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Rob Wallace on the political economy of pandemics
Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and such leaders across the world are malicious miscreants, convening necropolitical death cults. But the alternatives, also tied to capitalist sociopathy, are only a little bit better. Our “progressives” worship at the altar of the circuits of capital.
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Small State but big questions
A week ago Saxony-Anhalt voted! The media prediction – a neck-and-neck race – was cock-eyed! But outside Sachsen-Anhalt (in German), did anyone really give a damn? Yes, some did!
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The Modern Tecumseh and the Future of the U.S. Left
Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. His dream of an Indigenous confederacy largely died with him. Yet his appreciation of the moment and the possibilities for transformation lived on and should give us all pause.
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Dossier no. 41: The farmers’ revolt in India
India’s big capital, in close cahoots with the political class, took advantage of privatisation policies to seize public resources (including profitable public sector assets), acquire vast tracts of land by displacing village and forest communities, control the nation’s mineral resources, and undermine public sector banks through a cascading set of fraud and non-payment schemes.
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Lefebvre and Althusser: Reinterpreting Marxist Humanism and Anti-Humanism
Since the October Revolution, Marxism has experienced almost as many crises as capitalism itself. Meltdowns of capitalism usually come as little surprise to savvy Marxist theorists but economic crises are one thing; economic crisis plus a global pandemic is something else again, beyond an everyday capitalist norm, more akin to the political-economy of wartime. Pandemic, like war, threatens not only life and limb, but also solidarity and tender acts of human togetherness.
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Americans must recognize economic classes
There appears to be a reluctance in the United States to wear the mantle of “working class.” Its connotation appears to be a relic from the economic revolutions of Europe in the late nineteenth century. However, they remain the economic class that built the nation’s now failing economy.
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Red Alert: Only one Earth
A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Making Peace with Nature (2021), highlights the ‘gravity of the Earth’s triple environmental emergencies: climate, biodiversity loss, and pollution’.
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U.S. imperialists deprive Cuba of syringes that are needed now
Cuba, the first Latin America country to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines, presently is short of syringes for immunizing its population against the virus. It’s not feasible for Cuba to make its own syringes. The U.S. blockade prevents Cuba from importing them from abroad.
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Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution with Sibel Kusimba
Money on the Left speaks with Sibel Kusimba, Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of South Florida, about her work on mobile money and digital finance in Kenya. In her recently published book with Stanford University Press titled Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, Kusimba both theorizes and critiques Kenya’s thriving M-Pesa mobile phone-based payment system as a constitutive component of Kenyan social life.
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Briefing to the 8782nd session of the Security Council, May 27, 2021
The events of the last few weeks have provoked worldwide recognition of realities on the ground in Occupied Palestine, realities of systemic discrimination, of oppression, and of settler colonialism.The events of the last few weeks have provoked worldwide recognition of realities on the ground in Occupied Palestine, realities of systemic discrimination, of oppression, and of settler colonialism. We are at a new juncture regarding the Question of Palestine. The impunity that the Israeli government has long enjoyed is coming to an end.
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Dossier no. 40: The challenges facing Brazil’s left
If the social consequences of adopting an ultra-neoliberal project weren’t enough already, the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and the gross mismanagement and negligence in combatting the virus have led to the worst-case social, economic, and health scenarios.
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The rise and fall of the Paris Commune
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune.
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Anger and dismay
“The Israeli warplanes bombed many different places in my area with more than 40 consecutive missiles, without issuing the prior warnings they used to issue in the past three wars. The sound of the bombing and shelling was so terrifying that I cannot describe it.”
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The fishing revolution
Centuries before the industrial revolution, the first factories transformed seafood production.
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In defence of Metabolic Rift Theory
One Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems has outshone all others in creativity and productivity: the theory of the metabolic rift.
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Will the United States finally decolonize Puerto Rico?
On April 14, 2021 the House Committee on Natural Resources held hearings on two competing bills to end Puerto Rico’s colonial status. H.R.1522, the Puerto Rican State Admission Act and H.R.2070, the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act.
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On Paul Kingsnorth and Unruly Nature
Myth, an early and enduring human technology, will always be with us, in both unconscious and conscious forms. As we now face the slow-motion collapse of the biosphere, the call for new myths is not so much an escapist alternative to concrete analysis and action as a starting point.
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Lessons, dangers and dilemmas for Correismo after Ecuador’s election
On April 11, the second round of Ecuador’s presidential election saw the rightwing candidate Guillermo Lasso prevail by 52.4% to 47.6% over his left wing opponent Andres Arauz.
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United States withdraws from Afghanistan? Not really
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was criminal. It was criminal because of the immense force used to demolish Afghanistan’s physical infrastructure and to break open its social bonds.
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Finding the Money w/ Maren Poitras
Documentary filmmaker Maren Poitras joins the podcast to discuss and share a teaser from Finding the Money, the first feature-length documentary on the past, present, and future of Modern Monetary Theory. The film is currently under consideration for audience and jury awards in the DocLands film festival.