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Covid-19 and the Structural Crises of our Time (CSCT) is a very timely and important book, written by Mah-Hui Lim, a one-time sociology professor who went on to work in international banking, and Michael Heng Siam-Hang, a former professor of management studies.

As tensions between the United States and China rise, Washington is intent on contesting Beijing’s influence around the world, particularly in the Global South. The U.S. government has ramped up its efforts to influence international media and public opinion. In this new Cold War, South Africa is once again in the crosshairs.

Brett Scott joins Money on the Left to discuss his recently published book Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for our Wallets (Harper-Collins 2022). A committed advocate for financial heterodoxy, Scott grounds his perspicuous critique of “cloudmoney”–the conjoined efforts and outcomes of Big Finance and Big Tech’s drive to go “cashless”– in his anthropological training and work as financial derivatives trader in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis.

The concept of labor constituted a pivotal problematic in Georg Lukács’s theoretical development throughout his Marxist years.

We have to recognize that there is a pathway forward for humanity, but that the capitalist world system, and today’s governments that are largely subservient to corporations and the wealthy, are blocking that pathway, simply because it requires revolutionary-scale socioecological change.

Despite the persistent hegemony of capitalism and its ruling neoliberal ideology, various forms of resistance, social struggle, and proposals for an emancipated future continue to emerge.

The United States (together with its Western allies) always tries to tell China what to do in managing COVID-19 outbreaks, and since the whole city of Shanghai was under lockdown, the U.S. media seems to have even more reasons to criticize China’s anti-virus policy.

John Bellamy Foster explains the capitalist ‘solution’ master-minded by global finance to resolve the imminent environmental crisis: create a multi-quadrillion dollars worth of assets on the back of everything nature does and expropriate it from the global commons to make a profit. Worse still: it is already happening.

In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!

1 year ago, in June and July, a massive uprising led by Communists in Swaziland threatened to overthrow the last absolute monarchy in Africa. With the help of its imperialist allies, the Swazi monarchy brutally repressed this uprising, but they have only temporarily delayed the inevitable. One year later, we can reflect on the conditions that caused the revolution, its successes and missed opportunities, the role of imperialism in tipping the scales to a comprador bourgeoisie, and what has changed in the year since in Swaziland as revolutionary agitation continues.

I have two favorite sayings. One draws on the dialogue in Shakespeare’s Henry the VI part 2 when Jack Cade envisions that the effect of his plot will be that “all the realm shall be in common.” To this, comrade Dick responds, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

U.S. media outlets and politicians have nearly all parroted the same praises of the recent “peace agreements” between Israel and the repressive U.S.-backed governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

Benjamin C. Wilson, Taylor Reid, and Max Sussman join the podcast to discuss their forthcoming co-written essay, “Food, Money, and Democracy: Cultivating Collective Provisioning for Resilient and Equitable Communities of Work.” Inaugurating our new journal, Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice, the article politicizes what Sanjukta Paul and Nathan Tankus term “coordination rights” across monetary and production sectors and focuses on the coordination of food systems, in particular. Coordination rights are fundamental to the process of building resilient communities, our guests argue, determining whether social provisioning systems are “collective” or “concentrated.”

Virtually all socialists today are descendants of the Second International of 1889 to 1914. Yet its legacy remains sharply disputed. Some associate this International with its betrayal of socialist principles at the start of World War I, and think there is little reason to study it any further. Others see the prewar Second International as a model to be re-created. Both assessments are mistaken.

The Supreme Court Justices have left town for the summer. Their sense of justice departed a few months ago, along with their fidelity to the history and text of the Constitution.

Under capitalism, corporate dishonesty has become so commonplace that most of us take it for granted.

On June 19, 2022, long lines brought 39 million Colombian (out of a population of 51 million) to vote in their presidential election. In rural areas, where the vote is often suppressed due to desolation or violence, the lines seemed longest.

This past week, as part of its policy to dominate the American hemisphere, the United States government organised the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. U.S. President Joe Biden made it clear early on that three countries in the hemisphere (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) would not be invited to the event, claiming that they are not democracies.

The tide of public opinion in Germany is as overpowering–and changeable – as elsewhere: “Stop the Russian invasion!“ – “Defend Ukraine!”–“Send money”–“More, bigger, further-reaching weapons!”- “Defeat Russia!” Sustaining this tide is an all-encompassing media campaign.

“Cannibalism,” as writer Jack Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé/Delaware-Lenápe) defined it, “is the consuming of another’s life for one’s own private purpose or profit.”