Capitalism
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Is This Revolution Truly Rinky-Dink?
During the late 60s, when the US war on Viet Nam was going strong and people were questioning capitalism, I drove from Eugene to Berkeley where my sister was living. I ran into folks who invited me to a discussion about starting a commune. There, everyone talked about dropping out of consumer society and buying land to get away… Continue reading
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Mega-rich recoup COVID-19 losses in 9 months but for everyone else…
The 1,000 richest people on the planet recouped their COVID-19 losses within just nine months, but it could take more than a decade for the world’s poorest to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic, reveals a new Oxfam report today. ‘The Inequality Virus’ is being published on the opening day of the World… Continue reading
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REVEALED: Public money is funding private healthcare
The UK government has used half a billion pounds of aid money to fund unaffordable private healthcare services in the global south. We need to take a stand and demand that public money is used to support universal public healthcare instead. Continue reading
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Three tragedies born in the womb of neo-liberalism
At first sight, the Pandemic, Grenfell and Brexit, don’t seem to be connected, but they are. They represent the uncivilised outcomes of an unrestrained capitalism obsessed by cutting costs, the state and regulations. The result is that the short-term enrichment of the tiny minority are now being swamped by the longer-term losses that the rest… Continue reading
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Covid and fictitious capital
During the year of the COVID, output, investment and employment in nearly all the economies of the world plummeted, as lockdowns, social isolation and collapsing international trade contracted output and spending. And yet the opposite was the case for the stock and bond markets of the major economies. The US stock market indexes (along with… Continue reading
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Zoom Privilege: COVID-19 restrictions are making the rich richer & everyone else poorer
Wall Street, Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley are swimming in cash and prosperity. 2020 could not have gone better for the country’s elites. The vast majority of Americans, on the other hand, have been forced into financial, physical, and emotional ruin. 2020 served as the year that government dictates — purposed with fighting a disease… Continue reading
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The UK’s Singapore-on-Thames Delusion
I will not spend much time on this topic because it is so ridiculous. But the notion that the UK can become a ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ seems to underlie some Brexit fantasies. Do these have any foundation? Continue reading
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A race to the bottom’? Post-Brexit deregulation of workers’ rights – 1
The FT editorial board reports on the package of deregulatory measures being prepared by the UK’s business department with the approval of Downing Street. It has not yet been agreed by ministers — or put to the cabinet — but select business leaders have been sounded out on the plan, ‘according to people familiar with the… Continue reading
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Brexit trade agenda threatens disastrous deregulation
The director of Global Justice Now, Nick Dearden makes an appeal to the public to support their work of restraining this government and its toxic policies centred around the recently negotiated Brexit deal. Continue reading
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Don’t worry, the sadism is good for you…
Ever since at least the Iraq War of 2003, the fundamental alternatives facing North American and European elites have been constant. One alternative might have been to accept a certain loss of global power so as to share global influence peacefully in a multi-polar world with China, Russia and other regional powers. Instead, the Western… Continue reading
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How Much Did “The Culture of Narcissism” Get Right?
Forty years ago, Christopher Lasch described a soulless society headed toward a “war of all against all.” Are we there? A look back at the book TK readers chose for review Continue reading
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Agroecology and Post-COVID Plunder
Contingent on World Bank aid to be given to poorer countries in the wake of coronavirus lockdowns, agrifood conglomerates will aim to further expand their influence. These firms have been integral to the consolidation of a global food regime that has emerged in recent decades based on chemical- and proprietary-input-dependent agriculture which incurs massive externalised… Continue reading
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War of the (Financial) Worlds
We all know, of course, that we’re living through a once-in-a-century-style pandemic; that millions of people have lost their jobs, a portion of which will never return; that the poorest among us, who can withstand such acute economic hardship the least, have been slammed the hardest; and that the global economy has been kneecapped, thanks… Continue reading
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ASSA 2021: part two – the radical answers
8 January 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog by michael roberts At the annual conference of the American Economics Association (ASSA), there are sessions hosted by the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) for Marxist and other heterodox economists to present papers. At this year’s ASSA 2021, many of the URPE sessions were concerned with the economic impact of COVID-19 and… Continue reading
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ASSA 2021 – part one: the mainstream dilemma
The annual conference of the American Economic Association (ASSA 2021) was unusual this year, for obvious reasons. Instead of 13,000 academic and professional economists descending on an American city to present and discuss hundreds of submitted papers over a few days, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ASSA 2021 was virtual. Despite that, there were a host of… Continue reading
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It Wasn’t 2020, It Was The Ruling Class Trying to Kill You
The sick reality underlying the present situation of poor, working-class, African, and colonized people around the world is that the people who currently have the most power to address our circumstances also happen to be the least interested in our long term survival. A decision was made in the spring that the interests of capital… Continue reading
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The dreaded lurgi strikes By William Bowles
24 December 2020 — Investigating Imperialism Stop the world I want to get off! – Anthony Newly Update 3: 24 December 2020 Officially Covid 24 December 2020 So I’m now officially Covid Positive. After my trauma of taking a shower on Monday, yesterday, I got transported to my local hospital’s A&E department to get checked… Continue reading
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When Role of Vaccines as Public Health Clashes with Their Role As Source of Super Profits
In recent years a different role for vaccines emerged – vaccines as a source of huge profits. Things became more worrying when this role of vaccines started clashing with the role of vaccines as public health and even appeared to be superseding it. Continue reading
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Will China Run the World? Should it?
[Prefatory Note: Interview Responses to Questions of Javad Heiran-Nia on world order in the time of COVID-19, with emphasis on China & United States, especially as reflected in the restructuring of the world economy. The underlying issue is whether the Chinese or U.S. approach to global policy and world order will gain the upper hand,… Continue reading
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Does automation spell the end of capitalism?
Capitalism will not ‘automatically’ morph into some ‘postcapitalist’ or socialist system due to technology replacing the human workforce. As the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY explains, ending capitalism will require a conscious, collective action on the part of ‘the many’ — the working class Continue reading
The New Dark Age 