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Political Economy
Solidarity with Syriza: What Can the Left Demand?
| by Barry Finger February 4, 2015 |
For Syriza to triumph, it is not enough for it to play tough with the European Union. not enough to bypass the structure of the European Central Bank to find individual national allies, not enough to refuse to cooperate with capitalist auditors. Greece has already lost 30% of its GDP since the peak before the crisis, with unemployment standing at 25%, a decline only comparable to that seen in the US during the Great Depression.
Greece after the election -- not a threat but an opportunity for Europe
| February 4, 2015 |
[Ed. note: The list of signatories to this declaration includes seven out of nine German trade union presidents, all members of the executive boards of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and IG Metall, plus some (primarily social-democratic) politicians at the Bundestag and European Parliament levels, including the vice-chairman of the SPD, as well as numerous academics.]
The political landslide in Greece is an opportunity, not only for that crisis-ridden country but also for a fundamental reassessment and revision of EU economic and social policy.
What’s Fair About Fair Trade?
| by Riad Azar | Winter 2015 |
The idea of “voting with your pocketbook” is giving rise to a new global movement of ethical consumption. Industrial capitalism and its ills, it is thought, can be redeemed through personal consumer choices. “If only I bought the biodegradable bag of potato chips,” one may think to oneself watching a column of waste management vehicles pass on their way to the dump.
Collapse of Oil Prices, Fall in Peso, Exacerbate Mexican Political Crisis
| Dan La Botz December 16, 2014 |
Critique of Piketty on Capital and Inequality
| by Charles Post October 27, 2014 |
THE ISSUE OF growing inequalities of income and wealth in the advanced capitalist world over the past four decades has been the subject of both social scientific research and political struggle. On the one hand, there is an extensive literature that amply documents the growth of inequality globally since the mid-1970s.
Ebola: Who are the Architects of Death and How Can We Combat Them?
| by Jean Batou October 11, 2014 |
According to the latest predictions of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if the Ebola pandemic continues to progress at the current rhythm, it could affect 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone between now and January 2015, leading to the deaths of 700,000 in a year, and thus making Ebola the third leading cause of death from infectious diseases in Africa, after AIDS and respiratory diseases.
Interview with Sam Gindin on 'The Making of Global Capitalism'
| by Lois Weiner August 31, 2014 |
Sam Gindin, former Research Director of the Canadian Auto Workers union and co-author with Leo Panitch of “The making of global capitalism” graciously agreed to answer questions from NP board members about his book when he and I participated in a conference at the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Koch Bros: Libertarians for Daddy
| Michael Hirsch August 21, 2014 |
Review of Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty
By Daniel Schulman
Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2014
Monsters and a Critique of Everyday Neoliberalism:
An Interview with David McNally
| Andrew Sernatinger and Tessa Echeverria July 4, 2014 |
[This is part two of an interview with scholar-activist David McNally on the current economic crisis. The first part focused on the crisis itself, its causes, the way in which working life has been reorganized, the perspective of ruling elites in managing the crisis and pursuing austerity policies, and how this should help inform our stance as movement activists.
Argentina: The End of Kirchnerism?
| by Niall Reddy | Summer 2014 |
Scholars have sometimes noted that Argentinian history seems unusually punctuated by periods of booming prosperity followed by dramatic collapse.
Sleeping Through the Pirate Raid
| by Michael Hirsch | Summer 2014 |
The mainstream media was never true to its pretension of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable—which was Gilded Age humorist Finley Peter Dunne’s point—but there were exceptions, and exceptional practices. “Accountability reporting,” or investigative reporting, is one of them.
Rosa Luxemburg: Economics for a New Socialist Project
| by Ingo Schmidt | Summer 2014 |
Right-wing militias killed Rosa Luxemburg and dumped her dead body into the Landwehr Canal after the Spartacus uprising in Berlin. Social democrats and communists finished off her intellectual and political legacy by putting her on their respective pedestals. She became a principal witness against Bolshevik organizing practices for the former and was praised as a co-founder of the German Communist Party and a revolutionary martyr by the latter.
China’s Emergence as an Imperialist Power
| by Michael Pröbsting | Summer 2014 |
One of the most important issues in world politics today is China’s rise as a great imperialist power. Most left-wing writers consider China either as a “socialist country,” a “deformed workers’ state,” or as a “dependent capitalist country” exploited by Western monopolies.
Beyond Obamacare
Universalism and Health Care in the Twenty-first Century
| by A. W. Gaffney | Summer 2014 |
The Affordable Care Act commentariat—including those confidently awaiting the day when all its promises are vindicated, those rooting for its ignominious demise, and those of us in a separate camp—have been kept occupied in recent months. Between autumn’s website drama and winter’s enrollment saga, the news cycle has been full of stories of IT dysfunctions tackled, right-wing challenges thwarted, enrollment goals met, electoral prospects threatened, and individuals newly insured (or variously dissatisfied).
Global Slump & the New Normal
An Interview with David McNally
| Andrew Sernatinger and Tessa Echeverria June 29, 2014 |
[It’s been nearly seven years since the onset of the global economic crisis that began in 2007. In order to get an understanding of the crisis—of its origins, depth, and trajectory, we spoke with David McNally, activist, political economist, and author of Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (2010) and more recently Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (2012). For readability’s sake, we have broken this interview into two parts. This first part focuses on the crisis itself, its causes, the way in which working life has been reorganized, the perspective of ruling elites in managing the crisis and pursuing austerity policies, and how this should help inform our stance as movement activists.