The neoliberal restructuring of U.S. higher education is widely recognized, but nonetheless treated superficially and piecemeal in most left analyses, with little critical understanding of its inner political-economic logic. It is here that American observers have the most to learn from their British counterparts. | more…
May 2018 (Volume 70, Number 1)
Marx’s Open-Ended Critique
Against attempts to characterize Marx as a dogmatic and deterministic thinker, it is precisely the open-endedness of his criticism that accounts for historical materialism’s staying power. This openness has allowed Marxism to continually reinvent itself, expanding its empirical and theoretical content and embracing ever larger aspects of historical reality. | more…
Revolution or Decadence?
Thoughts on the Transition between Modes of Production on the Occasion of the Marx Bicentennial
Revolution is still on the agenda for the global periphery. Restorations in the course of socialist transition are not irrevocable—and in the weak links of the center, breaks in the imperialist front are not inconceivable. | more…
The Communist Manifesto in the Twenty-First Century
The Manifesto‘s analysis of the capitalist crises that “put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society” remains central to any attempt to predict the events of the coming years. | more…
The Physics of Capitalism
Human economies are complex biophysical systems. By exploring some fundamental concepts in physics, we can develop a better understanding of the ways that the energy-intensive activities of capitalism are changing humanity and the planet. | more…
Behind the ‘Black Protests’
The Struggle for Abortion Rights in Poland
This article will be made available online on May 28.
In October 2016, cities across Poland were seized by massive demonstrations against proposals for a total ban on abortion. Whatever their ultimate outcome, the protests prove that mass mobilizations are possible in today’s Poland, and that the right’s political and cultural hegemony may yet be more fragile than it appears.
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Two Lives on the Left
This article will be made available online on May 28.
Jane Lazare has written a fascinating, intensely personal book about history, family, and the Communist Party in the United States. She knows this story well: her father was an active Communist organizer, and the memoir recounts his life and hers, and the connections between them.
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April 2018 (Volume 69, Number 11)
Notes from the Editors
Building on Marx’s own open-ended critique, three revolutionary new developments have recently arisen in Marxist theory, addressing social reproduction, the expropriation of nature, and racial capitalism. | more…
The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism
From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, millions of Africans and Native Americans were enslaved and traded by European settlers in the Americas. This story of slavery, colonialism, and emerging capitalism—and their handmaiden, white supremacy—is integral to that of modernity itself. | more…
The New Service Proletariat
From call centers to fast-food restaurants, the future of service work is one of precarious employment, with no stable schedules, wages, benefits, or union representation. Should these workers be considered part of a new service proletariat, or treated as a new class altogether, the “precariat”? | more…
The Multiple Meanings of Marx’s Value Theory
The Marxian critique of political economy is inseparable from the “labor theory of value.” But what exactly does this theory mean? This article considers Marx’s value theory from five perspectives: as a monetary value theory, a theory of exploitation, a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production, a theory of individual prices, and a theory of crises. | more…