Precarious Work and Contemporary Capitalism

Precarious Work and Contemporary Capitalism

Jonathan White There is understandably a lot of public discussion around the issue of what’s increasingly called precarious work. For some, this is evidence of the emergence of something qualitatively new in our economy. A fundamental shift has happened, the argument goes, toward a ‘gig economy’ in which a whole set of assumptions about the…

Absolute Capitalism

Absolute Capitalism

  John Bellamy Foster This article is based on a keynote address, entitled “Absolute Capitalism: The Neoliberal Project and the Marxian-Polanyian-Foucaultian Critique—Where Do We Go from Here?,” presented to the 2nd Biennial Conference of the Caucus for a New Political Science, February 25, 2019, South Padre Island, Texas. The French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in…

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply…

Capitalism and Mental Health
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Capitalism and Mental Health

A mental-health crisis is sweeping the globe. Recent estimates by the World Health Organisation suggest that more than three hundred million people suffer from depression worldwide. Furthermore, twenty-three million are said to experience symptoms of schizophrenia, while approximately eight hundred thousand individuals commit suicide each year. Within the monopoly-capitalist nations, mental-health disorders are the leading…

How Labour’s Radical Agenda was Built from the Ground Up

How Labour’s Radical Agenda was Built from the Ground Up

A common criticism of left-wing politics is that activists always know what they are against, but struggle to articulate what they are for. After this week’s Labour Party conference in Brighton, this taunt can safely be retired. Labour delegates backed a range of radical policies including the introduction of a four-day week with no loss…

The Root Problem is the Capitalist System
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The Root Problem is the Capitalist System

Text of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ speech to the United Nations General Assembly, September 24, 2019. Brother President of the United Nations General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad Bande. Brother Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Sisters and brothers Presidents, Chancellors and Delegates Sisters and brothers of the International Organizations and all the peoples of…

The Systemic Crisis of World Capitalism
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The Systemic Crisis of World Capitalism

The hallmark of a systemic, as distinct from a cyclical or sporadic, crisis of capitalism is that every effort to resolve the crisis within the broad confines of the system, defined in terms of its prevailing class configuration, only worsens the crisis. It is in this sense that neoliberal capitalism has now entered a systemic…

Reclaiming a Socialist Vision

Reclaiming a Socialist Vision

As the capitalist crisis deepens and movements against capitalist globalisation build up across the world, many people are now talking about capitalism and describing themselves as anticapitalist. Great! But what do they mean? That capital’s international institutions are bad because they usurp the right of citizens to make democratic decisions? That financial speculation detracts from…

The Debate Over Inequality
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The Debate Over Inequality

The debate over inequality has become hotter world-wide. While Trump had introduced substantial tax cuts for the rich in 2017, and Britain’s Boris Johnson, the front-runner to succeed Teresa May, has promised to do the same if he becomes Prime Minister, there are strong proposals for taxing the rich which have also been mooted. Bernie…

The Global Rise of Fascism: Capitalism End Game?
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The Global Rise of Fascism: Capitalism End Game?

It is everywhere. In a few years, it has metastasized like a cancer, on all continents. Its fervent proponents and ill-informed supporters call it populism or nationalism. In the Italy, Germany, or Spain of the 1930s, however, this ideology of exclusion and fear, defined by a hatred of the other, together with a tyrannical executive…