by Richard D. Wolff Recent press reports refer to troubling price increases for such assets as real estate, government bonds, companies targeted for acquisition and artwork. A New York Times front-page headline read “The Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything … Continue reading Marxian Economics vs Capitalism
by Leon Trotsky Moral effluvia During an epoch of triumphant reaction, Messrs. democrats, social-democrats, anarchists, and other representatives of the “left” camp begin to exude double their usual amount of moral effluvia, similar to persons who perspire doubly in fear. … Continue reading Their morals and ours
by Sanjay Perera
Much has been said about Thomas Piketty’s important and much talked about book. But not enough has been said about his nuanced wit and jibes at a system of meritocratic capitalism that is starting to merge with the hereditary accumulation and growth of wealth termed as patrimonial capitalism. But then it can also get quite serious. Continue reading Taking notes 37: Meritocracy, repression and Piketty’s apocalyptic asymptote
by Angelo J. Letizia Globalization entails the compression of figurative space between people, nations and institutions (Dare, 2010; Spring, 2008). With the advent of new communication and transportation technology, ideas, goods, people and money move across the globe with relative … Continue reading Radical servant leadership: cultivating information citizens
by Henry A. Giroux and Brad Evans The 20th Century is often termed the “Century of Violence.” And rightly so, given the widespread devastation of an entire continent during the two Great Wars; the continued plunder and suppression of former … Continue reading Disposable futures
by Henry A. Giroux Fred Jameson has argued that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” He goes on to say that “We can now revise that and witness the … Continue reading Protesting Youth in an Age of Neoliberal Savagery
by Henry A. Giroux Noam Chomsky is a world renowned academic best known not only for his pioneering work in linguistics but also for his ongoing work as a public intellectual in which he has addressed a number of important … Continue reading Noam Chomsky and the public intellectual in turbulent times
by Roland Boer This is a question I am asked reasonably often in China: do you think China is communist? Many would not hesitate to say ‘no’. Not only do you find this position among the bland liberal commentators around … Continue reading Taking notes 36: Is China communist?
by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Preamble Over the past few years, we have written a series of articles about the global crisis.[1] These papers try to break the conventional constrains of liberalism and Marxism, examining the crisis from the new theoretical viewpoint of capital as power. Capitalists and corporations, we argue, are driven not to maximize profit, but to ‘beat the average’ and increase their differential power. In this approach, the redistribution of income and assets is not a ‘societal’ side effect of the economy, but the central conflict that propels modern capitalism. And the main weapon in this … Continue reading Taking notes 34: The enlightened capitalist
by Zoltan Zigedy I should perhaps add that I experienced the American dream at the age of twenty-two, when I was hired by a university near Boston just after finishing my doctorate… Here was a country that knew how to attract immigrants when it wanted to! Yet I also realized quite soon that I wanted to return to France and Europe… One important reason for my choice has a direct bearing on this book: I did not find the work of US economists entirely convincing… To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish … Continue reading Reading Thomas Piketty: A Critical Essay
Philosophers for Change 