Tag: capitalism
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The Pink Tide in Latin America: limitations and possibilities
The recent article by Steve Ellner on the ‘Pink Tide (‘Applying/Misapplying Gramsci’s Passive Revolution to Latin America’, Monthly Review, 76(5), 47-63. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-076-05-2024-09_4) provides a useful overview and analysis of the debates among progressives regarding the limitations and possibilities of the Pink Tide phenomenon in Latin America. ‘Pink Tide’ refers to the election of progressive governments…
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What Comes After Neoliberalism?
A panel of commentators brought together by Project Syndicate (4 June 2024) including Mehrsa Baradaran, Anne O. Krueger, Mariana Mazzucato, Dani Rodrik, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Michael R. Strain are asked to respond to “What comes after neoliberalism?” The steep tariff increases on Chinese goods that US President Joe Biden’s administration recently announced are just the latest in a long string…
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The Crisis of Liberalism
By Prabhat Patnaik in IDEAs (originally People’s Democracy) 13 May 2024 Each strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for,…
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The IMF and Class Struggle in Latin America: Unveiling the Role of the IMF
By David Barkin and Juan Santarcángelo in Monthly Review Online, 1 May 2024 Mainstream economics posits that the path to prosperity for developing countries is achieved through the implementation of a set of “free market” policies, which, among its principal measures, advocates for economic openness, market deregulation and liberalization, and privatization of public enterprises. Despite empirical evidence…
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Ian Angus’s “The War Against the Commons”: A vital new history of the bloody rise of capitalism
Review of The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism by Ian Angus, reviewed by Steve Leigh in Firebrand, republished by Monthly Review Online, 22 May 2024 In Marxist theory, primitive accumulation is, as Marx defined it in Capital Volume I, “the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of…
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Dividends payments soar globally as worker pay stagnates
By Phillip Inman in the Guardian 1 May 2025 Shareholders have proved to be more successful at securing bumper payouts than workers have at winning higher pay, according to two studies that show dividends outstripping wages by a considerable margin in recent years. Oxfam said analysis of global data showed that dividend payments to shareholders over the…
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Corporate Medicine 2.0 — Special Purpose AcquisitionCompanies in the United States
By Nishant Uppal and Zirui Song, published in NEJM, 10 April 2024 Acquisitions of U.S. health care entities by private equity firms have come under scrutiny. But the back end of corporate acquisitions — the exit strategy — has remained largely ignored, despite arguably being more important in the long run. Private equity firms typically…
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Mazzucato’s Mission economy: a moonshot guide to changing capitalism
Book Review by Mark Howard, published in Review of Radical Political Economics (22 April 2024). [Mariana Mazzucato served as chair of WHO’s Council on the Economics of Health for All. See Final Report (May 2023). Howard’s assessment of her approach to ‘changing capitalism’ is relevant to an appreciation of the report to WHO. – DGL]…
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Looming debt crisis, deepening inequality, lack of investment in climate mitigation and adaptation: UN Trade and Development calls for structural reform
Globally, in the first quarter of 2024, economic growth is slowing; private investment is stagnant, income inequality is increasing; and consumption expenditure is increasingly sustained by private borrowing. The UN Trade and Development Report Update (April, 2024) is a ‘must read’ for understanding the structure and direction of the global economy. Higher interest rates in…
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Capitalism is the single greatest source of violence
By Jason Hickel, from Pearls and Irritations, 23 April 2024 What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the “Cold War” was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation…
