February 20, 2024
Fred Magdoff, author, with Chris Williams, of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation, talks with Brian Becker on “Loud and Clear,” via Sputnik Radio. Listen, below, or at Sputnik News
February 20, 2024
‘You hold your nose, you take it,’ said Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras in a recent interview with The Guardian. ‘You know that there is no other way.’ He was referring to his astonishing volte-face in summer 2015: a few months after being elected prime minister of Greece thanks to Syriza’s opposition to the EU’s austerity drive and refusal to grant debt relief, he suddenly caved in to the pressure from Brussels and imposed a harsh programme of spending cuts and privatisations: the very policies that he had so vehemently denounced in the years before, making him one of the most popular figures on the European left….
February 20, 2024
February 20, 2024
Karl Marx has frequently been described as a “Promethean.” According to critics, Marx held an inherent belief in the necessity of humans to dominate the natural world, in order to end material want and create a new world of fulfillment and abundance through a planned socialist economy. Understandably, this perspective has come under sharp attack, not only from mainstream environmentalists but also from ecosocialists, many of whom reject Marx outright. Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism lays waste to accusations of Marx’s ecological shortcomings. Delving into Karl Marx’s central works, as well as his natural scientific notebooks—published only recently and still being translated—Saito also builds on the works of scholars such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, to argue that Karl Marx actually saw the environmental crisis embedded in capitalism.
February 20, 2024
In Trump in the White House, John Bellamy Foster does what no other Trump analyst has done before: he places the president and his administration in full historical context. Foster reveals that Trump is merely the endpoint of a stagnating economic system whose liberal democratic sheen has begun to wear thin.
February 20, 2024
Society and nature are weighty topics. Ian Angus confronts them with force in A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism. ¶ We read of the related work of 19th century natural and social scientists, from Charles Darwin, Justus von Liebig and Karl Schorlemmer to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Their revolutionary critiques blend with those of Earth System scientists of the 21st century, from Paul J. Crutzen to John R. McNeill and Will Steffen. ¶ I read Angus’ informative and provocative book as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria pounded Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Climate chaos is here. Blame fossil-fuel-driven imperatives of capitalism to grow endlessly…
February 20, 2024
E-Verify is back on the political agenda. ¶ For years, politicians have wanted to force all of the country’s 7.7 million private employers to check new hires against this online system–which compares employees’ documents with government databases in order to catch immigrants without work authorization–but so far, the efforts to impose a universal E-Verify requirement have failed. Now the idea has been given new life by a tentative agreement that President Trump and Democratic leaders made on September 13 to promote legislation protecting the immigrants previously covered by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)…
February 20, 2024
“What’s behind the recent rise in wages for undocumented workers?” David L. Wilson asks. “It could be immigrants’ rights activism.” Wilson, with Jane Guskin, is author of the 2nd edition of “The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers”…
February 20, 2024
Vladimir Lenin was the pivotal figure of the 20th century. His life and work dramatically pose the central dilemma of that century (and of our own): Should humanity progress by reforming bourgeois society along liberal social democratic lines, or should it move forward by overthrowing capitalism and establishing an entirely different social and economic system? Lenin’s life also suggests that social revolution remains a practical possibility even when historical circumstances seemingly render it unlikely….
February 20, 2024
Eric Holt-Giménez, author of the soon-to-be published A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat, recently talked to Katy Keiffer, host of What Doesn’t Kill You: Food Industry Insights on the Heritage Radio Network, “the world’s pioneer food radio station,” based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Listen, below, or at What Doesn’t Kill You.
