Departments

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Marxism

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    5/4/2022

    The Rent is Too Damn High(ly Central to Modern Economies)

    by Trevor Jackson

    Historian Trevor Jackson reviews Brett Christophers's book on rent, which places the power of the rentier class at the center of the inequality and dysfunction of modern capital and brings Marx's original investigations into the 21st century.

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    4/4/2022

    Gramsci's Gift

    by Alan Wald

    As the political thought of the Italian marxist is increasingly used and misused in popular discourse, including in right-wing attacks on "cultural Marxism," has the time come for this generation's biography of Antonio Gramsci? 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    2/1/2021

    Why Black Marxism, Why Now?

    by Robin D.G. Kelley

    Robin D.G. Kelley places the work of Cedric Robinson in the context of Black radical traditions that have challenged the use of Marxism as a critique of power and politics. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    12/15/2020

    Caste Does Not Explain Race

    by Charisse Burden-Stelly

    A reviewer takes Isabel Wilkerson's book "Caste" to task for failure to examine the connections between racism and economic exploitation. 

  • 2/13/20

    The Communist Manifesto Turns 172

    by Sam Ben-Meir

    This is a moment that we should not allow to pass without some reflection on the meaning to us today of Marx and Engels’ pamphlet.  

  • SOURCE: Guardian (UK)
    7-9-13

    Richard D. Wolff: How Capitalism's Great Relocation Pauperised America's "Middle Class"

    Richard D Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a visiting professor in the graduate programme in international affairs of the New School University, New York City. Richard also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. His most recent book is Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It (2009). A full archive of Richard's work, including videos and podcasts, can be found on his site.Detroit's struggle with bankruptcy might find some relief, or at least distraction, by presenting its desperate economic and social conditions as a tourist attraction. "Visit Detroit," today's advertisement might begin, "see your region's future here and now: the streets, neighborhoods, abandoned buildings, and the desolation. Scary, yes, but more gripping than any imaginary ghost story."

  • SOURCE: NYT
    3-31-13

    Jonathan Freedland: Review of Jonathan Sperber's "Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life"

    Jonathan Freedland is an editorial page columnist for The Guardian of London.The Karl Marx depicted in Jonathan Sperber’s absorbing, meticulously researched biography will be unnervingly familiar to anyone who has had even the most fleeting acquaintance with radical politics. Here is a man never more passionate than when attacking his own side, saddled with perennial money problems and still reliant on his parents for cash, constantly plotting new, world-changing ventures yet having trouble with both deadlines and personal hygiene, living in rooms that some might call bohemian, others plain “slummy,” and who can be maddeningly inconsistent when not lapsing into elaborate flights of theory and unintelligible abstraction.

  • SOURCE: Cuban News Agency
    3-20-13

    Cuba to pay tribute to Eric Hobsbawm

    HAVANA, Cuba, Mar 20 (acn) The International Colloquium “Changing history, changing the world” under way at Havana’s Juan Marinello Cuban Institute for Cultural Research until Thursday, will be dedicated to British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm.Hobsbawm (Alexandria, 1917 - London, 2012), considered one of the most important historians at a world level and a key thinker of 20th century history, will be honored by way of an analysis of his intellectual work, by renowned Cuban and foreign researchers.Sponsored by the Antonio Gramsci Department, the meeting will bring together specialists from Great Britain and Latin America, like Jean Stubbs, Fernando Martinez Heredia, Pedro Pablo Rodriguez, Jorge Ibarra, Maria del Carmen Barcia, Nils Castro and Robin Blackburn, sources of the institute told ACN.

  • SOURCE: Time Magazine
    3-25-13

    Time Magazine: Was Marx right?

    Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.