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Notes from the Editors, June 2020

Notes from the Editors, June 2020

by The Editors

June 1, 2020

The current massive oil glut is the product of the effects of the tight oil or shale oil revolution, which for a time turned the United States into the biggest oil and gas producer in the world. Now, suddenly as a result of an overproduction of world oil, made far worse by the sudden falloff in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing the possible euthanasia of the U.S. tight oil industry, bleeding cash even before the oil price collapse and encumbered with mountains of debt.

COVID-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism: Commodity Chains and Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic Crises

COVID-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism: Commodity Chains and Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic Crises

by Intan Suwandiand John Bellamy Foster

June 1, 2020

Since the late twentieth century, capitalist globalization has increasingly adopted the form of interlinked commodity chains controlled by multinational corporations, connecting various production zones, primarily in the Global South, with the apex of world consumption, finance, and accumulation primarily in the Global North. COVID-19 has accentuated as never before the interlinked ecological, epidemiological, and economic vulnerabilities imposed by capitalism.

The Brazilian Crisis and the New Authoritarianism

The Brazilian Crisis and the New Authoritarianism

by Anthony Robert Pahnkeand Marcelo Milan

June 1, 2020

Three decades after liberal democracy replaced the military dictatorship of 1964–85, the far right in Brazil has made a comeback, most starkly with the electoral victory of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. Bolsonaro, however, is not an isolated individual; rather, his government is characterized by an authoritarian style of neoliberalism built on a series of alliances, a prominent one of which is with the judiciary. This coalition boasts connections with the military and police forces, the evangelical religious right, and agribusiness.

German Deunification: Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel, and the Liberal Roots of German Neofascism

German Deunification: Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel, and the Liberal Roots of German Neofascism

by Darko Vujicaand Ingar Solty

June 1, 2020

In 2021, Angela Merkel's fourth and last term as the chancellor of Germany will end. To understand Merkel's domestic and foreign policy, one must understand the country she inherited. She came to power in 2005 following the first center-left government since 1982, the government of Gerhard Schröder, and was in the fortunate position of becoming chancellor after a coalition government of social democrats and Greens had done the devil's bidding of implementing very unpopular neoliberal policies to the sole benefit of German capital and the rich.

Notes from the Editors, May 2020

Notes from the Editors, May 2020

by The Editors

May 1, 2020

In its wider economic, ecological, epidemiological, and public health context, the current COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the enormous dangers of the metabolic rift in human ecology and epidemiology brought on by capitalist social relations in the age of monopoly-finance capital, global agribusiness, and intricate, globe-spanning supply chains associated with the extreme exploitation and expropriation of both human beings and nature. Neoliberalism, representing the inner logic of capitalism, has left the world vulnerable to catastrophe wherever it has come into play.

COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital: New York to China and Back

COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital: New York to China and Back

by Alex Liebman, Luis Fernando Chaves, Rob Wallaceand Rodrick Wallace

May 1, 2020

COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the second severe acute respiratory syndrome virus since 2002, is now officially a pandemic. As of late March, whole cities are sheltered in place and, one by one, hospitals are lighting up in medical gridlock brought about by surges in patients.

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