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Nature, Labor, and the Rise of Capitalism

Nature, Labor, and the Rise of Capitalism

by Martin Empson

May 1, 2017

Capitalism was a radical break with the past: for the first time, production of basic goods was driven by the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, and not primarily to satisfy human needs. Likewise, we are alienated from the natural world, as the products of our own labor are no longer under our control. Our very perception of nature is shaped by an economic system that treats "the environment" as a collection of commodities to be exploited.

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A Radical Invitation for Latin America: The Legacy of Andre Gunder Frank’s ‘Development of Underdevelopment’

A Radical Invitation for Latin America: The Legacy of Andre Gunder Frank’s ‘Development of Underdevelopment’

by Felipe Antunes de Oliveira

May 1, 2017

Admired, followed, criticized, denounced, and rediscovered, "The Development of Underdevelopment" deserves a place among the key documents of postwar radical political economy. More than fifty years on, its ideas still illuminate aspects of recent struggles and shortcomings among left-of-center governments in Latin America. Most importantly, Frank's work poses a bold postcolonial challenge that has yet to be fully met by Latin American scholars and social movements.

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Singing for Women’s Lives in Chile

Singing for Women’s Lives in Chile

by Maxine Lowy

May 1, 2017

In an idyllic canyon near Santiago, a group of twelve women were electric with emotion from sharing personal stories and experiences, and, of course, from singing. Deep bonds were forged among participants, few of whom knew each other prior to the workshop. They were there to compose women-identified songs in a setting that alternated between individual and group composition.

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Neofascism in the White House

Neofascism in the White House

by John Bellamy Foster

April 1, 2017

Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, but with historically distinct features specific to the political economy and culture of the United States in the opening decades of the twenty-first century.

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A Teachers Union Against Itself: Organized Labor and the Crisis at City College of San Francisco

A Teachers Union Against Itself: Organized Labor and the Crisis at City College of San Francisco

by Rick Baum

April 1, 2017

How did a community college that had managed to serve and retain most of its student population and remain fiscally sound amid a recession and a budget crisis become the target of condemnation by accrediting authorities? The answer involves a disastrous collision of corporate education reform, administrative arrogance, and timid, undemocratic union leadership.

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Notes from the Editors, March 2017

Notes from the Editors, March 2017

by The Editors

March 1, 2017

U.S. economic, military, and financial dominance have been ebbing for decades, leaving the United States in the position of a wounded mastodon within the world at large, a threat to all around it. Washington has repeatedly tried with very limited success to reverse this slide in its hegemonic role by means of geopolitical expansion, aimed at increasing its "strategic assets" across the globe. The result has been a constantly expanding theatre of global conflict.

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Organisms and Objectifications: A Historical-Materialist Inquiry into the ‘Human and Animal’

Organisms and Objectifications: A Historical-Materialist Inquiry into the ‘Human and Animal’

by Joseph Fracchia

March 1, 2017

The anthropocentric tendency to view nature or the environment as everything that is not human obscures the productive processes that go on in "nature." But non-human animals are also the purposeful producers of their own worlds: they too engage in their own species-specific objectifying activity that transforms what is, from their perspective, nature; they too build worlds in their own bodily image.

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