A recent article by the economist Riccardo Bellofiore includes a significant treatment of Paul Sweezy’s dynamic theory of monopoly capital. But the essay’s most noteworthy contributions, in our view, relate to Harry Magdoff and Sweezy’s role in the 1970s and ’80s in developing a theory of financialization, and what their analysis can tell us about our current situation. | more…
The most important principle of the monopoly capital tradition is that of “the present as history”—a focus on the historical specificity that separates the various modes, stages, and phases of production and accumulation, and its application to our understanding of the present. | more…
The decline of Western dominance over the capitalist world system and the concurrent rise of Asia demand a deconstruction of the accepted wisdom of economic history. Understanding the legacy of Eurocentrism in both the rise of capitalism and its historiography is necessary if we are to challenge the dominant discourse and ideological assumptions of the so-called “European miracle.” | more…
The experience of the British working class from the late nineteenth century to the current era of austerity illustrates that for labor, the welfare state is not just a mechanism to enhance the accumulation of capital or reinforce oppression. From the beginning, it was a vital part of the class struggle—and so it remains today. | more…
The state cannot be other than Leviathan in imposing its structurally entrenched power on overall societal decision-making. Yet a way must be found to extricate humanity from the ever more dangerous, arbitrary, and alienated form of the Leviathan state. Indeed, the survival of humanity depends on it. | more…
Sara Farris’s In the Name of Women’s Rights is a brave monograph that analyzes the way that the discourses of Europe’s right-wing nationalists, government agencies, and liberal feminists converge in their representations of Muslim and non-western immigrant women, relegating these communities to commodified spheres of social reproductive work. | more…