Americas
Given [the] background of high unemployment, lower-wage jobs, and smaller portions of the pie going to workers, it should come as no surprise that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty (with income in 2011 below $23,021 for a family of four) while another 50 million live between the poverty level and twice the poverty level—one paycheck away from economic disaster. Thus, the poor (those in poverty or near poverty), most of whom belong to the working poor, account for approximately 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population.… Wage repression and high unemployment are the dominant realities of our time. A vast redistribution of income—Robin Hood in reverse—is occurring that is boosting the share of income to capital, even in a stagnating economy. Is it any wonder, then, that for years on end polls have shown a majority of the population agreeing with the statement that the United States is on the wrong track and not headed in the right direction? | more…
Marge Piercy is the author of eighteen poetry books, most recently The Hunger Moon: New & Selected Poems, 1980–2010 from Knopf. Her most recent novel is Sex Wars (Harper Perennial) and PM Press has republished Vida and Dance the Eagle to Sleep with new introductions. | more…
When I was a lad, I wrote amorous ditties, To Judy, Aleine, Edelina, and Sue. But now that I’m gray, I’ve abandoned those pretties, I’m singing my songs to the MONTHLY REVIEW.… So sang E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, to the tune of “The Streets of Laredo,” at Monthly Review’s fifteenth anniversary party. Accompanying him on piano was my late wife, the Judy to whom Yip wrote ditties. You will not find her or Aleine Mufson mentioned in the pages of this biography. Nor will you find cited any who, because they rubbed elbows or other body parts with Harburg, could lead the reader to the fullest possible understanding of who he was. | more…
Review of Sinan Koont, Sustainable Urban Agriculture in Cuba (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2011), 208 pages, $74.95, hardback.
Review of Agustín Fuentes, Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths About Human Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 274 pages, $27.50, hardback.
Review of David Gilbert, Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), 352 pages, $22, paperback.
For a long time now orthodox economics has been hindered by its extreme irrealism—a refusal even to attempt a realistic theoretical understanding of how modern capitalism functions. The shift to using fanciful assumptions to explore largely minor issues, following a brief Keynesian moment in the post-Second World War era, has been in many ways self-reinforcing. Once fundamental characteristics of the capitalist economy such as labor exploitation, accumulation, built-in inequality, monopoly power, rent-seeking behavior, technological change, and the tendency to stagnation were removed from the analysis—as a result of an ideological process of system-rationalization—there was little recourse but to fall back in successive stages on more and more abstract models based on increasingly purified notions of individual rationality.… Nevertheless, the deepening crisis of today’s monopoly-finance capital has given rise to a new era of questioning within the economics profession, and some top-tier neoclassical economists are now struggling—though hindered at every step by their own training and inclinations—to recapture knowledge long abandoned. | more…
The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world’s ice due to feedbacks that will hasten the melting. It will thus set the course to an ice-free world. Sea level will rise. Numerous islands will be threatened along with coastal regions throughout the globe. Extreme weather events (droughts, storms, floods) will be far more common. The paleoclimatic record shows that an increase in global average temperature of several degrees means that 50 percent or more of all species—plants and animals—will be driven to extinction. Global food crops will be negatively affected. | more…
Nothing makes me more hopeful than discovering another human being to admire. My wonder at the life of Celia Sánchez, a revolutionary Cuban woman virtually unknown to Americans, has left me almost speechless. In hindsight, loving and admiring her was bound to happen, once I knew her story. Like Frida Kahlo, Zora Neale Hurston, Rosa Luxemburg, Agnes Smedley, Fannie Lou Hamer, Josephine Baker, Harriet Tubman, or Aung San Suu Kyi, Celia Sánchez was that extraordinary expression of life that can, every so often, give humanity a very good name. | more…
It is impossible to disentangle the migration and labor question today without a deep understanding of the nature of contemporary capitalism, namely, neoliberal globalization. One of the main features of the new global architecture…is the assault on the labor and living conditions of the majority of the global working class, and in particular the migrant workforce, which is among the most vulnerable segments of this class. This essay will analyze some key aspects of the system that contemporary migration is embedded in, with emphasis on the process of segmentation and the growing precariousness (precarization) of labor markets worldwide. | more…
When the real estate market was building momentum during the 2000s, [new types of restructured, risk-based financial instruments] looked like a free lunch and insurers could pocket the insurance premium without ever being called in to make up for losses. However, when the market reversed in 2006, the payday came: some insurers lost heavily, others went bust, and a few, such as AIG, were bailed out. … By the end of the cycle, we had learned about the pro-cyclical nature of ratings-based structured products and the dangers of the new food chain. Hedge fund manager George Soros called Credit Default Swaps “weapons of mass destruction.” We had, many believed, been defeated by novelty. Or had we? Many think that subprime products are new, and that the use of ratings to structure financial instruments and so-called Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are a recent invention permitted by advances in modern finance. They ought to study the history of Levy Maybaum, a man who lived in New Jersey in the late nineteenth century and invented the first CDS. | more…
His right eye blinked furiously, swollen and red; he continued to rub it…. Louis-Jodel Chamblain, the man sitting across from me, had been a commander of the paramilitary force…known as the Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti—also known as the Front for the National Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti, or FLRN…. He was also a cofounder in the mid–1990s of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH) death squads. According to Human Rights Watch, the FRAPH took part in the killing of at least 4,000 people as well as in thousands of rapes and other acts of torture. Before cofounding the FRAPH, Chamblain had served with the Tonton Macoutes, the infamous paramilitary arm of the Duvalier dictatorship, which according to human rights organizations was responsible for killing tens of thousands of people and victimizing many more. | more…