Top Menu

Global

Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis: The Uncertain Future of Capitalism

Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis: The Uncertain Future of Capitalism

In this provocative study, economist Ernesto Screpanti argues that imperialism—far from disappearing or mutating into a benign “globalization”—has in fact entered a new phase, which he terms “global imperialism.” This is a phase defined by multinational firms cut loose from the nation-state framework and free to chase profits over the entire surface of the globe. No longer dependent on nation-states for building a political consensus that accommodates capital accumulation, these firms seek to bend governments to their will and destroy barriers to the free movement of capital. And while military force continues to play an important role in imperial strategy, it is the discipline of the global market that keeps workers in check by pitting them against each other no matter what their national origin. | more…

The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy

The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy

John Bellamy Foster is a leading exponent of the theoretical perspective that continues in the tradition of Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital. This new edition of his essential work, The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, is a clear and accessible explication of this outlook, brought up to the present, and incorporating an analysis of recently discovered “lost” chapters from Monopoly Capital and correspondence between Baran and Sweezy. It also discusses Magdoff and Sweezy’s analysis of the financialization of the economy in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, leading up to the Great Financial Crisis of the opening decade of this century. | more…

The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital

Three years ago, in December 2006, I wrote an article for Monthly Review entitled “Monopoly-Finance Capital.” The occasion was the anniversary of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital, published four decades earlier in 1966.…The article…[discussed] “the dual reality” of stagnant growth (or stagnation) and financialization, characterizing the advanced economies in this phase of capitalism. I concluded that this pointed to two possibilities: (1) a major financial and economic crisis in the form of “global debt meltdown and debt-deflation,” and (2) a prolongation of the symbiotic stagnation-financialization relationship of monopoly-finance capital. In fact, what we have experienced in the last two years, I would argue, is each of these sequentially: the worst financial-economic crisis since the 1930s, and then the system endeavoring to right itself by returning to financialization as its normal means of countering stagnation. It is thus doubly clear today that we are in a new phase of capitalism. In what follows, I shall attempt to outline the logic of this argument, as it evolved out of the work of Baran, Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff in particular, and how it relates to our present economic and social predicament. | more…

Socialist Register 2014: Registering Class

Socialist Register 2014: Registering Class

For fifty years, the Socialist Register has brought together some of the world’s leading radical thinkers to address the most pressing issues of the day. Independent, searching, and erudite analysis is the hallmark of the Socialist Register, and this fiftieth-anniversary issue is no exception. Contributors to Registering Class examine some of our assumptions about class in the light of the global economic crisis and the many forms of resistance it has produced. | more…

October 2009 (Volume 61, Number 5)

At the time of this writing (late August), the business news in the United States is full of discussions of “recovery” from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, while the economy appears to have bottomed out and a recovery of sorts may be in the works, this is in many ways misleading. Although a technical or formal recovery seems quite likely by the end of the year — with a small increase in economic growth mainly due to inventory restocking — it is unlikely to feel like a recovery to most individuals in the society. This is because official unemployment is projected to rise to the low double-digits by the end of this year or the beginning of next year — with the numbers of those dropping out of the labor market due to discouragement, or seeking part-time work because they are unable to obtain a full-time job, also growing. All of this points to a “jobless” and “wageless” recovery. As New York University economist Nouriel Roubini wrote in an August 13 column for Forbes.com, “It is very difficult to argue that the U.S. economy is not still in a recession while the labor market is still weak.” Indeed, what is really at issue is not simply recession and recovery but the longer-term structural crisis of capitalism. This is the subject of the Review of the Month, which seeks to place the current crisis in the context of the long-term development of capital accumulation and crisis. | more…

Three Essays on Marx's Value Theory

Three Essays on Marx’s Value Theory

In this slim, insightful volume, noted economist Samir Amin returns to the core of Marxian economic thought: Marx’s theory of value. Amin defends Marx’s theory of value against its critics and also tackles some of its trickier aspects. He examines the relationship between Marx’s abstract concepts—such as “socially necessary labor time”—and how they are manifested in the capitalist marketplace as prices, wages, rents, and so on. He also explains how variations in price are affected by the development of “monopoly-capitalism,” the abandonment of the gold standard, and the deepening of capitalism as a global system. | more…

The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism

The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism

Renowned political economist Samir Amin, engaged in a unique lifelong effort both to narrate and affect the human condition on a global scale, brings his analysis up to the present—the world of 2013. The key events of our times—financial crisis, the emerging nations, globalization, financialization, political Islam, Euro–zone implosion—are related in a coherent, historically based, account. | more…

June 2009 (Volume 61, Number 2)

The grim state of the U.S. economy in early 2009 was brought into sharp relief by economic data released at the end of April. Industrial production in the first quarter of this year dropped by an annual rate of 20 percent, while manufacturing capacity utilization (the operating rate of manufacturing plant and equipment) sank to 65.8 percent in March, the lowest level since the Federal Reserve Board series was introduced in 1948 (industrial capacity utilization as a whole is currently at 69.3 percent, its lowest point since that measurement began in 1967). | more…

Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives

Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives

This book examines the historical record of globalization and restores agency to the capitalists, policy-makers, and politicians who worked to craft a regime of world-wide exploitation. It demolishes their neoliberal ideology – already on shaky ground after the 2008 financial crisis – and picks apart the record of trade agreements like NAFTA and institutions like the WTO. But, crucially, Hart-Landsberg also discusses alternatives to capitalist globalization, looking to examples such as South America’s Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) for clues on how to build an international economy based on solidarity, social development, and shared prosperity. | more…

Monthly Review Volume 61, Number 1 (May 2009)

May 2009 (Volume 61, Number 1)

This issue of Monthly Review marks the sixtieth anniversary of the magazine. We are reprinting here Albert Einstein’s classic article “Why Socialism?,” written for volume 1, no. 1, of Monthly Review (May 1949). On Thursday, September 17, we will meet together at the Ethical Culture Society in Manhattan to celebrate and to promote a global socialism for the twenty-first century. We invite all our subscribers and friends. | more…

Albert Einstein (1959), charcoal and watercolor drawing by Alexander Dobkin

Why Socialism?

Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.… Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service. | more…

April 2009 (Volume 60, Number 11)

It is now universally recognized that the U.S. economy is experiencing a deep downturn unlike anything seen since the 1930s. Hence, the question continually arises: How close is this to a depression? One way of answering is to look at the unemployment rate. The Great Depression hit bottom in 1933 when unemployment peaked at 25 percent. Today the United States is losing jobs at the rate of 600,000 a month. But the official unemployment rate currently stands at 8.1 percent (seasonally adjusted, February 2009). This is the highest rate of official unemployment in a quarter-century, but hardly what is considered a depression-level rate, which is usually thought of as well into the double-digits. | more…