Resolving the ecological crisis is incompatible with capitalism. We must build a movement that works against capitalist logic with the aim to overcoming it in favour of a properly sustainable and egalitarian form of society. This is the contention persuasively presented by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster in their recently published book What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism. | more…

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger celebrated his Papal inaugural mass in 2005 it’s reasonable to assume he didn’t expect in the course of his reign to be facing charges in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. If the Center for Constitutional Rights prevails, that is precisely what awaits him. | more…

That capitalism is not a rewarding or healthy system for the vast majority of workers may not come as news to most of us, but as Perelman points out in this interesting book, such understanding has never been part of mainstream economics. Following Adam Smith, capitalist economics has concentrated on transactions – the operation of the market – to the exclusion of production, and therefore of the conditions under which production happens. The result, Perelman argues, is not just appalling conditions for workers but, in capitalist terms an even worse consequence, the diminution of profits.  | more…

John Marsh discusses his new book, Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality. Marsh’s study asks some uncomfortable questions about the limits of education as a tool for eliminating inequality and poverty in the United States. On the show, he discusses how over the course of American history, but especially since World War II, education has became increasingly viewed as the central method for reducing poverty and inequality. Meanwhile, other remedies, including redistribution through higher wages or social programs, have been pushed to the margins of political thought. | more…

On Tuesday, June 14, the Guardian of London published “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers.” In this nearly 1,100-word commentary, the British writer George Monbiot attacked the two of us (among others) as “genocide deniers” and “revisionists” for our writings on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Monbiot also went on to assail Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and the U.K.-based Media Lens group for their association with individuals as depraved as we are. | more…

In the last few decades, there has been a renewed interest in exploring issues of ecology and sustainability from a Marxist perspective. Partially inspired by the ecological movement more widely, partially by the revival of Marxist economic theory since the 1980s, the topic of ‘Marx and ecology’ has been given wide attention in a range of publications in recent years. All three of the authors of the present book have earned their stripes in this field of research, and in particular John Bellamy Foster has been influential in putting ecological questions on the agenda of socialist politics, a tradition that had hitherto often been hostile to the claims of (middle class) ‘green’ campaigners.  | more…

In general, college professors are not particularly well-regarded as political analysts (the noun “academic” is a term of unvarnished contempt in precincts like FOX news). But there is a special circle of irrelevance reserved for English professors, who are not typically known for their quantitative acumen — or, for that matter, their ability to write in a language the rest of us understand. So it was with some trepidation that I picked up this book by John Marsh, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana. Amazingly, I encountered a work of deft econometrics. Even more amazing, it’s clear, lively, and realistic. | more…

There are more factors than climate change that threaten our existence on Earth. Scientists warn that it is only one of nine “planetary life-support systems” vital for human survival. The other boundaries are: global freshwater use, chemical pollution, ocean acidification, land use change, loss of biodiversity and the increasing extinction rate, ozone and aerosol levels in the atmosphere, and the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles that regulate soil fertility.  | more…