Russell provides sound advice for those negotiating about the terms of these defined benefit plans, which still number 50,000 and have 60 million participants among active or retired workers. As he notes, in the current bargaining environment, “participants and their union representatives are more likely to be thinking defensively”… | more…
This thesis was provocative for several reasons, but perhaps most of all because it implied that once the material roots of slavery had been ripped up, the modern world would finally witness the progressive erosion of anti-Black politics and culture… | more…
Value Chains thoroughly and powerfully critiques modern-day forms of capitalism by bringing back to the table the much-needed analytical lens of imperialism to show the continuities of unevenness, an unequal world economic system, and the dominance of powerful corporations and nations over other regions, places, economies, labour and resources. | more…
It isn’t all black and white, of course. “Mastery over nature” doesn’t by definition preclude environmental conservation, nor does indigeneity bar overexploitation. But neither is the resulting system a mush of gray. For capitalists themselves cast the operative distinctions here as a matter of celebrated principle. | more…
“Dr. Horne, you’re from Saint Louis, and your younger brother is a Jazz musician and…I was wondering if you could paint the picture of when jazz first entered your world and psyche.” | more…
Marx’s reflections assume the existence of a money commodity, in this case gold. If a commodity functions as money, then the value of the money commodity is no more imaginary than the value of other commodities…. | more…
Born in a Jim Crow hospital. Attended racially segregated “apartheid schools.” Grew up in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis, an area similar to Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and home to several prominent Black businesses that were erased forever by racially motivated construction projects… | more…
“As an epidemiologist, you’re supposed to want to put yourself out of business,” Wallace said. “Everyone has bills to pay; I understand that. But the extent to which your corruption might lead to a pathogen that could kill a billion people—that’s where my line is”….“You can intellectually understand something but still not assimilate the oncoming damage,” he told me later, as he recalled the “sour vindication” of having his worst fears come true. “So there’s an aspect of rage, and an arrival at an understanding.” | more…
For Bellamy Foster and Clark, embracing the Good Anthropocene is simply a failure to appreciate the depth of the social change required… | more…
Zhun Xu, author of “From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty,” spoke alongside Chris Matlhako, Elias Khalil Jabbour, and Bikrum Gill on a panel titled, “Political Economies of Chinese Socialism.” | more…
Chavez inherited an impoverished country with a thin, glittering layer of affluence at the top. To the horror of Washington and Venezuelan plutocrats, he promptly began redistributing wealth to the poor… | more…
In their new book “Extraordinary Threat,” Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur delve into the critical questions: What is the nature of Venezuela’s government? Is it a dictatorship? Are Venezuela’s problems due to misgovernment, or are they due to U.S. interference? What would happen if Venezuela fell to U.S. imperialism? How has the U.S. been able to get away with this? And above all: Taking Venezuela as a case study, how does regime change propaganda work? | more…
…in the service of besieged Venezuela, en route to Iran, another nation similarly blockaded by America, when he was intercepted by Cape Verde authorities and thrown into prison there…. | more…