It seems that on an almost daily basis we read reports that climate change is getting worse, faster than expected. Only a few months back in the aftermath of the Paris climate talks in December 2015, politicians were hailing the successes of the negotiations. They claimed it was a major step forward. Yet little concrete action has taken place, and many of those who protested and called for serious action from the politicians, will be asking ‘what has changed? | more…
“Why are hundreds of millions of people in nonwhite nations mired in dreadful poverty? Blame the world system, details John Smith in Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century. ¶ His thesis flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that modern capitalism is a force for human development. According to Smith, the opposite is the case, as the Global North deindustrializes. ¶ As that process has unfolded since the 1970s, the Global South has industrialized without the broad-based prosperity that characterized the US in the
Social historian Eva Swidler, author of the June Monthly Review article, “Radical Leisure,” explores the radical potential of work resistance, explains how the labor movement of the 20th century traded the promise of less working hours for slightly more wages, and makes the case for collective action and working class solidarity as the only way individuals can reclaim their limited time from the unlimited demands of capitalism. On This is Hell: a weekly Chicago longform political interview program broadcast on WNUR. | more…
In this collection of dispatches, by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Rob Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. With a precise and radical wit, Wallace juxtaposes ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens with microbial time travel and neoliberal Ebola. While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace’s collection is the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics, and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science into a new understanding of infections. | more…
Meet Rob Wallace and hear him talk about his new book, Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science | more…
Michael A. Lebowitz is the author of Build It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century, The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted, and The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now. He was recently in Australia for the Socialism in the 21st Century conference, which was co-hosted by Links. In this interview, Lebowitz covers some of the topics he discussed during his visit regarding the opposition to neoliberalism and the prospects for a socialist alternative in Latin America today. | more…
“The idea that we are in the Anthropocene—a geological epoch defined by human activity—is now catching the interest of activists. It is becoming clear that human activity affects the Earth system in multiple, interconnected ways and potentially to such an extent as to be detectable in the geological record for years to come. ¶ Some on the left, including This Changes Everything author Naomi Klein, say that the Anthropocene concept is unhelpful as it suggests that humanity in general, rather than the capitalist system,
Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge. Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis. | more…
Watch Ian Angus at the Socialism for the 21st Century conference in Sydney, Australia, May 13, 2013, as he launches his new book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System. | more…
Marta Harnecker, author of A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism, presents her paper, “People’s Power and Political Instruments” to the Socialist Alliance’s conference, “Socialism in the 21st Century,” held in Sydney, Australia, May 2016. | more…
Left Forum, Saturday, May 21, New York City: John Smith, author of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, Intan Suwandi, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, discuss the accumulation of capital, cheap wage goods, and the super-exploited workers of the Global South. | more…
“The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now is Michael Lebowitz’s latest work, a gathering of eleven ruminations on the nature of socialism in the present day. In many ways, this is a refreshing volume that helpfully adds its voice to a suddenly resurgent and more confident left.
Books articulating theories of socialist development are voluminous in number. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the publication of such volumes has been fervid, as academics and Kathedersozialisten (armchair theorists) have struggled to make sense of the post-Cold War world with
“Residents of Richmond and other California refinery towns have learned, over time, to be wary of state and local officials too closely tied to companies like Chevron. ¶ Politicians who benefit from ‘independent expenditures’ on their behalf or direct campaign donations from oil producers or, their lobbying group, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) tend to be less enthusiastic about protecting the environment by reducing fossil fuel dependence. ¶ In Sacramento,
