Article Subjects and Geography: Economic Theory
April 2025 (Volume 76, Number 11)
April 1, 2025
This month, MR editors take on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, a pale imitation of the five authentic Nobel Prizes that is aimed at reinforcing the ideology of neoclassical economics and awarded to mainstream liberal economists who defend the institutions of capitalism. In line with this tradition, the editors note, the most recent winners are keen apologists for settler colonialism and Zionism.
Chinese-Style Modernization: Revolution and the Worker-Peasant Alliance
February 1, 2025
Since the 1980s, writes Lu Xinyu, a division between industrial and agricultural labor has grown in China, reflected in the fractured relationship between urban and rural areas. China’s successful navigation of the issue, Lu concludes, relies on creating a vigorous alliance between the rural peasantry and urban workers that aids in the ultimate delinking of China from the imperialist, world system. Chinese-style modernization, Lu concludes, represents a path that, while developed in a Chinese context, “represents the aspirations of the Global South to break free from worldwide Western hegemony.”
June 2024 (Volume 76, Number 2)
June 1, 2024
In this month’s “Notes from the Editors,” MR editors confront the Tower of Babel that has emerged over Marx’s early “Prometheanism” and later “degrowth communism.” This ahistorical interpretation has engendered further critique of ecosocialism and degrowth on the part of self-identified productivist writers, who attempt incorrectly to paint degrowth as a Malthusian project, rather than a realistic effort to live within Earth’s planetary capacities.
Ecosocialism and Degrowth
June 1, 2024
Originally published in the German journal Widerspruch, Arman Spéth interviews John Bellamy Foster about the growing interest in degrowth thought and the importance of incorporating democratic planning aimed at true equality into all levels of society. And what of the ecosocialist revolution? “Opportunities,” Foster says, “are everywhere. Obstacles, largely a product of the present system, are also everywhere.… Nothing can or will remain the same. That is the very definition of a revolutionary situation.”
Old Age but No Rest: A Political-Economic Reflection on Delayed Retirement Policy
April 1, 2024
As populations worldwide grow older, politicians are clamoring to raise the retirement age, thus extending people’s working lives at their own expense. Using the lens of political economy, Cai Chao examines the false narratives behind capitalists’ claims that delayed retirement is necessary to maintain society’s productive capacity, and proposes solutions to promote human development at all life stages.
What Do We Learn about Capitalism from Chip War?
November 1, 2023
Rahul Varman is on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, where he teaches and writes about corporations and the neoliberal order. The author is grateful to… READ MORE
Notes from the Editors, October 2023
October 1, 2023
buy this issue What the Joe Biden administration has called the “rules-based international order” stands for those institutions of world governance that were created under the control of the United… READ MORE
What Every Child Should Know about Marx’s Theory of Value
September 1, 2023
Michael A. Lebowitz was a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver until his death on April 19, 2023. For information on his life and work, see the… READ MORE