September 1, 2026
Through the work of neoclassical economist Thomas Sowell, Elliot Goodell Ugalde dissects the orthodox view that takes for granted that scarcity is at the center of economic life. In a world of various kinds of surpluses, Goodell argues, the idea that scarcity is the only organizing principle of our economic is inadequate to describe the complex interactions of institutions, history, and social power that make up economic organization under capitalism.
September 1, 2026
In this 1980 talk by Joan Robinson, first published in
MR in 1983, the economist painted a stark picture of global arms race fueled by military capitalism and imperialism. "The important question," she urged, "is not whether the rate of inflation is high or low or can be brought under control but whether our generation will succeed in destroying the world…. Economics should begin to address the important issue of our impending doom."
September 1, 2026
Paul Buhle reviews
The Radical Jewish Tradition by Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone. The book, Buhle writes, is a window onto "the antinomies of nineteenth-century Jewish life"—including the growing movement against Zionism and for socialism among Eastern European Jews. This authors, Buhle notes, also tells the story of Jewish communists in Britain, the United States, and beyond, taking into account the wide sweep of Jewish left activity globally, situating the present struggles against genocide in Palestine squarely within the legacy of radical Jews everywhere.
July 1, 2026
This month's "Notes from the Editors," originally published in May by the
German Quarterly, explores the last few decades of U.S. belligerence in Iran, culminating in the Trump administration's recent acts of war in the region. Together with Israel, the Editors write, the United States "has entrapped itself in an imperialist war that it cannot win," thus underscoring the necessity of a global anti-imperialist peace movement.
July 1, 2026
John Bellamy Foster introduces our special summer issue on the "Structural Crisis of Capital," illuminating its four main characteristics as first outlined by István Mészáros in
Marx's Theory of Alienation. Capital, Foster says, has found itself in a position akin to Lucian's sorcerer's apprentice: futilely attempting to control a runaway system that he had himself created, accumulating not only contradictions but outright catastrophe—with globe-spanning consequences.
July 1, 2026
Considering the "Structural Crisis of Capital" from the perspective of economics, Prabhat Patnaik sheds light on two major aspects that have risen to prominence in our current conjuncture. The first, rampant stagnation and unemployment, is clear and undeniable. The second, particular to the capitalism of the late twentieth century and the shedding of colonies on which imperial nations depended for wealth is particularly salient to Trump's economic strategy of economic recolonization not only through soft power, but direct military action.
July 1, 2026
"Old-style neoliberalism," write Riccardo Bellofiore and Giovanna Vertova "is dead, or at least gravely ill. The new paradigm that may replace it has not yet been born or is not yet recognizable. In the middle, between the times, lies what we have proposed to call the
permanent catastrophe: a regime in which capitalist responses in catastrophic form have become the norm, in which crises are no longer overcome but accumulate."
July 1, 2026
It is quite evident, Costas Lapavitsas begins, that the world is currently ensnared in geopolitical turmoil, perhaps for over a decade. In this article, Lapavitsas provides insight into the inseparable and interlocking mechanisms of dollar dominance and imperialism backed by the escalatory militarism of the second Trump administration. As Lapavitsas notes: "The dollar and the F-35—monetary coercion and military power—are two moments of a single structure of domination."
July 1, 2026
Jan Toporowski explains our contemporary age of "monetary policy dominance": the era in which the setting of short-term interest rates by the central banks is seen as the key instrument for regulating economic activity. This, however, does not reflect an ironclad law of the business cycle but, rather, a set of assumptions that underscores the dependence of capitalism on the accumulation of capital itself. This in turn obscures deeper truths about the effectiveness of monetary policy on the daily lives of the working class.
July 1, 2026
Over the last half-century, the "financial explosion"—manifest in the unrestrained expansion of financialization and its tools and institutions—has fundamentally reshaped the global economy, impacting countries throughout the Global North and South. China, however, has proven to be a distinctive case. Xiaolu Kuang, Zhi Li, and Fusheng Xie probe the question of how and why China has managed to maintain its emphasis on production above finance, and the development all above the accumulation of capital.
