May 1, 2018
The Manifesto's analysis of the capitalist crises that "put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society" remains central to any attempt to predict the events of the coming years.
May 1, 2018
Human economies are complex biophysical systems. By exploring some fundamental concepts in physics, we can develop a better understanding of the ways that the energy-intensive activities of capitalism are changing humanity and the planet.
April 1, 2018
From call centers to fast-food restaurants, the future of service work is one of precarious employment, with no stable schedules, wages, benefits, or union representation. Should these workers be considered part of a new service proletariat, or treated as a new class altogether, the "precariat"?
April 1, 2018
The Marxian critique of political economy is inseparable from the "labor theory of value." But what exactly does this theory mean? This article considers Marx's value theory from five perspectives: as a monetary value theory, a theory of exploitation, a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production, a theory of individual prices, and a theory of crises.
April 1, 2018
For several decades, intellectuals and economists who follow Marxist theory have hotly debated the financialization of capitalism. François Chesnais's latest book represents the most thorough and polished attempt yet to clarify several lingering questions around the matter.
April 1, 2018
Kohei Saito's Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy shows convincingly that Marx's ideas about the interaction between humanity and nature did not arrive fully formed, but arose from his rigorous engagement with science and philosophy. His insights still offer unparalleled tools to understand capitalism's current assault on the environment.
March 1, 2018
To understand the present ecological crisis, it is necessary to dig much deeper into capitalism's logic of expropriation, as first delineated by Marx during the Industrial Revolution. At the root of the problem is a spoliation of the natural environment—the expropriation of the earth itself.
March 1, 2018
An expanded Marxist understanding of capitalist exploitation is long overdue. There are many pathways of surplus extraction beyond the wage form, and understanding them is a task with profound implications for anticapitalist movements around the world.
March 1, 2018
The pharmaceutical industry has been enormously profitable for many decades. The myth is that these windfalls are warranted by the therapeutic advances made by pharmaceutical companies—but the reality is far different.
March 1, 2018
Ideas and theories can only play a limited part in tackling the climate crisis, but at least they should not act as obstacles to understanding and action. In his new book, Andreas Malm maps those obstacles and proposes a path through them.
