The Puzzle of Financialization
March 1, 2023
In this reprise from October 1993, Henry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy ask: "Isn't there anyone around here who understands how this capitalist system works?"
Article Subjects and Geography: Political Economy
U.S. Economic Planning in the Second World War and the Planetary Crisis
February 1, 2023
Martin Hart-Landsberg revisits the history of the industrial re-organization of the U.S. economy during the Second World War. What can we learn from our past about the systemic changes necessary to face our future?
Notes from the Editors, January 2023
January 1, 2023
This month's "Notes from the Editors" marks the 30-year anniversary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The abject failure of this framework to enact meaningful progress on the planetary crisis continued to be on full display in 2022, including at November's COP27 in Egypt.
Reflections on Lenin’s Dialectics
January 1, 2023
Pyotr Kondrashov takes a deep dive into Lenin's understanding of social dialectics. This exploration gives rise to an approach to that places the active human subject squarely in the center of a revolutionary Marxism that goes "beyond Marx," furthering the struggle for a liberated society.
Crypto Convulsions, Digital Delusions, and the Inexorable Logic of Finance Capitalism
December 1, 2022
The crypto winter, Ramaa Vasudevan writes, is here. Cryptocurrency, far from being a democratizing force in finance, has led to only further concentrations of wealth and power and increased precarity within the financial sector. The recent fall of Sam Bankman-Fried is only the beginning.
Mining Capital and the Indonesian State
December 1, 2022
Arianto Sangadji traces the relationship between the state and mining capital in Indonesia throughout the historical capitalist development of the country from Dutch colonialism to the contemporary practices of multinational mining corporations. While these powerful firms have generated significant profits, they are also associated with dispossession, environmental degradation, and ruthless labor exploitation, spurring resistance from the local populations.
Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Other “-Cenes”: Why a Correct Understanding of Marx’s Theory of Value Is Necessary to Leave the Planetary Crisis
November 1, 2022
The perception that we are living in a critical historical period regarding the conditions of habitability on Earth—not only for humans but for many other living organisms too—is gaining more and more adepts among common people, academics, politicians, and social movements. This critical period has been typified as the planetary crisis of the Anthropocene Epoch and studies undertaken in the present century show that habitability on Earth is progressively deteriorating.
End of Cold War Illusions
November 1, 2022
In this reprint of the February 1994 "Notes from the Editors," former MR editors Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy ask: "The United States could not have won a more decisive victory in the Cold War. Why, then, does it continue to act as though the Cold War is still on?"
Strategies for Degrowth
November 1, 2022
Mariko Frame reviews The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to the World Beyond Capitalism, by Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan (Verso, 2022) and its explorations of the policies, vision, and strategies for social change required for the burgeoning movement.
Some Lessons on Planning for the Twenty-First Century from the World’s First Socialist Economy
October 1, 2022
The Soviet Union's efforts at centralized economic planning suffered greatly by neglecting to integrate cybernetics into a comprehensive model. Today, this cybernetic approach to economic planning is still blocked. The time has come to implement alternative planning in the form of an automated model that coordinates the activities of all industries and sectors of toward a prosperous and sustainable future.