Political Economy
Once upon a time the capitalist mode of production represented a great advance over all of the preceding ones, however problematical and indeed destructive this historical advance in the end turned out-and had to turn out-to be. By breaking the long prevailing but constraining direct link between human use and production, and replacing it with the commodity relation, capital opened up the dynamically unfolding possibilities of apparently irresistible expansion to which — from the standpoint of the capital system and of its willing personifications — there could be no conceivable limits. For the paradoxical and ultimately quite untenable inner determination of capital’s productive system is that its commodified products “are non-use-values for their owners and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently they must all change hands. . . . Hence commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as use-values.” | more…
Twenty-first century capitalism is not an improved and benign version of its nineteenth- and twentieth-century manifestations, nor will it ever be, despite daily bluster by the system’s practitioners and apologists that a rising tide of prosperity will soon lift all boats. The animating principles of capitalism governing the pursuit of profits are as hollow and iniquitous now as they were in 1848, especially where human exploitation and the distribution of wealth are concerned. As super-capitalist Warren Buffett remarked recently in a trenchant understatement: “A market system has not worked well in terms of poor people” (The New York Times, June 27, 2006) | more…
Although some idealize and others demean the work of teachers, few people outside the field fully understand what it really means to teach. Misconceptions about teaching influence the ways that Americans think about the profession. One of the manifestations of this enduring disconnect between the American public and the professionals who teach is the low salaries teachers receive. This is the main issue that Moulthrop, Calegari, and Eggers tackle in this thorough and valuable ethnographic study of the lives of teachers, their daily struggle to make ends meet, and what it means to teach | more…
In his Essays in the Theory of Business Cycle published in Polish in 1933, Kalecki clearly stated the principle of effective demand in mathematical form. By 1935 he outlined his theory of employment, demolished the then-orthodox remedy for a depression — that is, wage cutting — and pinpointed the importance of investment for economic dynamics. | more…
This important essay dates from the end of the fifties. At that time, the rapid rate of Soviet industrialization had directed the attention of economists to problems of economic growth of former colonial areas which had won political independence. As Dobb points out, economists were chiefly concerned with the problems of growth under conditions of private ownership of capital and where investment is primarily under the control of private individuals or firms. The theories of economic growth in vogue at the time derived largely from the well-known growth conditions set forth by Roy F. Harrod and Evsey D. Domar. | more…
Our friends Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, editors of the Socialist Register, have recently published Coming to Terms with Nature: Socialist Register, 2007 (Monthly Review Press, 2006), which includes contributions by a distinguished group of analysts addressing crucial environmental issues—dealing with everything from “fossil capitalism” to eco-localism | more…
Rank-and-file rebellions began rumbling in the coalfields from Pittsburgh and down the Ohio River after 1964, when dissident miners first challenged incumbents in international and district United Mine Workers (UMW) elections. Concern and anger also seethed through the coalfields of southern West Virginia during those years, particularly over black lung, a painful and often-fatal occupational disease. Doctors Isadore E. Buff and Donald Rasmussen helped spark those rumblings with speeches in union halls, schools, and churches | more…
I have always lived in the long shadow of race. Johnstown, Pittsburgh, Portland, Miami Beach, in every city racist remarks and racist actions were commonplace. You didn’t have to look for them; they were hard to escape. And on our road trips, no matter where we went or for how few days, it was not at all unusual for a white person to offer a racist comment. It is almost as if there is an understanding among whites that they are all fellow conspirators in the race war | more…
This volume includes six essays, the first dating from 1935 and the last from 1967, by one of the outstanding economists of our time. The economics presented in this volume is political economy worthy of the name: a discipline that shows us the social relations, in particular the class and group conflicts, behind the economic quantitative relations. | more…
Monthly Review Press is publishing an exceptionally strong collection of new books in 2007. However, like most small presses the modest budgets we can devote to the promotion of these books scarcely allow us to be heard above the din created by the massive promotional campaigns of the large corporate publishing firms, which are, of course, mere arms of much greater media conglomerates. We are therefore hoping successfully to promote these new books mainly by word of mouth with the help of MR readers and friends. In this space last month we referred to Michael D. Yates’s new book, Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate, which is now available. Two other new releases are Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (translated from the French by Diana Johnstone), and The Socialist Register, 2007: Coming to Terms with Nature, edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. Bricmont’s book seeks to reintroduce the critique of imperialism to the global discussion on human rights, while the new Socialist Register addresses the emerging eco-socialist critique of capitalism | more…
In the 2006 presidential election campaign in Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Workers’ Party), was interviewed at length on July 11, 2006, by the Financial Times (which also interviewed Lula’s main rightist challenger Geraldo Alckmin). The interview touched on many topics but mainly concentrated on Lula’s adherence in his first term of office to the global neoliberal policies of monopoly-finance capital, particularly repayment of debt and “fiscal responsibility.” At two points in the interview the Financial Times bluntly asked whether Lula was looking toward a “radical change in the model,” i.e., whether he and his Workers’ Party intended to break with financial capital and neoliberalism in his second term of office. Lula gave them the answer they wanted: “There is no radical change in the model….What we need now, in economics and in politics, is to strengthen Brazil’s internal and external security.” | more…
These articles were written five months before the first round of presidential elections in Brazil, on October 1, 2006. The second round, on October 29, saw Lula reelected with 58.3 million votes (60.78 percent of all valid votes), beating Geraldo Alckmin, the candidate for the Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro (PSDB), the party of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula’s predecessor in office. Lula won this second four-year mandate after a campaign revolving around ethical issues and allegations of corruption against government officials and high-ranking members of his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT)—allegations from opposition parties, right and left. The campaign included the pathetic episode of PT officials trying to buy information on candidates from the PSDB in the State of São Paulo (economically and politically speaking, one of the most important states in the union, with a strong oppositional streak), and a concerted nationwide media campaign for Alckmin on a scale never before seen in Brazil | more…