Reports on Oil Workers’ Struggle in Kazakhstan

  The following reports are from Socialist Resistance of Kazakhstan.  Their website is <www.socialismkz.info/>. The background to all this is that the oil sector in western Kazakhstan has been hampered for seven months now by strikes and work stoppages (see Joanna Lillis "Kazakhstan: Labor Dispute Dragging Energy Production Down," Eurasianet, October 13, 2011).  According to some recent reports, the striking workers and their unions have become quite ...
Posted on January 24 2012 Keep Reading...

Contradictions of Finance Capitalism

  Over the last thirty years, capital has abstracted upwards, from production to finance; its sphere of operations has expanded outwards, to every nook and cranny of the globe; the speed of its movement has increased, to milliseconds; and its control has extended to include “everything.” We now live in the era of global finance capitalism. The term “finance capital” comes from Rudolf Hilferding, the Austro-German Marxist ...
Posted on January 24 2012 Keep Reading...

America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible?

  “Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown. No local, state or federal programs offered significant help. Steelworkers called training programs “funeral insurance”: they led nowhere since there were no other jobs available. Inspired by a young steelworker, an ecumenical ...
Posted on January 15 2012 Keep Reading...

The spectre of barbarism and its alternative: eight theses

  A note from the author The following two documents are presentations made or prepared for different purposes in Venezuela. The first (‘The Spectre of Barbarism and its Alternative: Eight Theses’) was presented at a conference of Venezuelan intellectuals organized by Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM) in Caracas on ‘The New International Situation and Construction of Socialism in the 21st Century’ on 1 October 2009; this paper points ...
Posted on January 15 2012 Keep Reading...

The Unifying Element in All Struggles Against Capital Is the Right of Everyone to Full Human Development

The Unifying Element in All Struggles Against Capital Is the Right of Everyone to Full Human Development Michael A. Lebowitz Interview     The following is a portion of an interview that took place in Caracas, December 4, 2009, published in Hak Mücadeleleri, edited by Yalçin Bürkev, Metin Özugurlu, Yasemin Özdek, and Ersin Vedat Elgur (Ankara: Note Bene Yayinlari, 2011) —Ed. Let’s start with your ideas about rethinking Marx, capital’s ...
Posted on January 15 2012 Keep Reading...

Food as a Commodity

  Food is one of the most basic of human needs. Routine access to a balanced diet is essential for both growth and development of the young, as well as for general health throughout one’s life. Although food is mostly plentiful, malnutrition is still common. The contradiction between plentiful global food supplies and widespread malnutrition and hunger arises primarily from food being considered a commodity, just ...
Posted on January 12 2012 Keep Reading...

The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism

  In the last few decades there has been an enormous shift in the capitalist economy in the direction of the globalization of production. Much of the increase in manufacturing and even services production that would have formerly taken place in the global North—as well as a portion of the North’s preexisting production—is now being offshored to the global South, where it is feeding the rapid ...
Posted on January 10 2012 Keep Reading...

Women, Labor, and Capital Accumulation in Asia

  The trend towards feminization of employment in Asian countries resulted from employers’ needs for cheaper and more “flexible” sources of labor, which meant more casualization of labor, a shift to part-time work or piece-rate contracts, and insistence on greater freedom of hiring and firing. All these aspects of what is now described as “labor market flexibility” became necessary once external competitiveness became the significant goal ...
Posted on January 10 2012 Keep Reading...

The Future of the Occupy Movement

  The Future of the Occupy Movement Jurist Guest Columnist Jules Lobel of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that if the Occupy Movement can create organizational forms that combine its democratic, egalitarian origins with ongoing direct action, a narrative of solidarity, equality and democracy over the long term, it will have made a major contribution in transforming the public dialogue and birthing a new ...
Posted on December 11 2011 Keep Reading...

The Wars of the One Percent

  America’s wars are remote.  They’re remote from us geographically, remote from us emotionally (unless you’re serving in the military or have a close relative or friend who serves), and remote from our major media outlets, which have given us no compelling narrative about them, except that they’re being fought by “America’s heroes” against foreign terrorists and evil-doers.  They’re even being fought, in significant part, by remote control -- by robotic drones“piloted” ...
Posted on December 11 2011 Keep Reading...