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...

LA and Occupy LA Agree: It’s Time to End Corporate Personhood

What’s the issue that unites the occupiers and the city they’re occupying? Getting corporate money out of politics. On December 3, just two days before Occupy L.A. was evicted by police, the General Assembly of the occupation passed a unanimous resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood. Today, the City Council of Los Angeles also voted, also unanimously, for a resolution making ...
Posted on December 11 2011 Keep Reading...

Occupy Wall Street Activists Take Over Foreclosed Homes

  The Occupy Wall Street movement has launched a new effort to reclaim foreclosed homes from bailed-out banks. On Tuesday, activists staged a national day of action dubbed "Occupy Our Homes," partnering with displaced families to return to homes lost to foreclosure. In New York City, hundreds of people toured a Brooklyn neighborhood beset with vacant homes. Senia Barragan, Occupy Wall Street Organizer: "This particular neighborhood is ...
Posted on December 8 2011 Keep Reading...

Reflections on the Arab revolutions

  “Turning-points in the history of humanity,” a contributor to the left-wing Algerian newspaper Le Matin observed in the summer of 2001, “are never simple for contemporaries to understand. Rarely are people able fully to assess the significance of these episodes, or their consequences. The developments concerned do not proceed in the manner, or at the time and place, that people expect. The early years of ...
Posted on December 8 2011 Keep Reading...

Pessimism of the Reality, Optimism of the Ideal

  I. It seems to me that José Vasconcelos has found a formula on pessimism and optimism that not only defines the feeling of the new Ibero-American generation in the face of the contemporary crisis, but also corresponds to the absolute mentality and sensibility of an era in which, despite the thesis of José Ortega y Gasset on the "disenchanted soul" and "the twilight of revolutions," millions ...
Posted on December 8 2011 Keep Reading...