‘On New Terrain’ – How Capital is reshaping the battleground of class war

by Ray M

rs21 | January 12, 2018

Workers strike at Walmart stores nationwide in November 2014

Since the Great Recession there has been much debate on the nature of capitalism and the crisis of neoliberalism. Often this has resulted in theories which emphasise finance capital, precarious employment, and play to a generally left Keynesian politics, such as that being pursued within the Labour Party currently.

Kim Moody, has been one most of the most experienced working class organisers in the US over the past few decades. His latest book On New Terrain seeks to rethink both our understanding of capitalism today, and how the workers can respond. To mark the publication of the book, Ray M provides an extensive review that explores its ramifications in the US. A concluding section begins to discuss the implications for the UK.

Ecology and value theory

by Jean Parker

International Socialism | January 03, 2017

A review of Jason W Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (Verso, 2015), £19.99

Jason W Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life sets itself the challenge of locating an account of capitalist commodity production inspired by Karl Marx within the biological, chemical and geological totality we normally call “nature”. The ambition of the book is therefore immense. Moore proposes a method for understanding world history that shows how economic development is connected to “long-wave” ecological transformations. At a time when humanity faces profound and simultaneous ecological and economic crises, Moore proposes a kind of meta-theory that explains them as the outcomes of a single logic.

FACE OF AN ECONOMY: Debt in US-life

A Journal of People report

Debt in the life of common persons in the U.S. is a big economic issue. It plays role in social and political life. It is also an indicator of life and economy in the U.S. The debt-citizens’ life is a face of the capitalist economy. The following reports, compiled into one, tell many facts of life in the capitalist economy.

A “2 Out of 3 U.S. Adults Expect to Never Be Debt Free” headlined report by Maurie Backman in The Motley Fool on January 14, 2018 said:

“Credit card debt reached an all-time high in the U.S. last year, with the average household on the hook for somewhere in the ballpark of $16,000. But a new survey by CreditCards.com reveals even more depressing news: A good 68% of U.S. adults either have no idea when they’ll manage to shake their debt, or don’t think they’ll ever be debt free.”

‘The Most Dangerous Negro’ : The Radical Legacy of Martin Luther King

by Manmeet Sahni

teleSUR | January 15, 2018

Today marks the 89th birth anniversary of legendary Black leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, a charismatic orator who played an instrumental role in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Facebook found profiting from dodgy ads and scams

by Felicity Collier

Morning Star | January 17, 2018

SOCIAL-MEDIA giant Facebook has been found profiting from fake ads and scams by con artists just weeks before it is due to give evidence to Parliament’s fake-news inquiry.

Currently, anyone with a Facebook page and a credit card can pay to promote a post in people’s news feeds and to target specific individuals, based on users’ activity.

U.S: Senator Bernie Sanders to Join 350.org in Launch of Fossil Free U.S. Campaign the Day After the State of the Union

On January 31st, Bernie Sanders Joins Bill McKibben and Movement Leaders to Show Urgent Next Steps for Climate Movement.

350.org | January 16, 2018

WASHINGTON – Senator Bernie Sanders will join prominent climate activists to kick off a new campaign to take on the Trump Administration and the fossil fuel industry on January 31st. The event, Fossil Free Fast: The Climate Resistance, launches Fossil Free U.S, a campaign led by 350.org, calling for an immediate halt to all fossil fuel projects and a fast and just transition to 100% renewable energy for all. After a historic year of hurricanes devastating Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico, floods across the South, and California and the Pacific Northwest’s wildfires, speakers including Senator Bernie Sanders, Bill McKibben, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Cherri Foytlin, Varshini Prakash, and more will outline a clear path for the climate movement through 2020.

How Prabhat Patnaik “discovers” Marx’s alleged shortcomings in theorising colonialism

by B. Sivaraman

Frontier | January 12, 2018

Alleged omissions by Marx
In an article tilted Marx and Naoroji—The clue to the puzzle of “drain of wealth” that appeared in The Telegraph on 20 December 2017, Professor Prabhat Patnaik has listed what in his opinion were major omissions by Marx in respect of colonialism [The said article of Prof Pravat Pattanaik may be seen in the “Links to News & Views”-section].

Patnaik has argued that during 1850s, when Karl Marx was working on his Das Kapital, he was also simultaneously writing columns on British Rule in India for New York Daily Tribune and for both he frequently visited the British Museum library and “despite the fact that he was researching on both themes at the same time, the impact of colonialism on the dynamics of capitalism is conspicuously absent in Capital”.