The Mexican debt crisis and the World Bank

by Éric Toussaint

 CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt) | July 22, 2019

In 2019, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will be 75 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few allied major powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations.

The WB and the IMF have systematically made loans to States as a means of influencing their policies. Foreign indebtedness has been and continues to be used as an instrument for subordinating the borrowers. Since their creation, the IMF and the WB have violated international pacts on human rights and have no qualms about supporting dictatorships.

A slavery story and a denial in the U.S

A Journal of People report

Slavery is a now a political issue in today’s United States. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes paying government reparations to the descendants of American slaves. One of these debates is concerning Senator McConnell’s ancestors owning slaves. Census records show his family benefited from the slaves’ labor.

A report by NBC News said:

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said recently he opposes paying government reparations to the descendants of American slaves, has a family history deeply entwined in the issue: Two of his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners, U.S. census records show.

Disablement, oppression, and political economy

by Marta Russell

Socialist Project | August 07, 2019

It is often claimed that disabled persons are invisible, disregarded by mainstream society, and irrelevant to the workings of society. This analysis has attempted to explain that the “unemployables” have been deliberately shut out of the labor force due to a capitalist economy that so far has dictated their exclusion by measure of economic calculations that favor the business class. It further posits that disabled persons are further oppressed in capitalist societies by having been purposely shifted onto social welfare or segregated into institutions for similar reasons – to keep workers who could not be profitably employed out of the mainstream workforce but also to exert social control over the entire labor supply.

Inequality metrics and the question of power

by Jason Hickel

 Jason Hickel Blog | July 03, 2019

How should we measure inequality? There are two metrics that economists use: relative and absolute. In the past I have argued that the relative metric—which is by far the dominant approach, embodied in the standard Gini index, in the famous “elephant graph”, and in logarithmic distribution graphs—is problematic in that it is aligned with the interests and perspectives of the rich, and effectively obscures real inequalities in the distribution of new income around the world. From the perspective of justice, and indeed from the perspective of the poor themselves, what really matters is the absolute gap between rich and poor, not relative rates of change.

Should universities care about the truth?

by Tim Hayward

MR Online | July 09, 2019

Isn’t the answer obvious? Universities are about attaining, preserving and disseminating knowledge—which only is knowledge insofar as it is true. Caring about the truth is what universities—through their members—do.

The question as intended, however, concerns claims of fact that are appealed to as grounds for governments to go to war or to engage in other kinds of hostilities such as sanctions, blockades, coups and military interventions.

The psychosocial dimension of power: An emotional analysis of the Davos elite’s discourse on globalization

 by Mario D’Andreta

Countercurrents | November 09, 2019

Arriving at Davos. (Reuters/Ruben Sprich)

Understanding for intervening

Constructivist and psychoanalytic oriented social research provides evidence that human behaviour is driven by the shared meanings of the subjective social experience (Blumer 1969, Mead 1934, Berger and Luckmann 1966, Moscovici 1961, Matte Blanco 1975, Carli 1993). This perspective can be used to understand the cultural drivers underlying the elite’s political and economic action.

Reading Marx’s Capital Today: Lessons from Latin America

by Marta Harnecker

Socialist Project | March 03, 2019

This paper was presented at the International conference “150 years Karl Marx’s Capital – Reflections for the 21st century” held in Athens, Greece on January 14-15, 2017. Organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – Athens Office in cooperation with Theseis, the conference discussed the actuality of Marx’s theoretical system of the critique of political economy 150 years on from the publication of CapitalVolume I.

The video of this presentation is available on YouTube. This article first published by Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

It reproduces much of what I have outlined in my book A World to Build. New Paths Toward Twenty‑First Century Socialism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 2015.

1. One hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx published his book Capital, an intellectual effort of great breadth, with the aim of revealing the logic of capitalist production and providing workers with theoretical instruments for their liberation. Having discovered the logic of the system, he was able to foresee with great anticipation much of what is happening in the world capitalist economy today. But, we cannot mechanically apply what is outlined in Capital to the current reality of Latin America.