Tag: socialism

China’s capitalist reforms are said to have moved 800 million out of extreme poverty – new data suggests the opposite

It has become an article of faith among many economists that China’s pro-market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s ushered in a sustained reduction in poverty. This narrative relies on figures from the World Bank, showing that over the past 40 years the number of people in China living in “extreme poverty” (less than US$1.90… Read More China’s capitalist reforms are said to have moved 800 million out of extreme poverty – new data suggests the opposite

Dilip

The Raya Dunayevskaya – Herbert Marcuse -Erich Fromm Correspondence

Kevin B. Anderson and Russell Rockwell, eds, The Dunayevskaya-Marcuse-Fromm Correspondence, 1954-1978: Dialogues on Hegel, Marx and Critical Theory, 2012 Reviewed by Ben Watson Raya Dunayevskaya died in 1987 aged 77, but her ideas remain alive and to-be-lived-by today, a permanent reproach to thought’s accommodation to an intolerable present. Dunayevskaya inspired and inspires a special enthusiasm, evidenced here by… Read More The Raya Dunayevskaya – Herbert Marcuse -Erich Fromm Correspondence

Dilip

The Subversive Seventies

Michael Hardt Progressive and revolutionary movements of the 1970s, which took place across the globe, provide an inspiring and useful guide for contemporary radical political thought and action, even more than those of the 1960s. The sixties were a crucial historical turning point and we can certainly learn from those movements, both the victorious and… Read More The Subversive Seventies

Dilip

A Year in Crises

NB: My one request to commentators on global affairs is this: could you please stop the journalistic shorthand ‘global north’ and ‘global south’? Or else give us a detailed list of those countries (are countries all there is?), which fall in either category? Is India ‘north’ or ‘south’? South Africa? Greece? Singapore? North Korea? Belarus?… Read More A Year in Crises

Dilip

Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution

This work of a lifetime presents high-octane, high-political drama – and attempts to rehabilitate the ‘bourgeois’ provisional government that preceded the Bolsheviks Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924 – By Robert Service Reviewed by Pratinav Anil This is, by my count, Robert Service’s 12th book that touches on the Russian Revolution, either substantively or… Read More Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution

Dilip

Louis Althusser: An Intellectual Adventure (2017)

Louis Althusser – an Intellectual Adventure (2017) This documentary traces the development of the thought of the Marxist French philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990), who influenced a whole generation of philosophers, including Lacan, Foucault, Derrida, Badiou and Zizek. Famous for his Definition of ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Althusser is credited with reinterpreting Marx in a… Read More Louis Althusser: An Intellectual Adventure (2017)

Dilip

Squeezing communities dry: water grabbing by the global food industry

Pension fund managers, private equity firms and other financial players are moving aggressively to snatch up lands around the world with access to water for irrigation. Their strategy is to pump as much water as they can and as fast as they can into the production of crops, like fruits and nuts, that reap high… Read More Squeezing communities dry: water grabbing by the global food industry

Dilip

The US invaded the island of Grenada 40 years ago. The legacy of revolution lives on

Bhaskar Sunkara You wouldn’t have guessed he was in enemy territory. Addressing 2,500 people at New York’s Hunter College one June night in 1983, Maurice Bishop won the crowd over with ease, covering everything from the Palestinian struggle to Ronald Reagan’s Medicaid cuts. At one point, the 39-year-old prime minister of Grenada described a “secret report” from… Read More The US invaded the island of Grenada 40 years ago. The legacy of revolution lives on

Dilip

Conceptualizing an Emancipatory Alternative: István Mészáros’s ‘Beyond Capital’

First posted June 29, 2016 “It is no exaggeration to say that with 1989 a long historical phase – the one initiated by the October Revolution of 1917 – came to its end. From now on, whatever might be the future of socialism, it will have to be established on radically new foundations, beyond the… Read More Conceptualizing an Emancipatory Alternative: István Mészáros’s ‘Beyond Capital’

Dilip