Why governments further policy agendas that entrench and expand extractive industries that drive biodiversity loss is revealed in Exporting Extinction, a report exposing structural drivers incentivizing this extractive agenda and constraining what states can do to address economic development and ecological crises.
In part 2, political scientist Dr. Saeed Rahnema discusses his experience in the workers’ council movement leading up to and during the Iranian Revolution of 1979-1980 and addresses the Islamic Republic’s opposition to unions. He also contends that modern-day working classes in the West are ideologically and culturally segmented and that the left has failed to mobilize at numerous historical junctures.
The workers’ council movement took shape in several forms across Europe, Russia, Tito’s Yugoslavia, Algeria, and Iran. Political scientist Dr. Saeed Rahnema discusses the failure of workers’ councils in these different historical contexts and traces out the tensions between workers’ control and workers’ participation under capitalism. Is real workers’ control feasible under capitalism, and do struggles for increased workers’ participation and higher wages necessarily lead to workers’ control?
Israel’s objective is to maintain Jewish-Israeli dominance in the region by imposing inhumane conditions on Palestinians, resulting in the forced displacement of the entire population of Gaza. Paul Jay, the founder of theAnalysis, states that in order to understand the Israel-Palestine conflict, one has to view it from the context of U.S. global hegemony and monopoly capitalism.
The current climate crisis emerged out of a specific set of historical and economic factors which have maintained capitalist accumulation and class inequalities to this day. Jason W. Moore, geographer and Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, explains how the development of capitalism fueled European colonialism and Western imperialism, resulting in a novel form of climate destruction.
In part 2, historian and geographer Jason W. Moore explains why climate and revolutionary struggles must understand capitalist dynamics and deploy a language of universal class solidarity to overthrow transnational power structures perpetuating the climate crisis.
Dr. Shana Marshall is the Associate Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University in D.C. She highlights a crucial element of financing the military and defense technology sector by venture capitalist and private equity firms with dubious financial and political interests. She explains how the business models of these firms shape the sort of weaponry produced in the U.S., such as an increase in drones and AI-powered systems and the “attritable” form of warfare that is waged as a result. Furthermore, she argues that U.S. policy in the Middle East and American support for authoritarian regimes has had dire consequences for the people in the region.
Widespread corruption in Lebanon is fostered by the country’s ruling class, whose business interests are enmeshed with those of international finance. Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, explains how Lebanon’s culture of political impunity is tied to the reconstruction agreements put in place in 1990, at the end of the 15-year civil war. The ongoing political deadlock shields the authorities from scrutiny and allows for vulture capitalists such as the former governor of Lebanon’s Central Bank, Riad Salameh, to embezzle the country’s resources. At the same time, ordinary people are faced with crushing inflation.
Justin Joque is a visualization librarian at the University of Michigan and the author of the book Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, and the Logic of Capitalism. His book examines the statistical models on which our algorithms, machine learning, and financial systems are built, highlighting the mechanisms of abstraction which lend these models an air of misleading objectivity. Can statistical models be used towards emancipatory aims?
Jomo K.S. warns U.S. policies are driving the world towards war and depression, leaving developing countries with a strong vested interest to reconvene a new non-aligned movement and strengthen democratic institutions of global governance. Lynn Fries interviews Jomo K.S. on GPEnewsdocs.
Talia Baroncelli and Paul Jay discuss Russian threats to use tactical nuclear weapons against Western Europe and what role China can play in solving the existential crisis of climate and threats of nuclear war—part 2 of 2.
Éric Pineault, professor of ecological economics at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal, explains how the fires raging in Canada are a corollary of the paradigm termed Extreme Oil. He discusses various oil and gas projects across North America, as well as the Canadian government’s support for the Trans Mountain Pipeline project, and how terms such as “net zero” and “carbon neutral” are misleading and conveniently serve Big Oil’s aims.
His recent book A Social Ecology of Capital presents an empirical analysis of capitalist societies, which both builds on and enhances Marxist theories by accounting for the energy extraction and colonization of ecosystems, a characteristic of what he terms our “fossil-industrial” society. His conception of capitalist metabolism outlines extractivism, production, consumption, and waste dissipation, which leads to an absorption of surplus energy, capital accumulation, and profit maximization. Most importantly, how is this understanding of social ecology useful for furthering a project of emancipation?
Why net zero commitments are empty and dangerously misleading if we continue to burn fossil fuels. Talia Baroncelli speaks to retired physician and IPCC climate expert Peter Carter about how ongoing wars, illegal mineral wealth extraction in active conflict zones, and the plunder of resources by transnational corporations are literally killing the planet.
Steve Keen has been exposing the ways mainstream neoclassical economists—including winners of the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics— have been arriving at their absurdly optimistic numbers regarding climate change, and they’re terrifying. In this interview with Colin Bruce Anthes, Keen goes through prevalent examples in detail and argues that these numbers and the methods behind them must simply be thrown in the garbage.
Are antitrust laws effective as a mechanism to break up monopolies and Big Tech? How monopolies enable price-gouging and drive inflation. Talia Baroncelli speaks to Matt Stoller, Research Director at the American Economic Liberties Project.
According to William I. Robinson, the COVID pandemic has further intensified the structural crisis of global capitalism and has caused numerous uprisings and revolts around the world, which global elites are trying to suppress via militarization, police repression, and surveillance. Robinson joins Greg Wilpert on theAnalysis.news.
Long-time activist and author Michael Albert outlines his vision for a post-capitalist and classless economic system, known as participatory economics and based on his most recent book, No Bosses (Zer0 Books, 2021). In this first part, Paul Jay and Michael Albert talk about the importance of economic vision and the rationale behind re-organizing the workplace on the basis of self-management and a non-corporate division of labor.
How would remuneration and the allocation of goods and services look like in a post-capitalist participatory economic system? In this second part of our discussion with Michael Albert, the author of the book, No Bosses (Zer0 Books, 2021), he talks to Greg Wilpert about the contours of an economic vision that fulfills the values of self-management, solidarity, diversity, equity, sustainability, and participation.
Michael Albert responds to some common objections and concerns that Greg Wilpert raises about his vision for a participatory economy, such as how to avoid the spontaneous formation of black markets, whether his proposal should be considered socialist or anarchist, and whether his proposal can be a considered a blueprint.
John Bellamy Foster explains the ‘solution’ master-minded by global finance to resolve the imminent environmental crisis: create a multi-quadrillion dollar’s worth of assets on the back of everything nature does and expropriate it from the global commons to make a profit. Worse still: it is already happening. Lynn Fries interviews Foster on GPEnewsdocs.
Is China’s Belt and Road initiative a socialist or capitalist approach to trade? Michael Hudson and Patrick Bond discuss and debate on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay
Will China resist financialization and lead the way on climate policy, or is it a form of capitalism that will not reduce inequalities much further and isn’t serious about phasing out fossil fuel? Michael Hudson and Patrick Bond in a discussion about what we can expect from the CCP. Note: this was recorded before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
James K. Galbraith discusses the shift of US capitalism from an industrial state to what he calls a predator state: a finance-led, military-centered corporate republic that continues to prevail. To overcome it, he lays out what is needed to focus on employment, stability and adjustments to rising resource costs. Lynn Fries interviews Galbraith on GPEnewsdocs.
On the first anniversary of the death of our dear friend Leo Panitch, we republish this 2015 interview with Leo by Chris Hedges.
In this second part of the interview series with filmmaker and journalist Paul Jay, they assess Biden’s foreign policy since taking office. They also explore whether the fight for press freedom will continue if Julian Assange is extradited to the U.S., and why the national security state continues to pursue him despite the serious consequences for press freedom.
In a 3 Part series, Prabhat Patnaik discusses his read on the history of capitalism from colonialism into the present. Prabhat Patnaik shows that as capital is relocated, real wages do not rise, inequality widens, and global demand is suppressed. The system remains in protracted crisis, Keynesianism in the North alone is no solution. The struggle is everywhere.
Imperialism which existed in the colonial era persists to this day and the system cannot do without it. In a 3 Part series, Prabhat Patnaik discusses his read on the history of capitalism from colonialism into the present. Prabhat Patnaik explains how the colonial system led to depression. Then, in advanced countries governments stepped in to increase demand and productivity, but how unless the periphery is available for extraction of wealth and cheap provision of inputs the system would collapse. So, the Global South was absorbed by a globalization process where finance becomes predominant, income deflation is widespread and governments everywhere are turned into the servants of financialization.
On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Drake says that in the name of national security we are eating out the very heart of democracy; what will be left will be a garrison state. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced August 7, 2015, with Paul Jay.
President Biden broke with Obama’s agreements with Cuba and is continuing Trump’s sanctions and aggressive stance. There are real problems in Cuba, but democratization and economic reforms will be decided by the Cuban people, not the U.S. or the “Miami mafia”. James Early on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.
The Right, and some of the Left, don’t want to acknowledge the critical role of white supremacy and settler colonialism in the founding of America and shaping sections of the working class. Gerald Horne joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news
No individual is more the embodiment of what is depicted as the horrors of socialism and communism than Joseph Stalin. A sober assessment of Stalin is necessary to envision what a democratic form of socialism might look like. Alexander Buzgalin joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news
The mass protests forced global media attention and sufficient state resources supplied to the prosecution; this may not be replicable. Chauvin may have been a bad apple, but the police barrel of apples is deliberately stocked with such rot. Gerald Horne joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news
Robert Pollin advocates a macroeconomic agenda centered on full employment. The decades long neoliberal attack on the working class is heightened with COVID-19. The world needs a New Deal to counter levels of unemployment and inequality last seen in the Great Depression.
The coronovirus pandemic exposes the consequences of taking the neoliberal road decades ago, explains Prof Radhika Desai. She discusses the failures of the Western capitalist system and the need to reorient our societies and economies.
Artificial Intelligence can make the world better or be a tool for war – says Lester Earnest, founder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford, on Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced January 4, 2019.
“Patents block progress” – says Lester Earnest, founder of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford, on Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced January 2, 2019.
On Reality Asserts Itself, Prof. Leo Panitch says it’s a dilemma that the gradualism of European social-democracy and attempts at a more radical transformation have so far both failed; Panitch says a first step towards democratizing the economy is to make finance a public utility – with host Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced March 15, 2018.
On Reality Asserts Itself, Ms. Foroohar says many wealthy people understand that the climate crisis, deep recession, and war are real threats, but they believe “apres moi le deluge [after me comes the floods];” the Financial Times columnist and author of “Makers and Takers” said many of the rich have escape plans thinking “they can avoid the apocalypse” – with host Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced May 9, 2018.
On Reality Asserts Itself, Ms. Foroohar says financialization delivers stagnant wages, inequality, and economic crisis; the Financial Times columnist and author of “Makers and Takers” says the financial sector represents only 7 percent of the U.S. economy but takes around 25 percent of all corporate profit while creating only 4 percent of all jobs – with host Paul Jay. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced May 9, 2018.
This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced on July 7, 2015. On Reality Asserts Itself, Chris Hedges and Paul Jay discuss Ferguson, Baltimore and the need to build a movement with candidates that targets white supremacy and corporate capitalism.
This interview was originally published on August 7, 2014. Mr. Williams tells Paul Jay that to face up to the science of climate change, coal and oil conglomerates worth trillions of dollars have to keep their fossil fuels in the ground – something capitalism can’t allow.
This interview was originally published on August 6, 2014. Mr. Williams says capitalism is not capable of facing up to the climate change crisis – and because there won’t be a hero that appears to save the day, it’s up to us to make the change.
Mr. Flassbeck says people must get politically engaged and find an alternative or we will face dictatorship because today’s capitalism is out of answers. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced August 3, 2014, with Paul Jay.
On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Flassbeck says the stock market bubble can burst at any moment because everybody knows there is no real growth behind it; then we are really in trouble as the whole effect of stabilization will disappear in one moment. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced July 31, 2014, with Paul Jay.
Mr. Flassbeck, former head of UNCTAD, says current economic policy is heading back to the 1930s, a race to the bottom, they have no solution at all, we will end up again in trade wars or other wars. This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced July 29, 2014, with Paul Jay.
This interview was originally published on June 1, 2014. Mr. Lapavitsas says we must deeply reverse financialization and take on private ownership of banking and other critical sectors.
This interview was originally published on May 30, 2014. On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Lapavitsas says Greece will face the choice between socialism or fascism.
This interview was originally published on May 28, 2014. Mr. Lapavitsas says that during the financial crisis the power of the state was mobilized to save finance.
This interview was originally published on May 27, 2014. On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Lapavitsas says modern capitalism requires financialization, but productive growth in the interests of the majority of people does not.