Maoism in the Chinese Labor Movement
The Jasic Incident signals the need to revisit Marxism and Maoism for today’s emancipatory politics and labor struggles.
A Great Little Man: The Shadow of Jair Bolsonaro
How to assess the new Brazilian regime? Early as it is in Bolsonaro’s rule, some broad stroke preliminaries are possible. In what follows I trace the political paralysis of the first five months, the popular social base of Bolsonarismo, its relationship to capital, and the role of evangelical Pentecostalism. I offer a biographical profile of Bolsonaro himself, map the three pivotal factions constituting the new government, and assess the economic outlook of the country. To anticipate the basic conclusions: the Bolsonaro regime is a weak and internally divided far-right regime, with declining popular support; capital backed Bolsonaro as a way out of crisis, but thus far the regime has not delivered, and the markets are losing faith.
Why is Homelessness Criminalized?
A class-based theory of homelessness helps explain both why anti-homeless laws exist and how homeless people are treated by charities and state welfare.
We know about Reagan, but was there a Clinton effect?
Many social scientists have worked to understand the lasting effects of the Reagan years on social inequality. Far fewer have focused on the effects of the Clinton years.
The New Memphis
This Life is a profound tour of our inner life and purpose that deftly weaves in religion and political economy, with an eye always to the future. But it fails to appreciate the profound worth of institutional changes that might reallocate powers and capacities to exploited people here and now for its chief goal, spiritual freedom.
The Ruling Class Does Rule
Social scientists should assuredly keep the structural constraints of capitalism in mind when developing state theory in the 21st century. However, we should not lose site of the fact that individuals also make history, and that a single-minded focus on the structural constraints of capitalism may only lead to a functionalist interpretation of the state, alongside a cynical approach to politics.
The Illusion of Democracy in Capitalism
To preserve its position, capital has no other choice than to curtail democracy. As class conflicts heightens, the need for authoritarian governance, “preventive fascism,” grows.
It’s Not Just Profitability: A Response to Michael Roberts
Marxism has a future only if its practitioners confront unexpected developments with a determination to find their roots using the methodology and concepts of Marxism, not by trying to show that the evidence is wrong out of a misplaced fear that any unexpected development threatens to undermine Marxism.
It’s Profitability: A Response to “Why Stagnation?”
Contrary to Professor Kotz’s view that “the usual profit mechanism that drives accumulation no longer works in the normal fashion,” it is doing just that.
Ideas and the Struggle Against Neoliberalism
The problem with the current trend of idea-centered scholarship on neoliberalism is that it seeks to isolate, and elevate the importance of ideas and experts, giving them a causal primacy that supposedly operate independently from materialist economic forces, the distribution of class power and the conduct of class struggle.
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