Robust economic growth during the last half of the 20th century resulted in many changes: workers increasingly acquired the trappings of a middle class existence as they bought homes, cars and all the ‘modern appliances’; families moved into better housing in suburban neighborhoods, abandoned the worst of the inner cities in the USA (or moved […]
The worsening social pains of government austerity programs now intensify the vast social suf- fering caused by the crisis since 2007. Beyond this especially severe business cycle, longer term trends show capitalist mega-corporations moving blue and white collar work to lower wage regions far from the former centers of capitalist production (the USA and Western […]
Two recent events have helped define our current situation in high relief. Many of us were in shock when, on 14 December 2012, a young man, using weapons obtained from his mother, (after killing her) went on a rampage at an elementary school brutally killing 20 children and six adults before turning the guns on […]
In the drive toward its ‘Global War on Terror’, the Bush administration famously claimed that one was either for ‘us’ or for the ‘terrorists’ – each and every man, woman, and child in America was suddenly reclassified as either an anti-terrorist combatant or an evildoer. Since there were no longer bystanders, everybody was also reclassified […]
We have just finished a marathon election season, almost two years in the making, and by all accounts billions of dollars spent (almost $3b by the candidates, altogether about $6b by all the various campaigns and PACs formed to promote one candidate or another), to arrive at the same place. We might be excused if […]
We are in the midst of a national decision (some might argue it is a sham, others that the choices are only by degree and not of great substance) on who should be the next President of the United States. Debates on the left vacillate between arguments that it does not matter who is elected since the […]
In a recent editorial in the New York Times (New York Times Editorial, 2012), rising income inequality and the unbalanced debt burden are identified as the reason our economy is struggling, and why (by implication), unless this situation is remedied, austerity measures are destined to fail. Clearly, this revelation does not come as news to […]
As the country was engaged in a primary campaign that pitted Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton, many saw it as a battle between the candidate of a progressive, post-racial America and the representative of the traditional political forces that had defined the Democratic Party for decades. The fact that this country was at a political […]
In this issue of the journal, William Robinson offers his analysis of the rise of transnational elites emerging outside of the traditional frame of nation-based capitalism. What is significant, in large part, is that unlike their national-capital predecessors, this new cadre has little concern for all that we refer to as social reproduction, industrialization, and […]
Even the most isolationist persons among us cannot help but be aware of how connected we are to the rest of the world, and for a moment recognize that perhaps we cannot disassociate ourselves from the global political economy. Aside from the endless noise about how we live in a globalized economy, and talk of […]