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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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In his account of the turbulent decade of the 1960s, in which New York City dealt with endemic corruption, racism and economic distress, English begins by telling us “(u)ntold thousands, perhaps millions, have fallen prey to the perils of municipal dysfunction, to the growing pains of a city forced to adjust to violent demographic shifts, […]
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At the end of the 19th century, Werner Sombart (1976 [1906]) asked what has frequently become a repeated question: why is there no socialism in the USA? At the time, Europe’s workers were constantly organizing and pushing for greater participation and a share of the economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution, joining unions and forming […]
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