JournalTOCs

Class, Race and Corporate Power
Number of Followers: 2

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 2330-6297
Published by Florida International University

[1 journal]

Don’t Believe the Hype, Big Finance Continues to Threaten Our
Survival
- Authors: Martin Hart-Landsberg
  Abstract: This article is reprinted with permission from Reports From The Economic Front and the author.Our special thanks to the author, Dr. Martin Hart-Landsberg.
  PubDate: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:47:22 PDT
A Labor Movement to Challenge the Billionaires: A Review of "Class
Struggle Unionism" by Joe Burns
- Authors: Jonathan Kissam
  Abstract: This book review of Joe Burns' Class Struggle Unionism (Haymarket, 2022) is republished with permission from both the UE NEWS (ueunion.org/ue-news) and the author (Jonathan Kissam).Our thanks to UE NEWS and the Mr. Kissam.
  PubDate: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:47:19 PDT
The Only Commonality is Uncommonality: Progressive Protest from Below
since the Mid-1980s
- Authors: Kim Scipes
  Abstract: Noting the extensive number of progressive protests, mobilizations, and social disruption from below since the mid-1980s, not just in the US but around the world, this article suggests that what is going on is the expansion of the global economic and social justice movement, a bottom-up form of globalization. It suggests that this is, ultimately, a rejection of industrial civilization itself. And it points out, through an examination of the effects of climate change, that the continued existence of industrial civilization is imposing a burden on the peoples of the world that far outweighs its benefits, and suggests that protests will expand as more and more people understand the costs of industrial civilization.
  PubDate: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:47:14 PDT
Transnational Corporate Power: From Lomé to the CARIFORUM-EU EPA
- Authors: Melissa A. Boissiere
  Abstract: The post-Lomé era, from the turn of the twenty-first century, marks a shift from an epoch of non-reciprocal preferential trade under successive Lomé Conventions to one of reciprocal trade within a free trade area under a neoliberal international economic order. Post-Lomé thus constitutes a new age in the relationship between the European Union (EU) and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. In this context, there are several factors that distinguish the Lomé period of preferences from twenty-first century agreements between the EU and ACP states, and which have influenced this development in the Europe-ACP relationship. This article focuses on the influence of one particular factor on the evolution of relations between Western Europe and ACP states that is often overlooked or undertheorized in the predominantly state-centric analyses of same. It therefore investigates and demonstrates the connection between transnational corporate interests and the dramatic shift to the post-Lomé framework for engagement between the EU and ACP states, as well as the progressive neoliberalization of Lomé era agreements even before the dramatic shift in this relationship. The study establishes that the agenda for and outcome of negotiations on the Cotonou Agreement of 2000 largely reflects transnational corporate interests, and that the CARIFORUM-EU EPA of 2008 is also consistent with the pattern of their neoliberal pursuits.
  PubDate: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:47:09 PDT
Why Scorcese is Right About Corporate Power
- Authors: James McMahon
  Abstract: This is a lightly edited compilation of a two-part series originally published by Notes on Cinema in June and July, 2021. It has been re-published here with permission of the author.Our thanks to Notes on Cinema and James McMahon.
  PubDate: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:47:06 PDT
The Transnational Investment Bloc in U.S. Policy Toward Saudi Arabia and
the Persian Gulf
- Authors: Mazaher Koruzhde et al.
  Abstract: U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf is driven by the economic and geopolitical interests of a U.S.-Saudi transnational investment bloc that derives steady profits from the region.
  PubDate: Tue, 05 Apr 2022 18:46:59 PDT
Absolute Impunity: On the Legacies of 9/11 & the Policies of the War
on/of Terror
- Authors: Bryant William Sculos
  Abstract: It has been a little over twenty years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and thus we are also going to be coming up on twentieth anniversaries of some of the most heinous restrictions on civil liberties in US history (though there is a lot of competition) and the twentieth anniversaries of instance after instance of unjustifiable atrocities committed in the name of the Stars and Stripes. Through autoethnographic reflection in conversation with Netflix’s Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021) and Spencer Ackerman’s Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (2021), this critical review essay explores the legacies of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, including policies of mass killing, mass propaganda, mass torture, and mass surveillance. The essay concludes with a reflection on where this leaves the US and world today: namely, in a place where it is increasingly “acceptable” to criticize the US war machine, though it has always been necessary.
  PubDate: Thu, 28 Oct 2021 19:55:48 PDT
Louis Proyect: a Fierce and Uncompromising Spirit
- Authors: Jeffrey St. Clair
  Abstract: This is a tribute to Louis Proyect by Jeffrey St. Clair, published originally in Counterpunch, August 30, 2021. Louis contributed film reviews to this journal, with his usual wit, flair and unadorned appreciation for works of art that have a political and artistic passion. We had the pleasure of conversing with Louis on social media. He will be missed.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:22:22 PDT
The Owners Phony Proposal Will Not Address Competitive Balance
- Authors: Ronald W. Cox
  Abstract: The owners of major league baseball are once again negotiating with the MLB Players Association to draft a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, as the current agreement expires on December 1, 2021. This article dissects the opening “pitch” that the owners have recently made to the players at the beginning of this negotiating process, locating the owner-player battle in the context of how revenue is distributed within the business of baseball.This article was originally published in Just Baseball in August of 2021.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:22:19 PDT
Eleven Theses on Socialist Revolution
- Authors: Chris Wright
  Abstract: It is an open question whether socialism will ever exist on a national or international scale. But if it will, it will come about in ways different from what both Marxists and anarchists have traditionally thought. In this article I present eleven "theses" regarding how it might be possible for the world to achieve an economically democratic civilization in an era of unprecedented crisis. In the process, I try to explain what has gone wrong with attempted socialist revolutions in the past.This is reprinted with permission. The article originally appeared in Counterpunch, August 27, 2021.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:22:15 PDT
Understanding the Paris Commune On its 150th Anniversary
- Authors: Dan La Botz
  Abstract: The Paris Commune of 1871 only lasted from March 18 to May 28, just 72 days, yet it is one of the most celebrated events in socialist history. It is a legend. Yet, what was it' What is it for us today' A model for socialists' A heroic failure' Negation of the state' Or the first workers’ government' Karl Marx wrote the most famous contemporary account, yet he failed to take up some of the Commune’s serious problems. Why'This article was originally published in New Politics on August 4, 2021 (pt. 1) and in the Summer 2021 issue (pt. 2). We re-publish both parts here for this issue of CRCP.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:22:11 PDT
Realizing A Green New Deal: Lessons From World War II
- Authors: Martin Hart-Landsberg
  Abstract: Many activists in the United States are working to build a movement for a Green New Deal transformation of the economy in order to tackle both global warming and the country’s worsening economic and social problems. To this point, Green New Deal advocates have been far more interested in discussing the programs to be included than in how to achieve the desired transformation. Helpfully, we have the experience of World War II to provide some guideposts. This paper begins by highlighting the enormity and speed of the US economy’s wartime transformation from civilian to military production. Then, it describes the evolution and evaluates the effectiveness of the most important public agencies and policies used to achieve it. It concludes with a brief discussion of the relevance of this conversion experience to efforts to advance a Green New Deal transformation of the US economy.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:22:06 PDT
Poverty in the High-Income Countries: a Marxist Alternative to Mainstream
Ideologies
- Authors: Jamie A. Gough et al.
  Abstract: Poverty has been present in all the advanced capitalist countries since the dawn of industrial capitalism in the late 18C, and remains so to this day. Mainstream explanations of this phenomenon are superficial and mistake symptoms for causes. In this article we present a Marxist explanation of poverty in the high-income countries since the late 19C. We show how poverty is systematically produced by the dynamics of capital accumulation and the capital-labour relation, including their spatial dynamics, operating in the realms of production, social reproduction, and their mediations by the state. Since poverty is produced by the totality of society, measures which target particular sites or aspects of poverty are doomed to failure: it cannot be solved outside of an end to capitalism. Since poverty is a condensation of oppressions which are experienced by the whole population, it can only be addressed by struggles against all forms of economic exploitation and social oppression, including those mediated by the state. These struggles benefit the whole population, not just the poor. The collective organisations of the whole working class in both the production and reproduction spheres are thus crucial for addressing both the immediate needs and long term interests of the poor.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:21:59 PDT
Canadian Financial Imperialism and Structural Adjustment in the Caribbean
- Authors: Tamanisha J. John
  Abstract: From the start of the early 1980s, structural adjustment was already normalized in the Caribbean given the power of a variety of self-interested actors, including the U.S., IFIs, and Canadian investors who continued to advance and support— by any means necessary— structural adjustment policies in the Caribbean. Debt traps, coupled with incursions on Caribbean state’s sovereignty would see the neoliberal and capitalist doctrine accepted by all of the independent states in the English-speaking Caribbean region by the mid-1980s. Structural adjustment drastically intensified the existing inequalities in states and removed the ability for governments to alleviate these situations. Alongside Caribbean structural adjustment policies (SAPs) in the 1980s was also a successful wave of imperialist (anti-socialist and anti-communist) propaganda. The result being that many of the independent states in the region would see left governments replaced with reactionary conservative ones; And a small number of states confessing themselves to be socialist and/or Marxist-Leninist to receive help from other socialist (and non-aligned) states, like Cuba and the Soviet Union. This article analyzes the causes, characteristics and consequences of the new global international architecture of the 1980s to the 2000s, looking at new opportunities for foreign investors that arose in the 1980s, and how these changes strengthened the already powerful Canadian banks and investors in the English-speaking Caribbean.
  PubDate: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:21:54 PDT
A Review of Shlomo Avineri, "Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution” (Yale
University Press, 2019)
- Authors: Daniel Skidmore-Hess
  Abstract: A review essay of Shlomo Avineri's "Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution" (Yale University Press, 2019)
  PubDate: Sat, 29 May 2021 14:06:41 PDT
Capitalism and Neo-Fascism
- Authors: Ronald W. Cox
  Abstract: Originally published on "The View from Left Field."The growth of global far right political movements poses a threat to humanity. To defeat these movements, we need to understand their origins and their relationship to capitalist structures of power. Should political leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro be labeled “far right” or “fascist'” In this post, I will defend the use of “neo-fascist” to define both Trump and Bolsonaro, as well as movements closely linked to them, such as the Brexit movement in Britain.
  PubDate: Sat, 29 May 2021 14:06:38 PDT
Which Side Are You On' The Answer is Clear for Today’s Useful
Idiots for the Right
- Authors: Tony Belletier
  Abstract: This article is reprinted with permission from Washington Babylon. It is the second in a weeklong series. Read Part I here.Our thanks to the author, Tony Belletier as well as Ken Silverstein, Editor of Washington Babylon.
  PubDate: Thu, 20 May 2021 06:47:29 PDT
The FBI, Fred Hampton and the Mythology of the Panthers
- Authors: Louis Proyect
  Abstract: This piece has been reprinted from CounterPunch and is a review of Judas and the Black Messiah by Louis Proyect. Thanks to CounterPunch and Louis Proyect for allowing us to reprint this here.
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:37:58 PDT
Criticizing Past and Modern Ideology Through Twisted Comedy Series: A Case
of "Comrade Detective"
- Authors: Damian Winczewski et al.
  Abstract: The objective of the paper is to solve the interpretative controversies around Comrade Detective, one of the most original TV entertainment productions of the recent years. This production is a pastiche of American buddy police films. The plot refers to the reality of the socialist Romania in the 1980s and presents in a satirical way the local militia’s fight against the American threat. We have attempted to prove that its not only deriding the reality of the political system, but the series constitutes also a satire on American propaganda films. Although the humour in the series seems vulgar and absurd, it has a dialectic character as fun is made of both the capitalist and the socialist systems. Furthermore, we have attempted to solve the controversy connected with political interpretations of the series. Its ambiguity ensues from the use of an artistic strategy which is close to the postmodern artistic strategy defined as retro-avant-guard.
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:37:49 PDT
Mexico's Fate Amid U.S. – China Competition
- Authors: Kathleen C. Schwartzman
  Abstract: What is Mexico’s future in the face of global hierarchical shifts. Mexico has existed in a dependent relationship with the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. Mexico’s dependency evolved in tandem with the U.S.’ rise to power. That U.S. dominance is being challenged in the 21st century, thus offering Mexico a chance for a different development path. Drawing on elements from world-systems, dependency, and political economy theories, I consider three possible trajectories: Mexico will develop more autonomously; it will become dependent on China; or it will experience stagnation. Using international and governmental data sets, reports from U.S. and Mexican governmental agencies and producer associations, along with journals and newspapers, I suggest that stagnation is the most probable outcome.
  PubDate: Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:37:43 PDT