March 1, 2009
As we write these notes in late January 2009 the economic depression is worsening with each passing day, creating previously unthinkable conditions. Even as production sinks and unemployment soars in the "real economy," the implosion of the financial sector remains at the center of the crisis. It is now widely acknowledged in financial and policy circles that nationalization of the U.S. banking system, under one or another description, is inevitable. The Obama administration still resists what is referred to as a "complete nationalization," with the government wiping out the bank shareholders and taking over the running of the banks. But every other option on the table involves further steps in this direction. Already the U.S. Treasury has received shares and other securities from 314 financial institutions in return for $350 billion in government bailout money.
�
March 1, 2009
In referring in my title here to "A Failed System" I do not of course mean that capitalism as a system is in any sense at an end. Rather I mean by "failed system" a global economic and social order that increasingly exhibits a fatal contradiction between reality and reason—to the point, in our time, where it threatens not only human welfare but also the continuation of most sentient forms of life on the planet. Three critical contradictions make up the contemporary world crisis emanating from capitalist development: (1) the current Great Financial Crisis and stagnation/depression; (2) the growing threat of planetary ecological collapse; and (3) the emergence of global imperial instability associated with shifting world hegemony and the struggle for resources. Such structural weaknesses of the system, as Joseph Schumpeter might have said, are the product of capitalism's past successes, but they raise catastrophic problems and failures in the present nonetheless. How we choose to act today in response to this failed system is therefore the most critical question that humanity has ever faced.
�
March 1, 2009
In the opening decade of the twentieth century the German national state united the great majority of the German speaking population of Europe, excluding only those in Switzerland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was among the leading states of the world. It boasted technologically advanced industry, among the highest per capita GDP, and the second largest army and third largest navy in the world. Germany was at peace, save for minor military operations against disobedient natives in Southwest Africa. It was a state that was among world leaders in providing basic social insurance, yet held sacred private property and the rule of law, except only in strictly prescribed areas of national security. In the opening decade of the twenty-first century the German national state unites the great majority of the German speaking population of Europe, excepting only those in Switzerland and Austria, its industry is technologically advanced and its per capita GDP high. Its military budget is the sixth largest in the world, and it is at peace, save for minor military operations against disobedient natives in Afghanistan. Despite cutbacks, few states in the world have better provision of basic social insurance, and Germany today prides itself on holding private property to be sacred and on its adherence to the rule of law, except for a few strictly prescribed areas of national security. In the fourth and fifth decades of the twentieth century the German national state committed crimes universally agreed to be the most horrendous in human history.
�
February 1, 2009
In 1987, in the introduction to their Stagnation and Financial Explosion, Monthly Review editors Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy wrote: "We both reached adulthood during the 1930s, and it was then that we received our initiation into the realities of capitalist economics and politics. For us economic stagnation in its most agonizing and pervasive form, including its far-reaching ramifications in every aspect of social life, was an overwhelming personal experience. We know what it is and what it can mean; we do not need elaborate definitions or explanations. But we have gradually learned, not altogether to our surprise of course, that younger people who grew up in the 1940s or later not only do not share but also do not understand these perceptions. The economic environment of the war and postwar periods that played such an important part in shaping their experiences was very different. For them stagnation tends to be a rather vague term, equivalent perhaps to a longer-than-usual recession but with no implication of possible grave political and international repercussions. Under these circumstances, they find it hard to relate to what they are likely to regard as our obsession with the problem of stagnation. They are not quite sure what we are talking about or what all the fuss is over.
�
February 1, 2009
Imagine. A liberation army that supports a generalized revolt of the peasantry reaches the gates of the capital, where the people, in their turn, rise up, drive the royal government from power and welcome as their liberator the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), whose effective revolutionary strategy needs no further demonstration. What is involved here is the most radical victorious revolutionary advance of our epoch, and, for this reason, the most promising.
�
January 1, 2009
This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in the history of capitalism. However, while the Great Depression has been very much in the news of late, this is not due so much to this anniversary as to the fact that for the first time since the 1930s an economic crisis has arisen on a scale and of a nature that invites direct comparison with that earlier deep downturn, which threatened the entire system and ended in the Second World War.
�
January 1, 2009
In the early 1990s there was near unanimity in the media, in Western political circles, and even among academics that the collapse of the Cuban revolution was imminent. Even today, many observers regard it as only a matter of time for Cuba to undergo a transition to democracy (understood as a narrowly defined polyarchy) and a "market economy."
�
January 1, 2009
The Cuban revolutionary victory of January 1, 1959, was a news event of epochal proportion even for those who knew little about that country. For many, it was like discovering a new world. And as in the age of the great navigators, encountering it was clouded both by ignorance and the prejudices that usually accompany such revelations.
�
January 1, 2009
On August 19, 1960, Che Guevara gave a talk to the Cuban Militia "On Revolutionary Medicine": "A few months ago, here in Havana, it happened that a group of newly graduated doctors did not want to go into the country's rural areas and demanded remuneration before they would agree to go."
�
January 1, 2009
Over the last fifteen years, Cuba has developed one of the most successful examples of urban agriculture in the world. Havana, the capital of Cuba, with a population of over two million people, has played a prominent, if not dominant role, in the evolution and revolution of this type of agriculture. The phrase "urban agriculture in Cuba" has a somewhat different meaning, simultaneously more and less restrictive than might appear at a first glance. It is more inclusive, as it allows for large expanses, urban fringes, and suburban lands. For example, the entire cultivated area of the Province of the City of Havana belongs to urban agriculture.
�
