Barry C. Lynn - Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction

Barry C. Lynn, one of the most original and surprising students of the American economy, paints a genuinely alarming picture: most of our public debates about globalization, competitiveness, creative destruction, and risky finance are nothing more than a cover for the widespread consolidation of power in nearly every imaginable sector of the American economy. Cornered strips the camouflage from the secret world of twenty-first-century monopolies-neofeudalist empires whose sheer size, vast resources, and immense political power enable the people who control to direct virtually every major industry in America in an increasingly authoritarian manner. Lynn reveals how these massive juggernauts, which would have been illegal just thirty years ago, came into being, how they have destroyed or devoured their competition, and how they collude with one another to maintain their power and create the illusion of open, competitive markets.

A confluence of small government zealotry and misguided efficient market theories has lead to a complete dismantling of government oversight of industry. Has that brought us the promised economic utopia? Just the opposite. For decades, the dominant elite has used the federal government to all but encourage companies to buy one another up, outsource all their production, and make their profits by leveraging their complete power over the market itself. Lynn makes clear it will take more than a lawsuit or two to overthrow America's corporatist oligarchy and restore a model of capitalism that protects our rights as property holders and citizens, and the independence of our Republic. Details how regular citizens can join together to beat the great powers, and how to do so by relearning the real history and language of our democratic republic. Includes stories of real people and real industries that show how monopolies threaten independent businesses, squelch innovation, degrade the quality and safety of products, destabilize vital industrial and financial systems, and destroy the fabric of democracy. Explores monopoly power across a wide array of industries, including appliances, auto parts, beer, eyeglasses, medical supplies, pet food, surfboards, vitamins, and more. Demonstrates how the drive for ""always lower prices"" makes your job disappear, puts your small business out of business, and turns dreams of entrepreneurial success into impossible fantasies

Erica Benner - Really Existing Nationalisms: A Post-Communist View from Marx and Engels

Really Existing Nationalisms challenges the conventional view that Marx and Engels lacked the theoretical resources needed to understand nationalism. It argues that the two thinkers had a sophisticated insight into the subject, and that the reasoning behind their policy towards specific national movements was often subtle and sensitive to the ethical issues at stake. Erica Benner identifies arguments in Marx and Engels’ writings that can help us to think more clearly about national identity and conflict today.

В США по статистике самая опасная работа теперь – работа курьеров. С помощью нового приложения Amazon следит за тем, делает ли работник паузы, уклоняется ли от маршрута, за какое время и сколько он доставляет грузов. На основании этого формируется рейтинг, по которому система может выписать штраф или уволить работника – всё это простым автоматическим мейлом. При этом доставщики пользуются собственным интернетом для навигатора и сами платят за парковки. В случае возникновения трудовых споров, если есть желание их рассмотреть не с автоматом, а с человеком, нужно заплатить 200 долларов.

Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy - The Crisis of Neoliberalism

This is a work of empirical economics, in which Dumenil and Levy adduce a wide range of evidence to argue that capitalism has entered a phase characterized by rapid technological change, increasing returns to capital, and financial instability. While the authors focus on the interpretation of contemporary capitalism, they also integrate an historical perspective, showing that in the immediate post-World-War II era from 1945 till 1975, now considered a golden age of capitalism in which economic growth was high, inflation low, and income inequality decreasing, returns to capital decreased. In the 1970s this trend reversed, and real interest rates started rising, returns to capital increased, and income inequality widened. This cycle occurred in earlier eras, including one that began in the late nineteenth century and ended in The Great Depression. The authors argue that the similarity between the late nineteenth early 20th century and the past two decades is remarkable. Following the depression of the 1890s, more favorable profitability trends were established as a result of the managerial revolution, in the context of the original assertion of the political and economic hegemony of finance. This course of capitalism culminated in The Great Depression. Will the second hegemony of finance end as the first one did in collapse? The authors do not conclude that a crisis similar to the Great Depression is on the agenda, but a major adjustment will be required. Whether it is a new phase of neoliberalism or a new distinct social order is an open question.

Chip Gibbons - Daniel Hale Went to Prison for Telling the Truth About US Drone Warfare

Daniel Hale’s revelations about the brutalities of US drone warfare didn’t harm any Americans or make them less safe. But his prosecution for whistleblowing and recent sentencing to nearly four years in prison was a blow against democracy.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/08/daniel-hale-drone-whistleblower-sentencing-trial

Eugene Victor Wolfenstein - Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork

In this important new work, Eugene Victor Wolfenstein rejects the reduction of psychoanalysis to conformist psychology and Marxism to Stalinist orthodoxy. Instead, he illuminates the critical and emancipatory force of both traditions. He persuasively argues for a ``binocular' view that integrates interests rooted in work and economic production with desires based in emotional life and human reproduction. Without obscuring the obvious differences between psychoanalytic and Marxist theories, his integrative approach provides the reader with a clearer, more complete understanding of modern society.

The book opens with a review of the work of Marx and Freud, the classical Freudian-Marxists (Reich, Fromm and Marcuse) and such recent thinkers as Habermas, Benjamin, Kovel, and Lichtman. Wolfenstein then develops the foundation for a psychoanalytic-marxist theory and practice. He reconceptualizes praxis and dialectics, and history and human nature, and presents a framework for social analysis. The book's final section utilizes these grounding notions for the analysis of class, gender, and race; psychoanalytic practice; and political practice (the modern state and its potential transformation).

Written in a bold and unusually lucid style, Psychoanalytic-Marxism will serve as a benchmark for all further reflection on this topic. It offers fresh insights for those with an interest in psychoanalysis, Marxism, and a broad range of related concerns: philosophy, the modernism/postmodernism debates, feminist theory, African-American studies, critical social theory, political theory, history, and sociology.

Michael Harrington - The Twilight of Capitalism (1977)

Relates the economic crises of the seventies to the fall of capitalism and sets forth an approach to a new world society based on a reinterpretation of Marxian theories

Marxism and Education: Renewing the Dialogue, Pedagogy, and Culture

Marxist thinking can offer a critical understanding of education in an international context. Jones tackles these issues from a variety of angles and perspectives, taking advantage of recent theoretical innovations in Marxist analysis as well as the personal experiences of educational practitioners with Marxist commitments. With a specific focus on pedagogical practices as cultural practices, this book combines detailed case studies of local situations with broad, critical overviews of global development and challenges.

Ariel Ron - Monetary Democracy

The rules of the monetary system are too important to be left to financial elites. When ordinary people speak up, they often come up with better ideas.

Money, Power, and the People begins with the Bankers’ Panic of 1907, a financial crash followed by a sharp economic depression. Times were so bad that people in the heart of coal country collected driftwood to warm their homes. A majority of the public blamed bankers’ ineptitude and selfishness. Financial reform became inevitable, kicking off three decades of struggle over what that reform would look like. Shaw deftly covers the many twists and turns, revealing that the struggle was fundamentally about whether private interests or public authorities should set the terms for how money gets created and allocated. While “bankers were united in adamant support for a private banking system firmly under their control,” he writes, farmers and workers pushed for government-run alternatives that would prioritize economic “security, affordable credit, and stability.” The battle to establish the Bank of North Dakota was just one episode in this thirty-year war. Other policy engagements concerned postal savings accounts, farm credit facilities, bank deposit guarantees, and ensuring that the Federal Reserve was overseen by public officials instead of financial insiders. Each of these was a knock-down, drag-out fight, but each was eventually enacted in some form or other. The upshot was a dramatically transformed financial environment that helped make the middle decades of the twentieth century a time of broad-based economic stability and prosperity.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/monetary-democracy

Ben Bagdikian - The New Media Monopoly: A Completely Revised and Updated Edition With Seven New Chapters

When the first edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 1983, critics called Ben Bagdikian's warnings about the chilling effects of corporate ownership and mass advertising on the nation's news "alarmist." Since then, the number of corporations controlling most of America's daily newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, book publishers, and movie companies has dwindled from fifty to ten to five. The most respected critique of modern mass media ever issued is now published in a completely updated and revised twentieth anniversary edition.

'Ben Bagdikian has written the first great media book of the twenty-first century. The New Media Monopoly will provide a roadmap to understanding how we got here and where we need to go to make matters better' (Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy)

Arghiri Emmanuel - Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade

The Salvage Collective - The Tragedy of the Worker

Facing irreversible climate change, the planet is en route to apocalypse. To understand the scale of what faces us and how it ramifies through every corner of our lives is to marvel at our inaction. Why aren’t we holding emergency meetings in every city, town and village every week? What is to be done to create a planet where a communist horizon offers a new dawn to replace our planetary twilight? What does it mean to be a communist after we have hit a climate tipping point? The Tragedy of the Worker is a brilliant, stringently argued pamphlet reflecting on capitalism’s death drive, the left’s complicated entanglements with fossil fuels, and the rising tide of fascism. In response, the authors propose Salvage Communism, a programme of restoration and reparation that must precede any luxury communism. They set out a new way to think about the Anthropocene. The Tragedy of the Worker demands an alternative future the Proletarocene one capable of repairing the ravages of capitalism and restoring the world.