Capitalism

How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

12 July 2019 - by Peter James Hudson

The expansion of banks such as Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and racial lines. This essay is featured in Boston Review’s Spring 2019 issue Racist Logic. Buy a copy and receive a free digital edition of Race, Capitalism, Justice. (...)
Care debt: patriarchy and capital on the offensive, feminist economics as a proposal

10 April 2019 - by Blanca Bayas

In recent years, the concept of “care debt”, associated with the time and work women have devoted to domestic and care tasks, has been widespread, thus sustaining the impact of the current crisis and making the functioning of the capitalist and patriarchal system viable. What does the idea of (...)
South Africa Suffers Capitalist Crisis Déjà Vu

3 April 2019 - by Patrick Bond

A year ago, the majority of South Africans stared into the abyss. They faced either a continuation of corrupt misrule by a stereotypical kleptocrat—Jacob Zuma—whose anti-imperialist rhetoric failed to disguise worsening austerity, or a potentially dramatic change of political direction toward (...)
The Economic Crisis and the Central Banks

25 March 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Everything is in place for a new international financial crisis to occur. We don’t know exactly when it will break out. But it will, and its impact will be felt all over the planet. The major factors contributing to the crisis situation are: first, the very large increase in corporate private (...)
#MeToo: A movement for women workers too!

8 March 2019 - by Sonia Mitralias

It has been more than two years since the emergence of the Me Too movement that unveiled the enormous extent of sexual harassment in the workplace and gender-based sexual violence around the world! Not at all ephemeral, this movement does not stop surprising us. Not only does it persist and now (...)
Tourism: the false fix – concentration of profits and social debt

5 March 2019 - by Marta Ill Raga

This ODG research starts to look at the relationship of debt and financialisation with tourism, and how they act though this industry, that is deeply affecting life in cities (and other places) around the world. This report aims to review the impacts of the tourism industry on the city of (...)
Battling bankers: grassroots insights on financial power

14 February 2019 - by Transnational Institute

Three inspiring activists — from Spain, UK and Kenya — share their experiences of taking on bankers and the lessons and insights from their ongoing struggles. This essay is part of the Transnational Institute’s “State of Power 2019” report. Worldwide, countless activists are engaged in (...)
Thomas Piketty and public debt

14 January 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

Thomas Piketty recently published an opinion in the newspaper Le Monde, “1789-2019, the return of debt”, (in french) which deserves to be read. We republish an article by Éric Toussaint on the positions of Thomas Piketty and that of CADTM on public debt. This text remains largely relevant (...)
Globalization from Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama until today

6 January 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The beginning of Globalization goes back to the outcomes of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus that brought him, on October 1492, to the shore of an island in the Caribbean Sea. It was the starting point of a brutal and bloody intervention of European sea powers in the history of American (...)
Adam Smith and the Yellow Vest Movement

23 December 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

It is sad to see how completely misrepresented Adam Smith (1723-1790) is when pundits call upon him to vindicate neoliberalism and the status quo. It seems many have not really bothered to read his works. Some passages in Adam Smith’s major work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the (...)
Nicaragua: From 2007 to 2018, Daniel Ortega Had the Support of the IMF and Conducted Policies Favourable to Big National and International Capital

5 November 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

The principal detonator of the protests that began in April 2018 in Nicaragua was the imposition by Daniel Ortega’s government of neoliberal measures that impacted social protection, and in particular retirements. These measures were the result of pressure from the IMF, with which Daniel Ortega (...)
Liberia: The “dictatorship of the multinational corporations”

4 October 2018 - by Moses Uneh Yahmia

Liberia has been taken over by multinational corporations that are exploiting its resources at the expense of Liberians, especially the country’s working class that serves as cheap labour to these foreign companies. Unlike other countries in the sub-Saharan region, Liberia was never formally (...)
Ten years on, the crisis of global capitalism never really ended

3 October 2018 - by Jerome Roos

With inequality on the rise, global debt higher than ever and international tensions intensifying, the political backlash to the crash of 2008 has only just begun. This weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the once-mighty US investment bank whose dramatic (...)
How do patriarchy and capitalism jointly reinforce the oppression of women?

13 September 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

In the summary of the first chapter, we have laid out a number arguments for the necessity of feminism today. They include violence, the lack or suppression of fundamental rights, under-representation in politics, poverty, economic marginalization and the threat posed by anti-feminist (...)
Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African programmes are not charity

24 August 2018 - by Philip Bereano

The activities of the Gates Foundation are a major example of what has come to be called ’philanthrocapitalism’. Philip L Bereano argues that philanthrocapitalism is an attempt to use market processes to do good, and therefore problematic as markets are ill-suited to producing socially (...)
Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project – first chapter

13 August 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

Feminism and the situation of women is an ever-growing concern for the CADTM network, which becomes almost unavoidable in the broad fight against domination(s). Women are indeed impacted by debt in several ways; as the main contractors of micro-credits, as the caretakers that have a higher (...)
Imperialism and Dependency: Similarities and Differences with the Marini era

8 May 2018 - by Claudio Katz, Richard Fidler

The main theorist of dependency anticipated trends of neoliberal globalization. He analyzed productive globalization, the centrality of exploitation and the relative weight of surplus value transfers. But the employment crisis exceeds what was envisaged by Marini, in a scenario disrupted by the (...)
Understanding the crisis is too important to be left to specialists alone. This is why “Bankocracy” is so important

16 April 2018 - by Avishek Konar

The Great Recession, from the middle of 2007 onwards, has rocked the global economy. This has led to at least a couple of things. The legitimacy of neoliberalism in the west—qua ‘there is no other alternative’—has been shattered, and vast majority of people are now looking for other political (...)
Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla: “the Continental Free Trade Area is a mistake” (Interview)

4 April 2018 - by Ndongo Samba Sylla, Maghreb Emergent

The economist Ndongo Samba Sylla is the author of the following books, among others: The Fair Trade Scandal: Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and La démocratie contre la République: l’autre histoire du gouvernement du peuple. He tells Maghreb Emergent why the CFTA is “suicide for African (...)
No TAV: feeding the fire of resistance in northern Italy

18 January 2018 - by Frank Barat

The decades-old struggle of the No TAV movement in northern Italy is an inspiration to environmentalist and anti-capitalist movements worldwide. When I get to Turin airport, on a warm autumn day, the smell of smoke is overwhelming. The weather forecast on my phone shows me a big bright sun, (...)
The EU chooses to defend big capital and not majority interest: Serbia is not the only guinea pig

10 January 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Stefan Slavković

Éric Toussaint granted this interview to Stefan Slavković from the Serbian weekly NIN. Eric Toussaint has been writing on international financial systems for a few decades now. He believes that everyone should be able to understand, comprehensively and effortlessly, how these systems work. (...)
2018 Report on world inequality: an undisputable diagnosis

28 December 2017 - by World Inequality Lab

This is a synthesis of the 2018 report on world inequality, coordinated by Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in WID – World Inequality Lab. At a time when many social conquests are under threat, reading this report is essential. The unequivocal (...)
Dancing on the Volcano

22 November 2017 - by Eric Toussaint

The statements of Mario Draghi, Jean-Claude Junker, and Donald Trump remind us of all the past crises. They could very well have participated in the 1825, 1875 and 1929 crises without changing a single word. Capitalism is not yet on the brink of collapse. Too bad, we would like to see the end (...)
Puerto Rico is our Future

1 October 2017 - by Richard Heinberg

News reports tell of the devastation left by a direct hit from Category 4 Hurricane Maria. Puerto Ricans already coping with damage from Hurricane Irma, which grazed the island just days before, were slammed with an even stronger storm on September 20, bringing more than a foot of rain and (...)
‘Africa Rising’ in retreat: Signs of new resistances

29 September 2017 - by Patrick Bond

Capitalism is bleeding Africa to death: illegal financial flows, legal financial outflows, FDI flows, foreign indebtedness, sub-imperial accumulation, new subsidies for infrastructure financing and uncompensated mineral and oil and gas depletion. The continent is further threatened by land (...)