MBDA’s Alabama factory makes components for Boeing’s GBU-39 bombs used to kill civilians in Gaza. Its profits flow through Stevenage to Paris — and it is one of the British government’s favourite firms, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
What should we do about ‘degrowth’?
The ‘degrowth’ debate raises critical issues to which only a Marxist approach can provide answers, argues the Marx Memorial Library
President Maduro mobilises the 4.5 million-strong Bolivarian National Militia in response to US ‘threats’, vowing to defend the country’s sovereignty and independence, DEVIN B MARTINEZ reports
Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES
For those in the West, hunger is often just the familiar feeling of a growling stomach between meals — in Gaza, it has become a strategic weapon of slow, systematic and deadly destruction, writes MARC VANDEPITTE
After almost two decades of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism, once led by Evo Morales, right-wing parties have emerged in the lead after the first round of elections on August 17 and are now in control of the legislature, reports PABLO MERIGUET
DAVID MATTHEWS looks at what a collective future for welfare might have in store for us
PART 1 of this answer argued that environmental destruction is driven by the fundamental contradiction in capitalism — between the forces and relations of production and its relentless drive for profit. Capitalism depends on continued growth, without which it would collapse. Non-exploitative capitalism is a contradiction in terms. There is not a single “human ecology” — every social system has its own ecological dynamic, and capitalism’s is a particularly destructive one.
Just as capitalism, as an economic system, depends on exploiting workers, so too does it depend on exploiting the resources — living and non-living — of our planet. That was something recognised by Marx and Engels with their concept of the “metabolic rift” between humans and nature.
Marx focused on agriculture, the depletion of soil nutrients and the pollution of waterways by run-off and human sewage. He was an early advocate of recycling. Today we recognise that the wider impacts of capitalism threaten the whole planet. As Barry Commoner, a Marxist ecologist and one of the founders of the modern environmental movement wrote a half-century ago (at the same time of the MIT computer models discussed in part 1 of this Q&A):
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MARTIN GRAHAM recommends a book that makes a critique of neoclassical economics and attempts to envision a sustainable global future
Labour’s fiscal policy is already in trouble. But simply printing money is not a solution, says the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School
Author RACHEL HOLMES invites readers to come to her talk in London about the great foremother of the working-class women’s movement – Eleanor Marx