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Tag Archives | R. Jamil Jonna

The Contagion of Capital: Financialized Capitalism, COVID-19, and the Great Divide

“The Contagion of Capital: Financialized Capitalism, COVID-19, and the Great Divide” (coathored with R. Jamil Jonna and Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 72 no. 8 (January 2021), pp. 1-19. The U.S. economy and society at the start of 2021 is more polarized than it has been at any point since the Civil War. The […]

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Global Commodity Chains and the New Imperialism

“Global Commodity Chains and the New Imperialism” (coauthored with Intan Suwandi and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed last), Monthly Review vol. 70, no. 10 (March 2019): 1-24. DOI: 10.14452/MR-070-10-2019-03_1 [HTML] To comprehend twenty-first-century imperialism we must go beyond analysis of the nation-state to a systematic investigation of the increasing global reach of multinational corporations or […]

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Marx’s Theory of Working-Class Precariousness

Worker Precariousness has become a major issue globally. Much of this, however, is divorced from the central role that this concept played in Marx’s critique of political economy. This article traces the notion of precarious labor back to its classical roots in historical materialism, including Marx’s general law of accumulation and his reserve army of […]

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Braverman and the Structure of the U.S. Working Class

The fortieth anniversary of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital is the occasion here for a reassessment of his work as a whole. Braverman’s analysis of the degradation of work is shown to have been only a part of a much larger argument he was developing on the structure of the U.S. working class. Building on his […]

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The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism

In the last few decades there has been an enormous shift in the capitalist economy in the direction of the globalization of production. Much of the increase in manufacturing and even services production that would have formerly taken place in the global North—as well as a portion of the North’s preexisting production—is now being offshored […]

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The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital

In a 1997 article entitled “More (or Less) on Globalization,” Paul Sweezy referred to “the three most important underlying trends in the recent history of capitalism, the period beginning with the recession of 1974-75: (1) the slowing down of the overall rate of growth; (2) the worldwide proliferation of monopolistic (or oligopolistic) multinational corporations; and […]

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Monopoly and Competition in the 21st Century

A striking paradox animates political economy in our times. On the one hand, mainstream economics and much of left economics discuss our era as one of intense and increased competition among businesses, now on a global scale. It is a matter so self-evident as no longer to require empirical verification or scholarly examination. On the […]

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The Penal State in an Age of Crisis

As a rule, crime and social protest rise in periods of economic crisis in capitalist society. During times of economic and social instability, the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the general population, more disposed to adopt harsh measures to safeguard their positions at the apex of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the economic growth […]

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