Capitalist Bonanza: Share Buybacks Reached Record High in 2021

Share buybacks hit a record high in 2021, enriching investors and executives at the expense of the working class.

2022: More Wealthy People and Far More Poor People. We Need to Fight Back

After almost two years of pandemic, the inequality gap has increased: 10 percent of the global population now receives 52 percent of global income, according to the World Inequality Report.

The Democratic Party and Capitalism’s Economic Contradictions

The Democratic Party is promising that its spending packages will rejuvenate the economy. And that has helped the party bewitch the Left and dampen mass struggle in the United States. But the economic situation today — riven by fundamental, explosive contradictions — shows that those promises are built on sand, and that we need to reject the Democrats and organize for an independent, revolutionary struggle.

Tariffs to Fight Climate Change? It’s a Capitalist Ruse

At COP26, the leading capitalist countries are pushing the idea of tariffs on certain exports as a way to reduce emissions. But these proposals are really about shoring up Western capitalism’s ability to compete with China.

The Climate Conference in Glasgow Is Just “COP-out 26”

The climate crisis demands urgent changes to the world economy. This would require bringing the fossil fuel companies into public ownership and rapidly expanding renewable energy. Yet none of this is on the agenda at COP26.

Production Chains, Bottlenecks, and Strategic Positions

With the post-pandemic economic recovery still trying to break through, the United States and other imperialist countries are suffering numerous disruptions to their supply chains. The globalized system of production signals capitalism’s fragility and points to the disruptive potential of working-class sectors that occupy key logistical positions within these chains.

The Fed, Interest Rates, and Stagflation

Accelerating inflation may be an issue right now in the US and other recovering capitalist economies, but for capitalism, profitability is the real benchmark, and that can be hit by wage rises on the one hand and interest rises on the other.

Stopgaps Won’t Stop the Crisis — the Capitalists Must Pay

On Thursday, September 30, Joe Biden postponed the government shutdown. A week later, the debt ceiling was raised by $480 billion. Capitalist crisis is ultimately inevitable unless we fight back with working-class methods.

China’s Evergrande: A Serious Crisis, But Hardly an Asian Lehman Brothers

The Evergrande Group, a giant Chinese real estate developer, is on the brink of default. For the Chinese bureaucracy, the crisis is not only an “opportunity to regulate the sector,” as some would have us believe. But it is too early to declare this a Chinese version of the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, since the Chinese government will not likely wait for things to reach that level.