The victories that followed the American civil war and the 1960s civil rights era are once again under attack, echoing earlier efforts to roll back equality and redefine democracy, says JOE SIMS
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Where does money come from?
Once it was a supposedly a physical thing, allegedly tied to an amount of gold — but money only really got into its stride when it was created out of nothing by nation states and financial institutions. What does that mean in a world with multiple currencies and distinct rich and poor nations, asks the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
In 2010, faced with the closure of their local library, a Buckinghamshire town’s locals turned to an unconventional tactic – borrowing every single book – to defend a cherished community space. MAT COWARD tells the story
The indictment of Nicolas Maduro after a deadly US assault is just the latest phase in a long campaign against the Bolivarian government, warns FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ
Journalist STEVE SWEENEY talks to Roger McKenzie about narrowly surviving an Israeli air strike last week while documenting the mass displacement of civilians – and explains why the real story goes far beyond the attack on him
After 27 years in Holyrood, the former first minister urged unity and respect — but, says NEIL FINDLAY, her time in power told a very different story
The Employment Rights Act 2025’s focus on individual rights forces workers into slow and costly litigation to assert rights, rather than empowering unions. A Campaign for Trade Union Freedom-Strike Map rally at the weekend called for a more radical sequel, reports BEN CHACKO
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” (attributed to Henry Ford)
OUR last answer explored the way that money is central to the circulation of commodities under capitalism. It argued that money is more than simply a token of value, a facilitator of exchange: it is itself a commodity, with (as Marx declared) the remarkable property of being able to make more of itself.
Debt, in particular, has become a commodity, bought and sold between large financial institutions. Credit is the basis of what Marx called “fictitious capital” — value in the form of paper money, shares, stocks, securities, and debt, all today existing primarily in digital form and all above and beyond what can be realised in the form of commodities or physical, productive capital.
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