ROGER D HARRIS and SARA FLOUNDERS challenge propaganda against the blockaded socialist island
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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
Marx and Engels incorporated in their writings a critique of the way that capitalism destroys the environment but it is only in the last half century that environmental concerns have become an integral part of the fight for socialism, writes the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
The racist Republican tactic of redistricting to keep Trump and his base in power is turning the clock back to the 1950s, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
With a political crisis engulfing the Labour Party, the case for PR is back on the agenda. TONY BURKE argues trade unions must now engage on changes to our voting system
YVETTE WILLIAMS and JOE DELANEY dissect the institutional dawdling that rubbed salt into the Grenfell open wounds prolonging the agony of survivors
The HS2 debacle exposes what happens when public infrastructure is handed to private contractors – especially when set against China’s state-led high-speed rail success, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
“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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