Suchergebnisse

Marx Matters is an examination of how Marx remains more relevant than ever in dealing with contemporary crises. This volume explores how technical dimensions of a Marxian analytic frame remains relevant to our understanding of inequality, of exploitation and oppression, and of financialization in the age of global capitalism. Contributors track Marx in promoting emancipatory practices in Latin America, tackle how Marx informs issues of race and gender, explore current social movements and the populist turn, and demonstrate how Marx can guide strategies to deal with the existential environmental crises of the day. Marx matters because Marx still provides the best analysis of the capitalism as a system, and his ideas still point to how society can organize for a better world. Contributors are: Jose Bell Lara, Ashley J. Bohrer, Tom Brass, Rose M. Brewer, William K. Carroll, Penelope Ciancanelli, Raju J. Das, Ricardo A. Dello Buono, David Fasenfest, Ben Fine, Lauren Langman, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Vishwas Satgar, and William K. Tabb

The fiscal crisis faced by municipalities is the product of a range of structural and political factors that leave communities unable to meet their obligations. To deal with this crisis, the State of Michigan turned to a program of Emergency Managers who were given the power to overrule locally elected officials, abrogate existing contracts and arrangements, sell public property, and in short do whatever they wished to address the problem. Emergency Managers imposed austerity-based neoliberal policies with little regard for underlying structural forces that left communities impoverished, and which in the end protected bond holders. As the case of Flint, Michigan, demonstrates, these actions did little to alter the long-term prospects of cities, and inflicted real harm on Flint's residents when the EM embarked on a 'money saving' plan to terminate an agreement to use safe Detroit water. In the interim, Flint began drawing drinking water from the Flint River, resulting in high levels of lead in their water, producing a health crisis. At the end of the day, cities where Emergency Managers were in charge were left in unsustainable positions, burdened by new long-term debt, with every likelihood they would find themselves in another fiscal crisis in the coming decades.