The story many have told can lead one to believe in the existence of a united Jewish people: rich, powerful, placed under centralized command and responsible for establishing a worldwide power strategy through money. Such a belief would merge with the fantasies that have spread across every century from Trajan to Constantine, from Matthew to Luther, from Marlow to Voltaire, from the Protocol of the Elders of Zion to Mein Kampf, to all that which is propagated today via the anonymity of the Internet. This is the story ripe to be challenged and retold. Herein lies the history of the relationship between the Jewish people, money and the world at large. The author is well aware of the subversive nature of this subject. It is a topic that has unleashed so many controversies and brought about so many massacres as to have become a veritable taboo, a topic that must not be evoked under any circumstance for fear of provoking some age-old catastrophe. Today, no one dares write on this topic, as if centuries of study have served no purpose other than to fuel book burning. It remains nevertheless in the best interest of modern mankind to understand how those who discovered monotheism also founded the ethics of capitalism, how some became its primary brokers and leading bankers, while others its most unrelenting enemy. In this book the author tackles the facts and the lies of the history of the relationship between the Jewish people, money and the world at large. "It seems essential that our world, and Jewish people themselves, face a part of their history that they may not care for but of which they have every reason to be proud." REVIEWS "The Economic History of the Jewish People by Jacques Attali is set to be as controversial as it is well documented and thoroughly researched by one of the foremost financial authorities of Europe, the Head of the Commission to Promote Economic Growth in France. Attali has written numerous books and knows this subject thoroughly. He has tackled it from the standpoint of history, myth, and dirty stories, proving some and dispelling others with facts. He has traced the economic experiences, leadership, and fall of the Jewish people from 2,000 years BC until present upheavals of economy worldwide. The book is fascinating for anyone interested in history, finance, or the Jewish people. It is an eye-opener in some instances and shows the influence, admitted or behind-the-scenes, which the Jewish people have had on the entire history of our world through the ages and how they have been rewarded or persecuted along the way for their use of any kind of tender (legal or illegal) around the world for 4,000 years. Really interesting and so very well written." Bonnie Neely, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer, 2010/05/24

The failures of “free-market” capitalism are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the production and distribution of food. Although modern human societies have attained unprecedented levels of wealth, a significant amount of the world’s population continues to suffer from hunger or food insecurity on a daily basis. In Agriculture and Food in Crisis , Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar have assembled an exceptional collection of scholars from around the world to explore this frightening long-term trend in food production. While approaching the issue from many angles, the contributors to this volume share a focus on investigating how agricultural production is shaped by a system that is oriented around the creation of profit above all else, with food as nothing but an afterthought. As the authors make clear, it is technically possible to feed to world’s people, but it is not possible to do so as long as capitalism exists. Toward that end, they examine what can be, and is being, done to create a human-centered and ecologically sound system of food production, from sustainable agriculture and organic farming on a large scale to movements for radical land reform and national food sovereignty. This book will serve as an indispensible guide to the years ahead, in which world politics will no doubt come to be increasingly understood as food politics.

For over sixty years, Selma James has been organizing from the perspective of unwaged women who, with their biological and caring work, reproduce the whole human race--along with whatever other labor they are performing. This work goes on almost unnoticed everywhere on the planet and in every culture. When this work is not economically prioritized, politically protected, or socially supported there are dire consequences for the whole of humanity, beginning with women and children. This collection compiles several decades of James's work with a focus on her more recent writings, including an analysis of C.L.R. James's two masterpieces, The Black Jacobins and Beyond a Boundary, and an account of her formative partnership with him over three decades. Her experience with the Caribbean movement for independence and federation is reflected in her introduction to Ujamaa, the work of Tanzanians to bypass capitalism, and much more. Steeped in the tradition of Marx urging the need for a "practical movement," James recounts the unusual history of how autonomous organizations formed within the International Wages for Housework Campaign and reshaped it. Women of color, queer women, sex workers, women with disabilitie... each independent but mutually accountable (including to the men's network with whom they work) as they confront sexism, racism, deportation, rape, and other violence. James makes the argument that the climate justice movement can draw on all the movements' people have formed to refuse their particular exploitation, to end the capitalist hierarchy that is destroying the world. ---From publisher description.

Few documents have had more of an impact on the course of history as has the Communist Manifesto. From its famous opening lines--"A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of Communism"--to its final rallying cry--"Workers of the world unite!"--the words of Marx and Engels have moved millions to join in the struggle against capitalism. But they have also inspired a legion of critics, detractors, and even a few despots to intentionally distort their meanings so as to sow confusion and justify untold horrors. According to Hal Draper, these mis-readings have, in part, been made possible by the enduring prevalence of translations from the original German that fail to accurately capture the intended meaning of certain key phrases. In this magisterial volume, Draper assembles the original German text, the first English translation, the officially authorized English translation--providing enlightening commentary throughout--as well as his own new translation of the pamphlet.

The question of how the Nazis came to power in one of the most advanced countries in the world, both industially and culturally, remains a burning question. In this work the author discounts recent arguments suggesting that their success was the product of a profound and long-held anti-Semitism within the German national psyche and demonstrates that the Nazis were of marginal significance until the crisis in the German economy made their commitment to smash any gains for the working class from the German Revolution attractive to wide sections of the German ruling class.

In this timely and provocative study, William I. Robinson challenges received wisdom on Central America. He starts with an exposition on the new global capitalism. Then, drawing on a wide range of historical documentation, interviews, and social science research, he proceeds to show how capitalist globalization has thoroughly transformed the region, disrupting the conventional pattern of revolutionary upheaval, civil wars, and pacification, and ushering in instead a new transnational model of economy and society. Beyond his focus on Central America, Robinson provides a critical framework for understanding development and social change in other regions of the world in the age of globalization. Demonstrating how the very forces of capitalism have brought into being new social agents and political actors unlikely to acquiesce in the face of the emerging order, Transnational Conflicts shows why the Isthmus, along with other regions, is likely to return to the headlines in the near future.

With capitalism in deep crisis, this urgent and impassioned book shows how and why growing populist nationalism across the world threatens the bonds that keep our societies prosperous, strong and united.

During the opening years of the 21st century, anti-­Semitic venom and incidents of violent assault on Jews have begun spreading. They are not a historical aberration. They are fueled by today's capitalist crises and fracturing of the post-World War II imperialist "order," described in recent decades as "globalization." At every turning point in history-from antiquity through feudalism, to capitalism's rise and the imperialist death throes of the past century-Jews have been targets of persecution. Including the genocide cold-bloodedly touted by Hitler as the "Final Solution." Why is Jew-hatred still raising its ugly head? What are its class roots? Why is there "no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism, just as there is no solution to other problems before humanity," without revolutionary struggles that transform us as we fight to transform our world? Abram Leon was killed in October 1944, at age 26, in the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz. He left us this book to help answer those questions.

Read a transcript of Amy Goodman's interview with Si and Elizabeth on Democracy Now! A legendary activist and a distinguished public philosopher address a timely but complex issue in a way that is accessible and compelling Evaluates privatization not just economically, but in social, political, and human terms Offers principles and practices for creating alternatives to privatization and strengthening the public sector Privatization has been on the right-wing agenda for years, but now it has the power of the Bush administration behind it. Health care, schools, Social Security, public lands, the military, prisons - all are considered fair game. But does privatization really serve the public good? Or is it a payoff to powerful corporations intent on replacing the government with a private profit culture, in which there is no meaningful public accountability and the bottom line rules all? In this powerful book, legendary activist Si Kahn and public philosopher Elizabeth Minnich argue that privatization is a threat whose seriousness few appreciate. Kahn and Minnich expose the damage privatization has done in several specific areas of society, as well as to society as a whole. They argue that corporations are, by their very nature, unable to effectively fulfill what have traditionally been the responsibilities of government. Some things that are worth doing simply cant, indeed shouldnt, be done purely for profit. Unless there is a balance between the public and private sectors, vulnerable populations will be chronically underserved and critical public functions will be under-funded to the point of virtual elimination. Privatization is usually dealt with in dry economic terms, but Kahn and Minnich take an unusual and lively approach to the issue. Combining stories, analysis, impassioned argument, and even song lyrics, they discuss how the concept of privatization has evolved and look at the different forces that work for and against it, emphasizing the extreme anti-government ideology motivating many privatization advocates. And they outline principles and practices for combating privatization and its proponents. The Fox in the Henhouse makes a powerful case that the market is not the measure of all things, and that a vital public sector is an indispensable component of a healthy democracy.

This is the fourth in a continuing series of collected essays by the former editors of Monthly Review on the state of the U.S. economy and its relation to the global system. Like its predecessors, this volume focuses on the most recent phase of the development of U.S. capitalism, stressing the profound contradictions of the underlying processes of capital accumulation and pointing the way to the fundamental reforms that are the essential precondition for a real economic revival.

This is the third book of essays on the United States and the world economy produced by the fruitful collaboration of Monthly Review editors Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff. In these essays, written between 1977 and 1981, the authors assess the results of efforts taken to stabilize the economy after the epochal changes of the early 1970s, the end of capitalism's "golden age," by attempts to counteract the effects of inflation, debt dependence, speculation, and financial instability.

Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of a thousand years of Russian history. Encompassing all key periods in Russia's dramatic development, the book covers everything from early settlers, through medieval decline, Ivan the Terrible-the "English Tsar", Peter the Great, the Crimean War and the rise of capitalism, the revolution, and the Soviet period, finally ending with the return of capitalism after 1991. Setting Russia within the context of the "World System", as outlined by Wallerstein, this is a major work of historical Marxist theory that is set to become a future classic.

This is the second in the series of four collections of essays in which Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, the editors of Monthly Review, set out as it took place the development of U.S. and global capitalism from the late 1960s to the "financial explosion" age of the early 1990s and after. This second set of essays constitute in their totality a probing analysis of the condition of the United States economy in the 1970s, immediately after the end of the "golden age" of capitalism. The authors concluded, correctly, that a new period had begun-"one of sluggish capitalist accumulation and unemployment in the advanced capitalist countries on a scale not seen since the 1930s."