Democratic socialists frame their project nationally without reference to the trans-national context, while also framing neoliberals’ view of ‘nationalism’ as regressive. Actually, the transnational context of the prevailing mid-range form of capitalism or ‘model of development’ influences nationalist tendencies that may be regressive or progressive…

Inequality is rising worldwide, but how it matters has a lot to do with how people perceive rising inequality. Indeed, people often misperceive the actual level of inequality in their society. And only when people see the actual inequality in their society and hold critical views toward it, will they take actions such as demanding government interventions…

The successive and overlapping economic, political, public health, geopolitical and environmental crises in the early part of this century highlight the continuing relevance of Marxism’s focus on capitalism’s contradictions.  However, capitalism’s resilience in the face of these contradictions is in part due to the system’s ability to prevent…

Like other fields of study, sociology, specifically urban sociology, has been concerned with inequality across neighborhoods, cities and other scales of geography. The name of the subfield itself invokes some consideration of cities and urbanization processes as points of critical inquiry. Yet, in explaining why some neighborhoods change and why others…

Natural resource extraction as a salient development strategy for resource-rich developing countries takes different forms depending on structural conditions such as availability and magnitude of resources, institutional arrangements, or the level of economic development. Moreover, natural resource extraction is a socioecological and sociopolitical…

Since Marx’s treatise on the primitive (or “original”) accumulation of capital, scholars of development studies and agrarian political economy have attempted to map out the forms dispossession takes under different periods of capitalist accumulation. Most recently, studies have documented accelerating dispossession in the global south, especially…

In 1972, my mother purchased the Baltimore City rowhome where I spent most of my childhood.  The reaction from her family was concern.  The neighborhood had a bad reputation as being a place with lots of criminal activity and drug use.  But it was affordable and convenient for a Baltimore City Public School teacher, so she moved in.  By the 1980s…

January 23, 2022 was the 46 year anniversary of the passing of athlete, artist, activist, and global intellectual Paul Robeson (1896-1976). The life and legacy of Robeson is of world-historical significance for struggles against exploitation and oppression. This applies not only to the past struggles through which he lived, but ongoing struggles for…

English-speaking countries represented the full range of democratic responses to the crisis of the 1930s. Canada, along with Australia and the United Kingdom, responded to the Great Depression in a conservative, protectionist manner, combining industrial tariff protection, selective intervention in the domestic market, and a largely cyclical (orthodox)…

The Marxist Sociology Teaching and Praxis Award The Marxist Sociology Teaching and Praxis Award recognizes outstanding integration of theory and practice in the promotion and achievement of social change through teaching and scholarship by sociologists. We look for nominees who have excellent accomplishments in teaching Marxist sociology and/or have…

In the past years, there has been a very much welcomed flourishing of Marxist Feminist analyses. In a recent article, we contribute to the ongoing discussion by elaborating on Marx’s concept of the value of labor power to conceptualize the massive incorporation of women into the labor market and its consequences in terms of wages in Argentina since…

To start off the New Year, we would like to share the 10 most read posts on the Marxist Sociology Blog published in 2021. Congratulations to all of our contributors! If you missed these posts the first time around, now would be a great time to give them a quick read. Looking ahead, we are excited to continue showcasing the important work of section…

In mid-March 2020, the Ontario government declared ‘a state of emergency’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Delivery gig workers had been suddenly reclassified as essential workers, delivering food to people’s front doors during lockdown, while risking exposure to the virus. The demand for food delivery services had increased to a level never…

We live in a world run by algorithms. Nowhere is this more apparent than with platform companies, such as Facebook, Uber, Google, Amazon, and Twitter. Platforms claim that their algorithms collect and use our data to optimize our experience with breathtaking speed and efficiency. Recent reports from scholars, journalists, and policy makers, however…

Explaining digital impacts on social movements requires moving beyond technological determinism by addressing two underdeveloped questions: How does political strategy shape the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs)? And how do divergent uses of ICTs influence movement outcomes? This paper addresses these questions by examining the…

At the beginning of economic restructuring in China in 1978, Marxist theory organized virtually all economic discussion in China.  However, by 2010, neoclassical economics and related schools of thought, such as “new institutionalist economics,” had become the hegemonic paradigm. Neoclassical economics came to dominate not only graduate and undergraduate…

A great transition is underway from the fossil fuel age to a new world powered by renewable energy (RE) – particularly solar and wind. Some of the key questions are how fast the energy transition will advance, whether it will be an “orderly” or “disorderly” transition, how much the transition will cost, what its impacts will be on job creation…

In the summer of 2021, Berlin, Germany, saw a wave of strikes and protests by delivery drivers of the start-up Gorillas, a new platform that promises to deliver groceries to customers’ doorsteps only 10 minutes after they ordered via the apps on their smartphones. Gorillas, whose business model is similar to DoorDash and other platforms, was founded…

I recently published an article in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology that uses the “student as customer” to help understand why college is so expensive. I explore three factors that contribute to high costs:  1) contemporary understandings of education as a private, rather than a public, good; 2) the ways that schools are funded…

Not being members of academic sociology circles, neither of us had encountered Richard Lachmann’s work until fairly recently. We are both part of the new generation of socialist activists swept into the political arena by the Bernie years. After an era of feverish activity—building DSA chapters, campaigns for universal healthcare, immigrant rights…

I was first introduced to Richard Lachmann’s work as a graduate student. I then had the privilege of calling him a colleague when I joined the faculty at the University at Albany in 2008. His sudden passing was a great personal loss to me and so many others, but it also meant the loss of one of the left’s great intellectuals. Richard was not, strictly…

President Joe Biden is worried about China. In April he explained “we are in competition with China…to win the 21st century…we are at a great inflection point in history. We have to do more than just build back better. … we have to compete more strenuously.” But…it was never supposed to be like this. Back in 2000, President Clinton, in a…

Defying stereotypes, millions of precarious informal workers have mobilized for labor rights over the past 40 years.  Yet, as my research on Bogotá’s recicladores (informal recyclers) movement demonstrates, organized informal workers may confront structural dilemmas as they seek to improve their working lives. As informal workers gain a measure…

With the US government finally withdrawing troops from Afghanistan after a disastrous 20 year war, politicians and pundits are wasting no time spinning this as a failure of epic proportions for Joe Biden. Republicans have claimed the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan “heightened the threat of terrorism around the world,” while Democrats label…

In the summer of 2004, as a young graduate student, I emailed Stanley Aronowitz asking for a meeting to discuss an idea for my doctoral dissertation. He replied that there are three reasons to be a professor: June, July, and August. He asked me, politely, to write him again in September.  That was the moment I realized I wanted to be a college professor…