Tag Archives: Journalism

I just finished Robert Service’s biography of Lenin. The “Marxism” of Lenin was not Marxist at all. Classical Marxism holds that capitalism must achieve a high level of industrialization before the workers can overturn the landlords and factory owners and collectivize the fruits of labor for the benefit of workers. Like Mao, Lenin retrofitted socialist revolution to the circumstances. Since Russia at the end of the Romanov dynasty was still a...

Martin Wolf is right to say that Vladimir Putin has ignited an indefensible war against Ukraine (Opinion, March 2). That it is worse than a crime is a folly highlighted by your report about Kharkiv, described as “another Stalingrad” (March 3). You do not call Ukrainians your brothers, then bomb them into submission. Whatever the war’s immediate results, Putin has ensured that Russia’s western borders become “ungovernable”. Belarus will be next on the list for “brotherly” persuasion, once...

An iconic American wilderness turns 150, National Geographic A “paradox of the cultivated wild.” That’s how National Geographic Explorer David Quammen  characterized Yellowstone National Park in a celebrated edition of National Geographic. In that issue, an epic ecosystem – it’s the biggest complex of mostly untamed landscape and wildlife within the lower 48 states – received epic treatment. On February 25th, Yellowstone National Park turned...

“March 5, 2022,” Letters from an American, Professor Heather Cox – Richardson Whenever something good is going down, there are nut jobs popping up making demeaning statements about what is occurring. Here is one of Trump’s acolytes taking a shot at Ukraine’s Zelensky’s courage. “Yesterday, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) referred to the “Putin wing” of the Republican Party when she shared a video clip of Douglas Macgregor. Macgregor was...

Martin Wolf is right to say that Vladimir Putin has ignited an indefensible war against Ukraine (Opinion, March 2). That it is worse than a crime is a folly highlighted by your report about Kharkiv, described as “another Stalingrad” (March 3). You do not call Ukrainians your brothers, then bomb them into submission. Whatever the war’s immediate results, Putin has ensured that Russia’s western borders become “ungovernable”. Belarus will be next on the list for “brotherly” persuasion, once...

The low levels of Lake Powell and the lack of rainfall in the west are not symptoms of drought. They are stages of Global Warming.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an invitation to what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction: a chance to liquidate obsolete investments and to create something new, better, and, in the jargon, more ‘resilient’ and ‘sustainable’. Schumpeter understood that humankind does not progress in a balanced way, rather it lurches from one extreme to another, each extreme producing its own reaction. In political economy, the subject of this contribution, the excesses of the...

In der aktuellen Corona-Krise wiederholen sich die Muster früherer Krisen. Vor dem Hintergrund sinkender Produktion und steigender Arbeitslosigkeit versuchen Notenbanken und Staaten weltweit ihre Ökonomien vor einem größeren Absturz zu bewahren. Die Rezeptur für diese Stabilisierungspolitik basiert auf der Lehre des britischen Ökonomen John Maynard Keynes, die dieser vor dem Hintergrund der Großen Depression im Jahr 1936 in seiner „Allgemeinen Theorie der Beschäftigung, des Zinses und des...

The theorist of “creative destruction,” one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, was no stranger to violent disruption in his personal life, as a new biography reveals Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) was one of the greatest economists of the 20th century—commonly bracketed with such giants as Keynes, Hayek and Friedman. He is best known for his theory of “creative destruction”—the view that the capitalist system progresses by constantly revolutionising its economic...

Nato governments have rightly said they are willing to address Russia’s security concerns, but then say in the same breath that Russia has no legitimate security concerns because Nato is a purely defensive alliance. Whether we like it or not, a Nato that now borders Russia and could in future border even more of Russia is seen by Russia as a security concern. In 2014 Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post that “internationally [Ukraine] should pursue a posture comparable to that...