East-Central Europe: Transition to Market Economy and Democracy The author addresses the relation between theoretical thinking and the events in East-Central Europe during the five years after the events in 1989 and 1990 as a kind of a political revolution, but one without a previous historical model and without a revolutionary theory or a theory […]
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Daniel Singer
Europe’s Crises The Nation European correspondent analyzes three closely connected crises: the unexpected difficulties confronted by the capitalist invasion of eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the long-term structural crisis due to mass unemployment in Western Europe due to technological advances, and the bankruptcy of social democracy and the inability […]
Leo Panitch
Globalization, States, and Left Strategies This article attempts to address the challenge posed to the Left by what has come to be known as “globalization.” The apparent subjection of even advanced capitalist social formations in recent decades to the competitive logics and exigencies of production, trade, and finance undertaken on a world scale is treated […]
John Saxe-Fernández
NAFTA: The Intersection of the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital This analysis of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) compares it to earlier experiments in geopolitical and geoeconomic “enlargement” that were tested in the long period between the establishment of a new world order based on the Treaty of Versailles and the emergence of […]
Arthur MacEwan
Globalization and Stagnation MacEwan discusses the economic conditions of world capitalism, and problems related to globalization. 1. The current neoliberal globalization is not the same as the general, historical spread of capitalism. 2. When globalization has been associated with rapid growth, that growth has had historically specific causes and cannot be attributed to globalization per […]
Pablo Gonzalez Casanova
Globalism, Neoliberalism, and Democracy Finding an alternative to neoliberalism is a moral, political, and social problem and is the most important intellectual problem confronting the social sciences of our time. The alternative to the neoliberal state will be a social democracy that differs from the welfare state, the populist state, or “real socialism.” It will […]
Bogdan Denitch
Democracy and the World Order: Dilemmas and Conflicts The prospects for democracy at the close of the 20th century are perilous. In an increasingly unified world system, it is no longer possible to write about the prospects for democracy except on a world scale. It cannot be a precious entity reserved for the rich First […]
Ralph Miliband
The New World Order and the Left Given the disintegration of the Soviet Union, an altered world order came into beign, with some significant new features. The “market economy,” capitalism, took command of the field, on a worldwide scale and there is now no effective counterweight to U.S. and Western predominance in international relations. Yet […]
Samir Amin
The Future of Global Polarization This article argues that history since antiquity has been characterized by social inequality. Yet it is only in the modern era that polarization has become the immanent by-product of the integration of the entire planet into the capitalist system. Modern capitalist polarization has appeared in successive forms during the evolution […]
Pablo González Casanova and John Saxe-Fernández
Preface to ‘The World Today’ In December 1993, the center for interdisciplinary research in the Sciences and Humanities of the National University of Mexico organized a seminar entitled “The World Today: Situation and Alternatives.” Its task was to examine the central concerns and problems facing humanity in the final stage of the 20th century, beginning […]
Robert Gould
Review of Understanding Health Policy: A Clinical Approach, by Thomas Bodenheimer and Kevin Grumbach Book review of Understanding Health Policy: A Clinical Approach book reviews; medical care — cost United States; medical care United States; medical policy United States; public health United States, Bodenheimer, Thomas, Grumbach, Kevin, Lange Medical Books/McGraw-Hill Citation: Social Justice Vol. 22, […]
Victor W. Sidel and Robert C. Wesley, Jr.
Violence as a Public Health Problem: Lessons for Action Against Violence by Health Care Professionals from the Work of the International Physicians Movement for the Prevention of Nuclear War The public health effects posed by the persistence of a global commitment to weapons and violence in conducting international relations–militarism–are presented by Victor W. Sidel and […]
Jacqueline Cabasso and Patrice Sutton
Nuclear Weapons: Now and Forever? The Role of Laboratory-Based Testing in Maintaining Nuclear Weapons Department of Energy plans to spend ever more billions of dollars to construct and operate a system of new high-tech laboratory facilities to preserve its capacity to maintain test modify design and produce new nuclear weapons with or without underground tests […]
Michael Veiluva
Federal Responsibilities and Realities: An Alternative View of the Cleanup of the Nuclear Weapons Complex Opportunities afforded by transcending the public health limitations of a ”NIMBY’ (not in my backyard) organizing strategy and the successes of activist participation in biomedical research are illustrated by case studies. However as Michael Veiluva notes in reference to the […]
Velma L. Campbell and J. Ross Vincent
Chemical Weapons Destruction: A Window of Opportunity Integral to the construction of a less fragmented more inclusive view of ”the public” are efforts that increase citizen participation in scientific and technological decision making affecting public health. A consistent public health theme in the 1990s will be how to balance the often divergent perspectives of governments […]
Jody Williams
Landmines: A Global Socioeconomic Crisis The public health effects posed by the persistence of a global commitment to weapons and violence in conducting international relations–militarism–are presented by Jody Williams By forcefully splintering the worldwide social fabric and directly and indirectly forestalling the achievement of universal social and economic well-being militarism is dually destructive of the […]