If the last 30 years were an era of reaction, then the coming decade could turn into an era of reform, even radical reform. Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years.

¿Cuál es el objetivo de las reformas económicas promovidas por la administración Obama? ¿Qué medida de progreso ha habido, o que se puede esperar de las propuestas de reforma para el avance de la seguridad y de los intereses de los trabajadores?

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Cathedral door helped put an end to the Middle Ages and heralded the dawn of the age of capitalism. Almost half a millennium later, world capitalism is going through rocky times, a new US administration is exploring new approaches, and socialist ideas are once again entering public discussion.

Anyone who reads Marx’s great work Capital today, and the number of new readers is growing, will find, before they hit the first chapter, six prefaces (four to German editions and one each to the French and English editions) and two afterwords (to the French and to the second German editions).

It is hard to envisage human beings doing anything were it not for emotions: feelings motivate us; they make us move (literally). There seems to be a direct link between feeling something via the senses, and feeling something emotionally...

What is the objective of the economic reforms advocated by the Obama administration? What measure of progress has there been, or can be expected, from the proposed reforms for the security and advancement of working peoples economic interests?

Things are not always as they appear. In proving this old proverb, Karl Marx explained some key features of capitalism in a way that remains relevant today. Towards the end of the first chapter of Capital, Vol. 1, after having established the validity of the labor theory of value, Marx presents a section on the Fetishism of Commodities.

There is a very common view that the current financial crisis of the capitalist world, and its fall-out in the form of the most severe slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s, are a consequence of “greed” on the part of the financial sector.

Interview with author Daniel Rubin about his new book "Can Capitalism Last?". Discussion of the economic crisis, Marxism, socialism and other hot topics.

I believe that there is a very big relationship in terms of understanding the fundamentals of capitalism and what is happening now, and what the prospects are for momentary solutions and longer-term solutions further down the road.

Another form of public option would be a Medicare-like option that would be in the mix along with the private plans in this kind of exchange. There are many formulations of what this could look like. So what would happen?

We live in the era of the global commons, but very few have actually met their neighbors – except as subalterns: household maids, hotel service-workers, nannies, most likely college-educated women from the Philippines.

When it comes to rational "scientific discourse" art is a language that is often excluded from the mainstream logos in a similar way to the "feminine," it being instead also associated with madness ("hysteria").

The blogosphere has lately witnessed some interest in a lecture, "Understanding Marxism" posted by Professor Brad Delong of the University of California and a former Clinton administration official.

Some of socialism’s fundamental building blocks are already present in US society. The means of production, for the most part, are sufficiently developed to support, in forseeable time – the next ten years – a workforce where at least two years of college, or equivalent, is available to every worker.

The current discussion around socialism in left and progressive circles in the U.S. needs to be placed in a more substantive arena. This is an effort to do so. I take note in advance of the criticism that the following eleven working hypotheses are rather dry and formal.

Recently appointed Attorney General Eric Holder, whose parents hail from the Barbados, aroused instant ire when he remarked last February 18 that the U.S. remains a “nation of cowards” for not talking enough about things racial.

The 20th century is well behind us, but we have not yet learned to live in the 21st, or at least to think in a way that fits it. That should not be as difficult as it seems, because the basic idea that dominated economics and politics in the last century has patently disappeared down the plughole of history.

Socialism can be defined as a phase of social-economic development during which ever-larger numbers of people in society are increasingly empowered to collectively control the direction of their lives through the process of incrementally crafting new democratic means of ownership and institutions for running the economy and other areas of social life.

In dealing with the current financial crisis, the US government is acquiring shares of financial and other corporations to which it is providing bailout funds. The press has been raising the specter that these actions are moving the United States toward socialism.