Capitalism’s profit focus has often held back the distribution of products to drive up their prices. Patents and trademarks of profit-seeking businesses effectively slow the distribution of all sorts of products. We cannot know whether capitalism’s incentive effects outweigh its slowing effects. Claims that capitalism promotes rather than slows progress are pure ideological assertions.

Cuba is facing its worst crisis in more than 60 years. Given the tradition of solid bilateral relations between Canada and the island nation, Ottawa could gain by aiding Cuba at this critical moment. An imaginative approach would improve substantially the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cubans. The question is: do we have the political will to help the Cuban people?

Instead of another subsidy for a pasta factory, our Liberal-NDP supply and confidence government should announce its intention to support a wave of local democratization projects, including the expansion of food cooperatives, worker cooperatives, various employee-ownership schemes, community land trusts, and the development of sustainable procurement policies.

It appears as though Fox Nation, a subscription-based video service and companion to Fox News Channel, is soon to present a documentary on Canada-Cuba relations, emphasizing the close ties between the Trudeau family and Fidel Castro—and in particular the theory that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the illegitimate son of the late Cuban leader.

In his latest letter from a Russian prison, Boris Kagarlitsky addresses why, in 2024, we should continue to find Lenin interesting. The letter was translated from the original Russian version by Renfrey Clarke. Clarke also translated Kagarlitsky’s latest book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left, available now for pre-order from Pluto Press.

The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left, by sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky. As well as bringing Russian and Western thinkers into dialogue, Kagarlitsky draws upon his experiences as a Russian dissident since the latter days of the Soviet Union in this encyclopaedic analysis of leftist strategy.

The Boris Kagarlitsky international solidarity campaign aims to build so much support that it becomes impossible for politicians who are in dialogue with the Russian government to ignore it, which would bring pressure to bear for Kagarlitsky’s liberation. The campaign also seeks to draw attention to the plight of Russian political prisoners, the vast majority of whom are imprisoned on baseless charges.

The main goal of the war is to protect the Putin regime and its autocratic vassal states, like the Lukashenko dictatorship in Belarus, from the threat of revolution. This goal coincides perfectly with the elite’s dreams of rebuilding the Russian Empire, which requires enslaving Ukraine but Russian expansion will not end there.

John Shannon Saul, the writer, scholar, and solidarity activist, died in Toronto on September 23, 2023. He leaves behind a rich scholarly and activist legacy, having authored, by a conservative estimate, some 25 books on African history, politics, and society. Saul played a key role in supporting liberation movements in Africa while advancing social change at home.

Western economists continue to argue that the Chinese economy is heading down the drain. As Michael Roberts argues, this critique is not factually correct, and it aims to distract attention from the reality that the Western capitalist economies (apart from the United States) are floundering in stagnation and near slump.