Month: May 2023

The materialist conception of nature

May 19, 2023 CEN_com 0

In the following article reprinted from the Monthly Review, Professor John Bellamy Foster, a leading proponent of ecological Marxism and editor of Monthly Review, is interviewed by Greek left-wing economist Haris Golemis. “I challenge the Western left to recognize that a materialist conception of history is meaningless without a materialist conception of nature—plus the role of dialectics as necessarily related to both. In this way, the long detour of Western […]

Origins of Ecological Critique in Marxism

May 19, 2023 CEN_com 0

Published2021/06/08 John Bellamy Foster’s The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2020) shows the role played by biologists and other scientists with a non-mechanistic, materialist outlook, alongside various Marxists, in laying the foundations of ecology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Foster’s book The Return of Nature picks up where the author left off 20 years ago in Marx’s Ecology, which, as the title indicates, addresses the aspects of Marx’s […]

Xi Jinping and 21st century Marxism

May 15, 2023 CEN_com 0

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday 28 July 2022 that Marxism has been showing new vitality in the 21st century, calling on all Marxist political parties to make the theory more relevant to the national conditions and the times. Xi made the remarks in a congratulatory message to the Communist Party of China (CPC) and World Marxist Political Parties Forum in Beijing. Marxism is an open, developing theory, said […]

Rich nations must pay climate damages

May 15, 2023 CEN_com 0

At the UN climate summit in 2021 – COP26 in Glasgow – a group of largely developing nations representing six out of every seven people in the world called for developed countries to commit to pledging funds for loss and damage. However, this call faced opposition from large Western economies particularly the US and EU – and, ultimately, was rejected because of this opposition by the rich West.  The issue of loss and […]

Globally Important Agricultural Heritage

May 12, 2023 CEN_com 0

Originally posted 21 July 2022 AGRICULTURAL HERITAGE FOR RURAL PROSPERITY The World Conference on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems opened 18 July 2022 in Qingtian County, Zhejiang, China, with the theme of “Agricultural Heritage for Rural Prosperity.” The conference under the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations was co-hosted by China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the government of east China’s Zhejiang Province. President Xi Jinping […]

Brazil top place for China investment

May 10, 2023 CEN_com 0

Originally Published2022/09/04  Investment by Chinese companies in Brazil more than tripled in 2021, returning to pre-Covid pandemic levels and making the country the main destination for Chinese capital last year. After a lukewarm performance in 2020, operations such as Tencent’s investments in fintechs and startups such as Nubank, QuintoAndar and Cora, as well as billionaire investments by Chinese oil companies in the Santos Basin have increased. Also noteworthy was the […]

China finds gene to boost grain yield

May 10, 2023 CEN_com 0

 Originally posted 24 July 2022 Chinese scientists have found a gene in crops such as rice and wheat which can improve the efficiency of photosynthesis and nitrogen utilization and significantly boost grain yield. The researchers enhanced the expression of the OsDREB1C gene in two rice varieties through genetic engineering technology. And they conducted field trials at three different sites in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Sanya in northern, eastern, and southern China, […]

China’s plan to clean up ‘new pollutants’

May 5, 2023 CEN_com 0

“This is a significant step forward for China’s chemical regime.” Liu Jianguo, Associate Professor, Peking University Hopes are high that a Chinese action plan will help control chemicals with ongoing harmful effects. In 2014, China declared a “war on pollution”. Since then, air quality has improved significantly, with nationwide levels of PM2.5 – harmful fine particles less than 2.5 micrometres wide – dropping by 58%. With the first campaign in that war […]