Archive | December, 2018

In this in-depth interview, Akeel Bilgrami speaks on a wide range of issues of intellectual relevance and contemporary importance such as the relationship between Gandhi and Marx, issues of modernity, Chomsky’s philosophy, personal influences, academic philosophy in India, secularism, caste and current politics in India, Hindutva politics and the criminal threat of the present government, the Hindutva political challenge and ways of resistance, and the importance of Left politics.

A five-year-old revolutionary movement in Nepal brings together program and commitment in a way that powerfully prefigures communist society.

Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources.

Mainstream economists continue to discuss the two great crises of capitalism during the past century just like the pillars of society performed in the brothel—a “house of infinite mirrors and theaters”—in Jean Genet’s The Balcony.

The police lied and said that when they knocked on the door and announced themselves, the Panthers immediately began shooting at them. This was later proven to be a lie.

John Pilger, investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, talks about the U.S.’ aggression in the Asia-Pacific region and the decline of its global dominance and says that a “new Cold War beckons isolation for the U.S. and danger for the rest of us”.

THE German political economist Wolfgang Streeck is one of the world’s leading critics of neoliberal capitalism. He received international attention for his essay “How will capitalism end?” written in 2014 for the New Left Review. The much-discussed essay was later republished in book form.

THE TRIBUTES TO former President George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday aged 94, have been pouring in from all sides of the political spectrum.

In this period of global crises and ferment, radical and revolutionary activists are reaching for modes of organization and political practice that can help advance their struggle for human liberation. For growing numbers, the political and organizational perspectives of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin are becoming a pole of attraction–providing an increasingly desired coherence and revolutionary edge.

Inequalities are immanent to capitalism. Capitalist modes of production are maintained through the reproduction of inequalities.

NARENDRA Modi said the other day, rather disparagingly, that the “Urban Naxals” live in air-conditioned comfort. Since all who speak or write in public upholding the right to dissent from the Hindutva positions, including even known critics of the Left, which means virtually all members of the intelligentsia who display any integrity, have been dubbed “Urban Naxals” by his government, his remark in effect amounts to targeting the entire intelligentsia.

In fact, my book begins with the early Marx because he created the first version of what I call the philosophy of praxis. The key problem of this version of Marxism is what Marx called the “realisation” of philosophy.

A new report on women’s human rights in Venezuela reveals the uneven advances of the Bolivarian Process in this area.

A former guerrilla and active member of the National Constituent Assembly talks with VA about the class struggle in the countryside and the looming menace of the ultra-right in Brazil.

The new Cold War is escalating, fueled by Washington’s bid to isolate or strangle Russia.

In 2018, Cambridge Analytica, the data mining and analytics company, dominated the news about political campaigning and data. But they are not alone in using personal data for political influence. Since we began actively documenting this industry, our global list has expanded to 329 organisations, and it is still growing.

In May 2017 artist Joana Moll, alongside Tactical Tech, purchased 1 million online dating profiles for 136€ from U.S.Date, a supposedly U.S.-based company that trades in dating profiles from all over the globe.

Earlier this month, in Savar (Bangladesh), over 1400 delegates came to the fourth People’s Health Assembly–first held in 2000 by popular health organisations to drive a global dynamic to champion public health measures. At the centre of the discussions were increased health inequalities–between the rich and the poor certainly, but also sharply between affluent states and states that have found their wealth robbed by colonialism and the adverse order produced over the past fifty years.