Cuba is only a few days away from ending its coronavirus quarantine. Except for Havana, all the other provinces are free of the contagion and have begun moving toward a new normality.
Archive | 2020
Capital Comes to America: Charles H. Kerr & Company and the Cross-Atlantic Journey of Marx’s Master Work
On his regularly appearing “Publisher’s Notes” page of the ISR, Kerr would often emphasise that the company was organised to do just one thing–to bring out books valuable to the international socialist movement and to circulate them at prices affordable for working class readers.
How Settler Colonial States use incarceration as a tool of dehumanization during the COVID crisis
Incarceration is a manifestation and continuation of chronic and interwoven structures of oppression
Police surveilled George Floyd protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies.
Turin grants honorary citizenship to head of Cuban medical brigade (+ Photos)
The Municipal Council of Turin granted the honorary citizenship of that city in the region of Piedmont to Dr. Julio Guerra, head of the Cuban medical brigade that helped fight COVID-19 there.
Laos has tackled COVID-19, but it is drowning in debt to international finance
On June 11, Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic)—a country of 7 million in Southeast Asia—said it had temporarily prevailed over COVID-19.
Money, Music & Method with Alex Williams
Economist, musician & Money on the Left audio engineer, Alex Williams, joins the podcast to discuss money, music and method in light of Modern Monetary Theory and heterodox economics. At the outset, we chat about methodology and the riddles of “administrative capacity” that drive so much of Williams’ work. Next, Williams guides us through his […]
Chart of the day
Yesterday morning, the U.S. Department of Labor (pdf) reported that, during the week ending last Saturday, another 1.3 million American workers filed initial claims for unemployment compensation. That’s on top of the 48.7 million workers who were laid off during the preceding fifteen weeks.
Macron wounded, but still eyeing austerity
The second round of the French local elections, at the end of June, was bad news for president Emmanuel Macron, whose candidates did very poorly. In response, Macron switched prime ministers, replacing high-profile operator Edouard Philippe with an unknown right winger, Jean Castex, whose previous experience consisted mostly of being mayor of a town with […]
Popular protagonism in Venezuela’s transition to socialism: A conversation with Michael Lebowitz
The Marxist theorist emphasizes that socialism involves people transforming themselves.
Mask-to-mask instruction may be more problematic than distance learning
People talk about the upcoming school year as if we have a choice between in-person classes or distance learning.
U.S. ruling class demands deadly reopening of schools
The ruling class, having worked out its strategic response to the pandemic in February and March, has carried out an unrelenting assault on workers ever since. The working class must respond with equal determination and ruthlessness. It must fight for the socialist overturn of the capitalist system, which threatens the lives of millions of workers […]
In Commune: The Panal 2021
Third episode of VA’s “In Commune” series, focusing on the combative Panal 2021 Commune in Caracas.
Collective care is our best weapon against COVID-19
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps around the world, statist and capitalist structures predictably continue to fail us in many ways. Underlying that failure is the stress on individual responses: stockpile, isolate, and care for yourself.
Suspending evictions is about saving landlords from themselves
Millions of U.S. households are already facing desperate crises.
The parlous state of poverty eradication
The world is at an existential crossroads involving a pandemic, a deep economic recession, devastating climate change, extreme inequality, and an uprising against racist policies. Running through all of these challenges is the longstanding neglect of extreme poverty by many governments, economists, and human rights advocates.
Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels – Review
Radical Reviewer Reviews The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
As white Jesus debate rages, Islam undergoes its own racial reckoning
The worldwide push for racial justice has sparked discussion within some Muslim communities on the overly white illustrations of key figures in the Islamic tradition, particularly the twelve imams so revered in Shiaism.
BAR Book Forum: Andrew J. Douglas’s “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society”
This book sets out to challenge some of the assumptions that undergird what I call the competitive society—that is, a society marked by winners and losers, a world in which Black people are routinely expected to bear the burden of loss and defeat.
VenezolanosConBiden and MAGAzuela: Two sides of the same coin
The Biden campaign recently held an event outlining the presidential hopeful’s “vision for Venezuela.” Spoiler alert: it barely differs from President Trump’s.
