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Letter from the U.S.: Trump and Bannon take control
Writing in the October 28 New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks said the preceding week was “when Donald Trump and Steve Bannon solidified their grip on the Republican Party and America’s national government”.
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A century after the Bolshevik Revolution
In the world we’re living in, it’s not enough to solve the tension between capital and work, the ongoing crisis of civilization urgently demands that we address the tension between capital and nature, which is currently compromising the existence of life in our planet.
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Only intelligent planning can save us
Universalism is not an innocent concept. In “The Grandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism,” published shortly after the fall of historical communism, Ágnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér, former Marxist philosophers and disciples of Georg Lukács, accused Marx and his followers of turning the Hegelian concept of universalism into a philosophy of praxis, a “predictive and action-orienting device” applied to change the world.
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Silvia Federici, ‘Caliban and the Witch’
Caliban and the Witch is a reminder that it is the task of feminists and Marxists alike to demand that the sphere of reproduction and continuing forms of colonialism be seen as key sources of value for capitalism and therefore as key sites of struggle against it.
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FARC’s insurgent feminism moves from the battlefield to society
Diana Lozado was 21 when she left her home city of Nieva and fled into the jungle to fight with the FARC. She had always been fascinated by the guerrilla movement and its fight against inequality in the countryside, and Lozado wanted to be part of it.
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The “Amazon Amendment” would effectively hand government purchasing power over to Amazon
This week, representatives of three major internet platforms — Google, Facebook, and Twitter — are testifying before Congress about their role in facilitating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But a fourth giant sat comfortably removed: Amazon.
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‘I made this… but didn’t get paid’: Garment workers appeal directly to shoppers
Factory workers draw attention to mistreatment and unpaid wages with notes hidden inside clothing items.
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Balfour at 100: A legacy of racism and propaganda
The coming months mark the centennial of Palestine’s forcible incorporation into the British Empire. In November 1917, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour declared his government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”; in December, Jerusalem fell to British troops.
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Paradise Papers: Tax havens show the hypocrisy of the rich
Another glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous has come to light.
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Offline: Medicine and Marx
When President Xi Jinping addressed the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last month, he spoke of “the scientific truth of Marxism-Leninism”. Marxism (with Chinese characteristics), as President Xi went on to set out, is to be the foundation for a Healthy China.
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The Afro-Asian Writers Association and Soviet engagement with Africa
This post is part of our online forum, “Black October,” on the Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora
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W. E. B. Du Bois’s “Black Reconstruction” and the new (Marxist) historiography
What follows is the paper I gave this past weekend at the ninth annual meeting of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History in Dallas. I received excellent comments from our chair, Amy Wood, and from several audience members–comments that have made me rethink some of my argument. But I publish here without editing in the hopes that I receive more comments.
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The other battle: to consolidate commandante Chavez’s dream
Beyond electoral battles and victories, the Bolivarian Revolution must fight a strategic battle every day; that is the battle of ideas. This cannot be waged simply through theoretical debate alone, but through the real practice of political ethics.
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OCTOBER: The Story of the Russian Revolution
Commenting on the many works on the Russian Revolution, China Mieville describes his book as: “… a short introduction for those curious about an astonishing story, eager to be caught up in the revolution’s rhythms. Because here it is precisely as a story that I have tried to tell it.”
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100 years ago, a forgotten soviet revolution in LGBTQ rights
The socialist October Revolution in 1917 brought about fundamental, thoroughgoing changes in Russian society. Millions of people in the largest country on Earth quickly found themselves far freer than they had ever been under the despotic, anti-Semitic Tsar, the strictures of the church, and the brutality of Russian capitalism and landlordism.
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When 20,000 American nazis descended upon New York City
In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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Marxian economics
This entry begins by setting out the core ideas of Karl Marx (1818–83), with particular reference to the theory of historical materialism and its application to the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s theory of value and distribution receives detailed attention, followed by his models of capital accumulation and economic crisis.
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Spain jails 8 Catalan officials, issues arrest warrant for Puigdemont
A Spanish high court judge has ordered eight Catalan ministers, who appeared in a Madrid court, to be jailed on charges related to the Catalan Parliament declaration of independence on Oct. 27.
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Britain: The empire that never was
Brexit sold the country a dream; ostensibly a project built on anti-migrant sentiment, it also invoked delusions of grandeur, rooted in reanimating the glorious days of imperial rule and global British hegemony. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit speech announced a vision for a ‘Global Britain’ – ‘a great, global trading nation that is respected around the world and strong.’
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‘It being clearly understood…’: What the Balfour Declaration tells us about Israel
Few documents as brief as the Balfour Declaration have had as devastating an impact as this historical document. I do not want to minimize the European colonization of the Americas, an utterly ravaging catastrophe for the Indigenous peoples of these continents.