Archive | Commentary

The ILWU must call for an end to the war. Most importantly we must appeal for port actions to the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) and the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) to refuse to handle military cargo by dockworkers around the world.

In 1990, on October 3rd, Germany could rejoice; unity at last, a single flag, a single anthem (“Deutschland über alles”), a single currency, a single foreign policy; in other words, freedom and democracy triumphant!

Present, all too present, on the earth, capitalism is not present to it. It is global.

Am I mistaken in hearing echoes of grating radio voices from my childhood, in 1938, frightening even without translation, and omens of the giant tragedy which descended upon the world just one year later? Today’s tones are smoother, the words more circumspect, but I see election results in Spain, Italy, France, even Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, the wrecking of the Labour Party in England and news from many regions of the USA—and I grow fearful.

The Cuban Revolution came about in a country subordinated to the U.S. from all points of view. Although we had the façade of a republic, we were a perfect colony, exemplary in economic, commercial, diplomatic, and political terms, and almost in cultural terms.

Are you ready for Occupy 2.0? Hell Yeah!

Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin’s poetry in Chicana on Fire (2022) is testimonial and collective.

A key concept in Karl Marx’s Capital is widely misunderstood.

Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle

The story of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant is not only a story about its workers. Their resistance, aspirations, and victories are part of a wider canvas that is interwoven with struggles to defend the public sector, confrontations with neoliberalism, and the fight to carry out a national modernisation project. Each collage in this dossier combines […]

It’s a momentous day! Not for the world–for which it’s nothing special. But for me!

Dennis Meadows: Climate change, inflation, food shortages are symptoms of a bigger problem.

Covid-19 and the Structural Crises of our Time (CSCT) is a very timely and important book, written by Mah-Hui Lim, a one-time sociology professor who went on to work in international banking, and Michael Heng Siam-Hang, a former professor of management studies.

As tensions between the United States and China rise, Washington is intent on contesting Beijing’s influence around the world, particularly in the Global South. The U.S. government has ramped up its efforts to influence international media and public opinion. In this new Cold War, South Africa is once again in the crosshairs.

The concept of labor constituted a pivotal problematic in Georg Lukács’s theoretical development throughout his Marxist years.

Despite the persistent hegemony of capitalism and its ruling neoliberal ideology, various forms of resistance, social struggle, and proposals for an emancipated future continue to emerge.

The United States (together with its Western allies) always tries to tell China what to do in managing COVID-19 outbreaks, and since the whole city of Shanghai was under lockdown, the U.S. media seems to have even more reasons to criticize China’s anti-virus policy.

John Bellamy Foster explains the capitalist ‘solution’ master-minded by global finance to resolve the imminent environmental crisis: create a multi-quadrillion dollars worth of assets on the back of everything nature does and expropriate it from the global commons to make a profit. Worse still: it is already happening.

In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!

1 year ago, in June and July, a massive uprising led by Communists in Swaziland threatened to overthrow the last absolute monarchy in Africa. With the help of its imperialist allies, the Swazi monarchy brutally repressed this uprising, but they have only temporarily delayed the inevitable. One year later, we can reflect on the conditions that caused the revolution, its successes and missed opportunities, the role of imperialism in tipping the scales to a comprador bourgeoisie, and what has changed in the year since in Swaziland as revolutionary agitation continues.