Archive | Commentary

1. We take winter for granted as the frozen backdrop that gives so many Christmas traditions their meaning. Even in warm climates, frosted landscapes persist in the holiday imaginary. The origins of this setting lay in the Pagan roots of the season. Typically held around the darkest of days, the Winter Solstice, Pagan Yule was […]

In 2013, Edward Snowden’s leak of documents pertaining to the inner workings of National Security Agency (NSA) sparked international revelations about the reach and unaccountability of Washington’s international surveillance apparatus. One series of documents that remain understudied, however, concern similar activities orchestrated by the Canadian government.

Within the heterogenous tradition of Marxism there are two diametrically opposed conceptions of popular culture: the elitist and vanguardist.

“When British capitalism depended on the West Indies,” Eric Williams wrote in 1938, “they ignored slavery or defended it. When British capitalism found the West Indian monopoly a nuisance, they destroyed West Indian slavery.”

Challenging the western monetary system, the Eurasia Economic Union is leading the Global South toward a new common payment system to bypass the U.S. Dollar.

In the last week of October, João Pedro Stedile, a leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil and the global peasants’ organisation La Via Campesina, went to the Vatican to attend the International Meeting of Prayer for Peace, organised by the Community of Sant’Egídio.

Commodification of the iconic image of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara has failed to dim the revolutionary light that burned on after his CIA assassination on 9 October 1967.

The Western media, due to their own bias, have either ignored or maliciously misinterpreted General Secretary Xi Jinping’s recently published report on the just concluded 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). All peace-loving and progressive people who are concerned about the world should cross these barriers of bias and carefully interpret this important report.

This dossier is about inequality, or inequalities, between the North and South, between the rich and poor, and between the classes that labour and those that profit.

China says on the international stage that it wants to tackle climate change, but it also says it must deliver “national energy security”. The decade ahead will show whether it can meet this challenge. The whole world is relying on it doing so.

Every culture has its myth. Ours is the myth of growth, whereby we perceive the accumulation of material and financial wealth as a proxy for social progress and human well-being. The example of Washington state illustrates how modern society struggles to abandon the illusion of limitless expansion, even when it tries to do right by its citizens.

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