Archive | Commentary

We cannot give ourselves the luxury of being technophobic, of negating the importance of technologies and their potential in the struggle. At the same time, we cannot believe in the idea that technology in itself will result in advances for the organised working class.

Fortunately, the scientific data produced by the IPCC makes it possible to calculate the real changes which are required to combat climate change.

According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), fiscal 2021’s final number of migrants apprehended or encountered at the southwestern border was 1,734,686, higher than the 1,643,679 total apprehensions for fiscal 2000.

How 16th century reformers fought privatization of land and capitalist agriculture.

The landslide victory of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the Indian state of Kerala in April 2021 is a historic achievement.

The current situation might present an opportunity to strengthen mass movements and to steer the focus towards the rights and livelihoods of women and workers. The ongoing Indian farmers’ movement, which started before the pandemic and continues to stay strong, offers the opportunity to steer the national discourse towards such an agenda.

The most important election result is hardly discussed in the media—and when it is, then with satisfaction or joy. It is, in fact, a truly sad result. The Left (DIE LINKE) missed the red line level of 5%—but was miraculously saved by a special rule; if three or more delegates of a party win out in their own districts—with those first crosses—then their parties and their proportionate lists are saved, just as if they had reached 5%.

To continue the marginalization of Black and, more recently, Muslim groups, you do not have to suddenly turn society upside down or challenge the dominant religious white or secular culture, or even, as in Nazi Germany, change citizenship and property ownership rules—in contrast to periodic historic assaults on certain white ethno-religious groups, who, by comparison, have sometimes enjoyed bourgeois, socioeconomic class power.

While the framework of “vectoralism” proposed by McKenzie Wark in Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? proves inadequate for understanding contemporary political economy, the concept of value chains developed by Intan Suwandi (Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism) offers a promising alternative.

In January 2020, as the Verizon settlement was being worked out, the city released the NYC Internet Master Plan, which declared: “The private market has failed to deliver the internet in a way that works for all New Yorkers.”

In German elections—like the coming ones, as always on a Sunday—all you have to do is present the registration paper mailed to every citizen, then make crosses on a paper  ballot. No trouble with the boss, no missing work, long lines or quarrels about fraud or discrimination.  It sounds easy.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research created the collages in this dossier based on archival photographs, inserting silhouettes of people and activities and breathing life back into the spaces of the Black Community Programmes of decades past.

It is a sign of just how serious matters have become—with the UN COP26 talks on climate in Glasgow this November now regarded by many as a last-ditch effort to achieve a global solution on behalf of humanity as a whole—that the early draft versions of Part II and Part III of the IPCC’s, ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, were leaked during the summer.

The simple quietness in Leiva’s photography reveals his poetic contemplation while exposing the loss of visual honesty in an era of hyper imagery manipulation.

“The expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production.” (Karl Marx)

Another leak of the UN report warns that the only known way to avert climate breakdown is to avoid any model which is based on perpetual growth.

The UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its latest comprehensive report on the state of the earth’s climate. The much-anticipated report dominated the headlines for a few days in early August, then quickly disappeared amidst the latest news from Afghanistan, the fourth wave of Covid-19 infections in the US, and all the latest political rumblings.

Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua all demonstrate what a society can do when it embraces a centralized system, people over profit, and solidarity. Not only are citizens protected, but the will to fight against threats like COVID-19 is all the stronger when nations are united behind a popular and radical project.

On Dec. 17, 2020, Deb Haaland was appointed by Joe Biden as Secretary of the Department of Interior (DOI). Celebratory headlines proclaimed it a “historic moment” and the identity politics-influenced left was quick to defend the appointment from questioning. Immediately, Haaland’s nomination was touted as a “victory for Indigenous movements.” As Indigenous and other colonized revolutionaries, we offer a materialist antidote to the narrow and superficial narrative that has been put forward by corporate, non-profit, and even, left-media sectors.

The U.S. has degenerated to such an extent that is probably one of the least democratic countries in the world. It is ruled by an extremely powerful and undemocratic billionaire class, buttressed by an entrenched bureaucracy and intelligence apparatus, and legitimized by an obsequious media which does not even pretend to be neutral.