Archive | Interview

Blanca Eekhout is the Minister of People’s Power for the Communes and Social Movements of Venezuela and a woman linked to revolutionary militancy long before President Hugo Chávez came to power, whose team she was part of.

A founding member of Tatuy TV speaks about what it means to be a group of revolutionary journalists in hard times.

In 2007, Søndergaard was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the People’s Movement against the European Union (EU). After resigning this position in 2014, he won election to the Danish parliament in 2015 as an RGA MP for Gladsaxe: he was re-elected in the June 5 general election this year.

Søndergaard spoke with Green Left Weekly European correspondent Dick Nichols after the RGA’s 30th Annual Meeting, held in Copenhagen on October 5-6.

Andreas Malm interviewed about Marxist approaches to the climate movement.

A key member of the ‘Comando Creativo’ artists’ collective reflects on how to make relevant art during a revolution.

In a scandal that threatens to lose Justin Trudeau the next election, several pictures of Canadian prime minister doing blackface have emerged. Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report explains why the recent scandal highlights the trouble with the idea that Canada is somehow a more benign version of the U.S.

In Brazil recently, I gave an interview to Brasil de Fato, which was born in 2003 as the weekly magazine of the World Social Forum. It is now one of the most important windows into Brazil’s political world. The newsletter this week carries the text of most of the interview.

The Trump administration is intensifying its economic warfare on the people of Venezuela with a crippling embargo—and facing no resistance from the Democratic Party.

Ecosocialism — in particular the Marxist wing of the ecosocialist movement — builds and acts on that understanding.

The total embargo declared by Donald Trump against Venezuela is another step in sharpening his strategy to generate chaos in the country and overthrow Nicolás Maduro. Julio Escalona, deputy of the National Constituent Assembly, analyzes the situation, the possibility of dialogues, and challenges.

It is impossible to predict what will happen in West Asia. Impossible to know whether the United States will conduct a military strike against Iran, which has already faced the full brunt of a U.S.-driven hybrid war against it for the past seven decades.

CounterSpin interview with Lawrence Glickman on racism & euphemism

The history of the transcontinental railroad is a process of “continental imperialism.”

Aijaz Ahmad argues that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its fronts, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), display distinct fascistic characteristics, but the Indian state continues to live by the liberal playbook, no matter how hollow the Indian liberal institutions may have become. He anchors this proposition in a distinctive theoretical position.

Imperialism is getting something for nothing. It is a strategy to obtain other countries’ surplus without playing a productive role, but by creating an extractive rentier system. An imperialist power obliges other countries to pay tribute.

That raises a whole range of very familiar and long-standing issues that have afflicted the Left, leading to debates in India (and no doubt in other places as well) between the organised Left and what has come to be called the “ultra-Left” and the insurgent Left.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research launches its eighteenth dossier, “The Only Answer Is to Mobilize the Workers.” The challenges facing Indian workers and their strategies to fight back are explained through the insights and expertise of K. Hemalata, president of the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU).

With the development of new anti-racist movements, there is a renewed interest in the history of the Black Panther Party. Shaun Harkin spoke to Donna Murch—historian and author of ‘Living for the City’—about the overlooked aspects of the Panthers, from their founding days, to their focus on political education.

Alan MacLeod interviewed Noam Chomsky via Skype on March 13, 2018, for MacLeod’s new book Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. They discussed the origins of the classic work of media criticism (co-authored with Edward Herman) Manufacturing Consent, the role of that book’s “propaganda model” today, Google and Facebook, Donald Trump and Russia, fake news and Syria. This is a lightly edited transcript.

In 21st century capitalism, Marxist theory remains a crucial means to interpret the socioeconomic present and potentials for political change. But Marxism as a method is also important culturally, in understanding the ideas, attitudes and beliefs that exist today, and how they have developed historically through various social forces.