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A trial for Lula and Brazilian democracy: What’s next for Brazil?
Brazil has just taken another step toward the dismantling of its democracy. On January 24, an appeals court confirmed a previous ruling against former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party), sentencing him to over 12 years in jail.
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Bill Fletcher Jr. on Black Marxism
Veteran labor activist Bill Fletcher jr. talks about how capitalism is based on the slave trade and colonialism, the Black contribution to Marxism, and the need to organize.
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Mexico’s first ‘seduction school’, rape culture and femicides
On Sunday, the international press agency EFE did not have enough words to praise the not-even-that-new initiative of a Mexican “seduction school”, lamenting that this kind of workshop remains largely “taboo” in the country.
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The Post should be viewed by current editors of The Post
I was afraid that The Post would give us a Hollywood film version of the publication of the Pentagon Papers and manage never to say what was in the Pentagon Papers. I was afraid it would be turned into a pro-war movie.
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Amazon is a 21st-century digital chain gang
When Amazon announced plans to locate a $5 billion, 50,000-employee complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments and municipalities fell over themselves offering billions of dollars in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize.
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Mainstream media and imperial power
Noted journalist and filmmaker John Pilger’s collection of work has been archived by the British Library, but deep-rooted problems of Western media create an increasingly difficult landscape for ethical journalism, as Pilger explained in an interview with Dennis Bernstein and Randy Credico.
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The soul of the revolution
Jose Marti was a renaissance man — journalist, poet and leading figure in the Cuban struggle for independence. OLLIE HOPKINS explains his relevance in today’s Cuba
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Marx and historical materialism
Karl Marx was a materialist – more than that, he was a historical materialist. Marxists, in order to establish their credentials in political arguments, frequently claim that they are giving a materialist analysis of a phenomenon. The claim that a materialist analysis is being provided both attests to the Marxist credentials of the argument, and validates the attitudes and actions that follow from that analysis.
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Leading Marxist scholar David Harvey on Trump
For the past year,, we have all experienced an intense sort of political vertigo. Of course, part of this is due to the fact that Donald Trump is president and constantly scoops the story of the latest outrage about himself by performing yet another outrage just as we start discussing the previous one.
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How should socialists understand finance: remembering the lessons of Capital
For those on the Left, finance seems like a bourgeois pastime. Many of us outright despise the stuff. While the petit bourgeoisie drool over dividends and diversification, we prefer to focus on crisis and class.
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Value, credit and crisis: Reading Marx out of context can lead to confusion
A literalist, out-of-context reading of Marx can get one into trouble, or at the very least, leave you hopelessly confused. For help, I look to David Harvey. Perhaps the preeminent expert on Marx’s Capital in the English-speaking world, Harvey meticulously reconstructed Marx’s approach to money in his major treatise, Limits to Capital (1982).
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Martin Luther King’s radical anticapitalism
In a posthumously published essay, Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out that the “black revolution” had gone beyond the “rights of Negroes.” The struggle, he said, is “forcing America to face all of its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism and materialism. It is exposing the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”
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Warren Buffett & imperial economics
Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is also Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway, a huge U.S. investment conglomerate. Looking at Berkshire’s investment policy reveals some important features of the economics of imperialism today and the role of money capitalists.
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Protests in Honduras intensify leading up to inauguration day
Juan Orlando Hernández, who was “elected” president in Honduras as a result of fraud and corruption, will hold his swearing in ceremony on January 27 in what may be the first closed-door inauguration (although his government has purposely not shared details about the ceremony).
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Lula, Brazil elections and the left
In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Brazilian professor and researcher Sabrina Fernandes discusses former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s Jan. 24 corruption trial and forthcoming elections in the South American country.
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Utopia and the right to be lazy
Students are much too busy to think these days. So, when a junior comes to talk with me about the possibility of my directing their senior thesis, I ask them about their topic—and then their schedule. I explain to them that, if they really want to do a good project, they’re going to have to quit half the things they’re involved in.
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Dutiful dirges of Davos
Thousands of people will gather next week in Davos. Their combined wealth will reach several hundred billion dollars, perhaps even close to a trillion. Never in world history will be the amount of wealth per square foot so high. And this year, for the sixth or seventh consecutive time, what would be one of the principal topics addressed by these captains of industry, billionaires, employers of thousands of people across the four corners of the globe: inequality…
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The struggle for actually building socialist society
“The economic base built in Mao’s era laid the foundation for a sovereign capitalist development.”
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The Billionaire boom: 82% of global wealth produced last year went to richest 1%
Forida is a 22-year-old sewing machine operator in a clothing factory in Dahka, Bangladesh. She often works 12-hour days producing clothes for brands such as H&M and Target. Sometimes, during busy production cycles, the hours are even longer.
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This is for the Guardian, NYT and the BBC: 1939 to 2018
Before I go any further with this let me state that I’m not a Trotskyist, or a Leninist, or a Stalinist or a Maoist (but I might have been all of the above, with exception of Maoist, at one time or another).