Cecil Bothwell, The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire, Asheville, NC, 2007. Today we are used to the ministers and preachers playing an open role in class politics. Usually they support the rule of our employers: railing against this or that Satan (the Kaiser, the Bolsheviks, Hitler, the USSR, Castro, […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
The Soft Surge: Opening the Gates of Hell in Pakistan
When I was younger, my family would visit Pakistan during summer vacations. In the teeming port city of Karachi, I often went with my uncle to the local bazaar, where merchants and browsers haggled fiercely over prices underneath tan tents. To conceal my American upbringing, I wore pants in the oppressive heat (shorts were derided […]
Traitor
Anyone looking for a good movie about traitors can skip the new Don Cheadle vehicle Traitor. Despite all the action movie hype, it won’t be around long, anyway. Traitor is not a movie about traitors, or a sensitive post-mortem on why people might become “traitors.” That old chestnut “The Man without a Country” is […]
Revitalizing the Memory of Sacco and Vanzetti
I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect. I am convinced that the human history has not yet begun — that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused […]
Faculty Resist Raising Funds for Endowed Chair Named after “Good-time Charlie” Wilson
When University of Texas faculty members opened the local Austin newspaper in mid-August, many were surprised to read that that their institution was raising funds for an endowed chair to honor Charlie Wilson, described charitably by the paper as “the fun-loving, hard-living former East Texas congressman portrayed by Tom Hanks in last year’s ‘Charlie Wilson’s […]
Anti-Maoism, McCarthyism, and the Indian State
Being the only “policeman” who “has ever risen to so much influence in India,” Indian National Security Adviser MK Narayanan seldom minces words in revealing the designs of the Indian State for “national security.” He recently pronounced the focus of the state’s strategy against leftist militancy in the country. In an interview with the Straits […]
Of Jobs Lost and Wages Depressed: The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Employment and Wage Levels in the Philippines, 1980-20001
Introduction Despite the vast literature examining the link between trade liberalization and economic growth, empirical studies still fail to provide conclusive and unequivocal evidence supporting the link. What most of these studies emphasize is that openness, accompanied by a country-specific mix of appropriate complementary policies (macroeconomic and financial policies, education, infrastructure, institutional capacity and governance), […]
Chinese Nationalism
Chinese Nationalism Paul Jay: To what extent is there development of big power nationalism, perhaps in the armed forces, in the Chinese Communist Party itself? Minqi Li: My own view is that, as far as China’s ruling elites are concerned, concerning China’s big capitalists, I’d say nationalism is not so much their own ideology. […]
The New Left in China
The New Left in China Minqi Li: There has been dramatic change in terms of China’s intellectual life. Back in the 1980s, among most of the intellectuals who were politically conscious or politically active, among most of the university students, it was dominated by neoliberal ideas. Paul Jay: The ideas of open markets, independent […]
The Nepali Revolution Moves On
In a historic vote on 15 August 2008 in Kathmandu, Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda), chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), was elected first Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, where now a “Maoist leads from the top of the world.” Prachanda garnered 80% of the votes cast in the […]
Marxist Bestsellers Increase JCP Membership and Alarm Conservatives in Japan
The Japanese Communist Party is suddenly attracting many new members. According to the party’s press release, the membership peaked at 500,000 in 1990 when it began its decline, and it has been hovering around 400,000 over the last ten years, but 9,000 have joined the party since the JCP central committee’s fifth general meeting […]
How Globalization Works: Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas (TMMTX) — A Case Study
Modern economic class struggle, the unremitting, sometimes hidden, sometimes open, fight between capitalists and workers that erupted in the 19th century and dominated the 20th, is taking on new forms and dimensions in the 21st century. The stakes of this continuing conflict are higher than they have ever been. Every aspect of human life on […]
Urgent Action Needed to Save Amin Maharana’s Life and to Free Anti-Displacement Activists in Orissa, India
On August 15, Dave Pugh returned to the U.S. after spending three and a half weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India. Pugh is a member of the Initiative Committee of the International Campaign Against Forced Displacement that was launched on June 19, 2008 at the Third International Assembly of the International League […]
Immigrant Rights Are Labor Rights
Today’s critical labor struggles revolve around immigrants’ rights, while today’s struggles over immigrants’ rights are grounded in workplace and labor organizing. Global, national, and local histories have woven these issues tightly together. In the U.S. we are seeing the beginnings of a multifaceted movement which engages these dynamically linked histories. Twenty-five years ago, U.S. labor […]
Southeastern Himalayan Slopes: The Frontline of Revolutionary Political Ecology
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its August 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. For those who recognise that there is an ecological crisis, a revolutionary Marxist perspective best sets out a practical view of our endangered surroundings. This entire issue of […]
Winners and Losers in the New China
Part 1: “Winners and Losers in the New China” PAUL JAY: So my question is: that [1989-1990] was a very politically charged time. The authorities felt besieged. Now people say things have relaxed, things have changed, to some extent. How much have they changed? In today’s China, could you still be arrested for making […]
Geopolitical Chess: Background to a Mini-war in the Caucasus
The world has been witness this month to a mini-war in the Caucasus, and the rhetoric has been passionate, if largely irrelevant. Geopolitics is a gigantic series of two-player chess games, in which the players seek positional advantage. In these games, it is crucial to know the current rules that govern the moves. Knights are […]
Statement by Dave Pugh on His Detention during His Fact-Finding Trip to India
August 16, 2008 Yesterday I returned to the U.S. after spending three and a half weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India. I traveled across five states in central and eastern India to the sites of projected industrial and mining projects and real estate developments. I spoke with hundreds of villagers who are […]
The Bottom of the Barrel: A Review of Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It
Summary Paul Collier, in an attempt to bring development economics to a wider audience, has written a book that departs from what he calls the “grim apparatus of professional scholarship.” The result is a book that is almost entirely unverifiable. What is verifiable turns out to be an elaborate fiction. Collier’s thesis is based upon […]
Mass Expulsion in Pakistan:In the Shadow of the Caucasus Crisis
Russia’s response to the Georgian aggression against South Ossetia has been the central theme of the media for a week, and it’s scarcely noticed that the human tragedy in northwest Pakistan will probably be of no less great political significance. On Friday, the ninth day of a punitive military expedition against Bajaur Agency in the […]
