There is currently too much dramatic news abroad in the world, mostly bad. What can an election in one single city mean, far from most fronts? Yet the voting in Berlin last Sunday (September 18th) was full of drama and meaning, also outside Germany. The results caused some to grieve, some to applaud, and analysts […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
The Imperial War Museum in London: A Lesson in State Propaganda?
In January 2016, I attended Tate Britain’s Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, a disappointing exhibition that in spite of its title did not face Britain’s past in any meaningful way. On the contrary, as I argued in my review, it shied away from this bloody history in favour of quasi-glorification, non-committal wording and […]
National Anthems in Germany
The debate about the US anthem echoes a debate about the German anthem. The “Deutschland über alles” text goes back to 1841 but its meaning has been and still is easily misused. When East Germany was annexed in 1990 many suggested adopting the GDR anthem, written in 1949 by the anti-Nazi poet (and minister of […]
Brexit and the EU Implosion: National Sovereignty — For What Purpose?
The defense of national sovereignty, like its critique, leads to serious misunderstandings once one detaches it from the social class content of the strategy in which it is embedded. The leading social bloc in capitalist societies always conceives sovereignty as a necessary instrument for the promotion of its own interests based on both capitalist exploitation […]
Turkey: A War of Two Coups
On the night of 15-16 July, Turkey went through a cataclysm that stunned the world: a huge section of the armed forces of the country (TSK in its Turkish acronym) attempted to take power from the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP, came very close to its objective, but was ultimately defeated. Official […]
Help Save the Lukács Archive!
A Request to Friends of Monthly Review From the time the current rightist government in Hungary came into power, the archive of Georg Lukács — a preeminent Marxist of the 20th century — has been under a brutal attack. It has been gradually deprived of its subvention from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of […]
Who Is to Blame?
Back in 1963 Bob Dylan (soon to be 75) wrote a bitter song; Pete Seeger also sang it often. It asks, after the death of a young boxer: “Who killed Davey Moore? How come he died, and what’s the reason for?” Then came the alibis of all those responsible, from the manager and media to […]
Strike at the Helm? Clamors from a Makeshift Raft
In a cabinet meeting in October 2012, months before his death, Hugo Chávez declared that the Bolivarian process needed to make a radical change of course, literally calling for a “golpe de timón” or “strike at the helm.” From that moment forward the slogan “golpe de timón” began to circulate in the most varied contexts […]
The Cuban People Will Overcome
Remarks by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, during the closing of the 7th Party Congress It constitutes, compañeros, a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible. In a meeting such as this, which brings together more than a thousand representatives chosen […]
The only force that can combat imperialism today is a worldwide struggle of workers
Marxism as a philosophy of praxis is inescapable, since it sums up the revolutionary potential for human emancipation and sustainable human development.
For a “Third Reconstruction”: An Interview with Bill Fletcher, Jr.
As the 2016 electoral game here ratchets up to nasty polemics, the US media is mainly focused on the carnival atmosphere of the Republican Party candidates. (The Democratic Party infighting is only now beginning to boil over.) Meanwhile, the Obama administration, free from scrutiny, continues its airstrikes in Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and […]
Why Do We Have Unemployment?
Unemployment has become so persistent a phenomenon in contemporary times that there is a common feeling that it is a “natural” state of affairs, that nothing can ever be done about it, and that the only way to have greater employment opportunities coming your way is either to oppose the system of job “reservations” for […]
Watch Out for Judicial Coup in Brazil
The judicial coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for 50 years. Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of the state jams; the veils of consent are torn asunder and the tools of power appear disturbingly naked. Brazil is living through […]
Cuius Regio, Eius Religio
Turkish Islamists used to dismiss the European Union as a “Christian club.” Their claim has acquired greater plausibility now that EU leaders have appointed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Europe’s refugee gatekeeper, bolstering his Islamist government in order to keep Muslims out of Europe. Such was the import of the agreement the two sides reached last November, […]
Randhir Singh: Farewell Teacher, Comrade, and Friend
When my brother called to tell me that that Professor Randhir Singh was no more I wanted, more than anything else, to be in Delhi. I wanted to see him one last time with my own eyes and to hug him. And, I wanted to be there with the crowd of people — of students, […]
The Challenge Before the Latin American Left
The Left upsurge in Latin America appears to be abating. In October 2015 Jimmy Morales, the conservative candidate in Guatemala, defeated the Left-leaning Sandra Torres in the presidential elections. On November 22, Mauricio Macri, the conservative presidential candidate in Argentina, defeated Daniel Scioli, his Peronist rival, by a narrow margin, to bring to an […]
Tunisia, As Expected
Mass protests have returned in Tunisia, since the 20th of January, in Kasserine, then in Tunis, and in the rest of the country. As expected, the pursuit of neoliberal policy by the so-called “national unity” government (ranging from Islamists of Ennahdha to leftists, including Bourguibists and survivors of the defunct Ben Ali regime) has not […]
Ellen Meiksins Wood — Her Importance to Me
I was extraordinarily saddened to hear last night of the death of Ellen Meiksins Wood and it took me a while to work out why. After all, I hardly knew her. We met a couple of times and I can recall in some detail only one conversation with her (in a taxi in New York). […]
Germany: Icy Times and Rays of Hope
2016 began here with an icy chill, not only with the weather but far worse, with human relations. It also offered some, like myself, at least a few warm rays of hope. First the larger scene. The huge influx of immigrants and asylum seekers, over a million in 2015, saw Germany effectively split in […]
Climate Change and the Summit Smokescreen
Ian Angus is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate & Capitalism. He is co-author, with Simon Butler, of Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis (Haymarket, 2011), and editor of the anthology The Global Fight for Climate Justice (Fernwood, 2010). He talked to Phil Gasper about what to expect from the Paris summit […]
