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‘The Dawn of Everything’ gets human history wrong
Is inequality inevitable? Is freedom just a choice? Two materialist critiques of a widely-praised book.
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They won’t ever find us because our love is bound to the rocks: The Fiftieth Newsletter (2021)
At the U.S. State Department’s Summit for Democracy (9–10 December), U.S. President Joe Biden announced a range of initiatives to ‘bolster democracy and defend human rights globally’.
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Red Star Over the Third World w/ Vijay Prashad: Lessons of Soviet History, Part 2
Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 and the rise of Soviet power reverberated across the world, from Latin America to Africa to Asia, and Middle East – that part of the world that lived under the ravages of colonialism and under-development.
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World inequality
The world has become more unequal in income and wealth in the last 40 years. That’s according to the World Inequality Report 2022.
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Ten Marxist classics for Xmas
Lindsey German’s Marxist holiday reading list
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Whales will save the world’s climate—unless the military destroys them first
Pentagon documents estimate that 13,744 whales and dolphins are legally allowed to be killed as “incidental takes” during any given year due to military exercises in the Gulf of Alaska.
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The Triumph of Financial Capital
Financial capital, once cut loose from its original role as a modest helper of a real economy of production to meet human needs, inevitably becomes speculative capital geared solely to its own self-expansion. In earlier times no one ever dreamed that speculative capital, a phenomenon as old as capitalism itself, could grow to dominate a national economy, let alone the whole world. But it has.
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Revisiting Marx on Alienation and Communism
A review of Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation, edited and introduced by Marcello Musto.
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COP26 was a failure… the future is in our hands now
What does COP26 mean for the climate movement? simon hannah offers his assessment.
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Ten contradictions that plague Biden’s ‘Democracy Summit’
Biden hopes to secure his place at the head of the “Free World” table by coming out as a champion for human rights and democratic practices worldwide.
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Marxism and STS: From Marx and Engels to COVID-19 and COP26
At the recent conference of the Society for the Social Study of Science, I came to the conclusion that the history of Marxism in relation to science and technology studies is an increasingly forgotten story.
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Stories of resistance
Fighting back against extractivism, false solutions, and social and climate abuse around the world.
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Opaque algorithms are creating an invisible cage for platform workers
We live in a world run by algorithms. Nowhere is this more apparent than with platform companies, such as Facebook, Uber, Google, Amazon, and Twitter.
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Systems thinking in COVID-19 recovery is urgently needed to deliver sustainable development for women and girls
Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the gendered aspect of pandemics; however, addressing the gendered implications of the COVID-19 pandemic comprehensively and effectively requires a planetary health perspective that embraces systems thinking to inequalities.
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COVID Omicron: The case for vaccine justice
Britain is one of the main countries to have blocked the global dropping of patents for coronavirus vaccines. If there is a major outbreak of the new Omicron variant in Britain, it will be directly due to the racist and profiteering policy of the Tory government, writes rs21 member Graham Checkley.
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GM ‘designer babies’: breakthrough or nightmare?
Only a global ban on human genetic engineering can prevent a new era of eugenics from emerging, writes Dave King.
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‘Why are you acting the Marxist?’ Frédéric Lordon on Thomas Piketty’s ‘Capital and Ideology’
On 31 January, at the Bourse du travail in Paris, Frédéric Lordon debated with Thomas Piketty on his book ‘Capital and Ideology’, at the invitation of Les Amis de L’Humanité. The following text is Frédéric Lordon’s opening speech, with minimal revisions.
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OTF – The “independent” internet freedom organization that makes all your favorite privacy apps–is staffed full of spies
While the OTF presents itself as independent internet freedom activists, their funding, staff, history and choice of targets all point to the conclusion that they are a digital weapon being used against Washington’s enemies.
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Climate change: Adapt for the future, not the past
Funding for developing countries to address global warming is grossly inadequate. Very little finance is for adaptation to climate change, the urgent need of countries most adversely affected. Also, adaptation needs to be forward-looking rather than only addressing accumulated problems.
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Cornel West on Frantz Fanon, one of the great revolutionary intellectuals of the 20th century
“Decolonization implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation.”