Subjects Archives: History

I certainly didn’t expect to spend the start of 2020 wading through nearly 700 pages about the 1892 Hamburg cholera epidemic, but I’m glad I did. Death in Hamburg, British historian Richard J. Evans’ social history of the epidemic, is a page-turner, his passion for the topic nothing short of infectious.

While there are great differences between the crises and political movements and possibilities of the 1930s and now, there are also important lessons that can be learned from the efforts of activists to build mass movements for social transformation during the Great Depression. My aim in this paper is to illuminate the challenges faced and choices made by these activists and draw out some of the relevant lessons for contemporary activists seeking to advance a Green New Deal.

The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government’s 1845 annexation of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. Mexican troops attacked Taylor’s forces, and on May 13, 1846, Congress approved a declaration of war against Mexico.

This month’s Money on the Left episode departs from the show’s regular interview format to reflect on the past, present and future of the Money on the Left project as a whole. We focus, in particular, on a recent special scholarly journal issue dedicated to Money on the Left, which was published by Liminalities: A […]

While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, on March 19 the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there.

Corporate America’s disinformation relies on politicians, media and NGOs to implant their messaging. An essential part of combatting that messaging requires us to question our own views, as none of us are entirely immune to disinformation techniques, which have in effect become an advanced science.

Reverend Dr. Delman Coates joins Money on the Left to discuss why the politics of public money creation are essential for social and spiritual liberation. Dr. Coates holds a Master’s in Divinity from Harvard and a Ph.D. in New Testament & Early Christianity from Columbia University. He currently serves as Senior Pastor at Mount Ennon […]

Not all US women were given the right to vote in 1920, despite leading courageous efforts to widen the franchise.

The U.S. government facilitated the military coup in 1973 and is surely paying attention to Chile now. U.S. officials may be confident in the staying power of current regime but undoubtedly have concerns about the future of investments and trade.

The U.S.’s campaign against Iran has violated the most critical lessons that U.S. and UN officials claimed to have learned from the debacle in Iraq.

The departure of the former Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani is beginning to be felt in Iraq.

“It’s really interesting, isn’t it, how certain people would want to go to such lengths to smash Marx. Do they really think they’re going to destroy the ideas by destroying the grave? …people feel so afraid of Marx. Is there any other intellectual throughout history that is like that?”

The ‘stubborn class struggle’ inside the revolutionary process should provide someone who is not part of the revolutionary process itself to be sympathetic not to this or that policy of a government, but to the difficulty—and necessity—of the process itself.

A stern, history-based evaluation awakens doubts that, despite the paeans in the world media, the fall of the Berlin Wall was not purely a peaceful revolution, a choice of freedom by the masses, another successful victory for freedom and justice as in past centuries.

Why is a major federal agency funded by Congress helping push this bile on the Ukrainian people?

Mapping out the connections between the initiation of the permanent war economy, the drive for US empire, and today’s factional disputes and similarities among political elites.

In this episode of Money on the Left, we speak with historian Alison Collis Greene about her book No Depression in Heaven with an eye toward contemporary debates around the Green New Deal. Subtitled The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta, Greene’s book critiques what she calls the […]

Even thirty years have not accustomed all ex-GDR citizens to seeing youngsters in the streets with their ragged dogs and paper cups for charitable donations, concert violinists begging money with Mozart in cold subway stations or, on icy nights, homeless huddled figures in sleeping bags on the stations’ concrete floors.

Erdogan’s government is preparing to enter Syria for a major military operation against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is made up largely of Kurdish factions who set up this armed force to defend the mainly Kurdish enclave in northern Syria.

As the U.S. ramps up its global efforts to protect genocidal racial capitalism, it is a crucial time for a new generation to study and learn from Cuba’s 60-year effort to build an alternative socio-economic system.