Subjects Archives: History

RON JACOBS welcomes the political lessons for today, about organisation and withdrawal from conflict, made by an erudite and conversational biography.

The revolutionary road opened on 26 July 1953, when a group of young rebels led by the 26-year-old Fidel attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

The revolutionary legacy of Fidel Castro, who would have turned 100 this week, reminds us that breaking free from neocolonial plunder demands the rigorous construction of productive capacity and an unyielding commitment to human dignity.

A lot of contemporary scientific views are essentially dialectical. They don’t use that language.

The beauty of Marx’s analysis in ecological terms is that he provided the only theoretical approach that connected society and nature.

The McCarthy Era and the controversies of the 1960s and 1970s might not seem terribly relevant to a new generation of activists. But the old questions remain, and the left still needs to confront them.

China’s Marxist economic policy was developed to deal with a specific country at a specific stage of development. But this does not mean that it is not relevant to other countries.

Countless historians writing Cherokee history have maintained that the majority of Cherokees remained at peace with the American colonists during the so-called American Revolution.

No amount of money can repair the damage which has been caused to the African people through the transatlantic slave trade, classical colonialism, and today’s neocolonialism. No amount of money can pay for that damage. The essence of reparatory justice is a just reconstruction of the world, an entirely new world.

The backlash against a landmark national museum exhibition on the Nakba exposes an enduring effort to silence Palestinian voices.

Apolinario Mabini is the most neglected or ignored figure in the pantheon of heroes of the revolution against Spain and the United States.

These military attacks deep inside Russia are in reality also aimed by the United States against China and against the Global South.

These two conflicts, the aerial and the environmental, are interconnected. Both reflect a struggle for survival shaped by a Pakistani state that has prioritized military spending over water security, geopolitical interests over ecological planning, and the interests of large landowners over those of small farmers.

What is true of the world economy as a whole holds true for countries like India which have enormous labour reserves inherited from the colonial times, reserves hidden away in particular in vast agrarian sectors.

When the last U.S. soldier left Taiwan in 1979, Washington’s grip did not loosen–it simply changed shape, shifting from barracks and warships to classrooms, newsrooms, and the minds of a generation.

Culture, which has for so long—for too long—had only the weapons of the intelligence to defend it against the material weapons of the aggressors, that culture is itself not only an emanation of the spirit but also and above all a material thing.

This enormous history of capitalism provides much fascinating detail, but its flawed conceptualisation of the system’s history undermines it, argues Dominic Alexander.

Ferrer’s short article offers an excellent example of a simple truth: even many apparently moderate, intellectually sophisticated observers accept the basic premises of U.S. government policy toward Cuba.

Thoughts on the Peter Pan generation and how its shaped our relationship to money.

On the centenary of her birth, JOHN GREEN celebrates the life—and politics—of Marilyn Monroe.