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Faina Savenkova – “I wanted Americans to know the truth”
If you ask most teenagers in the United States or Europe what they like to do, they’ll probably tell you they enjoy playing video games like “Call of Duty,” where they pretend to be at war. For them, war is a game. An entertaining way to spend their time after school or on weekends.
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Marxist, nationalist, feminist: the art and politics of Frida Kahlo
Marxist, Nationalist, Feminist – these are the words that describe not only the political convictions but also the artwork of Frida Kahlo. Although born as Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón outside of Mexico City in 1907, Kahlo eventually shortened her name and frequently told people that she was born in 1910. This was the year that widespread political unrest finally culminated in the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution.
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As anti-BDS bills become the norm, ACLU takes free speech fight to the Supreme Court
In June, a federal appeals court upheld an Arkansas law barring state contractors from boycotting Israel, sparking concerns over First Amendment rights in the United States.
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How Cuba is eradicating child mortality and banishing the diseases of the poor
The drastic reduction in infant mortality rates is yet another testimony to the Cuban Revolution’s attention to the health of the country’s population.
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From Hegel to Lenin
As Lenin prepared to understand the First Great Slaughter of the twentieth century, he spent from September to December 1914 absorbing Hegel’s The Science of Logic (1813). Humphrey McQueen begins a six-part exploration of why Lenin thought he had to do so. This first installment, Dialectical Reasoning: ‘The Science of Interconnectedness’ shows why Hegel is still not ‘a dead dog.’
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The CIA & the Frankfurt school’s anti-communism
Frankfurt School critical theory has been—along with French theory—one of the hottest commodities of the global theory industry. Together, they serve as the common source for so many of the trend-setting forms of theoretical critique that currently dominate the academic market in the capitalist world, from postcolonial and decolonial theory to queer theory, Afro-pessimism and beyond.
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China Miéville: “If you don’t feel despair, you’re not opening your eyes”
The fantasy novelist and left activist on why Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ speaks to the crisis-ridden politics of the present.
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The Struggle between the Future and the Past: Where Is Cuba Going?
I have two favorite sayings. One draws on the dialogue in Shakespeare’s Henry the VI part 2 when Jack Cade envisions that the effect of his plot will be that “all the realm shall be in common.” To this, comrade Dick responds, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
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Peter Schumann turns sketches into comics—and comics into street theater
Five o’clock in the morning is a “preferred time” for Peter Schumann to make comics, he said. Ideas can come from just about anywhere: the weather in the Northeast Kingdom, where he lives, or a piece in the Monthly Review, a long-running socialist publication. “I go by what’s happening in the world,” he said.
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The Second International’s Conflicted Legacy
Virtually all socialists today are descendants of the Second International of 1889 to 1914. Yet its legacy remains sharply disputed. Some associate this International with its betrayal of socialist principles at the start of World War I, and think there is little reason to study it any further. Others see the prewar Second International as a model to be re-created. Both assessments are mistaken.
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Petro, a historic victory
With just over 98 percent of the precincts counted, the triumph of Gustavo Petro, candidate of the Historic Pact, in the second round of the Colombian presidential elections was confirmed.
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Julian Assange, Alina Lipp, and Anne-Laure Bonnel–When truth becomes a crime in the West
Julian Assange, Alina Lipp and Anne-laure Bonnel are three journalists who are paying a high price for telling the truth in the West: attempts to suffocate them financially, followed by censorship, threats of imprisonment or imprisonment altogether, and even physical and psychological torture in the case of Assange.
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A tale of two summits
Last week (June 8-10) there were two summits in Los Angeles, California: the Summit of the Americas hosted by the U.S. State Department and the Peoples Summit hosted by U.S. and international activist organizations. The two summits were held in the same city at the same time but could not be otherwise more different.
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Neil Faulkner – ‘Alienation, Spectacle, and Revolution: A Critical Marxist Essay’
The tradition of concise introductions to Marxist theory is a long one, stretching back perhaps to Engels’s Anti-Dühring. Alienation, Spectacle and Revolution enters stridently into this tradition with an acerbic, tremendously illuminating, and urgent style.
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The necessity of ecosocialist degrowth
We need degrowth in industries ranging from armaments and advertising to fast fashion and fossil fuels, together with a dramatic reduction in consumption of the richest 1% who are responsible for 15% of emissions.
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Intellectual prostitutes call critics foreign agents, useful idiots
A military funded academic, working at a school launched by Condoleezza Rice, claims leftist and anti-war journalists engage in Russian disinformation. His report doesn’t provide any evidence or refute anyone’s argument, but the legacy media laps it up.
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Evgueny Karas, SBU agent and leader of the neo-Nazi group S 14
Among the colorful fauna of Ukrainian neo-Nazism, and as a continuation of my work on the firm establishment of this ideology in Ukraine, here is an investigation into the S 14 group.
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‘Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation’ by: Marcello Musto, reviewed by: Carlos L. Garrido
Marcello Musto’s anthology of ‘Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation’ is both comprehensive and concise, containing within the span of 100 pages the three decades long development of the theory through more than a dozen published works and posthumously published manuscripts.
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France in 2022: the People’s Union, and Mélenchon
In the run-up to June’s parliamentary elections, the political atmosphere in France has been transformed by a new left alliance, the New Popular Union. How useful is it and what are its prospects?
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A second left-wing progressive wave is emerging in Latin America
The 9th Summit of the Americas, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles in June, remains uncertain. Since the Biden administration has not invited the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on the grounds of “democracy issues”, the leaders of Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, and other countries have expressed the possibility of refusing to participate.