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Dialectics, science, and naturalism: An Outline
Science is not an innocent activity, performed outside society. Lewontin and Levins write: ‘To do science is to be a social actor, whether one likes it or not, in political activity’ (1985: 4).
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Liberation through reading in Cuba
Literacy campaigns targeting African (Black) youth in Africa and across the diaspora have played a crucial role in fostering educational empowerment.
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Why are definitions problematic for Marxists?
”From a scientific standpoint all definitions are of little value. In order to gain an exhaustive knowledge of what life is, we should have to go through all the forms in which it appears, from the lowest to the highest. But for ordinary usage such definitions are very convenient and in places cannot well be dispensed with; moreover, they can do no harm, provided their inevitable deficiencies are not forgotten.” – Friedrich Engels
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War on Gaza: Jewish opposition to Israel is as old as Zionism itself
European and American Jews have been at the forefront of opposition to Zionism since its birth as a colonial-settler movement at the end of the 19th century.
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Galloway sweeps to victory in Rochdale in vote ‘for Gaza’
Triumphant George Galloway told Sir Keir Starmer “this is for Gaza” after sweeping to a sensational victory in the Rochdale by-election.
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Defending materialism: Lenin the philosopher
NICK MATTHEWS looks at the great Bolshevik leader’s intense three-week period of furious study in the British Library in 1908 and the timeless classic on Marxism and philosophy it produced: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
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The tragic death of a traitor (Part One: Origins)
Alexei Navalny, a Russian political opposition figure whose popularity in the West far exceeded his support in Russia, died while incarcerated in a Russian prison. He was serving a combined 30-and-a-half-year sentence for fraud and political extremism, charges that Navalny and his supporters claim were little more than trumped up accusations designed to silence a […]
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176 years since the Communist Manifesto was published, socialists around the world celebrate “Red Books Day”
Socialists across the globe in countries such as India, Brazil, and the United States celebrate the Manifesto and all “Red Books” that shaped the world.
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SPEECH: A Challenge to Artists, Lorraine Hansberry, 1962
At a rally against the House Un-American Activities Committee, insurgent playwright Lorrainne Hansberry called on artists to shake off the fear and incoherency of the world to defend the peoples’ rights.
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Zionism and the annihilation of Gaza: The problem in Palestine is not political, but ideological
All of this–the language of genocide, the genocide itself and the threats of committing a greater genocide–is rooted, not in a rational political theory, but in Zionism.
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If I understand the world, I can march to change it: The Eighth Newsletter (2024)
In December 2023, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a stunning report showing that, since 2018, literacy in reading and mathematics has declined amongst the world’s students.
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“Emergent” AI behavior and human destiny
What happens when killer robots start communicating with each other?
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The dialectic in the service of revolution
Karl Marx (1818-83), like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) before him, emphasized that human societies can and do undergo dramatic transformations, moving from one social order to another where each formation is governed by its own distinct laws, and a discontinuous logic separates one social order from the next.
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Leave Cuba alone
Has Cuba really failed if we do not see, as in the imperial metropolis, entire families sleeping on the streets in the middle of winter or under a scorching sun in the summer, children barefoot and dressed in rags, people rummaging through garbage bins looking for something to eat, or thousands of men and women destroyed by drugs, victims of a society possessed by a cruel individualism which condemns them to wander like zombies through the main cities to feed, with their addictions, the profits of the banking and financial corporations that are the final beneficiaries of drug trafficking, a business of close to a billion dollars annually?
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It is dark before the dawn, but Israeli settler colonialism is at an end
The idea that Zionism is settler colonialism is not new. Palestinian scholars in the 1960s working in Beirut in the PLO Research Centre had already understood that what they were facing in Palestine was not a classical colonial project.
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A word like peace is faster than the bullet of war: The Seventh Newsletter (2024)
On 26 January, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) announced the start of a massive military exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024 that will continue until the end of May.
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“Democracies” deny the popular will while suppressing protest and dissent
The nations that brag the most about “democracy” routinely ignore the will of their people. Support for Israel’s war crimes in Gaza is but one example of this phenomenon.
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Ernest Mandel – “Hope and Marxism: Historical and Theoretical Essays”
Some of Ernest Mandel’s finest work on Marxist theory and revolutionary politics appeared in the form of short articles. “Hope and Marxism” collects eleven of Mandel’s most significant articles and provides an excellent introduction to his thought.
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Palestine ‘a crappy piece of land’ claim sparks outrage
The resignation of a provincial minister in Canada over anti-Palestinian comments marks a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement, reports John Clarke.
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The subversive truth: The incomplete feminist revolution
In her latest column, VA’s Andreína Chávez explores the contrast between grassroots feminism and women’s demands versus government-led initiatives.