Subjects Archives: Ideology

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.

What happens when killer robots start communicating with each other?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

The resignation of a provincial minister in Canada over anti-Palestinian comments marks a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement, reports John Clarke.

In her latest column, VA’s Andreína Chávez explores the contrast between grassroots feminism and women’s demands versus government-led initiatives.

Civil rights complaint alleges biracial child faced two years of racially motivated attacks.

Academic David Miller was dismissed from the University of Bristol in 2021. Lawyers say the new ruling marks a ‘significant triumph’ for free speech in the workplace.

On the centenary of Thompson’s birth, Dominic Alexander celebrates his monumental work, “The Making of the English Working Class”.

Written by Marxist philosopher George Novack (1905-1992) and published in 1975 by Pathfinder Press, “Pragmatism versus Marxism: An appraisal of John Dewey’s Philosophy” sought to explain the origins, emergence, class basis, and norms of pragmatism, which has been the predominant mode of thought in U.S. intellectual and political life.

Lenin’s understanding of the workers state must also take into account the adjustments that had to be made in the post-revolutionary period, when it became clear that emphasis had to be put on developing the productive forces and an efficient state that could guide the process of destroying the global inequalities between imperialist and imperialized nations.

Among the many seminal theoretical contributions made by Lenin to Marxism was his pioneering of the concept of the worker-peasant alliance for a socialist revolution.

The new formation is led by Sahra Wagenknecht (born 1969), one of the most dynamic politicians of her generation in Germany and a former star in Die Linke, and Amira Mohamed Ali. It is called the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, BSW) and it launched in early January 2024.

On 12 January, the day commemorating the 1904 revolt of the Herero people against German colonialism, Olaf Scholz’s government announced that it would intervene in the International Court of Justice to oppose South Africa’s charge of genocide against Israel.

One hundred years since Lenin’s death, Nigerian socialist Abiodun Olamosu describes of the revolutionary on his own political development. As the preeminent organiser of the Russian revolution, Lenin helped to determine the course of Olamosu’s life in Nigeria. Olamosu explores the development of Lenin’s work and legacy. He regards Stalin’s rise to power, and the Soviet Union, as an abomination to the body of ideas of Marxism and socialist internationalism.

In exploring the notion of critical media literacy, the Marxist concepts of base and superstructure and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony provide an essential framework for understanding the complex dynamics of media, power, and ideology.