Marxist critique of society remains incomplete if it does not consider the fact that, to make profits, the ruling classes have not only exploited the oppressed classes within the history of class struggle, but also and always animals (and nature).
Subjects Archives: Literature
Recommended reading from Mumia
The nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, has high praise for historian Robin D.G. Kelly’s book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Depression.
Transformation problem unraveled
Moseley’s interpretation establishes the internal coherence of Marx’s theory, thereby creating a more solid basis for its further development on our own, Marxist, terms. Stated differently, there is no need to import unrealistic, abstract-ideal concepts from other economic theories in an attempt to “modernize” Marxist economics.
Can someone inform Donald Trump that Muhammad Ali doesn’t need his pardon?
“The power to pardon is a beautiful thing,” said Trump.
Mexie’s reading recommendations!
Books
Marx at 200
A specter is haunting human affairs these days: it’s the thought that Karl Marx (on his 200th birthday this week) may have been more right than wrong about rich-get-richer bourgeois economics.
Dreaming of communism: News from Nowhere
There can be no denying that the content of News from Nowhere, the utopian romance penned by painter, poet and designer William Morris, was heavily indebted to the writings of Karl Marx. Morris was exploring these from the spring of 1882, the year before Marx died and the year of his own 48th birthday. He […]
A farewell to Omelas: remembering Ursula Le Guin
I had a friend who as a child wrote to Ursula Le Guin. He was feeling miserable, bad things had happened to him and he wanted to run away to Earthsea. He told her that he felt ashamed that he wasn’t facing up to life, felt it was a failing that he just wanted to […]
The kids aren’t alright
When we talk about generations, we tend to talk as if history has always been divided up into them. But the idea of distinct eras of cohorts each defined by some unique spirit is not timeless. The notion of a generation was borne of a conception of history as a machine of progress—a claim central […]
Capitalism’s life source: the domestic and social basis for exploitation
Social reproduction theory (SRT) sounds quite intimidating, but the (rather grandiose) anthology of big words masks a relatively simple question: if capitalist production is fundamentally the production of commodities, and it is workers who produce such commodities, who ‘produces’ the worker?
Engels’ “theoretical moment”?
In Marx and Engels’ Collected Works volume 47, I found a very interesting letter written by Engels to August Bebel. It was written about a month and half after Marx’s death, April 30 1883. Bebel seems to have suggested Engels to move somewhere else in Europe. Engels’ justifications to continue staying in England is quite […]
Paradise Papers: Tax havens show the hypocrisy of the rich
Another glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous has come to light.
The Afro-Asian Writers Association and Soviet engagement with Africa
This post is part of our online forum, “Black October,” on the Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora
The Popular Front Novel
I became interested in literary relationships with communism and anti-fascism when I was an undergraduate student. I was curious about how modernist writing, often thought to have peaked by the mid-1920s, was transformed by the rise of fascism and the coming of the Second World War.
Why read “Capital”, 150 years later?
Out of all his works, the reputation of Karl Marx as theorist of the socialist tradition is undoubtedly based primarily on his magnum opus, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.
