Subjects Archives: Literature

Michael & Debby Smith write about 30 years of living with a parrot whose intelligence and emotional awareness challenges our human-centric world view.

Already a century ago, political thinkers and philosophers were confronted with an apparent paradox: the failure of revolution.

Indigenous rights and sovereignty must be at the centre of our collective efforts to rescue a habitable planet.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets—and arguably the greatest.

Jon Melrod brings back to us a vital moment in the history of the U.S. labor movement, a moment in which the demographic transformation the workforce but also the lingering memory of 1960s social movements and unrest, raised the possibility of radicals racing to the front of class conflicts.

After losing a coveted niche in the trucking industry, I started UCLA as an adult freshman, attracted by rumors of a high-powered seminar on Capital led by Bob Brenner in the History Department.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) advanced decisively into Russian-held territory in northeastern Ukraine two weeks ago, exposing the weakness, incompetence, and cowardice of Russian soldiers and officers. The tide of this war has turned. The Russian army is on the way to defeat, and President Vladimir Putin could go down with it.

On the 40th Anniversary of Banned Books Week, Jim Mamer examines the way in which more school districts are banning books that are narrowly focused on LGBTQIA+ issues, sexual identity issues, and the roots of racial tension.

The Cuban Revolution came about in a country subordinated to the U.S. from all points of view. Although we had the façade of a republic, we were a perfect colony, exemplary in economic, commercial, diplomatic, and political terms, and almost in cultural terms.

Accuracy no longer matters. Witnessing no longer matters. Conformity matters, writes Patrick Lawrence.

A key concept in Karl Marx’s Capital is widely misunderstood.

On the hundred year anniversary of Howard Zinn’s birth, Sean Ledwith examines the life and work of America’s greatest radical historian.

Marxism’s contributions to ecological literature and struggles is a rich and contradictory field of discussion. Marxism in diverse ways has fed into environmental struggles and broader ecological politics.

Vonnegut, like the novel’s Billy Pilgrim, witnessed the effects of the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II—a massacre and a war crime. In the novel, Pilgrim mentally flees the terrible memories by fantasising about extraterrestrial time travel, but can’t stop his mind from straying back to the trauma.

As yours truly has reported repeatedly during the last couple of years, university students all over the world are increasingly beginning to question if the kind of economics they are taught–mainstream economics–really is of any value. Some have even started to question if economics is a science.

In the best sense of the word a journalist is someone who brings to the public sphere accurate, well sourced information, and rigorous analysis.

Two hundred years ago, on July 8, 1822, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned. He was less than a month short of thirty.

The fantasy novelist and left activist on why Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ speaks to the crisis-ridden politics of the present.

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.

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.