Subjects Archives: Literature

About a year and a half before the publication of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, Erster Band (1867), there appeared in two sentences within two of his letters, a particular view of the term शून्यता / Śūnyatā: rendered in his own English, as nothingness.

The day is celebrated in dozens of countries to mark the anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto and to collectively stand up against the rise of the right

‘Beyond Capital’ helps us to understand why capitalism continues to persist despite endless crises, by drawing our attention to the messiness of human beings and the multiple circuits that reproduce capitalism as a complex and contradictory totality.

‘The world is rapidly being globalised’, Castro told the Cuban youth, and this globalisation was ‘an unsustainable and intolerable world economic order’ founded on the cannibalisation of nature and the brutalisation of social life.

The American Bar Association passed a resolution condemning antisemitism but removed a reference to the controversial IHRA definition from its text.

This new edition of Marx’s 1875 ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ comes with a few surprises in translation for Marxists who have previously interpreted it as justification for the continuation of wage-labour and commodity production, under the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the ‘first phase’ of socialism/communism.

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.