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.
Subjects Archives: Literature
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.
Che Guevara stamp sells out first run in ‘unprecedented’ public demand
THE Che Guevara stamp produced by An Post to mark the 50th anniversary of the Latin American freedom fighter’s murder on 9 October 1967 by CIA-backed Bolivian state forces has sold out its initial 120,000 print run.
How American racism shaped nazism
Depending on the reader’s perspective, Whitman’s central argument seems either modest or bold, as he claims, “What all this research unmistakably reveals is that the Nazis did find precedents and parallels and inspirations in the United States” (10). The most radical Nazis were often the most enthused about American legal precedents. More moderate, less anti-Semitic […]
Red scientist: two strands from a life in three colours
An exploration of Bernal’s contribution to the politicization of science and scientists, above all the development of the Social Relations of Science movement.
Writing while socialist
With each workshop the broad outlines of socialist writing become clear to me. I am now able to better distinguish between capitalist writing—which typically emerges from the liberal, mainstream media and is intended to produce commodities—and socialist writing—which is intended to produce a confident community of struggle.
How ‘white people’ were invented by a playwright in 1613
The Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton invented the concept of ‘white people’ on 29 October 1613, the date that his play The Triumphs of Truth was first performed. The phrase was first uttered by the character of an African king who looks out upon an English audience and declares: ‘I see amazement set upon the faces/Of […]
Soft shell, hard core: on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx’s Capital, Vol. 1
In bourgeois economic theory, competition, commodity production, profit seeking, and growth express something like the human essence. They are ahistorical constants, not the results of specifically capitalist relations that have historically emerged and can therefore be overcome. This is exactly what makes Marx’s critique of economics highly topical.
