Murali Balaji, The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, New York: Nation Books, 2007. W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson have been poorly served by their biographers. David Levering Lewis and Martin Duberman found these two US communist revolutionaries about as congenial […]
Subjects Archives: Marxism
Is President Obama a Socialist?
It started in an interview with Chris Wallace during the presidential campaign. According to John McCain, Barack Obama was planning “redistribution of the wealth . . . [and] that’s one of the tenets of socialism.” Although McCain backed off his accusation shortly afterwards, Republicans have since revived it. Rep. John Boehner, Republican leader in the […]
Iran’s Revolution 30 Years On: the Quest for Authenticity
“Religious despotism is most intransigent because a religious despot views his rule as not only his right but his duty.” — Abdolkarim Soroush The French philosopher Michel Foucault, at the request of one of Italy’s biggest dailies Corriere della Sera, went to Iran to cover the growing unrest and protests against the increasingly despotic regime […]
Arabic Thought in the Illiberal Age
Peter Wien. Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941. SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East Series. London: Routledge, 2006. x + 162 pp. $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-36858-2; $39.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-415-46182-5. Sometimes — when read against the backdrop of a particular time and place — a book resonates beyond the immediate […]
Do Communists Have Better Sex?
André Meier, dir. Do Communists Have Better Sex? (Sex im geteilten Deutschland). First Run/Icarus Films, 2006. 52 mins., color, subtitles in English. This film, a mixture of scholarly research and light-hearted presentations of stereotypes about the role of sex in divided Germany (from the end of the Second World War to the fall of […]
Who Am I?
Who Am I? / من انا؟ Observer / متفرجة Excerpts from the Book of Aswat / مقتطفات من كتاب أصوات Aswat / أصوات Aswat (Voices) is a group of Palestinian gay women, home to all lesbian, inter-sex, queer, transsexual, transgender, and bisexual women and women who are just beginning to question their sexual identities.
Eighth of March: A United March in Caracas to Commemorate Fighting Women’s Day
This Sunday, the Eighth of March, Assemble at Plaza O’Leary at 9 AM in Silence, to March toward Plaza Los Museos, the Location of the Cultural Festival We Are Marching to Open New Paths. Big Marches Work Their Magic Because We Make the Path by Marching, Which Is the Legacy of the Collective Memory of […]
Feminist Organizing against the Gaza Conflict
Throughout the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine conflict, civil society has been active in responding to crises and advocating for peace and justice. Kathambi Kinoti of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) interviewed Eilat Maoz, a general coordinator of the Coalition of Women for Peace, an Israeli organization that works for peace in Israel and […]
Social Change, the Women’s Rights Movement, and the Role of Islam
The implementation of Shari’a reinforced the patriarchal order and institutionalized gender inequality in post-revolutionary Iran. Nevertheless, the modernization of society has led to profound changes in the lives of Iranian women and in their attitudes regarding men’s authority. The modernization of women’s attitudes1 has in turn led to their mounting resistance or opposition against gendered […]
Islamist-Leftist Cooperation in the Arab World
Throughout the Middle East, actors across the political spectrum cooperate in ways that were unprecedented before the democratic openings of the early 1990s. Even though few of these openings have advanced toward democracy, groups that had never previously worked together — indeed, some with long histories as rivals — now routinely cooperate in a […]
Where Are Iran’s Working Women?
See, also, Hajir Palaschi, “Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women,” Trans. Yoshie Furuhashi, MRZine, 18 February 2008. The Iranian Revolution and its aftermath have generated many debates, one of which pertains to the effects on women’s labor force participation and employment patterns. For […]
Kaiser’s Class Justice
She’s called Emmely; her real name is Barbara E. — with the family name omiited in line with legal practice here. All over Germany people are talking about her, most frequently with anger in their voices. For Emmely, a cashier in East Berlin, was fired by her discount store employer for allegedly filching 1.30 euro […]
Lawfare in Gaza: Legislative Attack
If, therefore, a conclusion can be drawn from military violence it is that . . . there is a lawmaking character inherent in it. — Walter Benjamin The scale of Israel’s twenty-two-day attack on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 — which killed 1,300 people and damaged or destroyed about 15% of all its buildings […]
Interview of John Bellamy Foster on The Great Financial Crisis
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is the coauthor with Fred Magdoff of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, recently published by Monthly Review Press. MW: Do you think that the American people have been misled into believing that the current financial […]
Philosophy of Dogs
Written, shot, edited, and directed by Tatu Laukkanen and Matti Pohjonen, in collaboration with NEGATIVEWARMACHINE in Helsinki, Finland. “Philosophy of Dogs,” Part III of Elephantasma? (a feature-length experimental documentary film that examines economic change in Bombay, India from three different angles), “has already managed to get censored from one seminar on Indian economic growth” […]
Is Talking about Homosexuality Still a Taboo?
Is talking about homosexuality still a taboo? In the Arab world, specifically Lebanon, the answer to this question is yes and no. Sure, you can have an actual discussion about homosexuality. People can freely discuss homosexuality being a disease, unnatural, and even disgusting. The Arab world doesn’t seem to have an issue with such discussions. […]
Mexico Unconquered: Reviewing a People’s History of Power and Revolt
John Gibler, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, 356 Pages, City Lights Publishers (January, 2009). Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, calls Mexico home, as do millions of impoverished citizens. From Spanish colonization to today’s state and corporate repression, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, by John Gibler, is written from […]
Those Alternative Socialist “Stimulus” Plans
There are, of course, other ways to “support and stimulate” the declining US economy: those that congressional debaters, presidential advisors, and the dutiful media never discuss. All the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury ever do is justify their functions as lenders and spenders “of last resort” (when the private sector will not). Neither ever […]
Socialism and the Peasantry
One of the greatest insights of Karl Marx was his perception of the capitalist system as a self-acting, self-driven and “spontaneous” order. Far from being a malleable system, where intervention by the State could be used for bringing about basic changes in the mode of its functioning, in which case of course the need to […]
Interview with Mohammed Nafa’h, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Israel
“Supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination is a duty of Israeli communists.” The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and its front Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) were the only political forces in Israel that confronted the massacre perpetrated by the Tzahal (IDF), the Israeli armed forces, in Gaza last January. Regrettably, […]
