In 1965, as India and Pakistan slipped into another war, Sahir Ludhianvi, one of the great Urdu poets of his generation, wrote a poem called Ai Sharif Insano (‘O Nobel Souls’).
Subjects Archives: Marxism
The long shadow of racial fascism
Recent debates have centered on whether it’s appropriate to compare Trump to European fascists. But radical Black thinkers have long argued that racial slavery created its own unique form of American fascism.
Center-Left convergence in Venezuela: A blow to U.S. interventionism
Steve Ellner argues that average Venezuelans understand that U.S. sanctions hurt them—and should be resisted.
American exceptionalism won’t save the U.S. Empire from itself, or stop China’s rise
China’s rise reflects a bourgeoning global movement away from U.S. imperialism and toward self-determination.
The Past as Prologue: Caliban & the Witch – a Review
Alexandra Day reviews Silvia Federici’s seminal work, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.
Jeremy Corbyn is the victim of a monstrous campaign of slander
After years of being slandered, Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the British Labour Party. It’s a shocking development.
Jacindamania and the Aotearoa New Zealand elections of 2020: Hopes and potentialities
The New Zealand elections as a gain and as a limitation for the left — Editors.
Beyond Plague Urbanism
Over the centuries, humans have survived tragedy through the incredible stoicism of not moving, of standing one’s ground, of resisting, of engaging in tremendous creativity. Perhaps we can use the time alone to think collectively, to reflect together on how we might reconstruct the public realm of our cities.
‘Symbolic Violence: Conversations with Bourdieu’ by Michael Burawoy reviewed by Paul Leduc Browne
Michael Burawoy’s Symbolic Violence is a Marxist critique of the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. This fascinating book explores some of Bourdieu’s contradictions by staging a series of ‘conversations’ between the French sociologist and a range of important, mostly Marxist, thinkers whose writings Bourdieu ignored or dismissed in footnotes, even though he ought to have engaged […]
What is at stake in the study of settler colonialism?
Settler colonialism, those colonial processes based on the aim of permanently settling metropolitan populations on indigenous lands, and–crucially–the struggle against it, have been at the centre of many of the key political developments of the last three decades.
We Are That History That Is Discredited, but Which Reappears When You Least Expect It
The coup followed an election that would have resulted in Morales’ fourth term as president, the results of which were questioned by the Organisation of American States or OAS (60% of whose funding comes from the U.S. government).
‘Ecological Leninism’: On waging war against the common cause of Corona and the climate crisis
A ferocious polemic by Andreas Malm, written as the worldwide lockdown took hold, summons the imagery of Soviet war communism to impress the urgency of our predicament.
Policing the poor and minorities as counter-insurgency
Here are seven counterinsurgency features of policing and the inequities in the criminal justice system.
On the federation of economic communes: Engels and Dühring
Those who “go beyond” Karl Marx’s programme of economic liberation based on the socialisation of the means of production and “reach” a programme based on the federation of economic communes remind me of this promise of Sartre.
Billionaires and the Pandemic
WEALTH distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight.
In stunning display of popular will, protests in Bolivia to Chile force public reckoning of “Chicago Boy” economics
Like in Bolivia, the strength of public opinion in Chile was so immense that the government, led by Chile’s richest man Sebastian Piñera, immediately conceded.
Digital organizing isn’t as straight forward as it seems
Over the past few years, digital organizing has become the hot new thing in unionization campaigns. Digital mobilization and engagement technologies have become essential to winning.
An exemplary feminist mobilization
Female school students, with the support of feminist collectives, are mobilizing against sexist punishments put in place by their school management for wearing outfits deemed provocative.
Walter Rodney: Marxist, Pan-African, organic intellectual
Sean Ledwith recounts the socialist revolutionary Walter Rodney’s many accomplishments and intellectual prowess.
Peter Linebaugh interview
Peter Linebaugh interviewed by Johnny Flynn of Independent Left.
