Subjects Archives: Marxism

  • How I Became a Socialist

      “Workin’ hard scarred my proletarian flesh I used to go to sleep drunk every night depressed Slavin’ for a check, a couple hundred at best While the boss getting’ rich off my blood and sweat And all the crumbs I get go to bills and rent I ain’t workin’ all my life just to […]

  • March 1st Protest to Defend Ohio’s Working Class

    No on Senate Bill 5, 1 March 2011 Panayiotis T. Manolakos is an independent economist, writer, and activist based in Ohio.  The photographs above (available at www.flickr.com/photos/ptmanolakos/sets/72157626052775127/) are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License. var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print

  • Rally to Save Ohio’s Middle Class

      Tues. March 1 starting 10AM going all day West Lawn of the Statehouse THE SENATE IS EXPECTED TO VOTE ON SENATE BILL 5 TUESDAY. For more info, visit <www.protectohiofamilies.com>.   var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print  

  • Revolutionary Women of Bahrain

    Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  | Print

  • Egypt: Middle Class for Military Junta, Workers for Permanent Revolution

    Since yesterday, and actually earlier, middle-class activists have been urging Egyptians to suspend the protests and return to work, in the name of patriotism, singing some of the most ridiculous lullabies about “let’s build new Egypt,” “let’s work harder than even before,” etc.  In case you didn’t know, actually Egyptians are among the hardest working […]

  • Iran: Hard-Line Women Heckle Mashaei

    On 22 Bahman 1389 (11 February 2011), the 32nd anniversary of the victory of the revolution in Iran, hard-line women heckle Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the right-hand man of the president of Iran.  The hecklers are heard shouting: “Down with monafeq!  Monafeq, get lost!”  “Mashaei, be ashamed!  Resign from the government!”  “Down with the anti-velayat-e faqih.”  […]

  • Puerto Rico: Police Assault Students and Professors Go on Strike

      The Association of Puerto Rican University Professors (APPU) on Wednesday called a 24-hour strike at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), vowing that there will be no classes on Thursday. The decision to strike was made as students held a protest on campus, after a fierce confrontation with riot police in front of the […]

  • Arab Women of the Revolution

    Inspired by the actions of young Egyptian women whose voices are weapons! Laila Shereen Sakr is a media artist known as VJ Um Amel.  Her work critically examines cyber ecologies in a post-9/11 world. var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print

  • Egyptian Dictatorship, Made in USA

      The Egyptian dictatorship, made in the USA, is still powered by an Israeli battery, but the battery is running low. . . . This cartoon was first published by Al Jazeera; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  Cf. Mark Landler and Helene Cooper, “Allies Press U.S. to Go Slow on Egypt” (New […]

  • The Egyptian Working Class Enters the Arena with Full Force

    My sources have just confirmed this now.  The Cairo Public Transportation workers, who started a strike today in six garages — Nasr Station, Fateh Station, Ter’a Station, Amiriya Station, Mezzalat Station, Sawwah Station — have issued a statement with a list of demands, calling for overthrowing Mubarak.  No public buses will roam Cairo tomorrow, except […]

  • No Alternative Other Than Socialism

    Message from WSF 2011 “Neoliberal” globalization, thoroughly bankrupt, is now indeed on the defensive.  It has no legitimacy.  And people in revolt illustrate that.  In Latin America and Nepal, today in Egypt and Tunisia, and tomorrow elsewhere in the South, gigantic popular upsurges are felling regimes that were once at its service. Autocratic regimes are […]

  • Counter-Revolution Field Manual

    In a speech attacking ‘multiculturalism’ Prime Minister David Cameron argued for a “muscular liberalism” that would actively confront “extremist” ideologies — principally radical Islamism — that fail to conform to “Western values”.  The problem is not with Islam per se, he argued, but with those “distortion[s]” of Islam that reject “democracy, the rule of law, […]

  • In Search of Method in the Age of Transition

    István Mészáros.  Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, Volume I: The Social Determination of Method.  Monthly Review Press, 2010.  463 pp. It is always infuriating to read in any mainstream publication the typical smug commentary on some erstwhile left-academic who had come to reject the ‘determinism’ of Marx’s theory of history.  It is one of […]

  • Islam as Democracy against the Dictatorships of the Western Powers

    The West has financed dictatorships in the Middle East and Arab World for more than a century. The pro-democracy protests against Western-backed dictatorships in the Arab world have shown, once again, the immense hypocrisy of our rulers.  Which side are the Western governments on — the side of protesters or the side of dictators?  The […]

  • Brave Women of Egypt against Mubarak

    Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.   | Print

  • Women Protesting in Tahrir Square

      Protests sweeping Egypt have done more than raise hopes of democratic change.  Egypt’s women are hoping this might mark the start of a new era for them as well.  Women have been on the frontlines of the demonstrations, braving tear gas and gunfire, to call for the unseating of President Hosni Mubarak.  They helped […]

  • Egypt: Vodafone Supports Dictatorship

    So not only did Vodafone have a disgraceful role during the April 2008 Mahalla uprising, now also the company is sending out text messages announcing pro-Mubarak’s protests. Massive demonstration to start at noon this Wednesday from Mustafa Mahmoud Square, in support of President Mubarak Can activists in the UK sue the mother company? Hossam el-Hamalawy […]

  • Egypt: Retrofitting “Operation Ajax” to Support the Pharaoh against the People

      “As soon as I saw the defiant tone and substance of Mubarak’s speech, I realized that he is not speaking for himself but for the US/Israeli sponsors. . . .  I just read the speech by Obama: it confirmed my suspicion, that basically Mubarak was permitted by the US to do with the Egyptian […]

  • Crisis, Chains, Change: The American Exception to Marxism

    A Plenary Address at the American Studies Association Presidential Panel, San Antonio, Texas, 18 November 2010 For Ruthie Gilmore. I am an imposter here: not a real American Studies scholar.  I went to graduate school in the late 1980s to study History and Anthropology.  My interest was in the contemporary history of India.  When I […]

  • Cuomo’s Class Mobilization

    Many of the most interesting — and from a left perspective, most disturbing — developments in U.S. politics today are occurring at the state level.  As the excellent Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, the aftermath of the recession wrought by the financial crisis has plunged virtually every U.S. state into a deep […]