Subjects Archives: Marxism

  • A Family Affair: Intergenerational Social Mobility across OECD Countries

      Higher inequality is associated with lower intergenerational mobility.  More progressive taxation, higher unemployment benefits, more childcare and early childhood education, and other measures that reduce inequality promote social mobility.  Tracking, ability-grouping, and pushing disadvantaged students into vocational education hinder it.  Poorer students have better chances of overcoming their socioeconomic backgrounds in systems where “larger […]

  • Honduras: Massive Mobilization of Feminists in Resistance

    Memory and Justice for WomenInternational Feminist Mobilization8-14 March 2010 CommuniquéTo women of Honduras and the worldTo human rights organizationsTo democratic and independent organizationsTo national and international mediaTo people in general We, Feminists in Resistance, members of the National Front of Popular Resistance of Honduras, issue a cordial and sincere invitation to all feminists, women, democratic […]

  • Women’s Role in the Nepalese Movement: Making a People’s Constitution

    At this very moment Nepal is making a constitution through the historic Constitutional Assembly (CA).  It is important to note that up till now all prior constitutions handed over to the people of Nepal were through direct intervention of oligarchs or kings.  It was the historic ten years of People’s War (PW) (1996-2006) complemented with […]

  • Palestinian Revolutionaries on International Women’s Day

      Sukant Chandan interviews Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled and Palestinian Gaza resident and revolutionary Shireen Said for International Women’s Day 2010 Leila Khaled: “Palestinian women have a fundamental role in uniting Palestinians” The Palestinian people’s oppression continues due primarily to the financial, diplomatic, and military support that the Zionist state receives from the USA and […]

  • Don’t be BAMBOOZLED by the BudgetA University of Washington for the Elite and the Superwealthy? Not On Our Backs!

      Democracy Insurgent is a majority people-of-color activist group animated by principles of democracy, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, queer liberation, Third World Feminism, and workers’ power.  We are based in Seattle, Washington.  We are a member group of the UW Student Worker Coalition.  Find out more at <nobudgetcutsuw.blogspot.com> and <democracyinsurgent.org>.  Contact us at <d.insurg@gmail.com>. | | Print […]

  • Sexuality and the Law: An Uneasy Marriage

      Matthew Waites.  The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship.  Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.  viii + 285 pp.  $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4.  $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.”  But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]

  • Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History

    This is an exercise in historicization.  This lecture concerns the relation between feminism, the movements of second-wave feminism, and the recent history of capitalism.  My aim is to try to shed some light on where the feminist movement stands today in the current crisis of capitalism. So, I want to tell a story that has […]

  • Pederasts and Others

      William A. Peniston, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris.  New York: Harrington Park, 2004.  xii + 258.  Maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index.  $49.95 US (hb).  ISBN 1-56023-485-7; $24.95 U.S. (pb).  ISBN 1-506023-486-5. As part of the burgeoning of the history of gender and sexuality, recent years have seen several […]

  • Mau Mau, Marx, & Coca Cola: 18th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival

    The 18th annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival, which takes place yearly during Black History Month, is one of Los Angeles’ cultural jewels.  Arguably America’s top Black movie venue, PAFF is a leading U.S. showcase for independent, studio, student, foreign (especially African) political and progressive pictures.  Many movies have their U.S. debuts at this […]

  • Haiti: The Aid Racket

    It’s now more than a month since the earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and thrusting millions of people into the most desperate conditions. But according to the U.S. government, Haitians have a lot to be thankful for. On February 12, the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Ken Merten boasted: “In […]

  • Marx’s Ecology and The Ecological Revolution

      Interview by Aleix Bombila, for En Lucha (Spain), of John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, and author of Marx’s Ecology and The Ecological Revolution En Lucha: In your book Marx’s Ecology you argue that Marxism has a lot to offer to the ecologist movement.  What kind of united work can be established between […]

  • Colonialism and Homosexuality

      Robert Aldrich.  Colonialism and Homosexuality.  London and New York: Routledge, 2003.  xii + 436 pp.  Maps, notes, bibliography, and index.  $104.95 US (cl.).  ISBN 0-415-19615-9.  $32.95 (pb.).  ISBN 0-415-19616-7. It is generally seen as a sign of maturity when gay scholarship moves beyond a mere self-affirmative search for “ancestry” and develops a critical and […]

  • A Socialist View of Sexuality and Liberation?

    Sherry Wolf.  Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation.  Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009.  333 pp.  $12. The cover photo on Sherry Wolf’s book shows a protest rally with a woman holding a highlighted rainbow flag.  Radical gay and lesbian activists, one assumes.  Look closely, though, and you’ll see that the woman is […]

  • Rethinking Islam and Masculinity in Germany

      Katherine Pratt Ewing.  Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.  xii + 282 pp.  $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-5899-4; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8047-5900-7. Katherine Pratt Ewing’s Stolen Honor provides an interesting and original approach to analyses of discourses of Islam in Europe by focusing on constructions of Muslim masculinity in […]

  • Sex-Pol among Allies in the North Atlantic

    Do you have an indelible memory of a theater experience?  One winter in the 1970s, while I was a film student at Manhattan’s Hunter College, I heard that Mother Courage, by that red cat Bertolt Brecht, was being performed downtown at Wooster Street.  So voila! next stop Greenwich Village, and I attended the Wooster Group‘s […]

  • Sussex University Occupation, 8-9 February 2010

      “We recognise that an attack on education workers is an attack on us. . . . They’re occupying everywhere in waves across California, New York, Greece, Croatia, Germany and Austria and elsewhere — and not only in the universities.  We send greetings of solidarity and cheerful grins to all those occupation movements and everyone […]

  • Seema Is a Human Rights Worker, Not a “Naxali”: Letter to the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi

      Seema Azad, editor of the left-wing journal DASTAK published from Allahabad, was taken into custody by the police Saturday, 6th February, soon after she alighted from the train on her return from the Book Fair at Delhi.  She, along with her husband and left-wing activist Vishwa Vijaya Azad, has been detained at the Khuldabad […]

  • Understanding Islamic Feminism: Interview with Ziba Mir-Hosseini

    Born in Iran and now based in London, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, an anthropologist by training, is one of the most well-known scholars of Islamic Feminism.  She is the author of numerous books on the subject, including Marriage on Trial: A Study of Family Law in Iran and Morocco (l.B.Tauris, 1993) and Islam and Gender, the Religious […]

  • The Ugly Face of the Beautiful Game

      Christos Kassimeris.  European Football in Black and White: Tackling Racism in Football.  Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008.  viii + 267 pp.  $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7391-1959-4; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7391-1960-0. Soccer fans held in thrall by the European Championships have no doubt observed the significant display of anti-racist statements and activities before, during, and after the […]

  • Surge in Women’s Employment Brings Unemployment Rate Down to 9.7 Percent

    The unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent in January, driven by a 0.4 percentage-point drop in the unemployment rate for women to 8.4 percent.  The unemployment rate for men fell 0.2 percentage points to 10.8 percent.  This drop came in spite of a reported loss of 20,000 jobs in the establishment survey. The improved employment […]