Subjects Archives: Marxism

El futuro de la Revolución Bolivariana en América Latina se ve más brillante desde que Evo Morales participa en la construcción del Bloque Regional de Poder (BRP) de América Latina, en lo que será probablemente el año más peligroso para la humanidad desde el fin de la “Guerra Fría”: el año del ataque de la […]

A short time ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein wrote a column starting, “I don’t support our troops.” It was a well-reasoned piece by most standards, though Stein unthinkingly repeats the urban legend about “peaceniks” spitting on troops returning from Vietnam. For his honesty, he received a hundred “hate e-mails” on his (unpublished) personal […]

  Michael A. Lebowitz, the author of Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class, argues that Capital, taken alone, is one-sided, given Marx’s intention to also write a book on wage-labor.  The incompleteness of Marx’s work has helped produce a left whose theory is distorted and characterized by economism and programmatic narrowness.  I […]

The Bamako Appeal aims at contributing to the emergence of a new popular and historical subject, and at consolidating the gains made at these meetings. It seeks to advance the principle of the right to an equitable existence for everyone; to affirm a collective life of peace, justice and diversity; and to promote the means to reach these goals at the local level and for all of humanity.

  Most of us grew up thinking that the United States was a strong but humble nation, that involved itself in world affairs only reluctantly, that respected the integrity of other nations and other systems, and that engaged in wars only as a last resort. This was a nation with no large standing army, with […]

  José Martí and Simón Bolívar, two of Latin America’s most respected independence fighters, recognized nearly a century ago that their homelands would never be free of imperial domination, until Latin America came together in solidarity as a united force. Martí and Bolívar’s insights remain relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization.  The colonizers of […]

1. Evo Morales y el socialismo “Evo, ¿que entienden tú y el MAS por socialismo?”, le pregunté durante aquellos horribles días de matanza de Sánchez de Losada, en La Paz, en febrero del 2003, donde estaba invitado por el Comité Ejecutivo de la Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). “Vivir en comunidad y en igualdad”, me contestó. […]

Only last year, Honda’s humanoid robot, Asimo, was learning how to walk. Now, the five-year-old droid is ready to take on simple office work, greet visitors and fetch refreshments. Japan’s third-biggest auto manufacturer introduced Tuesday a second-generation Asimo that can also push a cart weighing up to 22 pounds, and walk straight, sideways or backwards […]

  Despite union opposition in several countries, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) squeaked through the House of Representatives by only two votes on July 28, after passing the Senate a month earlier. CAFTA expands NAFTA-style free trade to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica — with the possible later addition of […]

Part 3: Systematic Bias “…an ingenious strategy for recycling natural disaster as class struggle” Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear Michael Hoover, “Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief; Part 1: History: The Problems Are Inherent” (28 November 2005) and “Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief; Part 2: Politics: The Electoral Connection and […]

Michael Hoover, “Rowboat Federalism: The Politics of U.S. Disaster Relief; Part 1: History: The Problems Are Inherent,” 28 November 2005 Part 2: Politics: The Electoral Connection and Beyond The U.S. government’s role in disaster relief began expanding in the 1930s when President Franklin Roosevelt authorized Depression-era federal agencies to repair flood-damaged roads and bridges in […]

  “You will never solve the problem until you let in the women.” “Women win all strikes!” — Mother Jones Mary Harris (Mother) Jones predicted over 100 years ago that, if organized labor didn’t embrace gender equality within the unions and in society in general, the problems faced by labor would not be resolved. But […]

[All figures below are in current dollars.] Part 1: History: The Problems Are Inherent The U.S. constitution established a federal system of “dual authority” incorporating both national and state sovereignty. The product of a series of political accommodations made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, federalism was designed as an opportunistic political battlefield with ambiguous boundaries, […]

“Our sons made the ultimate sacrifice, and we want answers.” — Cindy Sheehan, Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas “If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of […]

Lila Rajiva, the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media, will discuss her book at the following venues. Wednesday, December 14 7:00 PM Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., T: 510-658-1448 OAKLAND, CA Thursday, December 15 7:30 PM The Marxist School of Sacramento, Sierra 2 Center, Curtis Hall, 2791-24th St., […]

That “Sex Machine” ever got approved for air play is testimony to the stupidity of radio censors. It’s little more than James Brown, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business (one of several), encouraging his penis to labor just as hard: Stay on the scene Like a sex machine. In case you miss the point, the […]

The number of films on national figures like Gandhi, Ambedkar, Savarkar, and Bhagat Singh, as well as films like Lagaan and Gadar, in recent years point to an interest in revaluation and reinterpretation of history, especially that of the freedom struggle, in India. That this has happened in the last few years needs an explanation. […]

Monthly Review‘s July-August issue, focused on the theme of “Socialism for the 21st Century,” made me ponder the question of possible working-class organizing in the 21st century to build resistance to capitalism, the resistance that can dialectically develop into socialism. Harry Magdoff and Fred Magdoff wrote in “Approaching Socialism”: “[I]ntellectuals and specialists cannot derive a […]

The exiled German philosopher Walter Benjamin, 48 years old, portly and with a heart condition, joined a hiking tour group in Banyuls-sur-Mer on the French side of the Pyrenees on September 24, 1940. He had no backpack, only a briefcase. He let the group return without him and spent the night on the open hillside. […]

It had been five years since I last set foot in China as a graduate student doing research on Chinese workers’ protests of privatization in Zhengzhou City, the (ironic) site of the February 7th incident memorial that commemorates the repression of the first general strike against colonial administrators of the rail system in 19231  In […]