Subjects Archives: Marxism

The birth anniversary of Friedrich Engels, collaborator, co-thinker and a long-time friend of Karl Marx falls tomorrow, 28 November 2020.

It wasn’t that long ago that the country celebrated frontline workers by banging pots in the evening to thank them for the risks they took doing their jobs during the pandemic.

The Lords of Capital use periods of crisis to devour the less-rich and reshape the political economy to their further advantage, so that the Joe Bidens of the world jump higher and come quicker when summoned.

Today marks 200 years since the birth of Friedrich Engels, the revolutionary leader who, side by side with Marx, elaborated a good part of what we know today as the theoretical bases of Marxism and built the first international organizations of “insurrectionist wage slaves” who adopted communism as the name for their objective.

Exploitation begins with the terms on which workers sell their labour power to capital. Marx saw that 140 years ago, and it hasn’t changed since.

With legislative elections on the horizon, Ociel López looks at the different political forces and scenarios ahead.

October 15 was the 33rd anniversary of Thomas Sankara’s death. On this day, he was murdered by imperialist forces at the tender age of 37.

Sidney Powell’s conspiracy theories went too far for Trump’s legal team after her outlandish claims went viral online.

President Donald Trump’s categorical refusal to accept what seems like an inevitable and increasingly crushing election loss has many in media rightly worried about the political repercussions of such a move, with some sounding the alarm over a potential coup d’etat in the U.S. (e.g., Salon, 11/11/20; Washington Post, 11/12/20; Guardian, 11/13/20; New Republic, 11/13/20).

One of my frustrations with contemporary Marxist philosophy is the way in which the word ‘dialectical’ is often employed like a magical wand to sanctify various relational phenomena.

Recently, mainstream economics has been forced to acknowledge some of the explicit and implicit forms of discrimination and bias that are rampant in the discipline, thanks in particular to some brave interventions by some women economists.

Smith’s book demonstrates that the far-right has always played the victim card when it comes to free-speech, writes Houman Barekat.

Like most political formations in the United States, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) members and supporters represent different tendencies.

After a Spring in which Sweden had one of the worst Covid death rates in Europe, some latched on to their low summer case numbers to argue for a herd immunity approach. But as cases again rise dramatically, Madeleine Johansson challenges the Swedish herd immunity myth.

A key figure from the newly-formed Popular Revolutionary Alternative talks about his expectations for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Hobsbawm’s thinking was guided by dialectical materialism, which was a scientific outlook based on analysis. It always accounted for unpredictable human agency and, though economic factors played the principal role in the development of history, this study rejects the claim that Hobsbawm was a mechanical determinist.

What Robinson identified as “the rewhitening of America” a century ago is what we’re seeing play out today.

Karl Marx’s 1875 critique of the German Social Democratic Party provides a withering examination of capitalism’s ‘wicked ways’ and a guide to what the commons is and how to bring it about.

It looks like a safe bet that Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20th after successfully campaigning on returning the murderous and oppressive Orwellian US empire back to its pre-Trump “normal”.

The third major influence on Marx’s critique of political economy (in addition to and combined with classical economics and Hegel’s philosophy) was utopian socialism.