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Subjects Archives: Marxism

“Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.” —Karl Marx

Offline: Medicine and Marx

When President Xi Jinping addressed the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last month, he spoke of “the scientific truth of Marxism-Leninism”. Marxism (with Chinese characteristics), as President Xi went on to set out, is to be the foundation for a Healthy China.

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Told you so. Reuters.

Marxian economics

This entry begins by setting out the core ideas of Karl Marx (1818–83), with particular reference to the theory of historical materialism and its application to the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s theory of value and distribution receives detailed attention, followed by his models of capital accumulation and economic crisis.

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writers congress

The Popular Front Novel

I became interested in literary relationships with communism and anti-fascism when I was an undergraduate student. I was curious about how modernist writing, often thought to have peaked by the mid-1920s, was transformed by the rise of fascism and the coming of the Second World War.

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Stuart Hall’s deconstruction of fate

The island of Barbuda is currently devoid of human life, a bleak reality that is both unfathomable in its scope and seemingly inevitable under the conditions of racialized capitalism. The severity of Hurricane Irma’s impact was undoubtedly worsened by the gross consumption of natural resources, particularly by nations that historically benefitted from colonialism and the […]

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Neil Martinson, A portrait of Annie Spike at work (1978)

Women and work

It has often been claimed that the radical documentary practice of the 1970s attended to class politics to the exclusion of gender. This was one of the core arguments for a staged practice of photography.

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arton1795

Why Everything Costs Money

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Marx’s Capital. In the midst of a near-decade long world economic crisis, there has been a major resurgence in interest in the book.

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Photo Credit: Jorge Gonzales (flickr)

The imposition of class

The recent success of authoritarian-populist politicians and the critique of globalisation, unemployment and social insecurity they advocate has prompted renewed attention to the question of class. In Germany, this debate has been accompanied by discussions surrounding the publication of Didier Eribon’s recent book, Returning to Reims.

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Photo credit: New Socialist

3 ways you can build Corbynism from below

Winning the next election is the start of the fight for Corbynism from below. A left wing government will face attempts to bring it in line through bribery, obstruction and, if those options fail, force. The establishment and the capitalist class will do anything to stop a socialist program from going the distance.

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Gears.

In defense of old materialism

There was only once, in the final year of my PhD, that my supervisor and I butted heads. I had just submitted my fourth chapter for her review and, because I was living in another city at the time, she sent me an email saying we needed to speak on the phone urgently.

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Fascist torch march in Kiev (1/28/2017)

The current upsurge of fascism

To describe the present upsurge of fascism as nationalist or populist would be misleading. Neither is it a replication of the fascism of the 1930s. However, it is marked by four features, which have been common to all fascist upsurges in the past, namely: rise of supremacism, apotheosis of unreason, proliferation of fascism as a […]

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