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1968: The year the world shook
1968 – 50 years ago – was the highpoint of the radicalism that had been sweeping the globe through the mid-60s from Belfast to Berlin, from Mexico to Melbourne, from Paris to Prague. It was a year of revolution and repression, of struggle and solidarity, of wild optimism and crushing defeat.
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Cornel West: Neoliberalism has failed us
We live in one of the darkest moments in American history,” Cornel West begins his new introduction to the 25th-anniversary edition of Race Matters, published on December 5, 2017.
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Somali deportees from U.S. exposed to “slave ship conditions”
92 Somali nationals who were deported from the United States earlier this month are suing the Trump administration over “slave ship conditions” on the plane back home. They were denied access to food, water and bathrooms for nearly two days while on the plane.
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Two billion dollars in stolen wages were recovered for workers in 2015 and 2016—and that’s just a drop in the bucket
The last four decades have been marked by rising wage inequality, with the vast majority of American workers experiencing wage stagnation while those at the top rung of the economic ladder reap the benefits of growth in productivity. These dynamics mean that many workers struggle to make ends meet; in 2016 one in five families in which at least one person worked were living below 200 percent of the federal poverty line (U.S. Census Bureau 2017).
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“Social leaders are murdered because of fights over women”, said Colombia’s Defense Minister
Just a week ago, Colombian social leaders denouncing the murder of another one showed up to the press conference with masks covering their faces in order to avoid risking to lose their own lives—such is the danger of defending human rights in Colombia.
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Reiterating Mao on December 26, his birth anniversary
Reiterating Mao’s teachings is one of the essentials in the area of political education as a new generation is joining people’s struggle.
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Power to the People: In Italy, Potere al Popolo, a new left-wing movement is born
The meeting, attended by thousands of people, was thrilling and inspiring; all Italian communist parties and organisations, as well as environmentalist groups, social and community centres and workers associations took part in it.
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Capitalism’s life source: the domestic and social basis for exploitation
Social reproduction theory (SRT) sounds quite intimidating, but the (rather grandiose) anthology of big words masks a relatively simple question: if capitalist production is fundamentally the production of commodities, and it is workers who produce such commodities, who ‘produces’ the worker?
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Alain Badiou debates reformist Laurent Joffrin
Alain Badiou is former chair of philosophy at École normale supérleure and author of In Praise of Politics. Laurent Joffrin is editor of Libération newspaper—and a reformist who defends existing social democracy. Alain Badiou recently announced that he would stop running his seminar. He also announced that he would soon be publishing The Immanence of Truths, completing […]
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Capitalism, exterminism and the long ecological revolution
teleSUR spoke to Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster about climate change & the need to fight for an ecosocialist, revolutionary alternative to the profit-driven world capitalist system.
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Concrete utopia
Where is Utopia today? Is this question relevant? One might argue that the term utopia is incongruous with the politics of our time, to say the least. Not only does the term ‘utopia’ indicate no place, when it found a place, it was mistreated and mutilated. What would be the place for utopian thinking in a world that is desperate to solve the accrued problems that it has created for itself? Would utopian thinking distract us from the real tribulations besetting the world?
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Yemen: A western-sponsored genocide
The lack of media interest makes it seem like a crisis unfolding in slow motion. But that is only because outrage and compassion are now meant to be weaponised when they can be useful in justifying imperialist interventions. For the Yemeni people the agony is real and there is no escaping it.
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Poll finds growing demand for reform in Russia
According to a survey by the Russian Academy of Sciences, 51% of Russians believe the country needs “significant reform” over “stability.” Though a small majority, that’s the first time “reform” has won out since before 2003, perhaps indicative of a changing political mood locally. Per the polling, the younger generation is the most pro-reform, with 62% in favor.
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Debt comes for us all
“DON’T LET YOUR CHILDREN GO INTO CRIPPLING DEBT LIKE I HAVE!” I shout, as I and a group of students with SENS-UAW make our way to a major intersection just off Union Square. We wave signs, hoist our banner and merge into the crowd. We are protesting the new GOP tax bill, which will affect the lives of current, previous, and prospective students in critical and long-lasting ways.
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Net neutrality and the socialist moment
In recent months, one of the United States’ most important debates has revolved around the broad concept of Net Neutrality (NN). Without delving into the technicalities, the concept of NN is that internet service providers (ISPs) cannot privilege or restrict internet data. Basically, once you’ve purchased your internet package with the requisite bandwidth parameters, your ISP cannot make your access to a certain site easier or harder, faster or slower.
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Employers would pocket $5.8 billion of workers’ tips under Trump administration’s proposed ‘tip stealing’ rule
On December 5, the Trump administration took its first major step toward allowing employers to legally pocket the tips earned by the workers they employ. The Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule that would allow restaurants to take the tips that servers earn and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers.
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A revolutionary voice for women’s freedom available in English for the first time
Liz Payne reviews The Woman Worker by Nadezhda K Krupskaya.
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Evgeny Pashukanis: Commodity-form theory of law
Whether one believes that law is provided by God (Natural Law), is created by human intellect (Positivism), a gendered institution perpetuating patriarchy (Feminism) or the maintainer of the status quo against marginalised groups (Critical Legal Studies), undergirding those beliefs is the assumption that law is autonomous.
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Limits on free speech
Judith Butler asks what happens when free speech clashes with other basic values.
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Trump’s thug-power, or does anybody still like Woody Allen?
Let’s go back to when we were all a little younger and less terrified. Obama is president. I am talking to a slightly older, white, heterosexual male, highly esteemed by the academic world and by me. I, a lesbian, admire and trust this guy. We’re catching up, talking about life, books, friends. I tell him my friend Beth is having a hard time writing her memoir. She’s trying to decide if she should include the fact that her very famous father, a renowned attorney, had sexually molested her for years while she was growing up.