Subjects Archives: Philosophy

My engagement with Marx in this book is ultimately an act of critical dialogue–of thinking with as well as across and through his texts toward multiple unforeseen destinations.

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A Robinson have been awarded the Nobel (really the Riksbank prize) in economics “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”

Unlike mainstream media, which all too often distorts the truth and lies by omission–as we see with reporting on Palestine, where the death toll has reached 114,000–conjunctural analyses help us understand the deeper forces at play and provide political and social movements with the materials to intervene to shape the future.

On 1 October 1949, the People’s Republic of China was established. Seventy-five years into its revolutionary process, China has made rapid advances while still facing many challenges.

A site called Marxism and Collapse (M&C) has conducted a ‘dialogue’ with an AI model called Genesis Zero (GZ) that includes “an expansion and refutation” of Marx’s theory of value.  The human voice (M&C) asks questions and leads the AI model (GZ) into discussing the inadequacies of Marx’s value theory and to reach a new, […]

Surrealism has been an international movement since its inception. However, here michael löwy focuses mainly on the Paris surrealist group, initially around André Breton, but which continued its activity after the death of the author of the Surrealist Manifestos.

In Fredric Jameson, who died on Sunday at the age of 90, we have lost probably the most creative Marxist thinker of our time.

The antidote to the mental health crisis lies in re-building our societies, moving away from capitalism’s culture of hostility towards a culture of connection and community.

The head of a prestigious research center talks about knowledge production in the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader’s campaign was built on sweeping reforms, tackling corruption and ensuring economic relief.

After meeting with Giorgia Meloni, Keir Starmer expressed admiration for the Italian prime minister’s plans to deport refugees to camps in Albania—signaling the Labour government’s willingness to embrace the policies of neofascism.

For years, the U.S. executed Israel’s regional destabilization program using phantom terrorists as justification for the ‘War on Terror.’ But 7 October 2023 killed Washington’s never-ending war project–with a flip of the switch, U.S. adversaries have now turned the ‘Long War’ on Israel.

Lumumba had seen hope in the African diaspora to invest what capital and skills it had in building the Congo. Arghiri Emmanuel made similar recommendations to Antoine Gizenga, Lumumba’s former deputy prime minister who led the rebel socialist Free Republic of Congo from December 12th 1960 to January 1962.

Writing about Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange, Jairus Banaji noted that it is “the closest Marxist counterpart I can think of to Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth”.

For the Caracas-based La Minka collective, culture and bread-baking go hand in hand with the project of making a socialist commune.

Vladimir Lenin made many valuable contributions to Marxist political economy.

Hegel frequently practices self-censorship in his published texts, sometimes quite deliberately, sometimes unconsciously.

Paul Robeson, speaking of the scientific achievements of the West which have formed the bedrock of its claim to supremacy, posed a question for the 20th century: “having found the key, has Western man—Western bourgeois man—sufficient strength left to turn it in the lock?”

It is not easy to explain in such a limited space which philosophical, methodological, and practical features characterize the study of Kunstwissenschaft that arose from the insights won by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and were enriched by Vladimir Lenin, as well as many other scholars and revolutionaries.

Honoré de Balzac is renowned as a prolific literary genius and was one of Marx and Engels’ favourite authors.