Subjects Archives: Philosophy

RON JACOBS welcomes the political lessons for today, about organisation and withdrawal from conflict, made by an erudite and conversational biography.

A philosophy of contradictions.

A lot of contemporary scientific views are essentially dialectical. They don’t use that language.

Johanna Fernandez left a powerful and revolutionary legacy through her scholarship and activism.

The beauty of Marx’s analysis in ecological terms is that he provided the only theoretical approach that connected society and nature.

A new exhibition struggles to explain how the Marxist anti-imperialist became one of the most influential artists of all time, further commercialising her legacy.

The struggles over what kind of place we inhabit and what kind of people we want to be is a form of general political and social struggle that is central to what socialist consciousness must embrace. It is oppositional to the alienated and exclusionary nationalism that frequently attaches to the toxic form of developmentalism that too often corrupts anticapitalist politics.

Apolinario Mabini is the most neglected or ignored figure in the pantheon of heroes of the revolution against Spain and the United States.

Pre-capitalist societies even in normal times have been characterized by a degree of deference by the common people towards the intelligentsia; this was strengthened by the role played by the intelligentsia during the anti-colonial struggle and the period of post-independence dirigisme in countries like India.

At the Marxism 2026 conference in Toronto last month, Ian Angus spoke at a release event for his new book, Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth System, out now from Monthly Review Press.

Marx and Engels demonstrated that ideas arise from material social relations rather than existing independently of them. Gramsci showed how those ideas, once institutionalised within culture, help reproduce the very material relations from which they emerged.

The government made a great decision to nominate the Governor of Bihar Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd.) to represent the country at the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

How can movements confront a digital capitalism that has become technologically advanced to an unprecedented degree?

Born in Bradford and shaped by northern art-school discipline, David Hockney brought a working-class, almost punk refusal to British art: do the work, trust the eye, do not ask for approval.

If Marx in Capital lays bare the “hidden” abode of capitalist production, Joyce, in Ulysses, lays bare the hidden (yet all-too-visible) abode of modern reproduction, the arena that’s both the starting and end point of progressive politics, decreeing its victory or defeat.

Toward a method of critical inquiry.

On the centenary of her birth, JOHN GREEN celebrates the life—and politics—of Marilyn Monroe.

CounterSpin interview with Karma Chávez on academic freedom.

Anybody who’s ever leafed through Finnegans Wake will quickly recognize that we’re not dealing here with a standard novel, just as anybody leafing through Marx’s Capital will know we’re not dealing with standard economics.

Welcome to the sixth entry in the Marx in Moments series. These are three-minute reads examining key Marxist concepts in a clear and accessible way. This week, we focus on so-called primitive accumulation — Marx’s account of the violence that made capitalism possible, and the reason he insisted on those first two words.