Subjects Archives: Socialism

“We have relations of domination, new ways in which imperialism manifests itself. That’s the reality of Europe, not the fairy stories of an alliance of nations, overcoming national borders, becoming one big, happy family.”

Commune activist Gerardo Rojas remembers Chavez’s proposals for the construction of socialism and uses them to analyze the government’s current attempts to revitalize the economy.

“There are two things I will never accept, colonialism and racism. What many people do not realize is that Europe’s wealth is built on five centuries of exploitation of third world peoples, and that there is something like a historical obligation of reparation, of solidarity at least.”

The originality of Marx’s Capital is often underestimated. Countless commentaries have appeared, but only a few have taken the full measure of Capital’s truly unique and counter-intuitive outlook. Critics generally assume that Marx was pursuing familiar questions of economics or philosophy in a fresh way–that his aim was to explain profits, history, or ontology.

Project Cybersyn was an ambitious political and economic project introduced by Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile in the early 1970s. It was an experiment of socialist design that attempted to harness pioneering cybernetic models of complex systems to run a national economy.

Labour needs to develop a socialist strategy that goes beyond a single election manifesto. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin look at the challenge of state transformation.

What might socialist development look like? Mainstream conceptions of development deem capital accumulation the bedrock upon which to achieve human development. In these conceptions of change, labouring classes are regarded as fuel for the development motor, which in turn justifies their exploitation and oppression. In contrast, how would a non-exploitative socialist development strategy be operationalised? This article advances a 10-point plan for sustainable socialist transformation.

The Egyptian-born social scientist and activist Samir Amin wrote extensively on political economy and the challenges for the peripheral capitalist states. He died in a Paris, France hospital on 12 August 2018 at the age of 86.

Here’s what they don’t teach: When the blind-deaf visionary learned that poor people were more likely to be blind than others, she set off down a pacifist, socialist path that broke the boundaries of her time—and continues to challenge ours today.

The Social Wealth Fund plan is insidious in the sense that it has the capacity to redirect vast amounts of energy and resources toward a goal presented as “socialist” when in reality it is fundamentally incompatible with socialism. We must bring the discussion out into the open to prevent such seductive ideas from compromising the basic vision and integrity of socialism.

Our global ecological crisis has created an increasing interest in Marx’s theory of metabolic rift as a crucial aspect of capitalism (Foster 2013). To appreciate fully how capitalism creates this rift, it is important to examine the human metabolic relation with nature in general and theoretical terms.

A history of the left in the Labour Party highlights the need for a strong extra-parliamentary movement, argues Chris Nineham.

VA’s Jeanette Charles reviews Maroon Comix, a book that tells the tales of maroons’ fight for freedom and self-determination and their legacy for today’s struggles.

Longtime revolutionary activist Kwame Somburu made it a point throughout his life to stress the “scientific” in socialist. During a time of confusion regarding what socialism is, Kwame’s insistence has never been more crucial.

Samir Amin transcends all borders capital creates to divide peoples struggling against exploiters, against all divisive politics, against all sectarian ideologies, which serve imperialism. Samir Amin stands for a modern life for peoples while opposes all backward ideas and ideologies serving exploiters.

While many countries claim to be protect civil rights and democracy, their ties to imperialism ensure silence in such moments. They predictably failed to denounce the assassination attempt, even after signing international agreements defining an attempt on the life of a head of state as a “terrorist act.”

The spectre of socialism is again haunting world politics.

Young people are turning to socialism, and Democratic Party politicians are adopting the term. But what is socialism?

Recovering the socialist character of Chavismo in Venezuela depends on activating its latent revolutionary component. This, in turn, hinges on re-encountering the aspiration toward substantive democracy and communal control of production that was once more present in the movement.

Democratic Party elites are increasingly concerned the midterm elections will be a “base election” and make their centrist politics even more irrelevant, as insurgent candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez garner widespread support.