Subjects Archives: Socialism

Many wonder how it is possible, following the democratic governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula, and Dilma Rousseff, that Brazilians have elected as President a shady federal deputy and die-hard defender of the military dictatorship that ruledthe country 1964-1985.

In an interview with Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Jeremy Corbyn said international efforts challenging economic injustice and inequality is needed.

In the West, since at least the myth of Gaea, the earth has been seen as something feminine. For ecofeminists, the linkage has had profound, and malign, consequences for our treatment both of nature and of women.

An election of “firsts:” Women, LGBTQ, Muslims, African-Americans and Native Americans score seats in the House and Senate.

The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a report earlier this week on “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,” apparently based on the fact that “coincident with the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse,” even though Marx’s birth was in May (1818).

The second round of elections in Brazil will take place Oct. 28, and this time two opponents will face off. On the one side is Fernando Haddad from the Workers’ Party (PT) who promises to continue the project started by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.

“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.