Subjects Archives: Socialism

  • Israeli Socialism and Anti-Zionism: Historical Tasks and Balance Sheet

      A talk delivered at the conference “The Left in Palestine/The Palestinian Left,” School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 28 February 2010 This talk is dedicated to the memory of my late friend and comrade, the Arab Marxist Jabra Nicola (1912-74). The terms “Right” and “Left” as used in Israel are misleading: they do […]

  • A Family Affair: Intergenerational Social Mobility across OECD Countries

      Higher inequality is associated with lower intergenerational mobility.  More progressive taxation, higher unemployment benefits, more childcare and early childhood education, and other measures that reduce inequality promote social mobility.  Tracking, ability-grouping, and pushing disadvantaged students into vocational education hinder it.  Poorer students have better chances of overcoming their socioeconomic backgrounds in systems where “larger […]

  • Don’t be BAMBOOZLED by the BudgetA University of Washington for the Elite and the Superwealthy? Not On Our Backs!

      Democracy Insurgent is a majority people-of-color activist group animated by principles of democracy, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, queer liberation, Third World Feminism, and workers’ power.  We are based in Seattle, Washington.  We are a member group of the UW Student Worker Coalition.  Find out more at <nobudgetcutsuw.blogspot.com> and <democracyinsurgent.org>.  Contact us at <[email protected]>. | | Print […]

  • A Socialist View of Sexuality and Liberation?

    Sherry Wolf.  Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation.  Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009.  333 pp.  $12. The cover photo on Sherry Wolf’s book shows a protest rally with a woman holding a highlighted rainbow flag.  Radical gay and lesbian activists, one assumes.  Look closely, though, and you’ll see that the woman is […]

  • In Memory of Alistair Hulett, Scottish Singer and Socialist

      Today is my daughter Leila’s fourth birthday, and while this occasion brings my thoughts back to the day she was born, the past 24 hours have otherwise been full of fairly devastating news. If the left can admit to having icons, then two of them have just died.  Yesterday it was the great historian […]

  • Socialism without Jails

    Q. What is your philosophy? I believe, I suppose, in the one that could be called democratic socialism because I believe that we need a society where the motive for the economic system is not corporate profit but the motive is the welfare of people — healthcare, jobs, childcare, and so on — where that […]

  • Venezuela’s Currency Adjustment: Necessary, But Is It Socialist?

    There is little doubt, even among some opposition leaders (who normally oppose just about anything the government does), that the recent currency adjustment of the bolivar was economically necessary.  It is a matter of basic math to realize that if inflation averaged 22% between 2005 and 2009 and each bolivar thereby lost about 72% of […]

  • Check It Out: WSJ Favors Socialist Market Controls After All

      So for the last 2 years the Wall Street Journal has been predicting the total fucking COLLAPSE of the Venezuelan economy because they stubbornly refused to devalue their currency.  Well guess what?  Over the weekend Venezuela finally bit the bullet and devalued the bolivar, so today the Wall Street Journal took their predictable victory […]

  • A Tribute to Baltimore Socialist Bob Kaufman

      In the early morning hours of December 25, 2009, we lost a revolutionary voice.  Bob Kaufman, a life-long fighter for social and economic equality, succumbed after a protracted struggle with health complications stemming from a brutal attack in 2005.  He was 78. Bob’s assailant was a drug-addicted tenant in his West Baltimore home.  After […]

  • Socialism Is the Path to Save the Planet

      15th International Conference of the United Nations on Climate Change, Kingdom of Denmark, Wednesday, 16 December 2009 Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, friends, I promise that I will not talk more than most have spoken this afternoon.  Allow me an initial comment which I would have liked to make as part of the […]

  • Chavez’s Historic Call for a Fifth Socialist International

      Addressing delegates at the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez stated: “the time has come for us to convoke the Fifth International.”  Face with the capitalist crisis and the threat of war that is putting at risk the future of humanity, “the people are clamoring for” […]

  • Socialists, the Environment and Ecosocialism

      Paper presented at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation conference “The Global Crisis and Africa: Struggles for Alternatives,” Randburg, 19 November 2009 There is an ecological crisis in the world and this crisis can be traced to capitalism.  There is deforestation due to the trade in timber.  There is climate change due to unsafe production methods. […]

  • Dismantling the Prisonhouse of Nations: A Socialist Prison Reform Proposal (SPRP)

    The USA: Prisonhouse of Nations The United States deserves the title, the Prisonhouse of Nations:1 The US imprisons more of its citizens than any nation in the world.  As of midyear 2008, over 2.3 million US citizens were behind bars and the prison population continues to expand as a result of the growing inequality and […]

  • Give ‘Em Hell

      In my video work, entitled Give ‘Em Hell (2008), I abruptly reveal today’s situation regarding migration in the UK.  During the course of several days in the summer of 2008, I positioned protest banners on the streets of London and secretly recorded the unfolding scene with a hidden camera from the opposite side of […]

  • Socialism and Welfarism

    Socialism consists not just in building a humane society; it consists not just in the maintenance of full employment (or near full employment together with sufficient unemployment benefits); it consists not just in the creation of a Welfare State, even one that takes care of its citizens “from the cradle to the grave”; it consists […]

  • Capitalist Crisis, Socialist Renewal

    This much is clear: not in a long time has capitalism been so critically questioned in the US and “socialism” so widely debated as a social alternative.  The left can and should seize this moment.  One part of doing that is to formulate a new program — including a new definition of socialism — that […]

  • Ecology, Capitalism, and Socialism

    The keynote address at the “Climate Change, Social Change” conference (organized by Green Left Weekly), Sydney, Australia, 12 April 2008. This address became the basis for John Bellamy Foster, “Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism” (Monthly Review, November 2008), which in turn became the last chapter of The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with […]

  • 21st Century Socialism on the Move — Reflections on “The Path for Human Development”

      Within an otherwise bleak reality of capitalist crisis, Mike Lebowitz has provided us with an eloquent restatement of the case for socialism — The Path for Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism?  This short text is now circulating widely in Venezuela, in Spanish, as a pocket-sized pamphlet, has been published in Monthly Review, and is […]

  • President Chávez and Venezuela’s Socialist Elected Officials Meet to Discuss Political Strategy

    On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez convened state governors, city mayors, and legislators from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to discuss the next stage in the construction of “21st Century Socialism,” following two important electoral victories for Chávez and his supporters over the past four months. Chávez urged governors and mayors to promote […]

  • Is President Obama a Socialist?

    It started in an interview with Chris Wallace during the presidential campaign. According to John McCain, Barack Obama was planning “redistribution of the wealth . . . [and] that’s one of the tenets of socialism.” Although McCain backed off his accusation shortly afterwards, Republicans have since revived it.  Rep. John Boehner, Republican leader in the […]