Current IssueFrom the Editors
In this issue we are proud to present a previously unpublished lecture by C.L.R. James, the noted Afro-Caribbean Marxist intellectual. His discussion of Oliver Cox’s book Caste, Class, and Race, first published in 1948, brings an historic Black socialist voice to illuminate some of the issues that face our own times and the demand that Black Lives Matter. Washington and Moscow: Halt the Bombing and Stop Supporting Dictators in the Middle East!
A Discussion of the Sanders CampaignWinter 2016
Bernie Sanders and the Dilemma of the Democratic “Party”
The Sanders Campaign and the Left
Symposium on InequalityWinter 2016Introduction
Inequality has become a defining issue of our time, with political commentators of all stripes discussing its causes, effects, and possible solutions. Thomas Piketty’s 2013 work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, set off a chain reaction of books, journal articles, conferences, and debates focusing on questions of inequality. We intend to push this critique further. The Systemic EdgeAn Interview with Saskia Sassen
The Rise of the Servant Society
Debt, Underemployment, and CapitalismThe Rise of Twenty-First-Century Serfdom
The Roots of the Modern Housing Crisis
Introduction
In 1971 the Institute of the Black World (IBW) was at a crossroads. Founded in 1969 by historian Vincent Harding, literary scholar Stephen Henderson, and other scholars in the colleges that comprised the Atlanta University Center (AUC), as well as with the support of leading national researchers of the African American experience, the IBW served as the intellectual wing of the Martin Luther King Center. The Class Basis of the Race Question in the United States
Turkey, Kurdistan, and RojavaWinter 2016Prospects for TurkeyA Historical Perspective
A Commune in Rojava?
The Kurds, Bookchin, and the Need to Reinvent Revolution
Who Wins From “Climate Apartheid”?African Climate Justice Narratives About the Paris COP21
Wealth Extraction, Governmental Servitude, and Social Disintegration in Colonial Puerto Rico
Podemos and the 15M Language Community
Radical Art: Art Young and the Cartoons of American Socialism
Social Capital and Class
The American Dream, that fantasy of growth that has long girded the ideology of entrepreneurship and a better future, is in crisis. Many haven’t felt the dream for decades, some never having experienced it at all. Robert Putnam, in his latest work, Our Kids, seeks to confront this stagnation in our economic dreams by interrogating the forces that have taken hold of communities across the United States. An Insider’s Look at What it Takes to Get By
In 2001, Professor Danny Dorling wrote an essay entitled “Anecdote Is the Singular of Data.” In it he explored how, during his teenage years, he grasped the idea that the places people live impact the lives they lead. Dorling opens the essay by describing a pedestrianized subway near his childhood home. The subway had four entrances, each leading from a different housing development. Who’s in Charge?The Power Structure and Foreign Policy
The godfather of macro-level power structure research in the United States was the sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of The Power Elite (1956). What Is This Thing Called Leninism?
First, allow me to come clean: I count Paul Le Blanc as a friend and comrade and am in his debt—along with Peter Hudis, author of Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism (Haymarket, 2013)—for inviting me to join the editorial board of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg being published by Verso Books. And I am in agreement with many of the positions on politics and historical matters that Le Blanc expresses in Unfinished Leninism. The Intelligent Human’s Guide to Socialism
This is the book many socialists have been waiting for, although we probably didn’t know it. In just over 150 pages it describes the core socialist ideas in a clear, highly accessible way. The fact that the book is frequently laugh-out-loud funny makes it even better. Socialism … Seriously is written for people who are new to socialism and want to find out what it’s all about. The first question about a book that sets out to explain socialism is, of course, what the author means by socialism. The Party of “Peace and Justice”
First, full disclosure: I read most of Jack Ross’s The Socialist Party of America in draft. Although it is normally not good policy to then review the book, I felt I could express my respect for what Jack Ross is attempting and share my concerns in a way that could serve a useful purpose. A Bottom-Up History, Not a Comfortable Reinforcement
Agustín Guillamón is a dedicated anarcho-syndicalist activist whose partisanship has not affected his critical sensitivities nor prevented him from graphically outlining what he regards as the errors and inconsistencies of the Spanish libertarian left. Happiness Is PoliticalWilliam Thompson’s Utilitarian Argument for Democratic Work
”Happiness is political,” is the opening line of Kaswan’s provocative book on William Thompson’s theory on the social nature of happiness and its ramification for organizing a just society. Kaswan introduces the reader to Thompson (1775-1833) as “perhaps the paradigmatic case of a traitor to his class.” Thompson was the only son of a wealthy merchant in Cork, Ireland; however as a political theorist, he developed ideas of the Enlightenment in a liberatory direction, calling for the elimination of subordination in all its manifestations. |
Blogs & On-Line FeaturesStrong headwinds are making France a stormy sea
![]() “The 49-3 is a brutality. The 49-3 is a denial of democracy.” Despite François Hollande’s opinions on this article of the French constitution in 2006, his government under Manuel Valls (who had himself been among the MPs proposing it be suppressed in 2008) used it to force through the unpopular law proposed by Minister for Labour Myriam El Khomri on May 10. This provoked an immediate reaction from the coordinating committee of workers’ and students unions calling days of national mobilisation and strikes on May 12, May 17, May 19, to continue on May 26 and June 14. [1] Media Blackout As France Witnesses Biggest Revolution In 200 Years
As France prepare to host millions of visitors at the Euro 2016 Football Championships, a state of emergency has been extended in the country as it faces its largest protests in recent history. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets in France, amounting to what some are calling the new French Revolution amid a total media blackout in Western news outlets. Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Muhammad Ali
I grew up in the Great Depression era and so I grew up with Joe Louis. That was my marker. If you walked down the street when he was having a fight, every radio in every house was tuned to that fight. You could hear the fight walking down the street, literally. So, of course, Blacks were very proud of him. And certainly having Joe Louis as the heavyweight champion you felt thrilled on the one hand, but on the other hand you felt ashamed because he was a very humble man and didn't push against the barriers, which were much stronger then, of course. Still we thought that with his fame, he might have pushed harder against those barriers. An Open Letter from Jill Stein to California VotersAll Hands on Deck! Two Ways To Build The Revolution in the CA Primary
![]() California voters have a chance to put us on the road to revolutionary change in the June 7 primary. At this historic moment, as voters reject the Clinton and Trump campaigns with record high levels of dislike and mistrust, I ask not just for your vote for me, but also for your vote for Bernie. These votes are powerfully synergistic as we build an historic grassroots movement and a political vehicle to carry it forward. The Champ in Our Corner
After Muhammad Ali refused induction--we had the champ in our corner. When in June of 1963 I graduated from Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach, just south of San Diego, California, I went to my local Selective Service Board—the draft board—and registered as a conscientious objector. My paternal grandfather, a Dutch immigrant and baker, was a socialist pacifist and his four sons had registered as conscientious objectors (C.O.s) in World War II and two of them—my father Herb and my uncle Bert—had been drafted and had done what was called alternative service (the alternative to serving in the military) at a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Big Flats, near Elmira, New York.
The End of Europe
The process of European unification is undergoing a deep crisis, certainly the deepest since it started at the beginning of the 1950s. In less than a year, the EU faced two major tests—first the Greek quarrel, then the refugee crisis — that revealed its true face: a mixture of impotence, unwillingness, egoism, arrogance and cynicism. It is not a pretty spectacle. No illusions can remain about this entity that, far from embodying the federal ideal, has become an empty shell, an object of shame and deserved sarcasm. Those who still ritually proclaim its virtues are the representatives of a highly discredited political elite who seem to no longer have any culture or values. The more they assert their belief in the EU, the more they disqualify it, even in the eyes of the millions of people who have never felt any sympathy for conservatism, nationalism and xenophobia. Little Insurrections: A fond farewell to New York’s Peace Pentagon
Nearly 20 years ago, as I left the War Resisters League, or WRL, offices in lower Manhattan for the first time, I noticed that my fingertips were covered in black soot and ink. My hands were full of tracts and leaflets, and I had been looking through nonviolence training materials for the last hour. I tried to rub the dirt off onto my jeans, but it wouldn’t budge and later even soap and water had to work really hard. Biden-Warren Ticket Could Blow Up the Democratic Party
Douglas Schoen, a former advistor to Bill Clinton, predicts in a column in the Wall Street Journal that Hillary Clinton may not be her party’s nominee. He suggests that if Sanders wins California, which he may well do, Clinton, with her legal problems and negative ratings in the polls, may be dumped and the convention could choose Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Schoen says in a Fox News interview that Biden is “chomping at the bit.” This scenario may be unikely, in a year when politics has brought us many unlikely developents, but it's worth thinking through. Certainly Sanders' supporters should think about how they would react to such a development.
Mexican Teachers 'Indefinite General Strike' Faces Severe Repression
The National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE) and allied dissident groups in the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE) declared a general, indefinite strike on May 16. Tens of thousands of teachers left their classrooms, shutting down many schools in four states: Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán. There have also been protests in the State of Morelos and the State of Mexico.
The Left of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) Unites to Form Platform A
This is a translation of a statement by the Left Tendencies of the French New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) that are grouped under Platform A, originally published in La Izquierda Diario on January 27, 2016. In the indicative vote taken at the NPA’s National Political Council meeting, the platform of the left tendencies came in first with 45% of the vote, beating those presented by François Sabado and Olivier Besancenot (38%) and Alain Krivine and Philippe Poutou (16%). The NPA National Conference confirms the decision of its Third Congress [January 2015] to present an NPA candidate in the presidential elections. The text that follows defines the political framework of this candidacy. This Is What Insurgency Looks Like
![]() In a small church in the Albany, New York's low-income, predominantly African-American South End, forty people were gathered for a community meeting. They were organizing a protest against trains carrying potentially explosive oil -- dubbed by the residents "bomb trains" -- that were running through their neighborhood. City Counselor Vivian Kornegay told the group that many municipalities had opposed the bomb trains and other dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure, but had little power to protect their residents; it was up to a "people's movement" to do so. "What we want is for all of us to be free, healthy, and safe -- and for our planet to be a better place to live."
The French Stand Up
[Montpellier, May 26, 2016] “We’ve had enough” is the phrase on everyone’s lips as – against all expectations -- the wave of strikes, blockades, disruptions and mass demonstrations begun eleven days ago continues to develop throughout France. Indeed, in the past couple of days, two new strategic groups of workers have joined the protest. Technicians at France’s nuclear power plants are now cutting back on production of electricity, and the railroad workers have massively joined the street protests while cutting back on trains. Meanwhile, there are long lines at the gas pumps as petroleum workers continue to blockade France’s major oil refineries. Brazil: the coup d’état – After the 1964 tragedy, the sad 2016 farce
Let’s call a spade a spade. What has just happened in Brazil, with the dismissal of the elected president, Dilma Rousseff, is a coup. A coup which is pseudo-legal, “constitutional”, “institutional”, parliamentary, anything you want, but a coup all the same. New Jersey anti-BDS bill is an affront to the first amendment and basic human rights
On May 9, 2016, the New Jersey State Senate approved by a vote of 39-0 S1923, a bill prohibiting the investment of state pension and annuity funds in companies that boycott Israel or Israeli businesses. One of the bill's sponsors was liberal stalwart and Democratic Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg. Among the co-sponsors were Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Republican Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. There is a similar bill in the Assembly, A925, still in committee. [Update: The bill was released by the Assembly committee on May 19, 2016.] Both bills are an affront to basic principles of human rights that many NJ liberals seem to support everywhere else in the world except when it comes to Israel-Palestine. And both bills are an affront as well to the First Amendment. What’s Left of the Lesser Evil?: A Foreign Policy Critique
The Question of the Lesser Evil In a recent article for Counterpunch, Gary Leupp details the long history of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record and concludes with the question: is the possibility of her winning the general election in November 2016 really that much less frightening than the possibility that Donald Trump does? Here, we want to explore a potential answer to that question. |