Probably the most sophisticated expression of the postmodern theory that has been used to support the idea that the World Social Forum should not organise struggles and should remain merely a space is that of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra in Portugal. Read more...

Postmodernism is not yet the dominant form of bourgeois thought. But it is, increasingly, the predominant form of critical academic thought. A Marxist critique of postmodernism has to challenge its intellectual core and uncover its material roots. The aims of this article are: to summarise the theory which underpins postmodernism; to offer a Marxist critique of that theory; and to explain the material roots of its plausibility.\n“The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art or social class, the ‘crisis’ of Leninism, social democracy or the welfare state etc. etc.); taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism.”(Frederick Jameson)1 Read more...

To mark the centenary of the death of Fredrick Engles, Dave Stockton chronicles Marx and Engles' fight for scientific socialism the rank of the early German workers' movement and explains the lasting Read more...

Leon Trotsky’s writings are a rich source of advice to activists about how to solve difficult political problems. Keith Harvey draws attention to his insights Read more...