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Debating Electoral Strategy in the Comintern, 1920: The Bulgarian Situation
Reviewing the debates over electoral strategy at the Second Congress of the Comintern, Donald Parkinson reviews the strategies of the Bulgarian Communist Party and their arguments against electoral abstentionism. The early Bulgarian Communist party is often forgotten, with little in the way of historiography. This is shocking considering that it was one of the only …
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Considerations on the Basis of the Socio-Political, Economic and Cultural Development of the Turkic Peoples of Asia and Europe by Mirsaid Sultan Galiev
Translation and introduction by Örsan Şenalp and Asim Khairdean The below is an attempt to provide an English translation of one of the key texts of the visionary militant Mirsaid Sultan Galiev, written between 1923 – 25 titled Some of our Considerations on the Basis of the Socio-political, Economic, and Cultural Development of the Turkish People …
Whose Democracy?: An Introduction to Oligarchy in the United States
The United States is a mockery of what democracy is supposed to be. J.R. Murray unpacks the reality of a corrupt system that is designed to empower the rich against the working class majority. In the eyes of global elites and much of the populations they govern, liberal democracy’s defeat of Fascism and Communism in …
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Why Define Fascism?: In Defence of Making Distinctions
Jacob Smith argues that if the left wishes to take fascism seriously we shouldn’t use the term lightly but with precision. Some weeks ago Natasha Lennard, Intercept correspondent and author of a forthcoming book from Verso, Being Numerous: Essays On Non-Fascist Life, was making the rounds on lefty podcasts. While fascism was the topic of …
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Latino Radicals and the Communist Party in the New Communist Movement: A Case Study of Two Oral Histories
Josh Morris discusses the experiences of Latino/Latina organizers in the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan and CPUSA, covering an often ignored aspect of US Communist history. On June 20th of this year, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) will celebrate its 100th-year-anniversary founding at their old hometown in Southside Chicago. There, …
Post-Insurrectionary Strategy
Jacob Richter weighs in on the Kautsky debate centering around revolutionary strategy, arguing for a balance of power approach. Earlier this year a series of articles in Jacobin on the Marxism of Karl Kautsky triggered a discussion of socialist strategy. It took a while for an article on Karl Kautsky (when he was a Marxist) …
The Grey Tree of Post-Keynesianism and Monetarism: The Classical Account, Inflation, and Unemployment
Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina takes a look at Keynesianism and Modern Monetary Theory and argues they are based on an idealistic notion of science. “I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt!” — Job 38:11 New Living Translation “Theory, my friend, is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.” …
Critique of the Saltsjöbaden Agreement
Translation by Emma Anderson of a pamphlet by Gösta Kempe from 1939. We publish this as a document of workers struggle against reactionary union laws that promote class cooperation and a demonstration that questions of procedure are also political questions. The following pamphlet was written in 1939, right after the Saltsjöbaden Agreement had been signed …
Cosmic Imagination in Revolutionary Russia
Before the rise of the Soviet Space Program, utopian visions of space travel existed alongside serious scientific work to make it a reality. Donald Parkinson explores the culture of space exploration that existed both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution and how it laid the groundwork for Sputnik. Common sense tells us that the Soviet …
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The Winnipeg General Strike: from Revolt to Revolution?
Medway Baker analyzes the Winnipeg General Strike, possibly the height of class struggle in Canada, for its centennial. Today marks the hundred-year anniversary of the beginning of the Winnipeg General Strike. An icon of the Canadian socialist mythology, the Winnipeg General Strike is emblematic of the 1919 Canadian labour revolt and the reformation of the …
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Leon Trotsky and Cultural Revolution
Doug Enaa Greene argues that in Trotsky’s work a theory of cultural revolution can be found, one which differs from Mao Zedong’s that was developed in the context of the Russian Revolution and its struggle against bureaucracy. The argument that a “cultural revolution” is a necessary part of a socialist revolution is generally associated with …
The Retrograde Left
J.R. Murray argues that the left must abandon the micro-sect form of organization derived from a false reading of the true meaning of Bolshevism, or else we will continue to exist in an endless cycle of self-marginalization. It was only 28 years ago that liberal democracy triumphed and the fall of the USSR ushered in …