Author: Phil Gasper

The Unions Our Educators & Communities Deserve

This action dialogue on Monday, May 3 will focus on the many roles of unions during these increasingly complex times for educators, learners, families, and communities. Speakers include New Politics editorial board member Lois Weiner.

Political lessons the left should learn from Donald Trump

The issues that gave rise to Trump still exist, and so far, they aren’t being adequately addressed by the Biden administration. Meanwhile, the Trump wing continues its domination of the Republican Party. The country is still deep in the woods.

Biden, Borders and the Fight for Migrant Rights

Join us for this online event on Sunday, April 25, 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT. Sponsored by: New Politics, puntorojo, Rampant, and Tempest.

Postmortem on Bessemer Amazon Defeat

It is important to look at the union’s strategy, comparing it to both other failed campaigns (especially of the UAW in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky), but also to a variety of mostly less publicized campaigns which were in fact successful.

On Gramsci’s Fall: A Review

In Nora Bossong’s latest novel, Gramsci’s Fall, we meet forty-six-year-old Anton Stöver whose marriage is falling apart with extra-marital affairs coming to a close and a career in a German university at a dead end.

One Hundred Years of the Russian NEP – Lessons for Cuba

The lesson of the Russian NEP is that economic liberalization does not necessarily signify the democratization of a country, and that it may be accompanied by the elimination of democracy.

The Only Treatment is Freedom: Mumia Abu-Jamal and COVID

The inextricable link between incarceration and standards of democracy in a country led the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to observe that, “The degree of civilization in society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

The New Cold War With China

The West’s Greatest Folly

Once again, anti-communism is being used to stage a new Cold War. China is viewed as a systemic rival that should be denied access to technology and hampered in its access to markets. The goal is military containment and encirclement.

When Your Enemy’s Enemy is Not a Friend

The problem with the campist perspective is that it so fixates on the role of imperialism and places so much emphasis on its ‘anti-imperialist camp’ that it ends up taking a very forgiving view of oppressive regimes.

Thomas Piketty and Karl Marx: Two totally different visions of Capital

Piketty proposes a scenario that suggests capital has been present from the origins of humanity and that revenue from a savings account held by a limited-income retired person is the same as revenue derived from capital.

The coup that wasn’t: Why Donald Trump failed to steal the White House

Trump’s attempts to retain office despite losing the election failed for a simple reason: the complete absence of any interest among leading capitalists or state bureaucrats to eradicate or even weaken the Constitutional order in order to extend Trump’s presidency.

Navalny and the protests: some clarification

This is a mobilization of very diverse discontent and aspirations that are expressed for the moment in a surge of solidarity from a people recovering their dignity. Navalny is not the leader but the detonator— the Navalny who risked his life to show that we could resist.

Against the Global Police State

It is not only in the US that we see the fusion of Big Tech with militarized police forces and the slide into anti-democratic and authoritarian political systems. These are worldwide trends rooted in the structural contradictions of contemporary global capitalism.

Authoritarianism and Resistance in India

Samantha Agarwal discusses the foundations of BJP rule in India and prospects for resistance. (From our Summer 2020 issue.)

Anti-communism with Chinese characteristics

Replacing one capitalist empire with another is futile

Any form of anti-imperialist politics that focuses on nations invariably arrives at pitting one of the faces of capitalism against another, which can only ever reproduce the very system it claims to fight.

Defend Iranian Woman Labor Leader Parvin Mohammadi

On December 21, 2020, the Iranian government sentenced Parvin Mohammadi, in absentia, to a year in prison on charges of “sedition.” She has refused to go to prison, continues to challenge the authorities, and has now gone into hiding.

Remembering Martin Luther King’s Last, Most Radical Book

King links race and class as the twin pillars of the capitalist exploitation that is the generator of poverty, economic inequality, spiritual disenchantment, and racial animosity in America and across the world.

The Invasion of Capitol Hill

Decaying Institutions, Rightwing Insurrection, and the Need for a Mass Movement

The rise of the radical right is based on interrelated but distinct dynamics: market capitalism’s destructiveness; the Left’s failure to respond to market capitalism; and the Right’s ability to sustain the belief that the Left is still a threat.

Is it still fascism if it’s incompetent?

It would be devastatingly stupid, complacent beyond belief, to expect US democracy to remain sufficiently stable in the coming years to deny this incipient fascism more opportunities to congeal, and grow.

Our Most-Viewed Articles of 2020

Here are some of our most-viewed articles from the past year. They don’t represent the full-range of issues covered by New Politics or the full-range of perspectives that you will find on our website and in our pages, but they do give an idea of what was on the minds of our readers.

The empire strikes back: Joe Biden’s plan to restore U.S. hegemony

Biden is proposing to combine Obama’s muscular multilateralism with Trump’s focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia. This augurs not the peace that liberals hoped for, but a dangerous reassertion of U.S. imperial power.

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