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.
Author: Phil Gasper
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.
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution
“With this year’s worldwide renewal of the Black Lives Matter protests, readers could hardly ask for a better time to revisit the Haitian Revolution.” Review of Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture.
The Pull of Communist Culture
Martin Comack reviews, The Pull of Politics: Steinbeck, Wright, Hemingway, and the Left in the Late 1930s—Milton Cohen’s account of how the CPUSA attempted to establish relationships with three major American writers.
Hong Kong’s Fight for Democracy
Anyone interested in getting a deeper understanding of how the 2019 Hong Kong rebellion fits into the bigger China picture and what might be coming around the corner, will do themselves a favor by reading Au Loong-Yu’s important new book.
Is socialism winning?
Though Trump lost the election, his base has been strengthened over the course of it. To say now that the Left is winning downplays—perhaps unintentionally—the growing relevance and threat of the Right.
Racism and Capitalism
Because capitalism and racism are intertwined, and because of the role that racism plays in dividing the working class, if we want to fight against capitalism and class inequality, anti-racism has to be at the center of our activity.
A Year of Revolt
Last year a wave of militant protests spread across North Africa and West Asia, in a sustained, historic series of popular struggles. Emma Wilde Botta reviews “A Region in Revolt: Mapping the Recent Uprisings in North Africa and West Asia” edited by Jade Saab.
Being Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels, born 200 years ago on November 28, 1820, has been termed the ‘first Marxist’ in some commentaries and histories from the nineteenth century on, and with good reason.
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