Category: American Politics

How GM Destroyed Poletown

The story of the construction of the Poletown plant is illustrative of the collaboration between big business and government, the failures of business unionism, and the shortcomings of liberals and the Communist Party

review

A Progressive Analysis of Veterans and Veterans Affairs

Betsy Zucker reviews Gordon et al.’s book “Our Veterans,” on the veterans’ healthcare in the US and the threat of privatization.

review

Recognizing the Counterrevolution!

Frances Fox Piven reviews and praises Stephen Steinberg’s book Counterrevolution, on the rise of the racist right in the US, attacking the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement.

review

Rage Against the Machine

Chicago Democratic Politics and their Contradictions

Guy Miller reviews Gordon K. Mantler’s “The Multiracial Promise,” an account and analysis of Harold Washington’s mayoralty in Chicago in the 1980s.

I’m Sick to Death of Florida’s Racism

Before the Florida Department of Education issued its curriculum directive that slavery in the United States did, after all, produce “personal benefits” for the enslaved in the form of a well-stocked resumé of trades, useful after Emancipation in 1863, the board members might have consulted a seminal document in the literature of the oppressed—Angela Davis’s 1971 essay, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.”

Cornel West for President? What Does the Left Think? Part 1

West’s candidacy will take place in the left lane of American politics usually occupied by other groups such as the Green Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Kali Akuno to Get 2023 Peace Award

Kali and his fellow members of Cooperation Jackson are creating a model for how the rest of us might be able to achieve peace on and with Earth.

Constitutions Are the Problem

An excerpt from We the Elites: Why the US Constitution Serves the Few. Direct self-organization makes a constitutional system unnecessary while simultaneously dismantling the rule of property.

The 2022 Midterms

We Are Not Back to Normal, We Are Facing Normalization

Dan La Botz analyzes the 2022 US Midterm elections and challenges facing the left.

Moore v. Harper

A Case that Threatens Democracy

Legal scholar Elizabeth Rapaport discusses the dangers to democracy posed by the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case Moore v. Harper.

Far Right Politicians Become a Power in the U.S. Congress

A Klan march in Washington, D.C. in 1925.
The far right has for the first time in a hundred years established itself as a force in the U.S. Congress. A group of just ten percent of the Republicans in Congress now . . .

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Mike Davis (1946-2022): Miscellaneous Encounters with “A Real Marxist”

Mike Davis, the revolutionary socialist social and culture critic, has died. 

The United States in Crisis

Homeless Camp

Colin Wilson, website editor for rs21 (revolutionary socialism in the 21st century), interviewed Natalia Tylim and Phil Gasper in July about the upheavals, dangers and opportunities facing socialists in the US today.

The End of Roe v. Wade

Legal scholar Elizabeth Rapaport analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Book Review: Two Failures of Vision

Doug Greene, A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism. Washington: 2021. 260 pages. Notes. Bibliography. No index.
Doug Greene has written his critical political biography of Michael Harrington, in large part it seems because he wants . . .

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The Necessity of Organizing DSA Members as Workers

Lastly, the synthesis of skills, experience, and political perspective required in the labor movement, and thereby in DSA’s labor work, are all ultimately based on the experience of organizing in the workplace and in the union.

Biden and the Democrats Face Potential Disaster; Sanders Calls for a New Course

Today, despite a strong start in his first few months, Biden finds himself and his party failing on every front, opening up the prospect of a Republican victory in the mid-term elections for House and Senate on November 8 this year.

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