Category: Electoral Politics

Palestinians in Israel at the Polls

Who could have missed Ayman Odeh’s eloquent op-ed piece in the New York Times, where he rightly asserted that “Arab-Palestinian citizens have chosen to reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his politics of fear and hate, and the inequality and division . . .

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One Member/One Vote: CA Health Care Workers Show How To Endorse, Democratically

At the national, state, and even local level, union political endorsements are often made with insufficient membership involvement.
Union leaders and legislative/political directors like to get their favorite candidates endorsed, without too much debate or discussion.
Instead of giving every member a . . .

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Swedish Social Democrats Drift Further Right on Nuclear Ban and the Environment

 
On Friday, July 12, after almost two years of discussion, the Swedish minister of foreign affairs, Margot Wallström of the Social Democratic Party, announced that the government has decided to not sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Wallström gave two reasons why she decided . . .

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What’s Next In Puerto Rico’s Movement for Justice and Democracy

For 14 days this summer, Puerto Ricans engaged in nightly protests that resulted in the ousting of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. The protests—which amassed nearly one-third of the archipelago’s population—were sparked by a leaked chat in which the governor and members . . .

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A Second Look at the Workplace Democracy Plan

The Bernie Sanders presidential campaign presents socialists with an unprecedented opening for explicitly socialist politics. And Sanders’ Workplace Democracy Plan (WDP) represents a coherent set of policies through which to examine that opportunity. In a recent Jacobin article, Barry Eidlin . . .

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Puerto Rico: The Organic Crisis and the Alternatives

The discredit attained by the dominant parties, by the legislature, by the “politicians” and even “politics” itself, defined inaccurately, but viscerally despised by many people, recalls the concept of “organic crisis” advanced by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Authors such . . .

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Climate Change is Growing the Fossil Fuel Industry

U.S. CO2 emissions are 8X the EU’s highest producer, Germany, and 15X-150X the rest. Following our lead would increase pollution. And pollution takes freedom away.

Marxism, the Democratic Republic, and the Undemocratic U.S. Constitution

The debate over socialist strategy that kicked off with Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign has now been going on for almost four years.  Over that time parties to this debate have delved deeper into the history of socialism and Marxism in . . .

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Boris Johnson and Cynical Optimism

It’s easy to be pessimistic. Since 1979 the key industrial battles have all been lost by the left, resulting in the imposition of the economic settlement we now groan under. And while it looked like social liberalism was all-conquering and . . .

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An Eco-Socialist Electoral Politics Strategy for 2020

“What Revolutionary Socialism Means to Me” by Sam Farber (on the Jacobin site) is a fine article and deserves to be studied. However, I believe it lacks a detailed strategy for left engagement in electoral politics especially for the 2020 . . .

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A Possible Road to Independent Leftist Electoral Action

Some months ago, a Gallup poll established that a majority of Americans, 57%, believe there is a need for a third major political party. Granted, this particular poll says nothing about the political orientation of this hypothetical third party. But given how . . .

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Reactionary Populism, meet Great Britain

If you’ve had the displeasure of tuning in to Fox News at any point over the last ten years, you’ll know that they’ve played no small part in turning the U.S. into a right-wing hellscape. A place where male political . . .

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Beyond Bernie

Last November, in one of the most hostile rental markets in the world, in a city where a majority of residents are renters, a local rent control ordinance was defeated on the ballot by a margin of 38 percent. In . . .

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Is a Revolutionary Rupture with Capitalism Possible?

For too long, the radical left has framed debates about reform and revolution in terms bequeathed to us from an era very unlike our own. At the expense of soberly and concretely analyzing the conditions socialists face today in advanced . . .

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On the Istanbul Municipal Elections and Ekrem İmamoğlu’s Victory

In Istanbul the joy was expressed along the two extremes of the Bosphorus, from the district of Besiktas to Kadiköy, through Sisli, Esenler, Beylikdüzü. Klaxons blowing, songs, flags being waved in cars running the avenues — the city has voted . . .

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What Defines Revolutionary Politics? A Response to Dan La Botz

I dislike criticizing my good friend Dan La Botz, but I have to disagree with aspects of his review of The Socialist Manifesto, the new book by Bhaskar Sunkara, our fellow New Politics editorial board member and editor of Jacobin. To me, . . .

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The Socialist Manifesto of Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin: Socialism without Revolution  

Bhaskar Sunkara, the young, left, entrepreneurial genius who founded and publishes Jacobin, has written a book, The Socialist Manifesto, in which he puts himself forward as the spokesperson for his generation’s socialist movement in America. He is certainly in a . . .

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Sudanese and Algerian Uprisings: Vantage Points for Global Solidarity

Let’s build on all the new elements and openings created by the Sudanese and Algerian uprisings. Let’s create regional and international links on this basis to change the course of events in the Middle East and North Africa from endless wars, authoritarian capitalism, religious fundamentalism and imperialism to an emancipatory direction.

Sanders’ “Socialism” Is Old-Fashioned Liberalism

Give Bernie Sanders props for popularizing the term “socialism.” It used to be a conversation stopper. Now it is a conversation starter.
But Sanders isn’t helping the socialist cause by confusing it with the old New Deal liberalism of FDR. As . . .

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Ada Colau Remains Mayor of Barcelona

Ada Colau of Barcelona en Comú (BComú) remains mayor of Barcelona thanks to the promise of a pact with the PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya) whose content is not yet known but which will involve a distribution of power . . .

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South Africa: Something’s Got to Give

The election of a new government should be a time of celebration. 25 years since the end of Apartheid should be the time of immense celebration. Yet, 25 years since the “dawn of democracy” and South Africans are engulfed by . . .

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