Leo Panitch was a genuine organic intellectual. He was a great teacher and a good friend. He should not have left us so soon and so suddenly. But we should all be grateful for what he gave to the left, to his students, to his comrades.
Category: Left Politics
State-Corporatist Alliance and Farmers’ Unrest in India
The ongoing Indian farmers’ protest in reaction to corporatisation of agricultural land and access to Mandis (open markets) demands an urgent legal reexamination of its impact on agrarian labour and small-scale farmers.
Trump Acquitted, Biden Builds Business Support for Relief
While Trump remains a major figure and his mass base a serious problem, today his party is weaker than ever. While Republican disarray benefits Democrats, Biden’s party still faces COVID, economic depression, climate change, and racism.
Union Democracy is Our Goal But Is It Practical? Responding to Nelson Lichtenstein
Nelson Lichtenstein and I agree on two major ideas that I think distinguish our shared viewpoint from the practice of many union officials and some of their supporters on the left.
Biden Moves Ahead as Republicans Line Up Behind Trump
President Joseph Biden, in office for less than a month, continued to move ahead with his plan to solve the American health and economic crises and to reassert U.S. global dominance. As he pushes ahead with his relief program, Republicans have lined up behind Trump.
Unions and Democracy: A Response to Lois Weiner
When I think of the tasks before the labor movement, and even more so the left in general, I think not of how to shift the policy program of the AFT or even of SEIU, but of what it will take to organize Walmart and Amazon and now Google.
Why Does Racism Survive?
Why does this anachronistic ideology survive, and even at times such as these, seemingly flourish? Obviously, the institutions of slavery no longer nourish racism. What then is its wavelike revival rooted in?
review
Looking Back at Maoism and the Global Left
As against nearly a century of debates over Stalinism, the international left has never come to terms with Maoism, especially its global impact.
Biden Will have a Short Honeymoon
The current celebratory mood of the Democrats and the honeymoon with the president is not likely to last long, given both who Biden is and the health and economic challenges that he faces.
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.
Belarus: The People’s Fight Continues
More than ever, the organized popular classes in Belarus must take the initiative in favor of political and social change in order to prevent the frustration of this genuinely popular movement by forces opposed to their interests, whether pro-Russian or pro-Western.
Biden's Inauguration
Challenge for the Left, Launching a Movement against the Washington Status Quo
As Biden enters office, the left must properly reflect on what has been perhaps the most contemptible administration in US history, to launch a movement of our own against the bipartisan neoliberal and imperialist hegemony.
Fighting the Far Right in the Biden Era: Discussion on Sunday, Jan. 24
New Politics is co-sponsoring an online discussion of how the Left can organize to fight the Far Right under the incoming Biden administration, scheduled for Sunday, January 24th at 2:00 pm ET/ 11 am PT.
Towards a Year of Crisis and Uncertainty
Will the left be seen as jeopardizing the desire for a period of stability after the insurrection? Will Black Lives Mater demonstrations seem too extreme? Or might the depth of the crisis combined with pressure from the left push Biden to adopt more far-reaching progressive economic and social policies?
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 2020 Elections in the United States: A Socialist View From Afar
Many of us watching with envy from afar—“envy” because the destruction of democratic institutions has gone much further in our countries—have nothing but admiration for the way in which a would-be dictator has been peacefully overthrown.
Bolivia’s Elections
The Return of Democracy and an Uncertain Future
Bolivia has given the world an impressive lesson in democracy, but reactionary sectors of the country are once again revealing their anti-democratic impulse.
In Puerto Rico, the 2019 Uprising Produces an Electoral Opening Toward the Left
As the eyes of the world were fixated on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico produced a more satisfying and historic outcome for the left after its local election on Nov. 3, 2020.
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.
Venezuela
How did Chavismo win 92% of the National Assembly?
The high abstention indicates that the working majority understood the irrelevance of the election. Voting could not have any impact on the disastrous national situation because the parliament had been de facto deprived of all its functions for several years.
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