Category: Left Politics

In my counter-historical novel Trotsky in Tijuana, being published on the anniversary of his assassination eighty years ago, I attempt to understand Trotsky the man and the political leader by projecting his life into a future he did not live to see.

Sherry Wolf interviews Donna Murch, activist and author of “Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland,” about the Black Lives Matter uprising and questions of organization, solidarity, and strategy.

The centering of “saving the middle class” in presidential politics not only left open the possibility of direction of anger and misunderstanding towards the racialized poor, but encouraged it.

A bumper sticker displayed with increasing resonance these days reads: “2020, any responsible adult.” This is undoubtedly the mood of Democratic Party voters as was made abundantly clear by the abrupt collapse of the Sanders momentum.

Growing numbers of individuals and growing social movements that have broken with the ideology that there is no alternative to neoliberalism (TINA) and acting on the belief that there is a liberatory alternative to racial capitalism is central to raising the social cost.

Turning points in history are very rare. We are now living in the midst of one, with the two months of virtually continuous protests against police abuse, the criminal injustice system, and for a human society that have swept the U.S. as well other parts of the world since the police murder of George Floyd on May 25.

The wave of hope that emerged during those years was defeated by the retreat of workers’ struggle after the incredible climax of 2010-15 and the defeat of the left within the Syriza party by the coalition of forces united under the banner of staying in the Eurozone at any cost.

My late comrade and esteemed New Politics editorial board member Joanne Landy steadfastly insisted she’d never vote for a Democratic Party candidate, preferring a protest vote for the Green Party. “But I’ll never join that party,” she insisted.

Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and possibly other federal agencies are deployed in Portland as this article is being written. They are assisting the Portland Police Bureau to brutally squash the rebellion against business as usual.

The far left joined the progressives in supporting Senator Bernie Sanders, a liberal in the New Deal mold who ran as a “socialist” against the “billionaire class.” But since Sanders dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden, many on the far left have felt they have no candidate.

If the activists that Bernie Sanders inspired are to continue to consider winning the presidency as a pivotal condition for transforming democratic power and the state, that achievement entails winning the African American vote in the Democratic primary.

The Online Summer Institute titled “The Syrian Revolution: A History from Below” is a webinar series about grassroots politics, class struggles, and state violence in Syria since the 1970s up until the present.

Herman Benson, veteran socialist activist and fighter for rank-and-file democracy in the labour movement, died on 2 July, aged 104. Herman was the second-to-last survivor, at least to my knowledge, of the “first generation” of “third camp” socialists.

The experience of the 2013 Turkish uprising in Gezi Park opened possibilities for the rise of new Left in Turkey and offers lessons for the U.S. in the midst of its own anti-racists uprising

Whether you have one foot in the realignment-is-possible camp or your eyes are firmly on the prize of workers’ own party makes a difference in how you organize and on what you’ll do at crucial forks in the road. The Democratic establishment will fight back. What is our plan when they do?

An exploration of the meaning and implications of “campism.”

The relationship between Russia and the left from 1917.

A review of a collection of articles from the early years of The Socialist Register.

The Communist Manifesto never seems to go out of style for very long.

How socialists in organizations outside of the Sanders campaign operate and what this situation demands of us.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president has changed politics as we know it.