For the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, an analysis of Marx’s views on the Commune and its historical possibilities.
Category: Intellectual History
Capturing “the Spirit of Struggle”
Rosa Luxemburg on Literature
Luxemburg’s recognition of the paradoxical push and pull of creative literature speaks to contemporary debates in the context of both a resurgent far right and mass movements against systemic racism.
On Gramsci’s Fall: A Review
In Nora Bossong’s latest novel, Gramsci’s Fall, we meet forty-six-year-old Anton Stöver whose marriage is falling apart with extra-marital affairs coming to a close and a career in a German university at a dead end.
Unions, Democracy, and the Third Camp
Comparing Lessons from New Politics and Herman Benson
An analysis of debates among labor leftists about how a commitment to socialism “from below” should inform union activity.
Karl Marx: Promethean Visionary?
“This small book is a very useful account of how Marx came to develop his materialist conception of history.” Michael Löwy reviews Eric Rahim, “A Promethean Vision: The Formation of Karl Marx’s Worldview” (Glasgow: Praxis Press, 2020).
Revolution in the Twenty-First Century: A Reconsideration of Marxism
Leftists must tolerate disagreements and work together—must even work with left-liberals—because a worldwide transition between modes of production takes an inordinately long time and takes place on many different levels.
What Is COVID-19 Teaching Us About Being Human?
Grocery aisles stand devoid of toilet paper rolls, paper towels, meat, and canned products as panic-stricken urbanites stock their pantries and garages to avoid multiple trips to the supermarket, or maybe even to avoid doomsday scarcity. When people do visit . . .
Review: Zionist Betrayal of Jews, From Herzl to Netanyahu
Stanley Heller’s new book may reveal no surprises to a few well-read scholars of the history of the Middle East. Many readers, however, who believe they know modern history will be surprised and disconcerted. To put it simply, Heller contends . . .
review
The Democratic Quest: Marxism Versus Liberalism
In a recent interview for the Minneapolis Interview Project, August Nimtz asserted that “to exercise political power, we must impose our will through collective action.”* In his new work, Nimtz says much the same when he writes, “If . . .
review
Questions for the International Left
In anxious anticipation of the Brexit referendum, then U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron summed up the philosophy of politics that drives him and so many who occupy the command posts of power: “I divide the world into team . . .
review
A Radical New Politics of Surrogacy?
Sophie Lewis’ new book Full Surrogacy Now, published by Verso, has gotten a lot of attention in left media circles. Lewis was interviewed on Jacobin Radio’s The Dig
From the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to Black Lives Matter
On SNCC’s 60th Anniversary
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began as an organization of students from black colleges in the South to integrate lunch counters that refused service to blacks. The tactic they used was the nonviolent direct action sit-in. What began . . .
Anti-colonialism and Humanism
Anti-colonialism is understood to be both a group of historical events and a critical analysis of past and ongoing imperialisms.
Are You a Settler?
Settler-colonialism, Capitalism and Marxism on Turtle Island
The politics of solidarity on display during the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline have raised the issue of Indigenous liberation more and more sharply to people on the left.
The Historical Retrieval and Controversy of Walter Rodney’s Russian Revolution
The posthumous publication of Walter Rodney’s book on the historiography of the Russian Revolution is a remarkable accomplishment of historical retrieval, and it provides us with an opportunity to look more deeply into Rodney’s relationship to Marxism, Soviet . . .
Writing an Obituary for Neocons
The New York Times obituary of neocon historian Gertrude Himmelfarb shows why neoconservatives remain a potent political force in U.S. politics: many liberals can’t imagine a socialist challenge to capitalism that doesn’t apologize for authoritarianism.
The NYT’s sentimental gloss of Himmelfarb’s . . .
Where Is Iranian Socialist-Humanist Intellectual, Yashar Darolshafa?
On Thursday November 21, five days after the outbreak of a popular uprising against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Yashar Darolshafa was violently arrested by government authorities at a friend’s home and taken away. Since then, family and friends have . . .
Noel Ignatiev, 1940–2019
A Life Defined by Political Engagement
This article by John Garvey on the late Noel Ignatiev was originally posted by The Brooklyn Rail as an introduction to a piece by Ignatiev on Frederick Douglass. Given Ignatiev’s importance as a writer on race and class in the . . .
Review: The Permanent Guillotine
Mitchell Abidor, ed. and trans. The Permanent Guillotine: Writings of the Sans-Culottes. Oakland: PM Press, 2018.
Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Life
Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy is very live, very relevant, and very contested. One of the ways to understand this particular political valence is to see her not only as an exceptional individual, which she surely was, but also as . . .
Rosa Luxemburg’s Legacy for Feminism
Many people who know something about Rosa Luxemburg would be surprised to hear the name of this talk: They know Luxemburg as the author of the brilliant pamphlets The Mass Strike and Reform or Revolution; they know that she debated . . .
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