Before turning to the current issue, we want to say a word about the new role that New Politics is playing on the left. New Politics has always been a source of analysis of national and world politics from the point of view of “socialism from below.” More recently, however, we’ve also become—as a print journal and as an online website—a locus for debate on the democratic left. Last issue we began and this issue we continue our series on “The Left We Need,” with articles by all together a dozen different left organizations. We recently featured on our website (newpol.org) a half-dozen articles on the Chicago election and several articles on the Sanders campaign.
New Politics also endorsed, some of its editorial board members attended and participated in, and we reported on the important Conference on the Future of Left/Independent Politics, collaborating with a dozen different political organizations involved in independent campaigns as well as in holding political office and using that office to advocate for progressive policies while also building social movements. We are proud to be taking on this new role and hope to expand it as we engage in discussion and debate with others on the left with the goal of building a larger radical left in the United States, one which is an expression of fights for social justice.
We turn in this issue to the latest explosive development of a social movement in the United States, the Black Lives Matter movement. Several Black and white authors, in articles as well as movie and book reviews, look at this new development and at accounts of earlier Black movements. Donna Murch, Raven Rakia, Kali Akuno, Francis Shor, Femi Agbabiaka, Gabriel Kilpatrick, Alan Stowers, Martin Oppenheimer, Linda Braune, Reginald Wilson, and Jamie Munro provide us with a variety of perspectives on the Black movements and particularly Black Lives Matter.
We also continue the series of articles on the “Left We Need” that began in the last issue, with articles by members of the Young Democratic Socialists and the Puerto Rican Party of the Working People (PPT).
Europe is also back on the agenda. Barry Finger looks at the Syriza party of Greece and its struggle with the Troika, while Jean Batou analyzes the struggle over Ukraine and Stéfanie Prezioso paints a picture of Europe and the growing far right.
Yousef Khalil examines neoliberalism and the failures of the Arab Spring, while Riad Azar shows the authoritarian consequences of neoliberal austerity. While there is much written about China, the left produces little analysis of Taiwan, a subject taken up in this issue by Poe Yu-ze Wan.
Additional book reviews include Johanna Brenner on the new edition of the socialist-feminist classic, Beyond the Fragments, Stephen R. Shalom on Murray Bookchin, Nathan Robinson on Rudolph Rocker’s 1937 Nationalism and Culture, and Michael Löwy on the Frankfort School and the Jews. Finally, Kent Worchester, our reviewer of comics and graphic art, writes in his “Words and Pictures” column about Wonder Woman.
Dan La Botz
Stephen R. Shalom
Julia Wrigley
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