Online Features
Comrades and allies: An interview with Donna Murch
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.
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).
Partisans or Workers? Figures of Belarusian Protest and Their Prospects
This week’s protests in Belarus have clearly overcome their initial electoral focus and morphed into an expanding dissident movement of the urban middle class and workers.
Solidarity is the Key to Victory!
As expected, the extremely dubious electoral procedure, misnamed “elections”, caused mass indignation among the citizens of the Republic of Belarus to which the authorities have responded with widespread violence and repression against many protesters.
Why We Campaign to ‘Save the Middle Class’ and Shouldn’t
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.
“They are all implicated”: An Interview with Joey Ayoub on the Beirut Explosion
On August 4th, an explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, left more than 170 dead, thousands wounded, and hundreds of thousands homeless.
A statement from left-wing collective Ta’amim al-Masaref in Lebanon: ‘It is time for rage’
The August 4 blast is an immediate and irreversible ramification of the ruling class’ deliberate dispensability of the masses. The capitalist, neoliberal system was built at our expense, and always – without exception – seeks to serve the interests of the ruling class.
Protest Vote or Independent Political Action?
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.
No Justice, No Peace! Raising the Social Cost through Direct Action!
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.
Police Reform: An Oxymoron
Many urban police departments can be characterized as regressive groups. These groups exhibit a number of dysfunctional characteristics to include group narcissism and shadow projection, psychic numbing, stifling dissent, and obedience to authority.
The Seeds of Revolution Have Sprouted: What is Now to be Done?
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.
A Life in the Shadow of the Bomb
I am a child of the atomic age. The atomic bomb, that is, the threat of nuclear war and mass destruction, has been in my consciousness—sometimes in the background but frequently in the foreground—nearly all of my life.
Domestic Politics: Home Improvement Can’t Repair America’s Pandemic Crisis
The digital documentation of DIY domesticity has become a nearly-compulsory social act, a demonstration of how well we are “hanging in there” or “making the best of it”—both exceedingly popular hashtags right now.
Greece: Five Years After the Syriza Government and the Referendum
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.
Why Leftists In Most States Should Vote Green
And Why In Some States We Shouldn't
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.
Statement on My Being Shot by Federal Troops
Since June, I’ve been attending peaceful protests in Portland neighborhoods in support of Black Lives Matter. I have gone with family and friends. I am a 52-year-old mother. I am a history professor. I was protesting peacefully. So why did federal troops shoot me in the head Monday night?
Yesterday’s Man Is Today’s Candidate for President
“Throughout his entire political career, Biden had cultivated and depended upon financial and corporate donors, raising money from Wall Street, big tech, and fossil fuels.” Dan La Botz reviews Branko Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
Trump Speak and its Discontents
Trump understands that to be an effective boss requires not only authority but respect for authority, and to instill such respect it is necessary to speak to working people in an obsequious and patronizing way to make it easier for them to accept the reality of what is required by the law of profit.
Race, Class, and Crisis in Higher Education
Higher education is structurally racist in large part because the working class needs it but does not have access to it, nor do they have the social support to succeed once they are there.
Portland Protests: A Chronology of Police Repression
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.
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