Place: North America

Thinking Out Loud about the End of Social Democracy

The Sanders challenge is over and the question for socialists is, where do we go from here? Up until recently this debate has ranged along familiar lines: the need for independent political action and the obstacles socialists face in recruiting . . .

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Old SDSers, New DSAers, and Trump vs. Biden

In a recent letter a group of old SDSers hoped to engage some young critics of the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. Those critics actually ought to be mightily commended for many of their analyses, insights, actions, intuitions, and feelings.
For example, the . . .

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Where to Begin? Growing Seeds of Liberation in a World Torn Asunder

What faces us in the post-COVID-19 world as we struggle to uproot capitalism and its malignant racism, sexism, heterosexism, and environmental destruction, both in theory and in practice?

An Appeal for Dialectical Polemics: A Reply to Post and Smith

In their recent article for New Politics, Charlie Post and Ashley Smith lay out what is a serious point of view within the socialist movement. I particularly agree with their insistence that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) can play . . .

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Against False Dichotomies

Bernie Sanders Suspends his Campaign
In the aftermath of Bernie Sanders’s suspension of his presidential campaign, analysis of what went wrong and possible ways forward will be essential, if painful, for the American Left. Understandably, those who went “all in” for . . .

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Building Class Power, Not Electoralism, Is the Future of the Left

In his recent piece “Mass Politics, Not Movementism, Is the Future of the Left,”  Paul Heideman aims to convince the Left that a strategy built primarily around “mass politics” (by which he implicitly means national electoral activity) is still the . . .

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Facing Reality: The Socialist Left, the Sanders Campaign and Our Future

A little over a month ago, many on the new socialist left expected Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic Party nomination, defeat Donald Trump in the general election, and enact a program of social democratic reform as President of the . . .

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Bernie Sanders, Coronavirus, and the Class Struggle Within the Democratic Party

Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden replied testily to Bernie Sanders during their last debate, saying that the immediate need was to defeat the coronavirus pandemic, that Bernie’s vaunted Revolution could wait. But then Biden went MIA for the next . . .

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In the Tempest of Coronavirus: Racism and Class Struggle

This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.
COVID-19 is now in all U.S. states with 530,026 cases and 20,614 deaths (as of April 12). Statistics suggest that the virus has peaked for . . .

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Building an Alternative to the Democratic Party

Bernie Sanders has ended his candidacy
When we feel our lives are in danger as they are in this pandemic, it can be very hard to look critically at national politics, by which I mean the end of Bernie’s candidacy and . . .

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Global Capitalism, Global Pandemic, and the Struggle for Socialism

We are now in the grip of one of the worst economic crises in the history of modern capitalism. As the Coronavirus pandemic forces people to stay home and businesses to remain shuttered, the St. Louis Federal Reserve has projected . . .

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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 . . .

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“What if?” COVID-19, Trump and Class Struggle in America

When I first wrote this article on Friday, March 27, the Covid-19 death toll in the US had surpassed 1,600, although casualties are mounting so fast this number will seem impossibly old in a day or two. By April 2 the number . . .

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Saint Paul Teachers’ Strike on the Eve of COVID-19

After over nine months of negotiations, on March 10, 2020 members of Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) took to the streets to fight for the schools our students deserve. Then, just one week later, we were back in our . . .

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Lashed by the Storm

This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the biweekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

Trump Threatens Venezuela under Cover of Coronavirus

Although Venezuela is only reporting 153 coronavirus infections and seven Covid-19 deaths as of April 4, that is likely a radical underestimation of the contagion’s spread. Venezuela’s healthcare system has been pushed to the breaking point by years of U.S. . . .

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Essential Workers: Class Struggle in the Time of Coronavirus

A newscast on SUR Peru Sunday showed residents of Lima at their windows clapping and thanking the masked sanitation workers loading bags of trash into a garbage truck. The screen read, “Coronavirus: Cleaning in Lima, Anonymous Heroes.” Residents knew whose . . .

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The Coronavirus Strikes and their Significance, So Far

Across the United States we are seeing workers walk off the job in wildcat strikes in response to the employers’ failure either to shut down the workplace or to make it safe. The strikes are too few to call them . . .

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Biden Should Drop Out Amid Credible Assault Allegation

Content Warning: Sexual Assault and Harassment
I just listened to former Senate aide Tara Reade vividly, calmly, and tearfully recount how the presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden nonconsensually penetrated her with his fingers. Reade was a staff assistant to Biden . . .

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An Ideological War

I believe that there is an ideological war going on right now and that the left needs to be prepared to do battle. In the very first days of this crisis, we saw moratoriums on evictions, expedited unemployment benefits, CA . . .

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America Faces the Deluge

This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.
The United States stands before the deluge. Coronavirus is spreading, the economy is collapsing, anxiety is everywhere. Federal and state government responses were slow . . .

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