July 1, 2017
The fundamental humanist values of the Russian Revolution still capture the imagination. As an experience of history and a methodology for transforming the world into a community, the revolution's legacy has persisted far beyond the failed experiment of state socialism itself.
July 1, 2017
Post-revolutionary societies, in their efforts to combat counterrevolution, have always been confronted with their own contradictions, and with the persistent threat that an exploiting class could reemerge. Instead of the intended socialization and democratization, in many places what resulted was instead state ownership and stultifying bureaucratization of both the economy and the polity.
July 1, 2017
Throughout Eastern Europe, there was an unleashing of pent-up questions, hopes, and fears brewing for decades. There was a sense that the ground was trembling underneath these experiments in socialism. It was clear to most of us that socialism could only survive through radical democratization.
July 1, 2017
For a century, the counterrevolutionary reaction to the events of October 1917 has arguably been the most determining ideological factor in Western politics. Today the victory of that counterrevolution is complete, but Western powers still need their inherited antithesis, in changing form, as self-justification.
July 1, 2017
Russell was both a liberal and a socialist, a combination perfectly comprehensible in his time, but almost unthinkable today. As a liberal, he opposed concentrations of power in all its military, governmental, and religious manifestations. But as a socialist, he equally opposed the concentrations of power stemming from the private ownership of the means of production, which therefore had to be put under social control.
July 1, 2017
Mainstream media outlets have recently expressed their dismay over the rise and spread of "fake news," taking it as an obvious truth that what they themselves provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of false or misleading information, often supplied by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.
July 1, 2017
The liberation struggles of peoples in the global South have been and still are closely linked with the challenge to capitalism. Indeed, the conflicts between capitalism and socialism and between North and South are inseparable. No socialism is imaginable outside of universalism, which implies the equality of peoples.
June 1, 2017
In the last several years, the left has experienced a series of defeats, and the grip of capital has tightened. The recent reversals in Latin America are a warning. We live in an age where a new era of revolutionary social change, unlike any that came before it, is the only hope—not just for ourselves, but for the chain of human generations.
June 1, 2017
Since Trump's election, mainstream commentary has generally avoided the question of fascism or neofascism, preferring instead to apply the vaguer, safer notion of "populism." In today's political context, however, it is crucial to understand not only how the failures of neoliberalism give rise to neofascist movements, but also to connect these to the structural crisis of concentrated, financialized, and globalized capitalism.
June 1, 2017
Consider the child with curly brown / hair sleeping with her dog in the back / of an old SUV while her parents doze / in scruffy front seats tilted back.…
