Articles

A Teachers Union Against Itself: Organized Labor and the Crisis at City College of San Francisco

A Teachers Union Against Itself: Organized Labor and the Crisis at City College of San Francisco

by Rick Baum

April 1, 2017

How did a community college that had managed to serve and retain most of its student population and remain fiscally sound amid a recession and a budget crisis become the target of condemnation by accrediting authorities? The answer involves a disastrous collision of corporate education reform, administrative arrogance, and timid, undemocratic union leadership.

‘A New Revolutionary Subject’: Marta Harnecker interviewed by Tassos Tsakiroglou

‘A New Revolutionary Subject’: Marta Harnecker interviewed by Tassos Tsakiroglou

by Marta Harnecker and Tassos Tsakiroglou

April 1, 2017

Although today there are some setbacks in the region, nobody can deny that there is a huge difference between the Latin America that Hugo Chávez inherited and the Latin America he left us. A new revolutionary subject has been created.
Notes from the Editors, March 2017

Notes from the Editors, March 2017

by The Editors

March 1, 2017

U.S. economic, military, and financial dominance have been ebbing for decades, leaving the United States in the position of a wounded mastodon within the world at large, a threat to all around it. Washington has repeatedly tried with very limited success to reverse this slide in its hegemonic role by means of geopolitical expansion, aimed at increasing its "strategic assets" across the globe. The result has been a constantly expanding theatre of global conflict.

Organisms and Objectifications: A Historical-Materialist Inquiry into the ‘Human and Animal’

Organisms and Objectifications: A Historical-Materialist Inquiry into the ‘Human and Animal’

by Joseph Fracchia

March 1, 2017

The anthropocentric tendency to view nature or the environment as everything that is not human obscures the productive processes that go on in "nature." But non-human animals are also the purposeful producers of their own worlds: they too engage in their own species-specific objectifying activity that transforms what is, from their perspective, nature; they too build worlds in their own bodily image.

‘Mourning and Militancy’

‘Mourning and Militancy’

by Michael D. Yates and Richard Seymour

March 1, 2017

There is a degree of unpredictability in politics today that presents opportunities for those who aren't too constrained by past experience to see them. We're seeing the possibility of regenerating a left that has previously been ground down to the scale of atoms, one that, if it adapts creatively to the coming defeats, can prepare the ground for success. But that means recognizing that the history of the left is a history of defeats; it is a history of the vanquished.

The Battle for the National Health Service: England, Wales, and the Socialist Vision

by David Matthews

March 1, 2017

England and Wales represent two very different, indeed incompatible, approaches to health care. In the former, health care has come under increasing threat from the predatory forces of privatization. In Wales, however, an explicit effort has been made to defend socialist values and formulate them for the twenty-first century, defending and expanding a system that puts the health and well-being of its citizens over profit.

Marx and Engels and the ‘Red Chemist’: The Forgotten Legacy of Carl Schorlemmer

Marx and Engels and the ‘Red Chemist’: The Forgotten Legacy of Carl Schorlemmer

by Ian Angus

March 1, 2017

Most accounts of Marx and Engels's lives, if they mention Carl Schorlemmer (1834–92) at all, refer to the renowned chemist only as a friend, without acknowledging his influence on their studies of the natural sciences. It is time to restore this neglected figure to his rightful place in the Marxian—and Engelsian—tradition.

Astronauts at Work: The Social Relations of Space Travel

Astronauts at Work: The Social Relations of Space Travel

by Peter Dickens

March 1, 2017

As astronauts penetrate ever further into the cosmos, how are their bodies and subjectivities being transformed? While space travel remains governed by mechanisms of power and domination that tend to treat astronauts as tools, the practice of "space medicine" is now beginning to interact with astronauts' bodies in a more multidirectional, dialectical fashion.

Steelworkers in Struggle

Steelworkers in Struggle

by Julia Smith

March 1, 2017

Ahmed White's vivid and deeply researched account of the Little Steel strike of 1937 makes an important contribution to our understanding of U.S. labor history, union organizing, and class conflict. It illustrates the tactical complexity of strikes, reveals the power and ruthlessness of employers, and demonstrates the risks of relying on the state to secure justice for working people.

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