The neoliberal restructuring of U.S. higher education is widely recognized, but nonetheless treated superficially and piecemeal in most left analyses, with little critical understanding of its inner political-economic logic. It is here that American observers have the most to learn from their British counterparts. | more…
Against attempts to characterize Marx as a dogmatic and deterministic thinker, it is precisely the open-endedness of his criticism that accounts for historical materialism’s staying power. This openness has allowed Marxism to continually reinvent itself, expanding its empirical and theoretical content and embracing ever larger aspects of historical reality. | more…
Revolution is still on the agenda for the global periphery. Restorations in the course of socialist transition are not irrevocable—and in the weak links of the center, breaks in the imperialist front are not inconceivable. | more…
The Manifesto‘s analysis of the capitalist crises that “put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society” remains central to any attempt to predict the events of the coming years. | more…
Human economies are complex biophysical systems. By exploring some fundamental concepts in physics, we can develop a better understanding of the ways that the energy-intensive activities of capitalism are changing humanity and the planet. | more…
In October 2016, cities across Poland were seized by massive demonstrations against proposals for a total ban on abortion. Whatever their ultimate outcome, the protests prove that mass mobilizations are possible in today’s Poland, and that the right’s political and cultural hegemony may yet be more fragile than it appears. | more…
Jane Lazare has written a fascinating, intensely personal book about history, family, and the Communist Party in the United States. She knows this story well: her father was an active Communist organizer, and the memoir recounts his life and hers, and the connections between them. | more…