Category: WATCH / LISTEN /

New: Matthew Stanley’s “The Ragged Edge of Freedom”

New: Matthew Stanley’s “The Ragged Edge of Freedom”

The latest, from Paul Buhle: "Abolitionists and social reformers of all kinds, with a wide Yankee following augmented by many recent German immigrants, sought to take things beyond the uneasy accommodation of white populations to each other across existing political lines. In Wisconsin and in Chicago most notably, these would include “Abe’s Boys” enrolling in the army of the Union. Not so in the Southern Illinois, two hours’ drive from my hometown. The whites who immigrated northward from the near South, largely uneducated and lacking skills, came to be considered almost a species in themselves...."
“Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?'”

“Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?'”

The latest: Einstein's perspective links alienation and nuclear annihilation, capitalism to the devastating possibility of omnicide -- the destruction of all human life on earth. As the U.S. approaches its 250th anniversary....
John Bellamy Foster’s “Breaking the Bonds of Fate”

John Bellamy Foster’s “Breaking the Bonds of Fate”

The latest: The title of John Bellamy Foster’s latest book "derives from Lucretius’s famed De Rerum Natura, usually translated as On the Nature of Things. Lucretius wrote: “Again, if all movement is always interconnected, the new arising from the old in a determinate order – if the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will break the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect – what is the source of the free [will] … .” ([On the Nature of Things,] Book II, 251ff) This exact quotation, moreover, was one made by Karl Marx in his Epicurean Notebooks, compiled in preparation for his doctoral thesis: “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature” of 1841. From this point of departure, Foster initiates the reappraisal of two thousand years of philosophical controversy...."
Ian Angus’ “Metabolic Rifts” (Stay tuned for September’s Ecosocialism 2026 gathering!)

Ian Angus’ “Metabolic Rifts” (Stay tuned for September’s Ecosocialism 2026 gathering!)

The latest: "Angus discusses the carbon cycle’s breakdown—which is driving climate change...and he describes how industrial agriculture is pumping nitrogen into Earth’s systems faster than any natural process through fertilizers, disrupting the nitrogen cycle. Angus proposes a radical reduction in the use of nitrogen and chemical fertilizers as a solution to environmental damage, and envisions a time when it will be possible to feed people without them..."
WATCH: Socialist Register 2026

WATCH: Socialist Register 2026

This was the first live launch of the Socialist Register in New York City, with our brand new editor, Arun Kundnani, alongside the (relatively new) coeditor of the Socialist Register, Steve Maher, joined by three contributors to this year’s volume: Ibrahim Shikaki, Costas Lapavitsas, and Paul Heideman. Together they considered these and other questions:
Andy Merrifield’s many books, from “Roses for Gramsci” to “Marx, Dead and Alive”

Andy Merrifield’s many books, from “Roses for Gramsci” to “Marx, Dead and Alive”

The latest: "....Is 'subaltern' a code for the working classes? Is 'hegemony' an economic force or a cultural power? Are 'organic intellectuals' inherently more progressive? The answers to such questions depend upon your choice of scholar—whether, say, you’re reading a Foucauldian literary critic or a Marxist sociologist, a subaltern historian or a posthuman anthropologist. Over the years, Gramsci’s writing has been polished by critics of such diverse persuasions that it has now become a mirror: One opens his books only to confirm one’s own beliefs....when the English writer Andy Merrifield arrived in Rome, feeling 'washed out intellectually,' Gramsci came to the rescue...."
Socialist Register 2026

Socialist Register 2026

June 27th, join the Marxist Education Project for an online launch of Socialist Register 2026, featuring Catarina Principe together with Michael Roberts, Alfredo Saad-Filho, and Stephen Maher.