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EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People)

In the service of furthering public knowledge of the roots of the current horrors in Gaza and beyond, Monthly Review Press is offering you the full introduction to A Land With A People. Please circulate widely!

ALSO: MRP is now offering free copies of A Land With A People in an effort to encourage people to form study groups–as just a first step towards action. Reach out! | more…

The Cuban revolution differed from the Stalinist regimes (How the Workers’ Parliaments Saved the Cuban Revolution reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

By examining the Special Period that Cuba went through, Ross gives us an example of how during periods of austerity, workers do not and should not need to pay the price of the crisis. For those who still think that Cuba is far from their ideal, I would like to paraphrase Marx. In theory, we assume that the laws of the socialist mode of production develop in their pure form. In reality, this is only an approximation; the approximation is all the more exact, the more socialism is developed and the less it is adulterated by survivals of earlier economic conditions with which it is amalgamated. | more…

Israel’s Kristallnacht (Author of Postcards to Hitler in ‘Counterpunch’)

As inter-imperialist rivalry now intensifies, especially between the U.S. and Russian and China, with each scrambling to secure allies and advantages against one another, the U.S. will cling to Israel and drag Jews, Palestinians and the other people of the region through a new hellish round of suffering for the sake of defending the American imperium…. | more…

The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis discussed on ‘The Nation’s’ podcast ‘Time of Monsters’

In 1960, Davis was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party. Davis’s lawyers defended him with the innovative legal argument that the First Amendment barred such questioning. While Davis lost in the courts, his legal battles were still an important effort in a larger battle to extend the parameters on political speech. | more…

On racialized antisemitism (Author of Postcards to Hitler featured in ‘Counterpunch’)

When world war erupted in 1914 Chamberlain extolled the German war effort. Germany’s defeat in 1918 devastated Chamberlain and may have negatively affected his health. After the war Chamberlain embraced the theory promoted by militarists, monarchists, and rising fascists that Germany had not lost the war but were betrayed by the liberals, Social Democrats and Jews…. | more…

Unpicking the connections between Covid and the crises of capitalism (Rob Wallace reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

The cause of COVID-19 and other such pathogens is not found just in the object of any one infectious agent or its clinical course, but also in the field of ecosystemic relations that capital and other structural causes have pinned back to their own advantage … the hidden-in-plain-sight truth behind the pandemic: global capital drove the deforestation and development that exposed us to new pathogens…. | more…

Fascinating blow by blow on the Cuban workers’ parliaments (Pedro Ross reviewed for ‘New West Indian Guide’)

Mass meetings took place in 80,000 workplaces, neighborhood committees, farmers’ organisations, and the Federation of Cuban Women. These acted as a two-way conduit, informing the workers and farmers of the reality of the situation while, at the same time, allowing for votes on different options, all unpalatable, but some more acceptable than others. By giving ordinary people a direct say and a stake in the solution of the crisis, the Workers’ Parliaments brought back a commitment to the social gains of the Revolution and enabled Cuban society to slowly emerge from the “Special Period.” | more…

“The only book in English devoted to the topic” of How the Workers’ Parliaments Saved the Cuban Revolution (‘International Journal of Cuban Studies’)

Faced with the implosion of the economy at the beginning of the 1990s and eschewing the neoliberal approach of placing the burden of social downturns on the poorest and weakest members of society, the Cuban government had to impose many restrictions on the consumption of all its citizens to distribute the hardships. How this was done is the heart of understanding the workers’ parliaments as a case study of workers exercising workers’ power, and hence as a case study of a particular dramatic and important event in Cuba’s 60-year effort to build socialism. | more…

WATCH: Commune or Nothing!

This virtual panel examined the commune and communal organizing as part of the project of revolutionary social transformation. The speakers addressed how socialist communes can be used to abolish capitalism’s logic, based on the exploitation of the human being and the expropriation of nature, along with the range of oppressions (including racial, gender, sexual, and colonial oppression) in capitalist society. The speakers – Kali Akuno, John Bellamy Foster, Chris Gilbert, and M.E. O’Brien – drew from various theoretical perspectives and practical experiences. | more…

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