The podcast Mechanical Freak, recently welcomed esteemed sociologist Jerry Lembcke to talk about how the memory of the Vietnam War was both recreated and used in the 1980s and 1990s to unify public sentiment against the liberatory movements of the 1960s. Lembcke reminded the audience that even in the creation of memory, there is a political struggle for the future that needs to be waged. | more…
The 59th annual volume of the “Socialist Register” examines the growth of corporate power and other important organizational trends in global capitalism. Rejecting such notions as “stakeholder capitalism,” it reviews the organization and strategies of unions and the left as it searches for new routes to socialism. Read on for excerpts from the likes of Adam Hanieh, Patrick Bond, Charmaine Chua and Spencer Cox… | more…
Aside from being an ideal teaching tool for college classes, this book, with its combination of poetry, personal statement, and rueful self-examination would make for an engrossing theatrical performance…. | more…
“…works brilliantly to create suspense and dramatic interest in that the reader is asked to see the world through the eyes of its main protagonist…” | more…
The United States, being the most advanced capitalist country in the world, is not only not immune to this sort of movement (fascism), but is uniquely vulnerable, and that vulnerability has not gone away in our times…. | more…
Stone documents MacArthur’s myriad machinations in eye-opening detail, noting that he “was trying to drag the US and United Nations into war with China and Russia. He was trying to start World War III”…. | more…
Here are the books published last year that taught me the most about the world we’re now living in, how it came to be this way and how we might, against all odds, go about changing it. So buy copies to help feed some starving writers, read them and then send them to a library in Texas…. | more…
The goal of this event is to emphasize the importance of uniting the working class to fight for equal rights for all in order to raise working and living conditions beyond mere survival. Participants are encouraged to join the discussion and contribute their own experiences in how the declining conditions for workers of all trades have impacted their lives, what they see as the limits of reformism, and how the underclass and super-exploited can play an important role in leading the fight to end exploitation. | more…
…in rejecting the possibility of half measures and compromises, Facing the Anthropocene stands with The Value of a Whale as a crucial document in the necessary joining of the environmentalist and anti-capitalist movements and should be compulsory reading. | more…
as many have observed, for many people it’s easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Foster’s book tells us that we have a choice: “ruin or revolution.” The reason for the necessity of revolution is that tinkering won’t solve our problems. Technocratic fixes won’t save the Earth as a place fit for human habitation. The problem, as he told me in the interview that follows, is systemic…. | more…
“Yes, there would be many painfully restrictive measures. But they would not be imposed by government decree, and they certainly would never be neoliberal….” | more…
Decolonial projects did not simply dwell on a race-first, class-first or even gender-first line of thought which so appeals today. What some might call “identity politics” today was not a dead end for class-based projects of liberation; it was a necessary and generative start to the practice of solidarity and unity…. | more…
Ferguson deserves to be applauded for incorporating nuance into both the characters and the narrative of ¡Brigadistas! instead of hitting the reader over the head with political messaging. Don’t get me wrong: This is a very political book. But not everything about the characters and how they interact with one another is “politically correct,” making this a far more realistic drama than one might expect. | more…