Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid, recently released by Monthly Review Press. He is interviewed by Dr. Jared A. Ball for imiXwhatilike! Emancipatory Journalism & Broadcasting, about the lives of Ruth First and Joe Slovo, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, and revolution. | more…
Although Jean-Paul Sartre was a popular and influential philosopher, he has not become as common a topic for serious scholarship as some of his peers. While Husserl and Heidegger are engines of continental thought, and Merleau-Ponty has a sizable following, Sartre tends to be used in introductory courses more than dissertations. Nonetheless, many philosophers do consider his work important and look forward to new insights about his legacy. The Work of Sartre promises to be such a book. | more…
Giroux asserts that a fundamental attack on democracy is currently occurring in the US, and urgent action is needed to defend democratic values against this assault. His view is that an examination of the education system provides evidence for this attack, and that education is itself both a key battleground, and the crucible in which the defence of democracy can be formed. | more…
In the opening pages of a new biography, Alice Walker’s Foreword sets the stage for the poignant portrayal of a person with scant name recognition in North America. Until, that is, the publication of One Day in December. Author Nancy Stout divides the book into four parts: Pilón, Manzanillo, Sierra Maestra, and Havana, Cuba, the main places where Sánchez and scores of other Cubans resisted, eventually toppling the Cuban government and replacing it with a revolutionary regime. | more…
Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid. Here, he is interviewed by Eric Mann for Voices from the Frontlines Radio, broadcast by Pacifica KPFK 90.7 FM. | more…
Unbelievably the family of sciences that should shoulder the burden of enlightening society in the light of the alarming findings of the natural sciences, seems to be struck by a debilitating paralysis, except that the truth is far worse. In The Ecological Rift – Capitalism’s War on the Earth (Monthly Review Press, 2010) John Bellamy Foster and his fellow authors draw one’s attention to the scandalous complicity, on the part of the social sciences, with the very economic system that is driving ecological ruin. One might wonder why this is the case. In fact, one might expect human scientists to be more radical in their approach to the matter than their natural science colleagues, while the opposite is in fact the case. | more…
A sense of the arguments and perspective that drive Jeb Sprague’s detailed study of paramilitarism in Haiti from the early 1990s to 2004 is given in the following quote, which comes in a closing chapter: “As with all historical processes, Haiti’s recent history cannot be reduced to pure good versus pure evil—the popular Lavalas movement had its own contradictions and failures. Even so, right-wing paramilitarism and its backers have produced, by far, the most victims of political violence in Haiti in recent history” (p. 281). Sprague supports this point—and at the same time aims to expose layers of political complexity—with an intriguing assessment of the role of paramilitary organizations in ensuring that popular movements in the Caribbean republic are kept hobbled. | more…
Henry A. Giroux is the author of America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, recently published by Monthly Review Press. This video was recorded on August 19, 2013, at his keynote address to the Third Ontario Common Front General Assembly. | more…
Nancy Stout, author of One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution, will be speaking in the Minneapolis area, at the invitation of the Minnesota Cuba Committee. Click here for more information. | more…
Socialist intellectuals (e.g., Bayard Rustin) and radical labor leaders (e.g., A. Philip Randolph) were trusted advisers and allies of Martin Luther King Jr. Their social-democratic economic ideas … embodied in the “Freedom Budget” … called for the elimination of poverty by 1976 through programs to create full employment, eliminate slums, and ensure a minimum standard of living for all. The book ends with a proposed updated version of the Freedom Budget; the budget includes federal programs for full employment, a restructuring of education and job-training systems, and more. … Invaluable for restating the influence of the American left on King’s views and enriching the historical record. | more…
Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, an oral history of the iconic revolutionary couple and their struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He is interviewed by Walter Turner for Africa Today on Berkeley’s KPFA, also available to stream online. | more…
(Michael Lebowitz is the author of The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”.) Why did ‘real socialism’ and, in particular the Soviet Union, fall? Let me note a few explanations that have been offered. With respect to the Soviet Union, one very interesting explanation that has been suggested is that it’s all the fault of Mikhail Gorbachev. And not simply the errors of Gorbachev but the treachery. Those who offer this explanation rely in particular upon a document which is sometimes described as his confession. | more…
“A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” published in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, demanded that the federal government put in place policies and programs that would eliminate poverty within ten years. Its authors demonstrated with clear and realistic assumptions about government taxes and revenues that this could be accomplished easily. The “Freedom Budget” was a direct descendant of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers of the march and the architects of the “Freedom Budget”—people like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.—understood that ending poverty, achieving full employment, guaranteeing incomes, winning higher wages and providing good schools, national health care and decent housing would not happen without tremendous struggle, one that challenged not only the federal government but the basic structure of a capitalist economy. Their sensibility was democratic and socialist; it envisioned a society both egalitarian and controlled by the people themselves | more…