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Renowned Marxist Economist Prabhat Patnaik: Capitalism cannot exist without imperialism (Watch: Break Through News)

“When most people think of imperialism, they think of wars, and invasions to secure resources for the Global North, or they think of Lenin’s definition of it as a stage of capitalism. But you argue that imperialism is an essential part of capitalism.” Rania Khalek asks: “What do you mean when you say ‘Imperialism?’” And: “How did the Global North end up dominating the Global South?” These are perhaps the quintessential starting point for the next generation of activists and organizers, just as they had been for those that came before – and perhaps far longer than any of us would like… | more…

FORTHCOMING! “Extraordinary Threat: Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela” (Three reviews in one from the Orinoco Tribune)

The book “Extraordinary Threat” will be here any minute! “Although the publication is not entirely a praise of the Bolivarian Revolution—the authors offer detailed critiques where criticism is deserved—overall the book stresses the importance for people of good conscience to defend the example of Venezuela. Through grassroots democracy and popular participation, Venezuela is trying to chart an independent course and overcome centuries of imperialist domination, a heroic resistance against the ‘extraordinary threat’ of the most powerful empire of modern times….” | more…

U.S. out of Africa (Africa Watch Bulletin interviews Gerald Horne)

What can we do? “We must organize more picket lines and study groups. We must make more media appearances. We must launch more documentary projects. We must establish a presence at the African Union in Addis Ababa and CARICOM too. We must picket the OAS headquarters in Washington, DC, especially re: the crisis in Colombia. We must **organize.**” | more…

A bold call for reorganising the global working class (Global Labour Journal reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”)

Throughout ‘Can the Working Class Change the World? ‘Yates demonstrates that “Capitalism is a system of stark individualism.” Only radical thinking and acting, he argues, “have any chance of staving off accelerating levels of barbarism.” Therefore, in the last part of the book, Yates offers suggestions about what organisations can do in the class struggle, pointing out that “the ‘I’ must be suppressed and the ‘We’ must come to the fore”… | more…

“Tells the Bosses We’re Coming” breaks out of the box (New Solutions)

“….Don’t read ‘Tell the Bosses We’re Coming’ expecting to find a “how to” list of the steps you must take to build power in your union or you’re likely to be disappointed. Instead, read it to be challenged to explore the ways your union, your Central Labor Council, your state federation, and the whole labor movement is narrowing the avenues for worker power in the United States. And then start working to broaden them.” | more…

The teeth in the Labor Law trap (Marx & Philosophy Review of Books reviews “Tells the Bosses We’re Coming”)

….not concerned to diagnose the cause of workers’ problems, Richman’s analysis implicitly centers work law as the principal culprit responsible for the labour movement’s predicament. He makes a strong case that labour law, rather than balancing the power disparities between employees and employers and protecting worker rights, has instead become a ‘trap’ favoring bosses and impeding worker organization. He deftly analyzes the teeth in the trap… | more…

Bondage and the invented bond of “Whiteness” (The Real Democracy Movement reviews “The Dawning of the Apocalypse”)

In the early 1600s, new settlers, were uniting across class and even religious lines, and what united them was their “whiteness”. The settlements had become a kind of joint European enterprise. Religious differences, that had so hampered the Spanish invasions, fell away as the white invaders came together “to bludgeon indigenes and batter Africans”. | more…

On committed anti-Zionist elders, such as Rosalind Petchesky, coeditor of “A Land With a People” (Middle East Eye)

Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian scholar and activist based in New York City: “Seeing a growing movement of unabashedly anti-Zionist Jewish groups is an important and inspiring reminder that these groups are building on a long legacy of Jews who, long before Israel established itself as a settler-colonial state, rejected Zionism and rejected Israel’s ethnic cleansing project… ”  | more…

Horne and Burden-Stelly on anti-Blackness, anti-radicalism, and the Internationalist counterforce (The E3W Review of Books)

….Internationalism in the Black American community, in particular, has been critical, not least because of the potency of white supremacy on these shores. Historically, international alliances have allowed us to construct a countervailing power against our domestic foes. You see that, for example, with regards to the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804, which ignites a general crisis of the entire slave system, not least in the Americas, which can only be resolved with its collapse…. | more…

David L. Wilson, coauthor of “The Politics of Immigration,” on the media’s ‘Border Crisis’ (FAIR)

News articles have emphasized the fact that border encounters for March and April were at the highest level since 2000, but the differences between now and then are rarely mentioned. The number of Border Patrol agents has nearly doubled since the early 2000s, the agency’s budget has tripled, and most of the 650 miles of barriers now at the border were constructed after 2000. The total monthly border apprehensions may be similar, but migrants have much less chance of eluding today’s outsized enforcement apparatus…. | more…