Why write an autobiography? Who do I think I am? Why should anybody be more interested in my life than anyone else’s life? … I’m not a celebrity. I haven’t starred in Oscar-winning movies getting reviews of mesmerising performances…. ¶ I’ve lived a life that was not headline-making, but not totally obscure either, as an activist, academic and author…” | more…
“I grew up in Jim Crow St. Louis with working class parents with roots in Mississippi. From an early age I recall a guitar in our house, that our father would pluck from time to time. Undoubtedly, my younger brother Marvin Horne—who has played with such giants as percussionists, Chico Hamilton and Elvin Jones, and as part of Aretha Franklin’s band just before she expired—was influenced to pick up this instrument because of its ubiquitous presence in our small house….” | more…
The supposed social media disinformation campaign that helped sway American voters was carried out by a private company based in St. Petersburg, Internet Research Agency (IRA), whose connection to the Russian government has never been established and probably never will…. | more…
Starting with Adam Smith and David Ricardo two central questions have dominated the history of economic thought: Does capitalism, as a social economic system, provide social harmony? And, is capitalism inherently stable? Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, the two most preeminent Marxian economists in America during the second half of the twentieth century, played a vital role in the debates surrounding these two questions in the 1960s…. | more…
On July 5, prolific author Gerald Horne appeared at Sankofa Video, Books & Cafe in Washington, DC to discuss two of his latest books, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music and White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela | more…
Even the debate on reparations for slavery and colonialism is framed in terms of correcting past wrongs, excluding any notion that imperialist plunder of nature and living labour continues apace in the modern ‘post-colonial’ world…. | more…
Last June, in a Town Meeting hosted by CCTV, via the Center for Media & Democracy, Fred spoke about what a just and ecologically sustainable society might look like–and if the current economic system can’t respond, what are the strategies to advance our struggle? | more…
For most of history, there was no ‘Germany’ as such – just a ragbag of German-speaking states. In 1871, most of them unified into the German Empire (Austria stayed outside, together with Switzerland, where German is but one of the languages spoken). ¶ Germany came late to the capitalist table, and flexed its muscles in the early 20th century with the aim of becoming a major imperialist power. … | more…
Helena Sheehan author, most recently, of Navigating the Zeitgeist: A Story of the Cold War, the New Left, Irish Republicanism, and International Communism, talks to C.S. Soong, host of Against the Grain, about her life as an activist, educator, Marxist philosopher, and her engagement with radical movements, including the New Left, the IRA, and the Communist Party of Ireland. | more…
Zillah Eisenstein, author of recently published Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution, talks about the crises all humans face–of capitalism, of racism, of misogyny–and how these crises cannot be reformed individually, but must be understood and fought with revolutionary rethinking, on This is Hell!, WNUR-FM. | more…
Reading between the lines is a skill we all need. Justice, freedom, equality and other fine ideals are invoked daily, but what do they really mean? In the abstract, it is impossible to say, for it is only when they are used in concrete contexts that we can get some meaningful handle on them…. | more…
But there exists a different narrative, or at least there did in the 1930s, before it was buried under an avalanche of patriotic American propaganda and liberal historiography. According to this alternative understanding, the US was falling victim to fascism already in the 1920s — though a different sort of fascism than in Europe… | more…
“Kohei Saito’s book Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism is based on extensive and painstaking research. As well as Marx’s published works, Saito makes use of notebooks that Marx kept on science and agriculture and that have only recently been made available. He argues that ecological questions were central to Marx’s worldview and defends a version of ecosocialism based on the notion of metabolism, and using the Marxist tools of value theory, contradiction and alienation…. | more…