In this second volume of his memoirs, Samir Amin takes us on a journey to a dizzying array of countries, primarily in the Arab World, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, recounting in detail the stages of his ongoing dialogue over several decades with popular movements struggling for a better future. Along the way, we meet government leaders, activists in popular movements, and working people, both rural and urban. As in his many works over the years, The Long Revolution of the Global South combines Amin’s astute theoretical analyses of the challenges confronting the world’s oppressed peoples with militant action…. | more…
Stephanie Urdang didn’t leave South Africa at the age of 23 because she was forced into exile. She left because she ‘hated Apartheid.’ It was the late 1960s—mid-hiatus between the Rivonia Trial, the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and other anti-Apartheid leaders (in 1964), the burgeoning of Black Consciousness (from the late 1960s onwards), the resurgent trade union movement (1973), and the Soweto uprising (1976). Avenues for fighting Apartheid had narrowed; the comforts of whiteness expanded…. | more…
It would certainly seem natural for leftists to support the right to migrate. After all, the socialist movement’s historic slogan has been ‘Workers of all lands unite,’ and its anthem is ‘The Internationale.’ But in the past few years, a number of people on the left have come out against the concept…. | more…
Michael D Yates, author of Why Unions Matter (1998), dedicated most of his academic and professional career to studying labour and social movements in the US. Through his latest work, Yates contends that the working class must change the world or humanity will succumb to the barbarity of capitalism. His warning must be taken seriously because we live in a world prone to wars and global economic crises, among other evils… | more…
Reviewing this book in the wake of the Mueller report’s findings, in which no evidence was found that Russia and the Trump presidential campaign colluded to influence the 2016 US election, it is tempting to hope that 2019 will see some self-reflection on the part of the US liberal establishment. This should entail a turning away from the tendency to look to outside actors for the answers to the crisis; specifically, how and why Trump won, and not Hillary Clinton…. | more…
The book captures the voices indigenous activists, fighting oil drilling in their homelands; mothers from favelas seeking justice for their children killed by police; opponents of large-scale mining projects; independent journalists working, at great personal risk, to expose corruption and human rights violations; women and LGBT people confronting violence and discrimination; and students demanding their right to a free, universal and high-quality education system…. | more…
The New York Times headline said it all: Mueller Finds No Trump Russia Conspiracy. ¶ After two years of investigation and $25 million in taxpayer dollars, the special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence that President Donald J. Trump or any of his aides coordinated with the Russian government in an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 election…. | more…
In the 21st century, we live in a world wholly dominated by the US empire and its allies, and capitalism maintains its stranglehold on the lives of working class people across the entire globe, all the while destroying the environment, posing an existential threat not only to humanity but all life on Earth…. | more…
On March 15 2019 up to 1.5 million students walked out of class to demand action in the face of looming environmental catastrophe. In the UK one of the most popular slogans was “System Change not Climate Change” reflecting the protesters’ feelings that capitalism and its politicians had failed them. As Marxist writers like John Bellamy Foster and Ian Angus have shown, capitalism is at heart, a system that puts the accumulation of wealth above the general interests of people and plane | more…
In this short book Samir Amin, a distinguished left intellectual with a career spanning many decades, offers an analysis of Russia and its role in the transition from capitalism to socialism. The book consists of six essays written between 1990 and 2015, supplemented by a new commentary at the end. Amin’s approach combines the Marxist theory of historical materialism with World Systems theory…. | more…
“In six chapters, Yates delivers a primer on radical economics. It is no mean feat, but he is up to it. ¶ In Chapter One, ‘The Working Class,’ Yates defines it, qualitatively and quantitatively. He refines the numbers that mainstream economists use to fog the oppressive nature of the system. ¶ Yates sketches an ‘analytical scaffolding’ of global labor, from the exploited (wages) and expropriated (theft). Yates explains how wage and unwaged labor are integral to the system, similar to the era of slave and ‘free’ workers… | more…
“The release of the Mueller report and its conclusion that President Donald J. Trump and his top aides did not collude with Russia has prompted some important critical reflection on the American media and its penchant for sensationalism….” | more…
Recently, Zillah Eisenstein, author of the forthcoming Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution, was interviewed by phone on Berkeley, CA radio KPFA, 94.1FM by Lisa Dettmer, host of the Women’s Magazine. | more…
