History…is not a peacefully flowing river, but made up of different moments, separated by tumultuous rapids’ (134). When the USSR broke apart in 1991, an unprecedented ideological campaign was launched, propagating the idea that Soviet collapse implied the collapse of the socialist project as a whole. The ‘end of history’ was said to be at hand. ¶ Amin’s critical reading of Russian history de-bunks this myth, with the compact prose and theoretical precision that is characteristic of Amin’s many writings… | more…

Hear historian Gerald Horne, author, most recently, of The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism and Storming the Heavens, and Paul Coates, founder of the Black Classic Press, in conversation on the past and present of Black Lives in the United States
Baltimore, Wednesday, April 18
6:30pm (doors open at 6:00)
THE REAL NEWS NETWORK
231 Holliday Street
Baltimore, MD 21202 | more…

Terror and killings represent only one aspect of a system of racial oppression manifesting in the United States first as occupation of Native lands and as slavery….It’s clear, therefore, that a system of racial oppression and race hatred has prevailed throughout U.S. history. Its staying power calls for explanation. Historian Gerald Horne offers insights…. | more…

Since the collapse of Eastern European “socialism” and the Soviet Union, the prospect to transcend capitalism has been lost in obscurity. ¶ However, what happened once can happen again, and “since the ‘end of history’ did not occur in 1989, one need not be a prophet to foresee that the need for the revolutionary salvation of the world will arise again” … | more…

Considered by many to be the most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century, Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly original study of poetry’s role, it explained in clear language how the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change and development. Culture as Politics introduces Caudwell’s work through his most accessible and relevant writing. Material is drawn from Illusion and Reality, Studies in a Dying Culture, and his essay, “Heredity and Development.” | more…

Gerald Horne introduces his book about 17th century English colonial aggression in the Caribbean and North America by mentioning a three-part ‘Apocalypse.’ He indicates that its ‘three horsemen’—slavery, capitalism, and white supremacy—were present and sowing grief at the formation of the United States. But the first two play only supporting roles in his narrative. They give rise to conflicts and crises that provoke white supremacy, his third protagonist, into existence…. | more…

This fascinating book builds on the work of Marxists such as John Bellamy Foster to argue that Karl Marx’s thought is central to understanding that humanity’s destruction of the planet is due to the capitalist mode of production. It is a further blow against the perception that Marx was a naive Promethean—someone who believed that simply increasing production will solve all humanity’s ills and that therefore Marxism has nothing to say about ecological crisis…. | more…

Recently, Barry Seidman, a host of Equal Time for Freethought (WBAI-99.5FM / Pacifica Radio in NYC), and John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review magazine and author of Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce, discussed the eponymous president, neo-fascist extraordinaire…. | more…

In the introduction to his latest book historian Gerald Horne makes clear the consequences of European settlement in the Americas:
“Though disease spread by these interlopers is often trotted out to explain the spectacular downturn in the fortunes of indigenous Americans, genocide – in virtually every meaning of the term, including volitional acts by invading settlers – is the proximate cause of this towering mountain of cadavers. Thus, even when enslaved Africans chose suicide, which they were often forced to do, it would be follow to suggest that enslavers were guiltless….” | more…

Allen Ruff, a host of A Public Affair on radio station WORT (89.9FM, Madison, WI), interviews the irrepressible African-American historian Gerald Horne, author of numerous titles exploring the centrality of race and class for understanding the contemporary world. His most recent book is The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean | more…

Ecosocialism is often seen as something of throwaway buzzword on the left, with some commenting that today’s left, which at least acknowledges that environmental concerns are essential part of the criticism of capitalism today, doesn’t even need it. Ian Angus, a writer of books such as Facing the Anthropocene and Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis (Haymarket Books 2011), with Simon Butler, and maintainer of the blog Climate and Capitalism, feels that it is a term that means much more than just a passing nod of one movement to another…. | more…

Unlike such obvious forms of oppression as feudalism or slavery, capitalism has been able to survive through its genius for disguising corporate profit imperatives as opportunities for individual human equality and advancement. But it was the genius of Karl Marx, in his masterwork, Capital, to discover the converse law of surplus value: behind the illusion of the democratic, supply-and-demand marketplace, lies the workplace, where people trying to earn a living are required to work way beyond the time it takes to pay their wages…. | more…

Billions of people around the world are drinking water contaminated with plastic…. We’ve been warned about the impact of capitalist production on natural processes for a long time. In the early 1960s, Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, insisted that the principal causes of ecological degradation, were ‘the gods of profit and production’ served by a cabal within industry, government and academia which betrayed the cause of scientific truth… | more…