Top Menu

Marta Harnecker: How to read Capital today, lessons from Latin America

Marta Harnecker, author of A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism, explains “How do read Capital today, lessons from Latin America.” This talk took place at the international conference, “150 years Karl Marx’s Capital, Reflections for the 21st century,” January 14-15, in Athens, Greece. The conference was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung | more…

Michael Lebowitz on Marx’s Capital: “If you don’t understand the Second Product, you understand nothing”

Michael A. Lebowitz, author of several MRP books, among them, The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now, explains that “If you don’t understand the Second Product in Capital, you understand nothing.” This talk took place at the international conference, “150 years Karl Marx’s Capital, Reflections for the 21st century,” January 14-15, in Athens, Greece. The conference was sponsored by the Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung. | more…

The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now

Melrose on Lebowitz: The Socialist Imperative

‘The socialist imperative,’ according to Michael A. Lebowitz, is to ‘end capitalism and build a society of associated producers oriented to the full development of human potential.’ To move beyond capitalism, to understand how capitalism is failing and why it ought to be superseded today, as a matter of urgency, is the primary purpose of Lebowitz’s The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now, a collection of essays based mostly on previous papers, books, and contributions. ‘The necessity to end the capitalist system and to replace it with that inverse situation oriented to the worker’s own need for development is undeniable’ insists Lebowitz. ‘Very simply,’ he concludes his first chapter, ‘if we are to have any dreams, we must end capitalism now, by all means possible….’ | more…

Union Power: The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania

New! Union Power: The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania

The United Electrical Workers Union, built by hundreds of rank-and-file worker-activists in the quintessentially industrial town of Erie, Pennsylvania, was able to transform the conditions of the working class largely because it went beyond the standard call for living wages to demand quantum leaps in worker control over workplaces, community institutions, and the policies of the federal government itself. James Young’s book is a richly empowering history told from below, showing that the collective efforts of the many can challenge the supremacy of the few. | more…

A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism

Marta Harnecker: “Nobody can deny that a new revolutionary subject has been created in Venezuela”

Q: You are coming to Greece for a Conference on the actuality of Marx’s theoretical system. In the midst of a severe international financial crisis, what lessons can we draw from Marx’s critique of political economy?
MH: I believe it is incredible how Marx anticipated what would happen in the world in regards to the development of the capitalist mode of production. To name only a few things: he announced the tendency to concentrate more and more in less hands (look at transnationals today), the conscious technical application of science to the process of production in general and especially to the exploitation of soil (look at robotic and transgenic agriculture), the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and, with this, the growth of the international character of the capitalist regime (look at globalization), and so on.  | more…

A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerillas' Victory

Organized labor against Batista: International Journal of Cuban Studies reviews A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution

London-based trade union activist Steve Cushion has written an invaluable contribution to our understanding of victory of the Cuban revolutionary forces in 1959 by focusing on the role of organized labor in the defeat of the Batista dictatorship. Leaning heavily on the labor archives of the Institute of Cuban History in Havana and interviews with participants in the struggles, Cushion fashions a well-written and well-researched account of the role of the working class struggles and their interplay with the rural guerrilla army and the armed urban under-ground…. | more…

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century

“Socialism or Nothing” – Imperialism in the 21st Century reviewed by PM Press

John Smith opens his study Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century with a flashback to the collapse of Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in April 2013. With more than 1000 garment workers killed, it was ‘one of the worst workplace disasters in recorded history.’ Smith emphasizes that its occurrence in a country with some of the most exploited workers on the planet is hardly coincidental. Rather, it is a stark reminder of a brutal global regime serving the interests of capital and disregarding the lives of millions of people feeding it, most of whom live in what was once known as the ‘Third World’ and is today commonly referred to as the ‘Global South.’ | more…

Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic

Haiti at a Crossroads: Los Angeles, Saturday, Feb. 4 – with Gerald Horne

Come to a fundraiser for the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, where Gerald Horne will talk about his book, Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic, and Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, will give an update on the current situation in Haiti. | more…

The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left

“SYRIZA Self-Destructs”: Helena Sheehan interviewed by HuffPost Greece

From her youth, Irish philosopher and historian Helena Sheehan admired ancient Athens, both its democracy and Socratic dialogues. In a rich academic life, she has explored philosophy of history and Marxist theory. In the 1990s she traveled often to our country with her partner Sam Nolan, secretary of Dublin Council of Trade Unions and political activist. She discovered the world of the Greek left and the birth of Synaspismos. | more…

Union Worker Democracy: Jim Young talks shop on The Union Edge

James Young, author of the forthcoming Union Power: The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania, joins host Charles Showalter to discuss workers, democracy in unions, and the hard-learned lesson of solidarity. Hear them on TheUnionEdge.com, Labor’s Talk Show. | more…

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (2nd Ed.)

“Labor Organizing in 2017: Looking Beyond Trump’s Lies on Jobs”—David L. Wilson, via Truthout

Donald Trump’s well-publicized deal with the Carrier Corporation last fall was ‘wildly popular’ with US voters, according to Politico. A survey by Politico/Morning Consult on December 1 and 2, 2016, found 60 percent of respondents viewing Trump more favorably because of the November 30 agreement, which the real estate mogul claimed would save 1,100 jobs that the air-conditioner manufacturer had been planning to move from Indiana to a facility in Mexico. ¶ As so often is the case, reality didn’t match up with the president’s assertion. | more…

The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left

New! Catch The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left

Utterly corrupt corporate and government elites bankrupted Greece twice over by profligate deficit spending and by agreeing to an IMF “bailout” of the Greek economy, devastating Greek citizen. Finally, in response to “austerity” measures, the people of Greece stood up, electing, from their own historic roots of resistance, Syriza—the Coalition of the Radical Left. ¶ A seasoned activist and participant-observer, Helena Sheehan adroitly places us at the center of the whirlwind beginnings of Syriza, its jubilant victory at the polls, and finally at Syriza’s surrender to the very austerity measures it once vowed to annihilate. The Syriza Wave is a page-turning blend of political reportage, personal reflection, and astute analysis. | more…