Article Subjects and Geography: Americas
The Grammar of Resistance: Rethinking Palestine Beyond Pity and Fear
September 1, 2025
In this interview, published here for the first time in English, Abdaljawad Omar (aka Abboud Hamayel) and Pasquale Liguori discuss Western media attempts to force upon Palestinians narratives of either victimhood or savagery. These portrayals, however, only obscure the threat Palestinian resistance poses not just to Zionism, but to the colonial project globally.
Neocolonialism through Debt: How French and U.S. Banks Underdeveloped Haiti
September 1, 2025
In 2003, Haitian president Jean-Betrand Aristide publicly called for France to pay reparations to Haiti—and less than a year later, was whisked away from the island via U.S. military aircraft. Steve Cushion sheds light on the colonial and neocolonial relationships that have imposed crushing debt on Haiti and its people, and their continuing implications for Haiti's development.
Black Scare in California: Blacks, Reds, and Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s
September 1, 2025
Joel Wendland-Liu reviews Armed Struggle?, Gerald Horne's exploration of the state violence and repression that were successfully employed to demolish the Black Panther Party and its influence throughout the 1960s and '70s. Though Horne's recounting, Wendland-Liu writes, we can take powerful lessons about the roles of race and class in the militant drive toward liberation.
Freedom and Economics
September 1, 2025
"Assume a ship under the command of a mad captain headed for certain shipwreck. What would freedom mean to the people on board?" asked MR cofounder Paul M. Sweezy in this previously unpublished discussion piece. "There can hardly be any doubt about the answer…the essence of freedom for the people on the ship is the ability to control their collective fate."
A Special Issue on Communes in Socialist Construction
July 1, 2025
Inspired by the Venezuelan project of building socialism via the commune, this special issue looks at attempts to use communal models in socialist projects in a range of different contexts, as well as the theoretical bases for such an endeavor. In their introduction, guest editors Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual argue that the theme of Communes in Socialist Construction is an important opportunity for engaged Marxist reflection of a kind that offers valuable contributions to the universal body of socialist thought.
Venezuela’s Communal Project
July 1, 2025
Ángel Prado, a founder of El Maizal Commune and Minister of Communes since 2024, discusses Venezuela's communal project as both a response to urgent material needs and a long-term strategy for building socialism. Drawing on his experience as a grassroots organizer, he explores how communes are structured, how they relate to the state, and how they embody a vision of popular power. He also reflects on the need for unity within the Chavista movement.
Land, Cooperation, and Socialism
July 1, 2025
João Pedro Stedile, founder and spokesperson of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement (MST), reflects on the movement's efforts to build a socialist alternative through land occupations, cooperative production, and political education. He highlights the importance of collective struggle and the MST's deepening ties with Venezuela's communal movement as part of a broader project to construct a just and solidarious society.
Popular Power in Brazil: What Can We Learn from Indigenous, African, and Peasant Histories of Collective Resistance?
July 1, 2025
"To tell the history of resistance," Roberta Traspadini writes, "we need to investigate the territories where people live their daily lives." Using both historical analysis and contemporary data, Roberta Traspadini reveals the importance of Brazilian Quilombola communities as local sites of struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. These quilombagem, she argues, reveal the revolutionary legacy that persists among the most marginalized in Brazilian society.
‘Making Every Yard a Farm and Every Garage a Factory’: The Theory and Practice of Cooperation Jackson
July 1, 2025
Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson outlines the ongoing projects and objectives of the Mississippi-based collective Cooperation Jackson. Akuno enumerates the many ways Cooperation Jackson has worked toward improving material conditions and building dual power in support of the Black working and peasant classes in the Mississippi Delta region.