November 1, 2021
The reissuing of Reluctant Reformers can inform our attempts to grapple with how the unity of the oppressed can be forged in such a way that the interests of the historically marginalized do not continue to get…well, marginalized.
October 1, 2021
The current situation in Haiti has roots in the historical struggle of the Haitian people, and is part of the endless retribution from imperial powers for its revolution.
October 1, 2021
In India, today, we are witness to the quiet rise of the figure of Mahar Sidnak, iconized and lionized as a warrior of the oppressed from the early nineteenth century. This is electrifying the anticaste struggle and energizing the militant youth, a source of inspiration as historical as it is mythical. Are material issues, or "real struggle," really so opposed to the question of the "mythical past"?
September 1, 2021
In 1970, the French left-wing filmmaker Chris Marker made a twenty-minute documentary about the French left-wing publisher François Maspero. Fleetingly, we catch a glimpse of two publications pinned side by side on one wall, seemingly granted special placement: a copy of The Black Panther newspaper and a Monthly Review. Hardly surprising is this prominence: Maspero's relationship with Monthly Review was always fraternal, both interfaced with one another, shared lists. Together, they helped define what that New in the Left would mean.
July 1, 2021
One of the key components of U.S.-China strategic competition is the technology war, the essence and implications of which can be further understood in the broader context of the international division of labor and the two countries' internal contradictions. From this front, we can decipher the antagonism between different classes/groups within and across the two countries.
July 1, 2021
The Chinese diaspora is compelled either to prostrate to an edifying project of assimilation to U.S. liberal democracy, or be branded as illiberal "Red Guards" unfit for serious political discourse. This discursive context has long mobilized overseas Chinese to affirm the universalism of Western liberalism in opposition to a Chinese despotism defined either by dynastic backwardness or communist depravity. Can overseas Chinese speak for themselves in the face of the West's "hegemonic right to knowledge?" Or will all such speech that challenges U.S. presuppositions of liberal selfhood and Chinese despotism simply be tuned out as illiberal noise?
June 1, 2021
In order to understand what is happening in the United States, in the aftermath of the presidential election, one needs to comprehend the distribution of power in the country.
June 1, 2021
U.S. sanctions killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans before the recognition of Juan Guaidó as interim president in 2019 led to even more murderous sanctions. The message is that tremendous economic pain will be inflicted on the country until Nicolás Maduro is gone.
June 1, 2021
We who are engaged in the struggle for change might ask: "Through what lens of refraction is the evidence of events recalled and related?" If we are to resist the genocidal use of military force, and to oppose the environmental depredation that follows in its wake, we need to see the roots and laws of motion of colonialism and empire
