To solve the climate crisis, we need a system in which working people and their communities collectively and democratically regulate production and other interactions with their material and social environment. To deny that this crisis is hardwired into capitalism, and that we need a new system to deal with it, is just as misleading and dangerous as to deny the existence of human-induced global warming. | more…
With the rise of Donald Trump, U.S. politics has descended, like never before, into a theater of the absurd. Unbridled anti-intellectualism, deception, and “vindictive chaos” recall a morally reprehensible past in the guise of “making America great again.” But despite his populist posturing, Trump’s contempt for democratic processes is matched by his commitment to economic policies that favor the financial elite. | more…
Capitalism was a radical break with the past: for the first time, production of basic goods was driven by the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, and not primarily to satisfy human needs. Likewise, we are alienated from the natural world, as the products of our own labor are no longer under our control. Our very perception of nature is shaped by an economic system that treats “the environment” as a collection of commodities to be exploited. | more…
Admired, followed, criticized, denounced, and rediscovered, “The Development of Underdevelopment” deserves a place among the key documents of postwar radical political economy. More than fifty years on, its ideas still illuminate aspects of recent struggles and shortcomings among left-of-center governments in Latin America. Most importantly, Frank’s work poses a bold postcolonial challenge that has yet to be fully met by Latin American scholars and social movements. | more…
Miroslav Krleža was a giant of Yugoslav literature, yet remarkably little of his writing has appeared in English. In a body of work that spans more than five dozen books, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays, Krleža steadfastly pursued a radical humanism and artistic integrity. Harbors Rich in Ships gives English-speaking readers an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate the astonishing breadth of Krleža’s literary creations. Beautifully translated by Željko Cipriš, this collection of seven representative early texts introduces a new audience to three stories from Krleža’s renowned antimilitarist book, The Croatian God Mars; an autobiographical sketch; a one-act play; a story from his collection of short stories, One Thousand and One Deaths; and his signature drama, The Glembays, a satirical account of the crime-ridden origins of one of Zageb’s most aristocratic families. | more…
England and Wales represent two very different, indeed incompatible, approaches to health care. In the former, health care has come under increasing threat from the predatory forces of privatization. In Wales, however, an explicit effort has been made to defend socialist values and formulate them for the twenty-first century, defending and expanding a system that puts the health and well-being of its citizens over profit. | more…
Most accounts of Marx and Engels’s lives, if they mention Carl Schorlemmer (1834–92) at all, refer to the renowned chemist only as a friend, without acknowledging his influence on their studies of the natural sciences. It is time to restore this neglected figure to his rightful place in the Marxian—and Engelsian—tradition. | more…
For decades, academics have suggested that Engels downgraded and distorted Marx’s thought. Today we are at last seeing the return of Engels, whose work continues to inform the struggles and inspire the hopes that define our own time. | more…
Ahmed White’s vivid and deeply researched account of the Little Steel strike of 1937 makes an important contribution to our understanding of U.S. labor history, union organizing, and class conflict. It illustrates the tactical complexity of strikes, reveals the power and ruthlessness of employers, and demonstrates the risks of relying on the state to secure justice for working people. | more…
In Acting Like It Matters, James McEnteer gives a compassionate account of John Malpede—actor, activist, and co-creator of the political theatre troupe the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD)—and of the Skid Row community that is the organization’s heart and soul. The story of Malpede and the LAPD is one of life as art and art as life, and its protagonists are the dehumanized homeless citizens of Los Angeles and their compatriots in cities across the United States and the world, who represent a growing part of today’s global working class pushed out of the formal economy. | more…
Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, the alt-right organization Turning Point USA introduced its notorious Professor Watchlist…, listing some 200 radical academics in the universities as dangerous professors. Stories regarding this list were soon being carried in major papers throughout the country. In contrast to David Horowitz’s list of “the 101 most dangerous academics in America” a decade ago, the current Professor Watchlist has behind it the new sense of power on the extreme right provided by Trump’s electoral victory.… There can be no doubt that this is part of an attempted new McCarthyism. In terms of its overall orientation, the alt-right strategy here resembles the Gleichschaltung (“bringing into line”) in 1933–35 in Hitler’s Germany, where intimidation was directed at all the major cultural institutions, including universities, with the object of getting them to align with the new dominant views. | more…
Aleida Guevara March is the daughter of Che Guevara and Aleida March. She is a pediatrician at William Soler Children’s Hospital in Havana, and teaches at the Escuela Latina-Americana de Medicina and at a primary school for children with disabilities. As a member of the Cuban Communist Party, she often participates in political debates across the globe. As a pediatrician, she has worked in Angola, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. She has two adult daughters and works closely with the Centro de Estudios Che Guevara, where her mother is the director.
