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Inequality

Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey by Dan Berger

A History of Black Power We Need and Deserve

This article will be released in full online November 18, 2023.

Say Burgin reviews Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey, an account of the fight for Black Power as told through the Simmons family, and particularly, Michael and Zoharah Simmons, from their first meeting during SNCC’s Atlanta Project to their later painful struggles as a family. The story that shines through, Burgin writes, is a story of Black Power that is deeply personal, often messy, and, above all, a refreshing challenge to popular narratives that serve to demonize the history of Black Power and the radicals who devoted their lives to the struggle. | more…

Bit Tyrants The Political Economy of Silicon Valley by Rob Larson

Bit Despotism: The Genesis of High-Tech Monopolies

This article will be released in full online November 25, 2023.

In this review of Bit Tyrants by Rob Larson, Mateo Crossa finds and expands on how the powerful actors of Silicon Valley have fashioned themselves into the new, unapologetic robber barons, operating in the shadows of political lobbying to maintain their monopolistic practices in the Global North while shamelessly engaging in the naked exploitation of the workers in the Global South. Crossa echoes Larson’s call for liberation from these tyrants, bringing attention to the necessity of socialism—both on- and offline—to agitate for democratic control over the technology and Internet platforms that increasingly penetrate our daily lives. | more…

A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and One-Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby

A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and One-Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby

One century ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald invited us into the lives of the “rotten crowd,” Jazz Age Americans with far more money than morals. In “A Rotten Crowd”: America, Wealth, and One Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby, John Marsh welcomes us back to Fitzgerald’s world to examine the rich and their reckless approach to human relationships, their poor taste in friends, and the harm they cause. Marsh leads us to wonder: What kinds of waste—economic, environmental, emotional—accompany a culture of wealth? What kinds of relationships do the wealthy form with those they rely upon to maintain their power—and how does capitalism and the need

Map showing locations of select strategic U.S. military installations (indicated by stars) along the first and second island chains in the Indo-Pacific.

Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific—An Introduction

John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark introduce this summer’s special issue on “Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific,” exploring how the super-region came to be conceptualized among geopolitical strategists and its present-day role in U.S military strategy. “The United States,” they write, “facing the demise of its global hegemonic imperialism, is not only preparing for a Third World War; it is actively provoking it.” | more…

Taiwan, the U.S. and China

Taiwan: An Anti-Imperialist Perspective

“In the Western imagination,” the Qiao Collective writes, “Taiwan exists as little more than a staging ground for ideological war with the People’s Republic of China.” However, this not only obscures the deep historical and cultural ties between Taiwan and the mainland, but functions as a justification for U.S. imperial intervention in the South China Sea. | more…

Closeup of the Korean Demilitarized Zone that surrounds the Military Demarcation Line

The Korean Linchpin: The Korean Peninsula’s Enduring Centrality in U.S. Indo-Pacific Geostrategy

Tim Beal dives into the critical role that the Korean Peninsula plays in U.S. strategy for maintaining power in the Indo-Pacific. The United States, he concludes, has long used its position on the peninsula to advance U.S. interests in the Pacific theater, aiming its most recent efforts against the rise of China and Russia. | more…

Ceremony to lower a Japanese flag and raise a U.S. flag in Seoul on Sept. 9, 1945

Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand: Peace in Korea and Northeast Asia Now!

In this forcefully argued piece, Dae-Han Song presents an overview of the past few decades of U.S. policy on the Korean Peninsula and its continued refusal to engage meaningfully with any peace process between the artificially separated North and South. The article ends with a series of demands that look toward a future of peace on the peninsula. | more…

Logo used by Parti Africain de l'Indépendance

The Actuality of Red Africa

What is “Red Africa”? Through an extended treatment of Kevin Ochieng Okoth’s Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics (Verso, 2023), Vijay Prashad and Mikaela Nhondo Erskog illuminate the potential for a reinvigorated socialist politics in Africa. In turning away from Afropessimism and Decolonial Studies, the authors catalog the on-the-ground realities at play in pan-African and Marxist social movements today. | more…

The Myth of Black Capitalism, New Edition

Is Black Capitalism Still a Myth?

The Myth of Black Capitalism, Earl Ofari Hutchinson reflects on the relevance of his work more than fifty years after its initial publication. Even despite the promotion of wealthy Black individuals as model capitalists and COVID recovery schemes purported to help Black entrepreneurs, “Little had changed except the desperation of countless numbers of near penniless, distressed Black small business owners.” | more…

Refugees crossing the Mediterranean sea on a boat, heading from Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 29 January 2016

Return of the Atlantic Route from West Africa to Europe: Imperialism and Regional (De-)Integration

As dangerous trans-Atlantic crossings between Africa and Europe continue to rise, Hannah Cross examines the roots of the ongoing crisis. The discussion around migration, she notes, “overlooks the imperial role of Europe and the United States over borders, migration regimes, regional (de-)integration, and national development projects within Africa.” The solution, therefore, can only be found through genuine liberation and autonomy across the continent, rather than internationally imposed mechanisms benefitting the powerful in the Global North. | more…

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