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Marxism

The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State

Engels for Our Times: Gender, Social Reproduction, and Revolution

“It is surprising,” Marnie Holborow writes, “how often in Marxist accounts of women’s oppression Frederick Engels is overlooked.” In responding to this gap in analysis, Holborow examines his influential work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, finding his observations on gender roles and social reproduction under capitalism—and their expressions based on class—are not only astute for Engels’s time, but very much for ours as well. | more…

Logo of the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea

Industrial Agriculture: Lessons from North Korea

According to most Western commentators, North Korea is an “enigma” plagued by “irrational” leadership, poverty, and pervasive food shortages. Zhun Xu charts the evolution of North Korean industrial agriculture and the country’s efforts to feed its population from the Soviet era up until today. What, Xu asks, can we learn from the country’s efforts to industrialize its agricultural sector, and what do they tell us about the future of agriculture under socialism? | more…

Notes by Marx on Italian grammar

Marx and Engels as Polyglots

Drawing on writings, historical accounts, and personal letters, Kaan Kangal surveys the considerable extent of Marx and Engels’s interest in language and capabilities as polyglots. This interest, he argues, was part and parcel of their political commitment to building worldwide socialism. | more…

The vegan flag coat of arms

The Case for Socialist Veganism

There is a paradox, Benjamin Selwyn and Charis Davis write, at the heart of corporate veganism in the Global North. While vegan products are sold to consumers as environmentally conscious alternatives to meat and dairy, the world’s largest producers of such products are rapacious, ecologically destructive, and exploitive of populations in the Global South. The authors argue that a turn toward socialist veganism can advance the goals of decommodifying and democratizing our food system. | more…

The Dialectics of Ecology: An Introduction

In this introduction to his forthcoming The Dialectics of Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2024), John Bellamy Foster charts the relatively recent reconstruction of Marxian ecology, based on the classical Marxist understanding of the social-metabolic system linking humanity and nature. It is through dialectical naturalism, he writes, that we can face the crises of the Anthropocene while building a society that truly supports the well-being both of society and Earth itself. | more…

Ajeeb Daastaans

Hegemonic Femininity in Popular Culture: Heteronormative Appropriation of Lesbian Sexualities in Contemporary India through Neeraj Ghaywan’s ‘Geeli Pucchi’

Using the lens of Neeraj Ghaywan’s film Geeli Pucchi, Aratrika Bose, Tanupriya, and Anuja Singh explore the ways in which lesbian characters negotiate the trappings of hegemonic femininity embedded in Indian culture, from marriage and home life to the workplace, and the role of the body and “beauty” in the navigation of feminine identities. | more…

Social Medicine and the Coming Transformation

Social Medicine and Collective Health

Oscar Feo Istúriz reviews Social Medicine and the Coming Transformation, an extensive work that explores the concept of collective health, from its early basis in classical Marxism to its contemporary implementation in Latin America (and lack thereof in the United States). This model of social medicine-collective health has the potential to not only replace the dysfunctional model of public health under capitalism, but open up new pathways toward profound social transformation. | more…

Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (1939) by David Alfaro Siqueiros

Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism

In this interview with Zhao Dingqi of World Socialism Studies, Gabriel Rockhill dives deep into the CIA’s campaign to propagate thinly veiled imperialist and capitalist ideology through the institutions of the Western left intelligentsia—and how this state of affairs continues among intellectuals to this day. | more…