Free Markets and the Decline of Democracy
Capitalist competition is the vehicle that transforms democracy into dictatorship.
The Life and Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg After 100 Years, January 1919-January 2019
Luxemburg’s 1906 pamphlet, “The Mass Strike,” analyzed the essentially spontaneous character of the gigantic strikes that accompanied the Russian revolution of 1905, and it showed that the workers learned and developed in the course of the struggle, not only strategy and tactics, but also revolutionary ideas. In a similar vein, she also wrote a stinging critique of Lenin’s more top-down concept of revolutionary organization, in a famous response to his writings on the vanguard party to lead. Also in this vein, Luxemburg penned an essay offering critical support to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, with her criticism centering mainly on the establishment of a single-party state, something she accurately predicted would undermine the democratic aims of the revolution.
Thinking Through Labor’s Future
What determines which path labor takes will be the degree to which labor mobilization spreads and is tied to a broader political vision. That in turn will depend on the kind of patient, workplace-based organizing that rarely makes headlines.
White Terror and American Capital
As neoliberalism pushes us away from finding collective solutions to social problems some turn right towards hate and racism.
Struggles New and Old: Yellow Vests, the French Revolution and 21-Century Anti-Capitalism
The yellow vest movement has displayed a curious mix of modern and pre-modern forms of struggle, some harking back to the French revolution. These old forms might very well become features of twenty first century anti-capitalist protest.
Remembering Erik Olin Wright: All Ideas Are Political
Socialists today should reject the kind of neutrality that conservatives praise Nathan Glazer for. But we shouldn’t confuse that neutrality with empirical rigor. Erik Olin Wright was confident enough in his political commitments to put them under the microscope. We should be, too.
Climate and contradiction in Marx’s theory of history
Climate change is just another expression of what Marx and Engels identified as the core contradiction of capitalism
Neoliberalism After Apartheid: From South Africa to Palestine/Israel
25 years after the end of apartheid, the lives of working-class black people remain extremely precarious in South Africa. What went wrong? And how can Palestinians avoid these pitfalls as they envision a post-apartheid future?
Marxism and the race problem
Race is best explained as an unintended consequence of the reproduction of capitalist social relations
Down with neoliberalism . . . as a concept
It is only the left who talk about neoliberalism. Our opponents don’t use the concept so we are not engaging with them when we speak a different language. At best, because the term has been used in so many different ways, we almost always need to re-trace our steps to establish what exactly we mean by neoliberalism. Worse, the term lends itself to mirror-image inversions of the facile libertarian mantra that the market is good and the state bad. Ultimately, the term neoliberalism is misleading – not a tool but an obstacle to working out how the world works and how it changes. Nor does it help us identify what we should do.
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