COP26: Rulers strive to stifle youth response to climate emergency
In the face of climate justice movements from below, the rulers are determined to keep control in their hands. With creative new actions and thinking raising the possibility of alternative, anti-capitalist paths of development, the powers that be are working hard to reduce that to a mere “energy transition.”
DISCUSSION ARTICLE: Was Marx a materialist?
Many post-Marx Marxists have painted Marx as a materialist. While no one denies the aspects of Marx that are materialistic, to call his philosophy materialist is as accurate as calling his philosophy idealist. Both are key aspects that play a part in shaping human life. Both are important to understanding human life and human activity.
Attacking abortion rights undermines democracy
The raging attack on abortion rights is an attack on freedom by fascist leaders and their followers who want to undermine democracy and save a decrepit, unworkable, exploitative, racist-patriarchal capitalism.
Philosophic Essay: Marx’s demystified dialectic and the “new society”
Ours is an age of total crises and pervasive angst about humanity’s future. Marx’s recreation of Hegel’s freedom Idea, a humanism that is directly part of life and nature, is a unifying pull of the future in freedom movements and presages “the new society” Dunayevskaya saw in Hegel’s Idea.
Free speech and revolution
Workers are key in the fight for freedom of speech as is the need for theory grounded in a philosophy of freedom.
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Workers, from union to gig, reject rules that bosses try to reimpose
November 9, 2021Workers in the U.S. have made 2021 a year that ought to panic giant corporations and small store owners alike. The wave of strikes and...
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From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Automation and the New Humanism
November 14, 2021Questions raised by the actions and words of the workers in today’s militant labor insurgency demand a philosophical response. Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. began with...
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A call for solidarity from Sudan
November 11, 2021Call from The Sudanese Workers Alliance for the Restoration of Trade Unions to engage in a protracted struggle against the military coup, to engage in...
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Review-Essay: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes
November 15, 2021Ed Pavlić’s ‘Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes’ is the first critical book to appear after Rich’s Collected Poems (2016) and thus the first covering all...
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World in View: China’s and U.S.’s imperial maneuvers
November 17, 2021The front line of the capitalist-imperialist U.S-China confrontation shifts to the Pacific Ocean, with Taiwan in the...
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Afghans resist Taliban and the world
November 12, 2021After the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, there are mounting human rights violations. They are forcing women to disappear from public life and accept abuse but...
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Chicago climate strike
November 10, 2021Participant report of the Fridays for Future climate strike in Chicago on September 24,...
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Women of color brought R. Kelly to justice
November 12, 2021Rapper R. Kelly was convicted of racketeering. Ultimately, Black women, most notably Dream Hampton, the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter brought him...
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Squid Game: capitalism’s essence
November 16, 2021The popularity of Squid Game is a sign that people are realizing the starkness of their situation under our current economic system. It struck a...
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Nationwide marches for reproductive justice
November 11, 2021In Chicago, four to five thousand rallied and marched downtown to make it clear that women in the U.S. are continuing to fight back against...
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Thoughts from the Outside: Whitewashing history
November 16, 2021The opposition to “critical race theory” is an old idea in new clothes, whitewashing U.S. history based on a mythical past. We can’t find a...
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Editorial: Rulers say to the world: ‘Burn in hell!’
November 10, 2021While climate justice movements are increasingly radical, COP26 is run by capitalist states and private capital, greenwashing to block any kind of real self-determination from...
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Woman as Reason: Violence against women on the rise
After over 50 years of a Women’s Liberation Movement unthinkable numbers of women continue to be brutally raped and murdered worldwide—with the COVID-19 pandemic spiking that number even higher. What can help us gain that needed confidence is to understand the meaning of our own actions and thoughts which is the role of a philosophy of human liberation.
Review: ‘Reproductive Rights as Human Rights’
In ‘Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice,’ Zakiya Luna discusses how SisterSong, the reproductive justice organization, was based and operates on the concept of human rights.
Women Worldwide
Social media’s effects on young women’s mental health; Mexican Supreme Court bans criminalizing abortion; FiLiA2021 conference in Europe; and women boycott bars and clubs in Britain demanding better training for staff to protect women from rapists.
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U.S.-Mexico collusion against immigrants
Once again a migrant caravan—primarily Central Americans and Haitians—is proceeding from southern Mexico towards Mexico City, with hopes of reaching the U.S. While Mexico has historically been a safe haven for exiles the Haitians are facing Mexican government hostility, including National Guard soldiers who have attacked caravans near Mexico’s southern border.
Foul tap water in Benton Harbor
High levels of lead found in Benton Harbor, Michigan, reveal shocking environmental racism.
Queer Notes
Trans people in Puerto Rico; a counter-protest led by Rainbow Coalition, protector of Trans children in Canada; and a protest at Chicago’s Benet Academy against the firing of soccer coach Amanda Kammes.
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Readers’ Views, Part One
Readers’ Views on Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives 2021-2022; Labor shortage?; Workers as reason; Support El Milagro workers!; Detroit women’s march; Chapelle’s sexism; Afghans dead and buried; Betrayal of Haitians; and Which side are you on?
Solidarity with Soheil Arabi and his mother
Call to solidarity for the release of Iranian blogger Soheil Arabi, imprisoned for “blasphemy.”
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Readers’ Views, Part Two
Readers’ Views on Philosopher-revolutionaries; Youth, climate and the freedom idea; Climate crisis; California fires, FDA fails women, and Voices from behind bars.
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Voices from the Inside Out: Criminal priorities
Robert Taliaferro denounces the exacerbated inequalities of capitalism in the U.S.: while, in a Midwestern prison, hundreds of pounds of organically grown vegetables and fruits were allowed to rot, one out of five Black families face food insecurity.
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Mapuche people fight for their land in Chile
In October, right-wing Chilean President Sebastián Piñera twice decreed a 15-day state of emergency for several provinces which directs the armed forces to provide support for policing and surveillance of the Mapuche people. We include part of the Mapuche people’s declaration.
Handicap This!
Handicap This! takes up an inhuman “assisted suicide” bill being debated in the House of Lords in UK; the working conditions of caregivers; the effects of COVID-19 on government-funded caregiver agencies in Ireland; and the danger the Taliban pose for disabled people in Afghanistan.
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Free Maâti Monjib
Call to support Moroccan journalist Maâti Monjib, who was convicted of “fraud” and “undermining state security” by a court in Rabat, Morocco, and who has begun another hunger strike.
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Youth in Action
Young immigration activists confront Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to demand she uphold campaign promises; protests against racially biased enforcement of the student dress code in Richardson, Texas; and the demonstration marking the two-year anniversary of the uprising led by students in Chile.
Reading Altizer’s apocalyptic theology
Finzel and Kelch review Satan and Apocalypse, the latest work by the “Death of God” theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer, which explores the intersection between William Blake’s revolutionary vision and Hegel’s dialectic of Manifest Religion. What makes Hegel so contemporary, the reviewers argue, is that his absolute Idea as new beginning never bows to any given reality but holds fast to the positive in the ongoing creative power of the negative.
Youth hold Climate Strike in San Francisco
As part of the ongoing Fridays for Future, on Aug. 27 several hundred, mostly youth, gathered in San Francisco to call attention to environmental racism, the climate crisis, and public health.
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World in View: Nihilistic ‘science’
Emmett connects the ever-growing surveillance state as part of contemporary capitalism, with the “scientific” expression of the worst kind of nihilism and anti-humanity as expressed in Sebastien Bohler’s book The Human Bug.
World in View: For a Sudanese Revolution in permanence
The concrete difficulties of the Sudanese Revolution, which since Oct. 25 has been facing a coup by the state-capitalist militarists who control much of the economy, can be seen in the blockade of Port Sudan.
World in View: Aramesh Dustdar
A remembering of philosopher Aramesh Dustdar (1931-2021), an important critic of the retrogression of the Iranian Revolution.