La guerra de Israel y el ataque de Hamás avivan el retroceso

December 7, 2023

La guerra genocida de Israel sobre Gaza, así como los atroces ataques de Hamás que la provocaron, están llevando al mundo en una dirección reaccionaria y exponiendo la inhumanidad de los poderes dominantes, así como el retroceso de buena parte de la izquierda (Traducción al español del artículo “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”).

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World in View: Protests erupt in Syria against Bashar al-Assad

September 12, 2023

On Aug. 25, the flag of revolution flew high in villages, towns and cities across Syria. The Syrian revolutionary process of the second decade of the 21st Century was one of the most important developments to arise from the Arab Spring. Now is the time to solidarize with it, a solidarity that has been sorely missing.

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An atrocity: Assad welcomed back

June 7, 2023

It is an atrocity that Bashar al-Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League Summit on May 19. This is one more attempt to bury the Syrian Revolution, which has heard its obituary pronounced again and again since the first mass demonstrations of Arab Spring, March 15, 2011.

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Propping up fascists

March 17, 2023

To avoid Russia’s outright defeat in its brutal war against Ukrainians, the alliance of nations–Russia, Iran, and China, now with North Korea–that for 12 years has united to suppress the Syrian Revolution for freedom and dignity seems to be firming up again.

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COP15 and COP27: Ecology summits hide two worlds clashing

January 22, 2023

Two hotly anticipated global summits on ecology and climate papered over a raging war of capital against humanity and Planet Earth—a war manifested in open conflict between “developed” and “developing” countries, but more deeply in a war of the two worlds of rulers and ruled within each country.

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World in View: Saied buries Tunisia’s Arab Spring Revolution

November 12, 2022

Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has completed a counter-revolution aimed at ending the Arab Spring that the Tunisian masses launched in December 2010. He has gotten rid of Parliament and ended judicial oversight, and now has maneuvered a new constitution for the country. This gives him almost total power.

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UN documents Uyghur forced labor, torture

September 10, 2022

The pretext for China’s genocidal campaign against Uyghurs was “Countering Religious Extremism.” Under China’s “anti-terrorism law system” a new UN report states, “acts of legitimate protest, dissent and other human rights activities or of genuine religious activity fall within terrorism.”

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World in View: Tunisia in turmoil

May 19, 2022

Ever since Tunisian President Kais Saied suspended parliament in July 2021, followed in March 2022 by the dissolution of parliament, Tunisia has been in turmoil. Masses in the street protest the lack of jobs and a shortage of basic food items, especially bread for lack of wheat, massive corruption with black markets and Saied’s single-handed decision-making.

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World in View: Tunisia put to the test

September 11, 2021

Since 2011, the opposition between a largely secular “Left” and a more religious “Right” has delimited bourgeois democratic politics. This could have been the starting point for a revolutionary politics. But the Tunisian Left has been unable to transcend this Enlightenment contradiction, despite the vital working-class participation in the 2011 revolution.

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Women from India to the USA fight against misogynist violence

March 11, 2021

Violence against women has worsened in the era of COVID-19. Sexism, like racism, is systemic to almost every culture. Nevertheless women fight back with creative activism and thought. What is new is the internationalization and deepening of that struggle. This year’s International Women’s Day shows women deepening our fight for full freedom and new human relationships.

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Youth in action, March-April 2021

Young people in Tunisian streets call for jobs and relief from rising food prices; Kavi Vu and friends challenge rampant disinformation on Vietnamese language Facebook pages; 1,000 students at Columbia University withhold tuition, demanding 10% reduction in tuition, a reduction in campus police, and fossil fuel divestment.

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IV. What to do in the face of compounding crises—medical, economic, political, and the philosophic void

April 30, 2020

Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part IV: In the absolute opposite of today’s society, one based on freely associated labor instead of slavery to capi­tal’s production for production’s sake, we can leave behind pervasive misery, precarity and antagonism, and self-development and cooperation can flourish, as can a rational relationship to nature. We can see the beginnings in self-organization from below and the ever-growing rejection of capitalism. Against the large part of the Left that focuses on the power of the state to combat disasters, we must bring out the self-activity of mass­es in motion and not disarm ourselves by separating mass struggles from dialectical philosophy of revolution.

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II. The true pandemic war

April 29, 2020

Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.

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Revolution in Permanence in Syria, After the Uprisings

March 22, 2020

Review-essay (longer version) on the book ‘Syria After the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience’ by Joseph Daher. With a combination of ruthless criticism and consistent solidarity, the author situates the Assad regime and Syria’s three counter-revolutions into a broader trend of global neoliberalism.

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Editorial: Trump after impeachment

March 8, 2020

In the aftermath of Trump’s impeachment trial, impunity and purges rage while checks and balances failed. Armed with a philosophy of freedom, the opposition to Trump and to the capitalist system that spawned him would give Trump the challenge that fellow politicians could not.

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Algerians in revolt

June 26, 2019

The creative presence of women, youth, workers and national minorities in the Algerian freedom movement promises much for the future.

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Readers’ Views: May-June 2019

May 6, 2019

Readers’ Views on: Socialism and a philosophy of revolution; Sudan in revolt; Iran vs. Iranians; Flint, Mich., play captures voices; Notre-Dame and fracking on native land; gun control debate; labor strikes; debate on fascism; Trump and DeVos; and voices from behind bars.

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What Is Socialism? Socialism and Philosophy

March 3, 2019

This is the first in a series of four presentations on “What is Socialism?” Shorter versions will be published in News & Letters. The second essay is “Socialism, labor and the Black dimension”; the third is “Socialism and ecology”; and the last is “Socialism and Women’s Liberation.”

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World in View: Israel’s reactionary nation-state law

September 26, 2018

On July 18-19 the Israeli Knesset passed a law creating outrage among Arab and Druze citizens who see it as writing their second-class citizenship into law. It encourages the growth of illegal settlements on the West Bank and the continued dispossession of Palestinians.

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Call for Convention 2018

February 25, 2018

OFFICIAL CALL FOR CONVENTION
to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2018-2019

February 25, 2018

To All Members of News and Letters Committees

Dear Friends:

The deeply ingrained rape culture, already widely known but often hushed up, has been exposed in the broadest way yet by the #MeToo movement. How deep and total is the needed uprooting [=>]

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