We look at the world economic situation that must be changed: the role of state-capitalism, labor, climate change, the law of value, exploitation, alienation, and revolution and counter-revolution in Syria.
capitalism
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2018-2019: Fighting Trump and his fascist allies in practice and theory
May 1, 2018Part I of the Draft Perspectives Thesis: Trump’s war show.
The real threat of war reflects Trump’s extremeness as a product of failing capitalism, which is not an aberration but an index of the nature of U.S. capitalist imperialism.
Voices From the Inside Out: What is the objective of prisoner unity?
March 8, 2018Prisoner Faruq writes of “those of us confined behind prison walls [who] recognize the pressing need to unify the prison population in the different prisons.”
Call for Convention 2018
February 25, 2018OFFICIAL 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 [=>]
Workshop Talks: Genocide voted in
February 6, 2018Through a view of his childhood as ethnic Chinese in Burma, Htun Lin takes up the plight of the Rohingya and the betrayal of democratic ideals by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Letter from Mexico: Zapatistas and science for humanity
At the second gathering of “ConSciences for Humanity,” scientists shared with the Zapatista Indigenous communities their views of “Science in the face of the wall [capitalism].”
World in View: Australia’s castaways
February 2, 2018Since 2012 Australia has held around 2,000 refugees and asylum seekers in brutal detention camps. Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis, Uighurs, Rohingya and Kurds, thrown together, have been subjected to stress, violence, and rape.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2018, Part I
January 31, 2018Readers’ views on: U.S. Racism on trial, the right’s crocodile tears, creeping fascism, climate change, nuclear alarms, teachers as labor, Pat Hunt Presente! and Judy and Dan presente!
Readers’ Views: November-December 2017, Part 1
November 12, 2017Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.
Puerto Ricans suffer as Donald Trump plays to his racist base
Puerto Rico is devastated by hurricanes, with climate change a factor, and by the administration’s racist malign neglect, atop an existing debt crisis the masses did not create. Real solidarity came from below. .
DACA Dreamers and allies resist Trump
October 24, 2017A participant reports on a series of protests, rallies and marches of thousands taking place in September in Los Angeles against President Donald Trump’s attacks on youthful immigrants called Dreamers by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival Program.
Puerto Rico devastated by hurricanes, colonial exploitation, and Trump’s racism
October 1, 2017We condemn the racist response of the Trump administration to the desperate situation in Puerto Rico. What we are seeing there is nothing less than a physical and moral apocalypse.
Earthquakes in Mexico: a wake-up call
September 26, 2017An in-person report of the recent devastating earthquakes in Mexico and how social conditions including capitalism, government corruption, etc., negatively affect rescue efforts; how everyday people’s self-organization makes a significant difference.
The struggle for the meaning of history
September 19, 2017On Aug. 27 in Berkeley, Calif., thousands came out to protest an “alt-right,” “No to Marxism,” demonstration including Black Lives Matter, feminists, Muslims, immigrants, leftists, and ordinary citizens against “hate.”
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 2
September 5, 2017Readers’ Views: Marx’s concept of theory; we are not a game; voices from behind bars.
Rising U.S. racism challenges all freedom movements
September 2, 2017A Marxist-Humanist analysis of the history and meaning of the rising of the right-wing neo-Nazi white supremacist movement, its relationship to President Donald Trump and his administration, and its challenge to the freedom forces arrayed against it who are fighting for a humanist world. .
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 2
July 6, 2017Readers’ Views on Cooperative Form of Labor vs. Abstract Labor; Marx vs. Trump-Putin; Voices From Behind Bars
Voices From The Inside Out: Resisting Trumpism
May 1, 2017Through the study of theory and philosophy and by solidarizing and striking, prisoners seek a humanist society that rejects Donald Trump, his plutocratic regime and the U.S. criminal injustice system. .
Immigrants and allies challenge Trump’s inhumanity
April 22, 2017As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and related abuses, strikes, protests, and sanctuary cities are proliferating. The oppression of a lower caste of workers and the discrimination and violence faced by immigrants present a challenge to the Left, labor and the rest of humanity.
Essay: Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism
March 21, 2017Trump’s barbarism in power is a crisis for bourgeois democracy and revolutionary thought. Opposition from below is far deeper than bourgeois opposition to Trump. To have efficacy today, Marx’s body of ideas must be grasped and projected as a whole. The movement from theory needs to meet the challenge of history, of freedom struggles and revolution.
Women take the lead against world retrogression
March 8, 2017An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2017
February 26, 2017Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2017-2018
Voices From the Inside Out: African-American History Month
February 5, 2017Prisoner Faruq looks at how African-American History Month came to be, stressing the importance of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s vision and how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy included a critique of cultural and social relations as well as race, concluding that history is necessary for formerly enslaved people to move towards freedom.
As Others See Us: The new French edition of Marxism and Freedom ‘To retake the historical initiative’
January 31, 2017Frédéric Monferrand introduces the new French edition of Marxism and Freedom. This excerpt concentrates on how the work reconstructs the Hegelian philosophical consistency of Marx’s Marxism so that it comes to life–from the 1844 Manuscripts to “Capital,” through the idea that history is the history of the efforts of humanity to make itself free.
Letter from Mexico: Indigenous organize to contest 2018 vote
The National Indigenous Congress in Mexico announced that 430 communities had created an Indigenous Governing Council to prepare for selecting a woman to contest the presidential election in 2018, not with the goal of taking power through the ballot box, but to elicit the voices and actions from below.
Review: Wombs in Labor
January 29, 2017Review of “Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India,” by Amrita Pande. Pande references divergent feminist viewpoints but studies surrogacy as a form of labor so that she goes beyond moral questions to the question of how a labor market in wombs is created and how the laborers experience this market.
The Ghost Ship fire
January 26, 2017A view of the fire at the Ghost Ship that takes into account the capitalist nature of rents, evictions, land use, and how youth, by the way the live their lives, are fighting back.
Democracy in the streets votes Trump out!
January 23, 2017Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.
Uber scams drivers
November 30, 2016A woman ex-Uber driver details how they exploit their drivers with late fees, turning off your car, and their desire to get rid of their drivers altogether.
Where to now for the Middle East?
A look at the situation in the Middle East in light of Donald Trump’s election that takes up Syria, Yemen and the arming by the U.S. of varying forces–some of whom are fighting each other.
Editorial: Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline now!
November 26, 2016The resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline has become a beacon for all opposing the ruling system—and has been assaulted with ferocious repression. It is a powerful manifestation of the vast forces putting American civilization on trial. The time is now to support this struggle in practice and in thought.
How can we, once and for all, end sexism?
September 17, 2016From the September-October 2016 issue of News & Letters
Art by Paul Tanzawa
Women have been fighting for our freedom for centuries and yet we are still raped, beaten, enslaved–treated as less than human. We will never be free under capitalism, which has only made women’s lives worse and now threatens our existence [=>]
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 2
September 16, 2016Readers’ Views includes: Politics; revolution and the power of philosophy; remembering Olga Domanski; the sports section; national prison action; and voices from behind the bars.
Readers’ Views: September-October 2016, Part 1
September 14, 2016Readers’ Views on: Racism and Revolt Put U.S. on Trial; Life and Death Under the Class Divide; Environmental Struggles; War and Atrocities; and Women’s Lives at Stake.
Essay: Epigones discard Marxist-Humanist philosophy
September 12, 2016The retreat of former Marxist-Humanists into post-Marx Marxism is analyzed by Franklin Dmitryev through the books “Marx at the Margins” by Kevin Anderson and “Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism” by Peter Hudis, which appropriate some of Raya Dunayevskaya’s conclusions while quietly dismantling their philosophical framework.
Workshop Talks: Why allow Assad to kill the sick?
September 7, 2016Healthcare worker Htun Lin takes up the relationship between workers in healthcare in the U.S. who are told “not everyone can be saved,” and what is happening in Syria where the Syrian government, Russia and Iran are bombing civilians including–or especially–hospitals and healthcare workers.
Review: We were feminists once
September 6, 2016Review by feminist Adele of Andi Zeisler’s book, We Were Feminists Once: from Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, exploring how a once revolutionary feminism is being taken over by “marketplace feminism.”
In 1995 Andi Zeisler
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 2
July 14, 2016Readers’ Views on Needed New Beginnings in Philosophy and Revolution; Making One Year Count; Subjugated Knowledge; Free Syria/May Day; and Voices From Behind the Bars.
‘Workless’ capitalism?
July 4, 2016Universal Basic Income is posed by some as a solution to the robotization of work and a “workless society” but this ignores Marx’s liberatory vision of a society in which labor is completely transformed so as to become life’s prime want.
Jasmine Richards – Black Lives Matter speaks
July 3, 2016A revolutionary critique of the “lynching” charge against Black Lives Matter activist Jasmine Richards and how it reveals the racism endemic to U.S. society and spotlights the revolutionary Black youth fighting against it.
Editorial: Brexit emboldens the Far Right
An Editorial on how Brexit has emboldened the Far Right, not only in Britain but also in the U.S., bringing out blatant expressions of racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-immigrant hatred; and the importance of people’s own self-organization to counter this moment in history.
Fires in Canada, drought in India inspire creative revolt
The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and climate chaos fueled by capitalism’s drive for production for the sake of production.
III. Chinese labor in revolt
May 7, 2016Part III of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Strikes and workers’ uprisings in China have forced industrial wages up, not pausing even during the global Great Recession, as a window on capitalism and its crises.
II. The worldwide war against women
Part II of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The worldwide war against women includes attacks on abortion rights, counter-revolution in Egypt, attacks on women by UN troops. Women celebrated International Women’s day in Turkey and other countries.
I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.
May 6, 2016Part I of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Discontent is seething in the U.S. among workers, youth, Blacks, women, LGBTQ, including elements of the new society. Fear of revolution is powering neo-fascism opposing the revolt.
Workshop Talks: Alive in struggle
April 27, 2016Chinese university students’ struggle at Tiananmen Square for better living conditions; Kaiser workers’ fight against two-tier wages and the continuous miner; and today’s Hong Kong Youth’s Umbrella Revolution, Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter all show that workers are alive in struggle.
Woman As Reason: Exploitative reproductive industry
The assisted human reproduction industry treats women donating eggs as commodities, giving them no voice about their compensation and no regard for their healthcare.
The need for new beginnings in thought and in action
April 25, 2016Contents: Introduction; I. Discontent, revolt and reaction in the U.S.; II. The worldwide war against women; III. Chinese labor in revolt; IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa; V. Toward organizational new beginnings. The fact that the old, crumbling order will not go away quietly explains why we print the Marxist-Humanist Draft Perspectives in the pages of the paper of News and Letters Committees. It is an open window onto the needed philosophy of revolution, without which all revolutions and freedom movements remain incomplete.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 2
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: The Movements from Practice and from Theory; Berta Caceres; Why Read N&L?; Women’s Liberation; Voices from behind the Bars.