In this review of ‘Marxist Economic Theory’ by Ernest Mandel, Dunayevskaya criticizes Mandel’s denuding economic categories of their specifically capitalistic nature, and his distortion of Marx’s theory of crises.
capitalism
Essay: Scientists link climate/ecological crisis to social transformation
February 4, 2025The climate crisis, biodiversity, food, water, and human health are so closely linked that efforts to address one without taking the others into account often backfire. This finding from scientists reflects their hearing climate justice movements.
Editorial: California fires reveal human power to ruin and heal
January 20, 2025In California’s worst wildfires in its history, important factors include a century of land and water mismanagement and fossil fuel use that generates global warming. The fires brought out the best, mutual aid from below, and the worst, hateful scapegoating disguising climate denial. A global vision and humane principles in organizing ourselves are fundamental to a sustainable future.
Love as a revolutionary force
August 14, 2024Review of the book ‘El capital amoroso’ by Jennifer Guerra, a five-part essay that challenges our ideas and practices of love in modern society, and aims to restore its revolutionary meaning.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
November 29, 2023In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, we present a piece that takes up the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the connected slaughter of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. This piece goes beyond exposé to explore the treacherous nature of halfway revolutions, which set the stage for counter-revolution. It thus illuminates today’s crisis.
‘Succession’ and the dehumanization of today’s world
August 5, 2023‘Succession’ is a TV series vaguely based on the family running the Fox Corporation. It shows the immense influence of such a company in the daily life of U.S. citizens, but what shocked the reviewer most is how it depicts the dehumanization of human relationships in today’s world.
Climate toll sparks revolt
July 23, 2023The climate crisis is already disrupting billions of lives. Yet the economic and political powers are more concerned with eliminating safeguards for workers and pushing more fossil fuels. It is no time to despair. It is a time of crisis that opens the door to a revolutionary transformation of society.
Hollywood strikes
July 17, 202360,000 Hollywood actors joined the 70-day-long screenwriters’ strike. Despite the glamor, all who work in this $134-billion entertainment industry under the capitalist system are subject to exploitation and alienation like any other worker.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2023-2024: Polycrisis and the need to transform reality. Part IV
June 15, 2023The oil companies and allied capitalists and politicians admit the need for a transformation of economies in the face of the climate emergency, but have managed to frame it as an energy transition. That is a political and ideological victory narrowing the transformation down to a technological-centered change. Thus the transition, as it is being designed, is a nontransformational transformation that will solve nothing—and climate militancy continues.
Capitalism profits off immigrants’ woes
June 8, 2023U.S. President Joe Biden simultaneously put in place a proposal different from Donald Trump’s Title 42 that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their asylum hearing appointment. Biden used another of Trump’s laws: to require refugees to prove that they sought asylum in the first country they encountered. In both proposals human rights are trampled.
Thoughts from the Outside: A view of freedom and self-determination
June 7, 2023Ex-prisoner Faruq discusses the idea of freedom. Every one of our discussions has to center on liberation, what would real freedom look like? If revolution means anything, it creates seats for everyone at the table.
Capitalism can’t deal with disability
May 9, 2023People with disabilities make up 15% of the population. They are in every country and culture on earth. One thing that unites the disabled is that capitalism is a world not made for us, and communism is the only way to establish true freedom and equality for everyone.
German youth speak
January 25, 2023A member of the Socialist Youth of Germany (The Falcons) discusses their aim for a liberated society where people have ruptured the logic of capitalist exploitation in thought and action and taken on responsibility for themselves and their environment.
Thoughts from the Outside: Football and capitalism
January 24, 2023The reality of football was brought home when Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field. Football is a distraction every bit as crucial to propping up this system as circuses were in ancient Rome.
World in View: Migrants die in Qatar
January 22, 2023Qatar, one of the richest countries in the world, runs on sweated migrant labor. Since Qatar was awarded the World Cup over 6,500 migrant workers have died there building the infrastructure for the games.
Congress breaks railroad workers’ strike
December 3, 2022Congress has done its best to become the nation’s strikebreaker by forcing a five-year contract on railroad workers who had been set to go on strike on Dec. 12. Union members in four of the 12 unions had voted to reject a tentative agreement that negotiators had reached with six major rail carriers in September.
60th International Antiwar Assembly
November 11, 2022Excerpts of the appeal from the Executive Committee for the 60th International Antiwar Assembly, together with the message of solidarity sent to the Assembly from News and Letters Committees. Against Putin’s war and for revolutionary new beginnings!
Attitudes to the climate crisis and technology
November 10, 2022Today’s divide in attitudes to technology and climate solutions is more than a political question. It is a deep divide in philosophy. As crucial as are technological advances and the “energy transition,” they are liable to turn into their opposite if they are the focus instead of struggles of people trying to take control over their own lives.
Monkeypox, inequality and imperialism
September 13, 2022Prisoner Easley discusses how capitalist imperialism worsens the monkeypox epidemic and other crises.
Will China make war on Taiwan?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan provoked controversy. Times may have changed since Nixon met Mao but then as now, look to internal reasons in both nations for their foreign policy stances.
Editorial: Ukraine is a beacon against fascism & war
September 9, 2022Ukraine is afraid of losing European supporters after having fought off a Russian invasion for six months in the largest war in Europe since World War II. Ukrainians are also fighting imposed rotten compromises at the expense of Ukrainians! Yes to Ukrainian self-determination and freedom from Russian imperialism!
Stop the food crisis! Build food sovereignty NOW!
July 19, 2022Excerpts from the June 3, 2022, statement by La Via Campesina, “Stop the food crisis! Build food sovereignty NOW!” and a link to the full statement.
War, climate chaos, capitalism, COVID: World food crisis spreads
July 7, 2022With Russia’s war on Ukraine, a food crisis is emerging globally with lightning speed. Capitalism, with its agricultural-industrial system of commodity food production for the world market, is the cause of, and suffers from the consequences of, multiple, linked crises of war, COVID, and climate. There is radical opposition to this perfect storm of capitalist crises.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Hegel’s call to grasp spirit of the times
July 5, 2022Because nothing is more urgent in a time of such crisis than grasping and acting on the spirit of the time in a revolutionary manner, we excerpt a lecture given by Dunayevskaya taking up Hegel’s Absolutes for our day.
Film review: ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’
June 18, 2022Review of ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,’ states that it missed a great chance to be political in a meaningful way. Writer Katy Brand left out the hard part, creating characters who live in a safe world that doesn’t exist. You can’t comprehend prostitution, sex work and sex workers without talking about capitalism and how it alienates and destroys human relationships.
The French election
May 20, 2022On April 24, Emmanuel Macron won a second five-year term as president of France. The rise of right-wing politicians posing as populists is a worldwide phenomenon aided by the neoliberal economic policies of centrist candidates such as Macron and Joe Biden
Thoughts from the Outside: Capital’s discarded lives
May 19, 2022The shooting of a former prisoner working to help homeless people revealed the prison outside, and a cry for a new humanity.
Prisoner strikes and struggles through Marxist-Humanist lens
Commemorating the 10th anniversary of the historic prison hunger strikes that ended California’s permanent solitary confinement, Faruq and Urszula Wislanka give a retrospective/perspective on our involvement in prison issues with two talks on “Historic hunger strikes: 10 years after” and “Listening to women prisoners with Marxist-Humanist ‘ears’”
Editorial: Climate report: revolution or disaster
May 18, 2022The battle over the latest UN report on climate change laid bare the stark alternative between business as usual and the forces fighting for social transformation to stave off catastrophe. Protesting scientists called for “climate revolution.”
Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance shake up the world
May 15, 2022Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resistance to it are shaking up the world and revealing the ideological pollution of society, including of the Left.
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
May 14, 2022‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.
U of Illinois faculty threaten strike
May 11, 2022University of Illinois, Springfield, faculty members have been working since Aug. 16, 2021, without a contract and on April 21 filed an intent-to-strike-notice.
Review: ‘The 1619 Project’
April 22, 2022‘The 1619 Project’ tackles U.S. history since the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia—from multiple perspectives. Each essay is grounded in original sources, scholarly works, interviews and oral histories. Historical events, photographs of ordinary African-Americans and poetry surround each essay, adding a human touch.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2022, Part One
March 19, 2022Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Women in defense of the territory
A call from women living in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, to meet together to fight developmentalist capitalism, and stop the rampant violence against women in the area.
Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt
March 16, 2022Putin’s invasion confronted fierce resistance in Ukraine and opposition on Russian streets. The war reveals a changed world of competing centers of capital–which is in a state of stalled accumulation globally, devolving into militarism, other-hating fascism and fomenting new forms of genocide–signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked.
Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt
March 8, 2022Putin’s invasion confronted fierce resistance in Ukraine and opposition on Russian streets. The war reveals a changed world of competing centers of capital–which is in a state of stalled accumulation globally, devolving into militarism, other-hating fascism and fomenting new forms of genocide–signaling the future this system holds if left unchecked.
‘The Isthmus Is Ours’
March 4, 2022A call from women living in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, to meet together to fight developmentalist capitalism, and stop the rampant violence against women in the area.
Thoughts from the Outside: Homelessness & the needed humanism
February 5, 2022Faruq observes that the money going into the “homeless problem” is spent on mediators, not the people who are homeless, who must be related to as human beings, as part of setting afoot a new human being for the whole world.
Editorial: Attack on abortion harms democracy
February 3, 2022The 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.
Attacking abortion rights undermines democracy
December 14, 2021The 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.
World in View: Nihilistic ‘science’
November 19, 2021Emmett 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.”
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 nerve with the 99%, driven by our realization that we live in a modified version of this game.
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 of Rich’s poetry. The book is especially welcome because Pavlić attends to the latter half of Rich’s career, and acknowledges her Marxism, largely unexplored territory even now.
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 civil disobedience and a general strike until the downfall of the counterrevolution.
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 other job actions this fall have exploded and not just in numbers.
Call for solidarity from Sudan
October 26, 2021A call for solidarity from the Sudanese Workers Alliance for the Restoration of Trade Unions against the counter-revolutionary coup by the al-Bashir Security apparatus and the warlords who traffic in the suffering of the people.
Review of: ‘They didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties’ by Lisa Levenstein
September 22, 2021Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.
Review: Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes
September 6, 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 of Rich’s poetry. The book is especially welcome because Pavlić attends to the latter half of Rich’s career, and acknowledges her Marxism, largely unexplored territory even now.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: Part III. Economic contradictions
September 1, 2021The pandemic and the climate and ecological crisis struck when the world capitalist system had shown its inability to extricate itself from a prolonged economic slump. They deepened it. Despite the happy face that government and corporate economists paint, the opposite story is told by people’s lives.