Bruno Latour’s new book “Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime” wants to comprehend the era of global warming but takes a very wrong turn, substituting “Earth” for human subjects of revolution.
climate change
Readers’ Views: March-April 2019, Part 2
Readers’ Views on: Rosa Luxemburg’s revolutionary life; the Green New Deal; and voices from behind bars.
Women WorldWide: March-April 2019
March 10, 2019Women WorldWide takes up the South Korean Escape the Corset movement, Greta Thunberg’s work against global warming, and the struggle by BethAnn McLaughlin to draw attention to the harassment of women in science by prominent men.
News and Letters Committees Call for Plenum 2019
February 25, 2019Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2019-2020
The Green not-so-great New Deal
January 24, 2019Calls for a “green new deal” risk the kind of state/party co-optation of movements from below that was involved in the 1930s New Deal.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2018
December 14, 2018Readers’ Views on: Capitalism vs. the Planet; Anti-Semitism’s Inhumanity; Kavanaugh Travesty; Youth Rock!; Freedom Movements vs. Fascism across the Globe; Catholic Church Crisis; Voices from behind Bars
Youth in Action: November-December 2018
Yale Law School students sit in to protest the rush to confirm Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court; three Australian eighth-graders boycott school over plan to open coal mines on indigenous land overlooking the Great Barrier Reef; and California high school students attend school board meetings en masse to demand the right of 16-18 year olds to vote in school board elections.
Election deepens illegitimacy of Trump’s minority rule
December 3, 2018A Marxist-Humanist view of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections that highlights the illegitimacy of Trump’s rule, showing how it is the rule of a minority won because of anti-democratic voter suppression, gerrymandering, racism, sexism, extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, hate speech and lies. It highlights the other America that opposes such neo-fascism.
California fires are not ‘natural’ disasters
December 2, 2018Climate change and downed power lines from PG&E are the reasons for the unprecedented wildfires in California in 2018, despite Donald Trump’s attempt to put blame elsewhere and open California forests to more logging.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 1
September 29, 2018Readers’ Views takes up: attacks on immigrants; Syria and the Left’s failure; Democratic Party’s selling out women; Women’s Liberation; Serena Williams; ending money bail the right way; Trump-Kim “peace”; genocide and war heroes; and a discussion on sex crimes and their fallout.
Masses vs. capitalism: Climate chaos hangs in the balance
September 28, 2018With disastrous consequences of climate change making themselves felt, both scientists and movements are pointing to the need for a radically different direction, but capitalism has blocked the way and even put a cult of climate denial in the White House.
30,000 march for the climate in San Francisco
September 19, 2018On Sept. 8 over 30,000 came out in San Francisco for the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice, which had counterparts worldwide.
Climate change, capitalism, and Trump
September 5, 2018Climate change, capitalism, and Trump
Presentation to the Chicago Local of News and Letters Committees
By Franklin Dmitryev, August 27, 2018
“…the spirit of the time, growing slowly and quietly ripe for the new form it is to assume, disintegrates one fragment after another of the structure of its previous world. That it is tottering to [=>]
II. Spreading revolt opens new doors
May 3, 2018We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
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 [=>]
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!
Puerto Ricans suffer as Donald Trump plays to his racist base
November 12, 2017Puerto 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. .
“Science Not Silence”
July 6, 2017About 1,000 people rallied on Earth Day at the campus of Cal Tech in Pasadena, Calif., under the banner of “Science Not Silence,” part of nationwide protests.
Editorial: Trump’s attack on climate and labor
Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change is an attack on labor, not, as he claims, for the good of workers. The solution is not to spread illusions about international negotiations. What is needed is to confront capitalism’s suicidal path both in immediate battles and in raising the banner of a new society of freely associated labor. .
V. Lies, facts and ground
May 17, 2017The administration’s war against truth and reason, such as climate change denial, calls for more than fact-checking. What is needed is to establish a totally opposite ground, that of liberation.
I. Trumpism as an excrescence of world capitalism’s crises
Trumpism’s self-perpetuating disorder is based on negation of social movements, trying to stifle the positive in their negation of this exploitative society. His deceit and power grabs express capitalism’s disintegration, exuding racism, sexism, and fascism.
Fukushima is never going away
April 30, 2017Problems from the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima are not going away because the government is not dealing with them seriously and refuses to ask for international help.
Scientists march to safeguard the truth
March 17, 2017Report on the March for Science and other actions from scientists to protest the Trump administration’s attack on science.
Standing Rock: the struggle continues
March 14, 2017The fight against the Dakota Access pipeline continues despite military-style destruction of resistance camps. The movement for Native American liberation from colonialism and for stopping the fossil-fuel exploitation that drives climate change is still growing.
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
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part I
January 31, 2017Readers’ Views on: environmental and social crises; Martin Luther King Day; healthcare crisis, Donald Trump and the election; brutal “justice”; and who reads News & Letters.
Oakland, Detroit march on Martin Luther King Day
January 26, 2017Reports by participants of celebrations and protests on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Oakland, Calif., and Detroit, Mich.
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.
Solidarity with Standing Rock: Water Is Life
November 26, 2016Participant reports of Chicago and Oakland actions in solidarity with the Standing Rock Lakota who are fighting to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. #NoDAPL
Editorial: Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline now!
The 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.
Chicago solidarity action with Native resistance to oil pipeline in North Dakota
September 22, 2016As part of over 200 solidarity actions on Sept. 13, 150 people gathered in Chicago to support the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe fighting to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Lakota protest Dakota Access oil pipeline
September 6, 2016Citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and allies are maintaining a Camp of the Sacred Stones along the proposed route of the Dakota Access oil pipeline to defend the water, sacred and burial sites and wildlife habitat despite having their water and medical care removed as well as threats from the state government.
Fires in Canada, drought in India inspire creative revolt
July 3, 2016The 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.
Youth In Action: May-June 2016
May 7, 2016VIrginia Tech University students, staff and faculty protest and hold a teach-in against hate when white-supremacist author Charles Murray spoke there; a student sit-in at MIT ends when the college commits to taking some environmentally friendly steps; Minneapolis students march and participate in a sit-in against recent immigration raids and President Obama’s immigration policy.
Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 1
March 30, 2016Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
No coal trains in Oakland, California
March 12, 2016Protesters succeed in keeping coal trains from passing through Oakland, California, on their way to unload coal at a port terminal.
Paris climate accord’s suicidal complacency spurs protests
January 24, 2016The Paris Agreement on climate change reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve?
Paris climate accord vs. humanity’s future
December 19, 2015Paris Accord reveals limits of what capitalism will do even in the face of catastrophe. The question is what kind of development can people in all kinds of countries achieve? So long as the vision of an alternative, liberatory path of development is not made concrete as the energizing principle of a movement, a vacuum is left for false alternatives.
Voices from People’s Climate March
December 13, 2015Many voices spoke at Chicago’s People’s Climate March.
‘If you ship it we will block it’ stopping the bomb trains
September 6, 2015Report of a lively demonstration in the San Francisco Bay Area against trains carrying tons of coal that can cause huge explosions and yet travel through highly populated areas.
Mass march to keep ‘oil in the soil’
July 4, 2015Report of the 5,000-strong march, from the banks of the Mississippi to the Minnesota state capitol on June 6, in St. Paul, Minn., to voice objections to Enbridge Corporation’s pipeline expansion.
Youth in Action, July-August 2015
A roundup of youth in action including the struggle by student group GU Fossil Free to force Georgetown University to divest in fossil fuels and notice of a new report in the Index on Censorship, “Fired, Threatened, Imprisoned: is academic freedom being eroded?”
Refugees risk death fleeing war, terror and climate chaos
June 28, 2015Worldwide, the refugee crisis is unprecedented and is fueled by war, terrorism and climate change. The worldwide response is paltry with country after country turning away or deporting frantic and desperate people in search of a safe haven.
Things fall apart
May 6, 2015In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
Workshop Talks: 1949 coal miners’ general strike today
April 30, 2015We workers see from the inside that capitalism is coming apart. The 1949-50 Coal Miners’ General Strike is significant, not only because it highlights resistance to the early stage of automation, but because the miners’ self-activity signified “The Emergence of a New Movement from Practice That Is Itself a Form of Theory.”
Oakland March for Climate Leadership
March 11, 2015The March for Climate Leadership demanded justice for people of color, as they are disproportionately harmed by toxic waste and sea level rise.
Maldives coup defied
March 8, 2015A coup overthrew the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, a long-time pro-democracy activist and an internationally recognized leader on climate issues.
Lima climate talks betray future
January 29, 2015The 20th “Conference of Parties” was held in Lima, Peru, and, rather than action, issued a “Call for Climate Action” without binding commitments or effective monitoring. The U.S. and other nations as good as admitted the bankruptcy of capitalism by arguing that binding commitments had no chance of being adopted.
Hundreds of thousands throng People’s Climate March
November 24, 2014Central Park in New York City was filled with hundreds of thousands at the People’s Climate March on Sept. 21.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2014, Part 2
November 23, 2014From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Readers’ Views, Part 2
PHILOSOPHY, ACTIVITY, ORGANIZATION AND SOCIALISM
I appreciate how Dunayevskaya relates Hegel’s Absolutes with the concrete tasks of building a revolutionary organization. History is the process of becoming. Hegel said that Being and Nothing are abstractions, whereas [=>]