Cubans revolt and students speak out amid food and medicine shortages and human rights violations; and Latin America suffers under climate change.
climate change
Taliban reconquest shakes alliances, challenges Left
September 12, 2021The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2021-2022: The dialectic of crises worldwide is testing liberation struggles
September 1, 2021As another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic swells, too many people are stuck in a recurring nightmare. The world faces multiple existential crises–a global state-capitalist system shot through with racism, xenophobia, sexism, heterosexism, ableism and authoritarianism. That calls for the confluence of labor and liberation struggles through a unifying philosophy based in the dialectic of liberation in those movements.
Afghanistan turmoil shakes world politics, challenges Left
August 21, 2021The Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan has shaken world politics and challenged the Left to respond in a revolutionary way. In the absence of truly liberatory revolutionary movements, what looms to fill the vacuum is not only a reinvigoration of fundamentalist political and military movements but the reactionary maneuvering by Russia and China, refugee-scapegoating parties, and repression of social movements on the model of Syria’s Assad and Burma’s Tatmadaw—all of which have been flourishing under the U.S. permanent “war on terror.”
Readers’ Views: July-August 2021, part one
July 2, 2021Readers’ Views on: What Is Socialism?; What Is Marxist-Humanism?; Nuclear Socialism?; Nuclear Capitalism; Flat Earth Society; Indigenous Genocide; Indigenous Liberation; Racism Takes its Toll; Rape Culture; Coming Out in Sports; Colonialism and Liberation
Native Americans challenge Line 3
July 1, 2021The protests over the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota are the latest front in a long struggle of Native Americans. It is also part of the movement to confront climate change in a way that benefits Black, Indigenous and People of Color, women, workers and youth, rather than narrowly aimed to help capital.
Central America deal: troops at borders
May 8, 2021Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico agreed with the Biden administration to put more military at their borders to stop immigrants.
Youth in Action: May-June 2021
Young climate activists prepare for the next UN climate change conference, COP26; the French Senate’s reactionary vote to dissolve the National Union of Students of France; youth protest a Japanese plan to dump more than 1 million tons of irradiated water from the Fukushima reactor site into the ocean; and more than 60,000 schoolchildren in Japan signed a “Stop Extreme School Rules” petition.
Editorial: Green recovery needs a radical struggle
January 30, 2021Recovery from current environmental, health and economic devastation needs radical struggles and ideas or it will be funneled into building a new stage of capitalism.
Readers’ views: September-October 2020, part two
August 29, 2020Readers’ Views takes up: Queer safety is a human right; fake green politics; women in India; women in the U.S.; shameless evictions; voices from behind bars.
Letter from Mexico: Ecological protest in Xochimilco
Participant report of a protest against the construction of a bridge that would destroy the wetland of Xochimilco, one of the few natural zones remaining in Mexico City.
Readers’ views, March-April 2020: Part one
March 17, 2020Readers’ views on climate struggles; labor struggles; racist politics; election contradictions; Modi’s Kristallnacht?; anti-abortion terror; rewriting history; and women and culture.
Essay: Ecosocialism and post-Marx Marxism
March 8, 2020Franklin Dmitryev explores the limitations of how “ecosocialism” rethinks, partially, post-Marx Marxism, focusing on theoreticians Michael Lowy and Joel Kovel.
News and Letters Committees Call for Convention 2020
March 2, 2020POSTPONED: Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2020-2021
Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One
January 22, 2020Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.
Australia’s megafires lay bare capitalism’s climate death march
January 21, 2020Australia’s megafires show that the climate crisis is upon us and powerful people are forcing humanity into a death march toward climate catastrophe–in sharp contrast to the passion and urgency of the youth climate strikes that have spread across the globe.
Voices from Chicago climate strike–December 2019
January 2, 2020News & Letters interviews some of the Global Climate Strike participants.
Chicago climate strike confronts the specter of climate chaos
December 11, 2019Participant report of the Dec. 6, 2019, climate strike in Chicago, part of global climate strike.
Greta Thunberg: No One Is Too Small
November 17, 2019A review of the book “No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference” by Greta Thunberg. .
Save the rainforest!
Participant report on a California protest against the burning of the Amazon rainforest and the Brazilian government’s negligence.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2019, Part One
Readers’ Views on youth climate strike; Socialism and ecology; counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East; auto and teacher strikes, and Brexit and labor
Voices of young and old from the Global Climate Strike
November 4, 2019On the first day of the third Global Climate Strike, Sept. 20, 2019, millions of people, mostly teenagers, marched across the world—the biggest climate action ever. Hear the voices of youth and adults in Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco.
Voices from Global Climate Strike
September 23, 2019News & Letters interviews some of the Global Climate Strike participants.
Global Climate Strike–Chicago
September 21, 2019Participant report on the Sept. 20, 2019, Global Climate Strike event in Chicago.
Green Detroit!
September 2, 2019Susan Van Gelder reports on a rally of youth, workers, and native people in Detroit demanding ”Make Detroit the Engine of a Green New Deal.”
Readers’ Views, September-October 2019, Part 1
September 1, 2019Readers’ Views on: Youth revolt, from China to climate strikes; Gunning for immigrants; Circling the abyss; Queer Notes; A prisoner responds; 1619 and today; Reading ‘N & L’; Elena Grigorieva; and Deborah Morris
Essay: What is Socialism? Socialism and ecology
August 31, 2019The last of a series of essays on What is Socialism? This time, taking on the relation of anticapitalistic social transformation and climate chaos, in order to grasp what is essential to capitalism and its destructive environmental effects, and what kind of new society can transcend that.
Demanding a future, youth lead fight for climate justice
June 26, 2019Schoolchildren continue to hold Fridays for Future strikes weekly across the world, demanding “that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5°C of global heating.” The Right’s attempts to co-opt this passion highlight capitalism’s contradictions and the need to center a liberatory direction.
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike
May 3, 2019Bay Area youth exuberantly join in a global march for the climate, raising awareness of climate change.
San Francisco Youth Climate Strike
March 25, 2019Report on the March 15, 2019, Youth Climate Strike in San Francisco.
Bruno Latour’s ‘Down to Earth’ buries human revolt
March 11, 2019Bruno 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.
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.