Marxist-Humanist analysis of the Trump-Kim summit and G7 summit shows Trump is not charting a path to world peace but rather toward a more openly brutal world order. .
fascism
World In View: After Italy, European Right coalesces
May 9, 2018The victory of Far Right and “populist” parties in Italian elections, preceded by that in Austria, and followed by that in Hungary, emphasizes the current threat of neo-fascism which means to take power in the EU.
World In View: Gaza March of Return challenges Israel
The March of Return is a Palestinian national event—reaching toward a new politics that would transcend the failures both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
III. The reality and the myth of contemporary capitalism
May 5, 2018We 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.
Fight against Duterte’s fascism
May 4, 2018In-person report of the situation in the Philippines. The fragmented Left complicates the struggle against President Duterte and his fascist rule.
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.
Philippines: Human rights vs. Duterte’s fascism
April 5, 2018In-person report from the Philippines.
World in View: Reaction rises in Brazil and Costa Rica
March 12, 2018Racist and homophobic politicians have moved from the fringes to contend for state power in Brazil. Fabricio Alvarado in Costa Rica and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a further step down an anti-human path.
Woman as Reason: Iranian women embody revolt
March 8, 2018On Dec. 28, 2017, demonstrations broke out in the city of Mashhad, Iran, the first of many that swept across Iran for weeks. Women were a vital part of the events, including strikes as well as protests against veiling, drawing on a long radical history.
#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
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.
World in View: Visage of Hitler rises in Austria
February 2, 2018Far Right racist parties have continued to make inroads into mainstream politics. 40,000 people marched in Austria against the new governing coalition of the anti-immigrant Austrian People’s Party and the neo-Nazi Freedom Party.
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!
Time to stop Trump
November 14, 2017Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of his hopes for the 2018 U.S. midterm elections to send a message that youth, the true middle-class, women and the LGBTQI community, people of all colors will take their country back.
‘Detroit’ offends Detroit
September 5, 2017Detroit activists reviews the film, “Detroit,” and finds it insulting to actual history and a “brilliantly filmed wasted opportunity.”
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 1
Readers’ Views: facing far right’s threat; don’t scapegoat; Canadian strike; Transgender troops; women’s liberation; homeless in Los Angeles; defend dissidents; why read N&L.
Voices from the inside out: ‘Agreement to End Hostilities’ 5th anniversary
Prisoner Faruq writes about the meaning of the fifth anniversary of the historic “Agreement to End Hostilities” that continues to challenge the racism imposed on prisoners in the California prison system and elsewhere. .
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. .
Fascism declares civil war in Charlottesville, Virginia
August 13, 2017Analysis of the violent invasion of Charlottesville, Va., the significance of the broader advance of fascism, and the opposite to it in human forces and reason.
Counter-fascist rally in Portland, Oregon
July 4, 2017Participant report on the June 4 rally against the fascists’ “Free Speech Rally” in Portland, Oregon, and the police intervention on the side of the fascists. .
Readers’ Views: July-August 2017, Part 1
July 2, 2017Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolt vs. Trumpism; Trump and the Left; Injustice to Immigrants; Anti-Woman, Anti-Labor Uber; ACT UP; From Iran; To Mexico; Why Read News & Letters?
World in View: European voters hold off fascism
June 30, 2017The recent elections in France and Britain have been a welcome setback for that fascist Right which saw Trump and Brexit as a cresting wave carrying them to state power.
Protesters counter fascist rally in Portland, Oregon
June 9, 2017An activist reports on the June 4, 2017, action by anti-fascist protesters against a rally of hate made up of Proud Boys, Militiamen, and Nazis who were protected by Portland cops who attacked anti-fascists.
Thousands demand Trump release his tax returns
June 5, 2017Participant report of the April 15, 2017, thousands strong protest in Los Angeles demanding that Donald Trump release his tax returns.
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.
IV. International crises
The people’s revolutionary struggles form the ground for approaching developments including Trump’s attack on a Syrian military base. The human-to-human communication found in places like Kafranbel has been a form of theory in itself. The deadliest weapon of mass destruction in the Syrian conflict has been the lie that there is “no good alternative” to Assad, echoing the bourgeoisie’s “no alternative” to capitalism. The state of Europe today illustrates the central importance of revolutionary solidarity.
II. The capital relation
The capital relation is spelled out as alienated labor, automation, destruction of jobs, unraveling of the social fabric–fertile ground for reactionary ideology, scapegoating, and fascism. Yet the human Subject’s quest for freedom continues.
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.
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2017-2018: Philosophy and revolt confront Trump’s drive to fascism
The true alternative to the threat of fascism is the path to a new society based on revolution from below. Can that happen without a unity of practice with theory, without the organization of thought embodied in an actual organization?
World in View: French elections
May 15, 2017France’s national elections will head to a run-off between fascist Marine Le Pen of the National Front party and liberal bourgeois centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party.
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.
End degenerate fascist private prisons!
March 19, 2017For-profit private prisons need direct action by the people to close them down permanently, a task made much harder now that Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General.
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.
Mass rallies denounce Trump and defend immigrants: Los Angeles
March 16, 2017Los Angeles youth march against the xenophobic deportations of Mexicans, Muslims and undocumented workers by Trump.
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
Trump’s American fascism must be defeated!
January 30, 2017Protests against Trump’s Muslim ban, and his reorganization of the National Security Council after the model of Hitler’s Reich Main Security Office, signal a profound struggle to be waged over what kind of society the U.S. will be.
Editorial: Freedom and terror define Syria
January 26, 2017Editorial taking up the present situation in Syria where the smoke of destroyed East Aleppo, of ravaged Free Idlib, East Ghouta, Wadi Barada, and other revolutionary communities raises Trump’s fascist banner. While President Obama is no friend to the Syrian Revolution, Trump delivered: surrender or death.
Inauguration of neo-fascism faces widespread revolt
January 23, 2017The 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.
Readers’ Views, November-December 2016, Part 1
November 27, 2016Readers’ Views on Election Stirs Battles in Thought and in Life; Deep Racism in the USA; Women Fight Back; Indigenous Struggles; Global (In)Humanity; Why Read N&L?
Lead-Editorial: No to Trump’s counter-revolution! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
November 26, 2016Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
No to Trump! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
November 12, 2016Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Help keep News & Letters going and growing
September 7, 2016An appeal for funds to help keep the paper, News & Letters, going and growing; and to help us expand our subscriptions to prisoners.
Fascism rising from Russia to India, from the U.S. to the Philippines
An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations in India, the Philippines, China, Japan and the opposition by rulers worldwide to those fighting for a free existence and new human relations.
Workshop Talks: Bleak future if no labor solidarity
July 3, 2016Workshop Talks columnist Htun Lin looks at the world situation from the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando to the murder of Jo Cox in Britain to Brexit and to how workers are reacting, suggesting that there is no exit from global capitalism without international labor solidarity.
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.
Britain’s hate-driven referendum a victory for the Far Right
June 26, 2016With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Nixon’s ‘racist mayhem’ lingers today
May 18, 2016Our era, when racist police gun down Black men, women and youth, continues a history as old as the U.S. The piece excerpted here shows some of that history and how racism can be spurred on by this country’s leaders and would-be leaders, out for power. It takes up how Left movements respond to racism and the attempt to answer the question by funneling liberatory impulses into the dead end of electoral politics. The relationships between the Black freedom movement, anti-war youth, workers, and philosophy of revolution remain as critical today as when this article was written.
V. Toward organizational new beginnings
May 13, 2016Part V of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Together with the depths of counter-revolution, the passion for philosophy points to both the need for and the potential for totally new beginnings in the transformation of society, for new banners of freedom as a polarizing force.
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.