Review 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.
human relationships
Woman as Reason: The practicality of revolution
December 28, 2023Reporter Sonia Sodha asked: “Women in revolt achieved so much. Why are decades of progress now being reversed?” The struggle for freedom of all those who have been pronounced as less than human may seem impossible, but as Irish revolutionary James Connolly said: “Revolution is never practical—until the hour of the revolution strikes.”
‘Women, Life, Freedom!’ The transformation of Iran
September 28, 2022The Iranian hardline regime should be very afraid. The cries of: “Women, life and freedom!” “Death to the head scarf!” “Death to the dictator!” fill the streets. Iranian women have inspired the world and put Iran’s oligarchs on notice that their repressive regime is in grave danger.
Thoughts from the Outside: A way out of no way
July 19, 2022Faruq takes up “Civil,” a new documentary about human rights champion Benjamin Crump. To do right in this world, Crump, a lawyer, filed suits in a variety of civil and human rights cases including winning large settlements for the families of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
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.
Need for a Total Uprooting: Down with the Perpetrators of the Palestinian Slaughter
June 12, 2021In 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.
Agroecology in Xico
May 8, 2021Our landlords run the biggest agroecological project in the zone. They sell organic food in a store in the capital city of Veracruz. It is astonishing to see that their great respect for nature is matched with their great disrespect for human life.
Youth: Marx speaks to youth alienation
Young people keep taking matters into our own hands. Our time of total crises calls for a philosophy to help us understand the problems at the root of our misery and give us hope we can create a new society. This makes Marx a contemporary for youth, looking for a way out of life under capitalism’s hopeless future.
Woman as Reason: The torture of abortion bans
April 29, 2020Abortion bans during the COVID-19 pandemic are cruel, based on lies, and constitute torture against women, causing not only more deaths, but also revealing the contempt with which women are held and the danger in forcing women to give birth against their will at this time.
Woman as Reason: Abortion in the time of COVID-19
April 15, 2020Abortion bans during the COVID-19 pandemic are cruel, based on lies, and constitute torture against women, causing not only more deaths, but also revealing the contempt with which women are held and the danger in forcing women to give birth against their will at this time.
Creating homes for ex-prisoners
September 1, 2019Excerpts from a talk by Terah Lawyer, ex-prisoner and coordinator of the Homecoming Project for Impact Justice that finds private homes for prisoners on probation.
Prisoners endangered
January 31, 2019Families of prisoners and supporters rallied in front of the California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation’s (CDCr) headquarters against the CDCr-induced violence that many of their loved ones are experiencing.
Essay: Marx’s concept of permanent revolution as philosophy: Exploring it today with Dunayevskaya
December 5, 2018On the occasion of the publication of the new book “Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution in Permanence for Our Day: Selected Writings by Raya Dunayevskaya,” this essay explores Marx’s ideas on the basis of Dunayevskaya’s writings on them as a philosophy of revolution needed for our age.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Karl Marx’s continuous development of the philosophy of revolution in permanence
December 3, 2018Marking the publication of writings by Raya Dunayevskaya on Marx’s philosophy of revolution in permanence, the article presents parts of a lecture in which she gave an overview of this concept in relationship to her just-completed book, “Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution.”
Solidarity with Trans people under attack by Trumpism
October 28, 2018News and Letters Committees statement on Donald Trump’s latest attack on Trans people by trying to claim that the word “sex” in Title IX does not include them. Trump has chosen to dehumanize a group of people whose whole lives have often been fraught with brutal violence and discrimination, those who are Transgender.
Masses for freedom fight Trump-Kavanaugh’s reactionary grab for power
October 10, 2018Given the moral bankruptcy of Congress and Donald Trump, it was no surprise that Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court was pushed through Congress. The surprise was the vibrancy, strength and determination of the fight against that nomination…
Woman as Reason, November-December 2017: #MeToo
November 14, 2017Terry Moon joins the #MeToo campaign, sharing her experience of sexual harrasment when she was 23. .
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.
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.
Woman As Reason: Will Stanford rape be a turning point?
July 2, 2016Terry Moon explores how the rape of a woman by a Stanford University student can become a turning point, rather than a stopping point, in the struggle to end rape culture, and the necessity for revolution to be total from the start and to be permanent.
IV. Counter-revolution and revolution in the Middle East and North Africa
May 13, 2016Part IV of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The renewal of Syrian demonstrations for freedom refuted the state powers’ belief that the idea of revolution can be destroyed by bombs, and highlighted a civilizational crisis and the need for international solidarity.
Letter from Mexico: Meaning of Mexican workers’ struggles
March 18, 2016Upsurge of workers’ struggles in 2015 in Mexico, from field workers in San Quintin, Baja California to maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez along with ongoing opposition to government educational “reforms” by teachers in the autonomous union CNTE, demonstrate workers’ resistance to the plans of capital and its state. How can organizations of activist-thinkers meet what workers have achieved in our own organizational response?
Philosophic basis of News & Letters
November 20, 2015On the 60th anniversary of News & Letters we discuss its philosophic basis and invite readers to participate.
Editorial: Black Lives Matter NOW!
June 28, 2015The video of Cpl. Eric Casebolt’s June 5 attack on Dejerria Becton and other kids at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, went viral because it was simultaneously shocking and commonplace. In 2015 USA, protests were inevitable and were heard around the world.
Editorial: Syriza’s many challenges
March 7, 2015The electoral victory of Greece’s Syriza party was an important first step in resisting austerity imposed on the Greek and European working classes as capitalism’s response to its own intractable crisis. Nothing could be in greater contradiction to the movement that lifted Syriza to prominence than the parliamentary alliance with the racist, theocratic Independent Greeks party.
Women as Reason: 60 years of News & Letters, the women’s dimension
January 28, 2015As we celebrate 60 years of publishing News & Letters, a look back at the Women’s Liberation Movement encountering Marxist-Humanism and how the women’s movement was anticipated as well as documented in its pages. It is an ongoing perspective.
From Ferguson to Staten Island: The logic of racism is genocide
December 5, 2014Protests erupted after the cops who murdered Michael Brown and Eric Garner were let off. They mark a new moment of rebellion against a social order in which Black youth are made to live continuously suspended over an abyss of non-existence.
The passion to tear up this deeply racist society by the roots calls for the fullest development in activity and thought.
Write, sell, be a bundle dealer for NEWS & LETTERS
July 7, 2014Every page of News & Letters is meant to be part of an ongoing discussion about freedom with you, our readers. If you have a story to tell about your work, about demonstrations happening where you live, about an article you’ve read in this paper, send it to News & Letters, 228 S. Wabash [=>]
WOMAN AS REASON: Isla Vista murders fueled by misogyny
July 5, 2014When you are despised for who you are, as those murdered by Elliot Rodger were—and women are not the only ones on a list that includes any differently sexed person, immigrants and all minorities but especially Blacks, people with disabilities, and that’s only in the U.S.—then a revolution has to be more than an economic change, it even has to be more than “from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her need.” Revolution has to be so deep and total that all human relationships are transformed. To do so, it must be total from the start…