May-June: Women WorldWide

May 11, 2023

Takes up: Canadian Dawn Dumont Walker’s struggle to keep her son and escape her abusive ex-partner; the Spanish parliament passing legislation for paid leave for debilitating menstrual pain and decriminalizing abortion, including for minors; and the life-altering and horrendous suffering of women in Bangladesh due to climate chaos.

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Women Worldwide: September-October 2022

September 24, 2022

Women Worldwide on Pope’s apology to Indigenous peoples in Canada; Sudan rolling back rights women had won over the past two years; the conviction of Aydin Coban in Canada for sextortion, and Spain passing the “only yes means yes law”.

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Queer notes, March-April 2021

March 11, 2021

Ohio assailed for refusing to recognize Jack Henning-Sepkoski’s gender identity; Chicago Black Drag Council holds town hall over racism against performers of color in Gay bars; children of same-sex mixed nationality couples in Europe struggle for citizenship.

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II. The true pandemic war

April 29, 2020

Draft thesis for discussion about where the world is heading, and what to do about it from a revolutionary standpoint. Part II. The true pandemic war: A. The capitalists’ class war; B. Subjects of revolution fight back; and C. Pandemic class war reveals the social structure.

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Pandemic as battlefield

March 30, 2020

The battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is a battle over how society will change, mirroring the battle over how to confront and adapt to the climate and extinction crisis. Strikes are erupting across the world.

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Greek crisis: austerity, revolt and illusions

August 30, 2015

Although the Greek masses reject the austerity program imposed on them by the European institutions, Syriza inexorably took a path to capitulation because it is rooted in the search for state power rather than the power of mass self-activity.

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Readers’ Views, July-August 2015

July 4, 2015

Black lives as Subject; Russia in crisis; Nothing about us without us; Homelessness in L.A.; Central Canada Alliance; Perspectives and philosophy; Elderly to the streets?; Women and Yemen half-peace; Labor and climate justice; Dialectic and women’s liberation; Voices from behind the bars

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Afghan women demonstrate on Feb. 13 in Kabul showing their opposition to violence against women. They chant: "Justice! Justice!" and "No more violence! Photo by Afghan Women's Network, www.afghanwomensnetwork.org.

Women fight for freedom against growing retrogression

March 13, 2014

While experiences in the squares of the Arab Spring, in Turkey’s Gezi Park, in the streets of Spain and Greece, and in the U.S. Occupy Movements have revealed moments of what new human relations between women and men could look like, those moments of hope and exhilaration have been followed by devastating reaction and retrogression.

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Anti-Roma racism

November 23, 2013

Racism against Roma infects significant sectors of French society, and now reaches into the innards of the “Socialist” government.

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Capitalism’s violence, masses’ revolt show need for total view

May 1, 2013

The world today is riven between the creativity of masses in revolt and the violent degeneracy of counter-revolution, whose destructiveness even extends to the revived specter of nuclear war two decades after the collapse of the USSR. Such is the degeneracy of the globalized capitalist system, laden with destructive forces and sunk into structural crisis. The deep crisis is seen in the U.S. and abroad, economically, in unemployment and poverty, homelessness and hunger. It is seen politically, in new laws attacking workers and women, and new outbursts of racism. It is seen environmentally, with the advance of climate disruption and fake capitalistic solutions. It is seen in thought, as the lack of philosophy, of a total view, hampers the development of struggles from the U.S. to the revolutions of the Arab Spring facing counter-revolutions.

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Readers’ Views, September-October 2012, Part 1

October 15, 2012

CAPITALIST CRISIS AND REVOLT

I appreciated Franklin Dmitryev’s Lead article in the July-August N&L, on “Spain, Greece, Europe: Capitalist crisis and revolt,” for showing how the so-called “radical Left” is not really so radical. They think they can solve things through managing the economy and redistributing wealth, and channel energy into politics.

The boldfaced paragraph in the [=>]

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Syria and the Left

July 21, 2012

World in View

by Gerry Emmett

“None of us believe that peace is so sweet or life so dear that we are willing to sell our freedom at the price of chains and slavery.”

These words of a young Syrian woman express the passion that animates the Syrian Revolution now facing the most brutal, determined opposition from Assad’s [=>]

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Spain, Greece, Europe: capitalist crisis and revolt

July 10, 2012

by Franklin Dmitryev

When the bailout of banks in Spain, the Eurozone’s fourth largest economy, was announced on June 9, the immediate reactions revealed the two worlds that exist in every country. The Spanish masses intensified their protests, marching directly on both banks and government, while Greek and Spanish workers exchanged messages of solidarity against the [=>]

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July-August 2012 issue of News & Letters is on the web

July 8, 2012

News & Letters, Vol. 57, No. 4
July-August 2012

Lead: Spain, Greece, Europe: capitalist crisis and revolt

When the bailout of banks in Spain was announced on June 9, the immediate reactions revealed the two worlds that exist in every country. The Spanish masses intensified their protests, marching directly on both banks and government, while Greek and Spanish [=>]

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Paths of destruction

May 14, 2012

From the May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters:

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013
III. Paths of destruction

A. From war to war to war

War is one of the rulers’ most potent counter-revolutionary weapons when faced with economic crises and revolt. With a military stretched thin, one eye on China, and the failures of Iraq and [=>]

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New May-June 2012 issue of News & Letters is online

May 3, 2012

Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2012-2013

Counter-revolution’s rise shows need for a total philosophy

Revolution, having forced its way to center stage over the last year and a half, cannot easily be bottled up. That explains the viciousness of the counter-revolution, whether the violent police attacks on occupations from New York to Oakland or the Syrian state’s torture [=>]

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‘We are all Greeks’

March 21, 2012

From the new March-April 2012 issue of News & Letters:

‘We are all Greeks’

On Feb. 12, open rebellion broke out in Athens. “Layoffs! Layoffs…You will save Greece without the Greeks!” protesters proclaimed against the Greek parliament’s approval of a new round of austerity measures, dictated as conditions for a new 130 billion euro loan [=>]

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Readers’ Views, January-February 2012 (part 1)

February 18, 2012

Readers’ Views (part 1)

THE STATE OF THE WORLD AS WE BEGIN 2012

I’m deeply enamored of the contents of every issue of N&L. This is because the articulation of the various issues addressing the multitude of socioeconomic crises, brought on by economic contraction affecting capital relations, points to how deep the revolution must go. In [=>]

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Readers’ Views, September-October 2011

October 7, 2011

From the September-October 2011 issue of News & Letters:

Readers’ Views

Contents:

  • REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION: ARAB SPRING AS CROSSROADS IN HISTORY
  • KARL MARX AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
  • REMEMBERING CHRISTINA SANTIAGO
  • THELONIOUS MONK
  • CANADA AS ‘CONTESTATAIRE’ SOCIETY
  • MAN-MADE DISASTERS: NUCLEAR POWER AND WORLD WAR
  • LABOR STRUGGLES IN 2011
  • WHY WRITE FOR N&L?
  • VOICES FROM BEHIND THE BARS

REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION: ARAB SPRING AS CROSSROADS IN HISTORY

The West supports any revolution where they [=>]

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July -August 2011 Readers’ Views

September 2, 2011

From the July-August 2011 issue of News & Letters:

Readers’ Views

Contents:

  • AS REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION TAKE WORLD STAGE
  • CHINESE ART PROJECT
  • HEALTHCARE IN 2011
  • NEW RIGHT=OLD LEFT?
  • FREEDOM RIDES, 50 YEARS AFTER
  • WOMEN’S LIBERATION SPEAKS IN MANY VOICES
  • BURMA AND NORTH KOREA
  • FIGHTING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
  • VOICES FROM BEHIND THE BARS

AS REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION TAKE WORLD STAGE

Congratulations on a fine May-June issue. Thanks especially for [=>]

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Reports from Spain’s Puerta del Sol Square

August 1, 2011

Defying laws against public demonstrations, tens of thousands of protestors, self-described “indignados,” occupied Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and gathered in 162 squares in towns and cities across Spain protesting unemployment, government austerity and a political system that serves only the banks and big business. Following are excerpts from an in-person participant-observer sent to us by [=>]

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World in View: Greece: Tahrir Squared

July 31, 2011

by Gerry Emmett

The Arab Spring has galvanized resistance to European governments’ aim of resolving capitalism’s crisis on the backs of the working class. Revolutionary ideas communicate across greater barriers than the Mediterranean Sea. Across southern Europe, resistance to austerity has begun to express itself in terms learned from Tahrir Square.

On May 15 a mass movement [=>]

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Greece, democracy and the economic crisis

July 25, 2011

Since May 25, a people’s assembly has been in session in Greece’s Syntagma Square outside of parliament. Through an open mike, tens of thousands from all walks of life have been coming to express their total indignation with Europe’s politics of austerity. The people’s assembly of self-described “angry ones” is a new dimension to the [=>]

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European worker revolt

December 4, 2010

World in View
European worker revolt

In Europe, capitalism’s deep economic crisis continues to unfold in ways that threaten the social benefits and social safety net that working people have fought for over decades.

First came the rescue of the banks and bankers–paid for through the public treasury. Privatize the profits; socialize the debt! Now all government talk [=>]

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