From Brexit to the Scottish independence movement and growing support for a united Ireland, the British state has been convulsed by the resurgence of nationalism. These crises ultimately stem from the decline of capitalist globalization after 2008’s crash.
Critics of Marxism say it cannot explain why nationalism is such a powerful force in the modern world. But the Austrian socialist thinker Otto Bauer developed a sophisticated, illuminating theory of nationalism in the 1900s that is ripe for rediscovery today.
The sell-off of the Port of Haifa looks like a takeover by corporate interests. Yet the acquisition was led by a close ally of Indian premier Narendra Modi — showing its ties to Israel’s strategy of finding autocratic allies abroad.
For decades, Jersey City was ruled by a cartoonishly sleazy party boss and his pro-corporate political machine. Today, it’s governed by a slicker version of the same. But now socialists and progressives are challenging their power.
C. L. R. James loved seeing workers take ownership of culture that was thought to belong to their betters. He believed in the creative talents of workers, just as he believed in their power to secure their own liberation without direction from above.
A new edition of Rosa Luxemburg’s writings, most of which have never appeared in English before, gives us a unique perspective on her thought. Luxemburg believed that a socialist revolution would have to be democratic or else it would be doomed to failure.
The stakes are high in Brazil’s upcoming presidential election: four more years of the reactionary, corrupt, right-wing rule of Jair Bolsonaro or a return of the most transformative president Brazil has ever seen, Lula da Silva.
Mongolia is experiencing a disastrous winter with alarming consequences for its agricultural output. Reports have highlighted the negative impact of climate change, but the country’s neoliberal transformation since the 1990s is the biggest factor.
Many thought that, with the end of the Cold War, the world had seen the last of big-power nuclear brinksmanship. But the Ukraine crisis has revealed that leaders have forgotten the lessons of that era.
Right-wingers love to insist that members of Adolf Hitler’s party were socialists. But Nazism’s real economic policies upheld hypercapitalist principles rooted in social Darwinist ideas about the value of human life. They weren’t socialists at all.
“Longtermism” is often associated with billionaire philanthropy. But this idea in vogue among effective altruists is perfectly compatible with a socialist worldview.
Twenty years ago, protests at the Genoa G8 summit proclaimed that “Another World is Possible.” But today, Italy’s weak and divided left lacks a vision for a real alternative to capitalism.
Rising from the ruins of World War I, in the 1920s Vienna’s socialist administration was famous for its innovative housing and public health programs. But at the heart of “Red Vienna” were its services for children, guaranteeing that even the poorest young people could share in the joys of childhood — and the foundations of a fulfilling life.
This summer, military recruiters continue focusing their efforts on twenty-three American cities with large numbers of black and Latino young people. As coronavirus drives thousands into unemployment, the Pentagon is developing bizarre neighborhood profiles and trolling social media to boost their enlistment numbers.
Representative Barbara Lee wants to slash America’s bloated military budget. It’s a necessary move that’s long overdue.
Liberals are right to condemn Donald Trump for his disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and his undisguised contempt for democracy. But Trump is no aberration: his rise was only possible because of a Republican and Democratic political consensus that has ravaged American politics and society for a generation.
The Korean War, which began 70 years ago today, inflicted unimaginable horrors upon the people of Korea, north and south of the 38th parallel. From carpet-bombing to mass executions, the US and its South Korean allies were responsible for some of the worst atrocities.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country by far, may not have a political profile to match its size. But it has a powerful tradition of socialist theory and practice that deserves to be better understood by the international left. That tradition has helped shape the best features of Nigeria’s contemporary political scene.
In an interview, Noam Chomsky talks about the “absolutely unprecedented scope and scale” of the protests against the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the importance of Lula’s presidency in Brazil, and why Donald Trump's refusal to act to stop the impending catastrophe of climate change makes him “the worst criminal in human history.”
Adem Somyurek was sacked from his position in the Australian Labor Party last week for alleged branch-stacking. It’s the latest indicator of how Labor has been emptied of all mass politics and become a forum for factional power brokers to vie for control of the creaking party machine.