By Simon Gilbert International Socialism A review of The Communist Road to Capitalism: How Social Unrest and Containment Have Pushed China’s (R)evolution since 1949, Ralf Ruckus (PM Press, 2021), £12 In The Communist Road to Capitalism German activist Ralf Ruckus takes a rather different approach to most histories of Communist China.1 While authors…

By Paul Gallant Xtra May 3, 2022 12:57 pm EDT Your Place or Mine? A 21st Century Essay on (Same) Sex by Gilles Dauvé Credit: Courtesy of PM Press Who can resist a little Marxist French critical theory? A participant in the 1968 Paris rebellion and a writer for the radical gay magazine Fléau Social, in Your Place or Mine? (PM Press), Gilles Dauvé…

Deadcast Europe ‘72: Bickershaw Festival The biggest gig of the Grateful Dead’s Europe ‘72 tour, their largest ever overseas show, & one of our biggest Deadcasts yet, reconstructing the legendary Bickershaw Festival mudbath with enraptured audience members including an extended conversation with Elvis Costello. Guests: Elvis Costello, Michael…

By Zinn Education Project Time Periods: World War I: 1910 – 1919 Themes: Labor, Organizing, Social Class On May 14, 1913, more than four thousand Philadelphia longshoremen, who loaded and unloaded ships, went on strike and shut down one of the busiest ports in the United States. During their two-week strike, they joined the Industrial Workers of the…

A ceasefire between the warring parties, a Russian withdrawal, a halt to arms shipments, a negotiated peace and an end to NATO. This is what the international left should be organizing around in regards to the Russia-Ukraine war. It shouldn’t be calling for stepped up arms shipments to Ukraine’s military or defending Moscow’s invasion. When all…

By Melissa A. Hubbard, University at Buffalo College & Research Libraries Journal May 2022 Activist and Marxist scholar Silvia Federici is perhaps best known for the Wages for Housework campaign launched in the 1970s, which demanded payment for domestic labor in an attempt to make a critical intervention in the capitalist exploitation of women.1 Like…

Por Eduardo Bravo 3 de mayo de 2022 El libro La vida bajo bandera pirata aborda el fenómeno de la piratería desde un punto de vista alejado del romanticismo. Además, aporta sorprendentes datos sobre estas comunidades de hombres libres, cuya organización fue más progresista de lo que cabría suponer. Desde hace siglos, los piratas han inspirado…

A review of Life of Che: An Impressionistic Biography by Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Alberto Breccia, and Enrique Breccia (Fantagraphic Books)The story of this book is almost as extraordinary as the story of Che Guevara’s life. As explained in the afterword by Pablo Turnes, Vida del Che was first published in January 1969, two years after Guevara’s…

Psychobabble May 2nd, 2022 That old “Only Band That Matters” sobriquet may sound a bit more pompous today than it did in 1977, but there’s no denying that The Clash was one of the most literate groups in the often borderline-illiterate British punk scene. Don’t get me wrong–I’d no sooner knock the primal joys of shouting “Neat! Neat! Neat!”…

Heidi Slowinski 5 Star Review Jewish Noir II is a collection of twenty-four stories from a combination of Jewish and non-Jewish writers focusing on topics including the resurgence of anti-Semetism in the US, the influence of stereotypes about certain Jewish communities on anti-Semetic attitudes, Israel’s on-going legacy of regional warfare, the Jewish…

On Thursday 28th April at 7pm, as part of the “Global conversations” series, University College Stockholm and Sankt Ignatios College organized a discussion on the topic “Sweden in NATO? The Future of East-West Relations after the War in Ukraine.” The guest speaker was Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned political thinker, activist, public intellectual…

By Eve Ottenberg Counterpunch April 29th, 2022 Despite its boys’ club origins, science fiction long exhibited a leftist streak. Even in the early 1950s, the heyday of white masculine conquest of space and battle with multi-legged monsters and nefarious aliens, there lurked at the margins of the genre alternate views on human forays into the future…

By Kim Kelly Philadelphia Inquirer The recent vote to unionize at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse should be a reminder that Philly is and always has been a union town. The recent news that workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse voted to unionize should be an inspiration to workers around the country, including in our region (where it must be said…

By Dianne Feeley Against the Current JON MELROD IS currently living in Sonoma County, California and devoting his time to promoting his upcoming book Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War. Dianne Feeley interviewed him for Against the Current. Dianne Feeley: Where did you grow up? Jon Melrod: Growing up in Washington, DC was…

By Raymond Craib Jacobin April 22nd, 2022 Crypto millionaires are attempting to buy an island in the Southwest Pacific. It’s the latest in a long line of schemes by libertarians asserting the rights of private capital above all else. topian thinking is everywhere out of favor, except in the libertarian fantasies of crypto enthusiasts who dream of…

Activists been readying for this for a while which doesn’t make this SCOTUS draft leak any less terrible. Take a moment and donate to groups doing the work to protect women from forced births in a country with no universal health care or support. Learn about the work of our foremothers to inspire us on this next leg of our fight for our rights, and…

By Gabriel Kuhn Originally published on the Apline Anarchist A Statement on the Participation of Some Anarchists in the 2022 Philippine Elections mndrgn, Taks Apoy, Lucy Fer (April 30, 2022) Since the Philippine Assembly was established by the Americans in 1902, the election has always been designed to be a playing field for local political dynasties…

By Iain Ellis / 18 April 2022 PopMatters chool has long been a punching bag in punk folklore, characterized, as the Clash sang in “White Riot” (1977), as a place where “they teach you how to be thick”. Most kids turn to punk during their prime school years and turn on school as a reason for doing so. Regarded as oppressive, censorious, and…

Why you wrote this book and why it’s important?  In 2018, I was still mostly closeted. I had just started a Master’s degree in Budapest, Hungary and didn’t feel safe enough to be out because of its “illiberal” (i.e. neo-fascist) government. Despite that political context, my experience with the gender studies department of Central European…

Although the 8-hour work day is entrenched in law thanks to our forefolks, many worker protections have been rolled back, corporations evade 8-hour mandates by calling their employees ‘contractors’ and in some cases just ignore health and safety protections all-together. Mainstream organizations seek to normalize “the hustle” of side-jobs where…

By Giran Ozcan Novaramedia.com 9 September 2020 Anthropologist and activist David Graeber was an early and committed supporter of the Kurdish freedom movement and the revolution in Rojava. He insisted that the international community, and the international left, in particular, recognise and defend what he described as “a remarkable democratic experiment”…

By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore BOMB April 19th, I met Cara Hoffman when she attended a reading I gave at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York for my third novel, Sketchtasy, in 2018. She had recently published her third novel, Running, and we became friends in that way that writers can become friends, which is maybe one of the best reasons to become…

By Joanne McNeil Filmmaker Magazine April 14th, 2022 In 1968, Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm planned to run an advertisement in a science fiction magazine with a list of authors announcing their opposition to the Vietnam War. But when they reached out to fellow members of the Science Fiction Writers of America to add their names, Merril and Wilhelm…

Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War

By Josh MacPhee Art & Politics, Posters & Prints January 26, 2022 We recently received a note from Amer Shomali, artist and designer who is a participant in the Imaging Apartheid Project. A version of his Visit Palestine poster used in Austria has become an excuse to hit a prominent BDS activists with a massive SLAPP lawsuit (Strategic Lawsuit Against…