Surge and Decline, Part 2: Course Correction
Josh Messite, June 24, 2022
Josh Messite, editor at Negation Magazine, traces the roots of 9/11 and the “War on Terror” it justified all the way back to mid-century efforts by Saudi and American reactionary elites to violently suppress threats to their domestic and international dominance. Read Article.
Full Time: a Caustic Film About the Inhuman Face of Capitalism
Christos Kefalis, June 20, 2022
Christos Kefalis, editor of the journal Marxist Thought, argues that French director Éric Gravel's new film Full Time (French: Á plein temps) presents a remarkable cinematic social critique of contemporary capitalism. Read Article.
Putin and the Project of a Big Russian Nation
Maxim Lebsky, June 17, 2022
Translation by Alex Andreev. The original article can be found here. Read Article.
The Specificity of Anti-Imperialism
S. Hilgers, June 15, 2022
S. Hilgers examines the arguments of the two sides which have emerged on the Left regarding how to conceptualize anti-imperialism in the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Revealing the severe limitations of both, Hilgers proposes an alternative anti-imperialist analysis that reckons with the absence of communist proposals in the context of current interstate conflict and re-centers opposition to the state and the capitalist world-system. Read Article.
The Long Crisis of Democracy
Marvin González, June 10, 2022
The following is an excerpted version of a piece authored by NYC-DSA members Marvin González and M. Fleischman in response to Warren Montag's 2021 article "The Necessity of Taking Back the Streets: Notes on DSA." Using Montag as a starting point, González and Fleischman take on a variety of topics including questions of authoritarianism, the proper method for conjunctural analysis, examples of such analysis applied to the history of political systems that currently circumscribe political action, how those systems are instantiated and managed, especially in the face of crisis throughout different epochs, and the current political situation within the right, the liberal center, and the left. These excerpts are specifically focused on a history of the political conjuncture in the US from its founding until the late 1960s and early 70s. Read Article.
We Will Return to Pandemic Protections Within a Year
William Silversmith, June 8, 2022
William Silversmith argues that the premature relaxation of pandemic protections will lead to an increasingly untenable situation and the eventual reimposition of said protections. Read Article.
Running Aground: The RCP and Stalinism
Doug Enaa Greene, June 2, 2022
Analyzing the intellectual output of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP), Doug Enaa Greene argues that, despite a few moments of minor insight, the Party failed to meaningfully reckon with the question of Stalinism. Read Article.
Africa, a Health Crisis, and Intellectual Property: On decolonization and Intellectual Autonomy
Otobong Inieke, May 31, 2022
Otobong Inieke lays out the obstacles facing the development of an independent and self-reliant African public health infrastructure. Read Article.
The Rise and Fall of Homegrown American Marxism
Daniel Tutt, May 27, 2022
Daniel Tutt explores the intellectual trajectory of U.S. Marxism during the era of the Second International and, drawing from Brian Lloyd's work on the history of U.S. radicalism, argues that the influence of Veblenian and pragmatist philosophy had a detrimental effect on the development of U.S. Marxist theory. Tutt, who has taught philosophy at George Washington University and Marymount University, is the author of Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family and an organizer of the Study Groups on Psychoanalysis and Politics. He is currently at work on a new Marxist critique of Nietzsche for Repeater Books. Read Article.
Marx Did Not Invent Socialism, He Observed It
Renato Flores, May 23, 2022
In part one of a series, Renato Flores reflects on the rise and fall of the base-building tendency. Read Article.