Many excellent articles have appeared analyzing the COVID 19 pandemic from a socialist and Marxist perspective. In this piece, we will look at just one question: what should socialists do during the pandemic? The main components of the answer are supporting essential workers fighting for safety protections, defending workers demanding […]
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Coronavirus and the global economic crisis: A crisis triggered by greed for profit
The global economic crisis is deteriorating at a rate as dizzying as the pandemic is. The reduction in economic growth and the sudden halt in China’s production system are now behind us. Now the price of oil has collapsed, stock markets have plummeted and panic in the financial world has […]
Workers’ actions at the start of the pandemic
The COVID19 pandemic and resulting shelter in place orders have obviously led to a tidal wave of suffering and hardship throughout the working class. However, in a number of cases, workers have used traditional labor forms of struggle to push back against this situation. These activities have tended to fall […]
The ISO, Bernie 2020, and Electoral Work
In light of the trajectory of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party primaries, the socialist left will have to come to terms with what it ventured and what it gained in the last two years. As they assess the Sanders campaign, socialists will disagree with one another. Hopefully […]
The militarization in Eastern Mediterranean and the threat of a Greco-Turkish war
A large mass of western imperialist states’ air and naval forces is gathered in Eastern Mediterranean. This “competitive co-existence” of large war ships with huge firepower that sail permanently in the area can be seen in map 1. The main factor is the presence of the American Navy, operating from […]
Lal Khan: What a heart has ceased to beat
The following three articles are from the Asian Marxist Review. In addition to the announcement of his death, for the benefit of readers we republish two articles by Lal Khan from November 18, 2018 and March 3, 2019 from the Asian Marxist Review. The first is on the future prospects […]
Ganging up on Bernie
The primary season is barely underway, but the Democratic Party’s “Anybody but Trump” strategy has already given way to “Anybody but Bernie.” Not surprisingly, the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) long-standing plan for former Vice President Joe Biden to assume the mantle of party nominee backfired badly in the first two […]
Anticapitalista statement to the State Citizens Assembly of Podemos
Earlier in February, Anticapitalistas, a revolutionary socialist organization that in 2013-4 helped to found Podemos as an electoral expression of the movement of the indignados, announced its decision to withdraw from participation in Podemos’ upcoming convention, known as the State Citizens Assembly. Anticapitalistas had concluded that it could not support […]
Upton Sinclair and the Democrat’s dirty tricks
AFTER DECADES of asserting his independence from the two capitalist parties in the U.S., one of the best-known socialists in the country registers as a Democrat to run in the party primaries. He campaigns on a program of pro-working class policies, taxing the rich and putting the unemployed to work. […]
Whatever happened to political independence?
Every four years, you can count on a group of prominent left-of-center figures to issue a statement aimed at the broad left urging a vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Whether it’s the positive case of “Progressives for Obama” or the fear-induced call to support the “lying neoliberal warmonger,” […]
Marxists and Elections
Paul D’Amato, former managing editor of the International Socialist Review and author of Meaning of Marxism surveys how Marxists have approached elections in this article originally published in the ISR in 2000. The article is especially relevant in the current period as many on the US left, including former leading […]
Chile 1973: The State and Revolution
Here we republish an article the late Tom Lewis wrote for the International Socialist Review (issue 6, Winter 1999), a publication for which he wrote frequently. Though written more than 20 years ago, the topic is so relevant for today, when so many socialists hold illusions in an electoral or […]
Capitalist crisis, “deglobalization,” and the Left’s challenges
This speech by Manuel Garí of Anticapitalistas and the editorial board of Viento Sur in the Spanish state was presented to the national convention of International Workers Left (DEA) in Athens, Greece, last December. In it, he discusses economic and political perspectives for the world, for Europe and for the […]
Is it time to launch a new socialist party?
The following document appeared in ISO preconvention bulletin #13, January 2019 in response to a proposal by Todd Chretien that the ISO initiate a process of launching a “new socialist party.” In it, I argued that though there were plenty of opportunities for collaboration and joint work on the Left, […]
The return of Karl Kautsky?
This article is based on a presentation to the International Socialist Project in December, 2019. For those on the revolutionary left, Karl Kautsky seemed like little more than an historical figure. Someone whom your Marxist education would expose you to, but someone you’d never think would become a reference point […]