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History

Trotsky

The Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated by a Stalinist agent on August 21, 1940. Many today who are interested in socialism know little or nothing about him. And yet Trotsky was a key leader of the only successful working-class revolution in history—the 1917 October Revolution. In the face of […]

Analysis Social Issues United States

Slavery in the United States

The following is the first chapter of Ahmed Shawki’s Black Liberation and Socialism (2005). Footnotes have been removed. Other chapters of this book will be posted in the coming weeks.   “Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. […]

Analysis Politics United States

The Democrats: Defenders of Empire

The following is chapter six of Lance Selfa’s The Democrats: A Critical History. The footnote references have been removed.     One of the enduring truisms of American politics since the 1960s is the notion that Republicans are “strong on national defense” while Democrats are “weak.” In 2004, largely on this […]

Analysis South Asia World

A tribute to comrade Lal Khan

The following, written by FK, is taken from a pamphlet, Dr. Lal Khan (1956–2020): What a Heart Has Ceased to Beat!, published by the Asian Marxist Review as its Spring 2020 special edition. Lal Khan, who died in February 2020, was one of the founders of The Struggle, a Marxist […]

Analysis Politics United States

The struggle has moved far “Beyond Bernie”

Bernie Sanders ended his second presidential bid in April—endorsing Joe Biden and urging his supporters to vote for him. Since then, the political climate in the U.S. has been transformed. The Covid-19 pandemic, the ensuing economic crisis and large scale unemployment, followed suddenly by the mass uprisings triggered by the […]

Marxist Education

A Marxist view of America: an activist’s reading list

The tsunami of demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd has awakened an interest in revolutionary ideas and strategy. Militants are confronting sharply posed issues such as what type of society could actually “defund the police” and can the Democratic Party take us even one inch of the way towards […]

Protesting murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis
Analysis Movements United States

The Language of the unheard

“Can you hear us now?” Those were the words spray painted on the boarded-up windows of Minneapolis’ East Lake Clinic—near the 3rd Precinct police station that protesters burned down on the night of May 28th. The whole world has now watched four Minneapolis cops murder George Floyd. Yet it took […]