United States

Analysis Movements United States

Chicago strikers fight for their patients

The largest strike taking place in this country today is the combined nurses and campus workers strike at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It represents one of the most important examples of united working class action in the time of Trump and COVID. What’s involved here? On Saturday, September […]

Analysis Politics United States

A difficult period for the working class

The International Socialism Project has held a series of discussions on the rapidly changing US political scene. This article is based on an introduction made to a meeting on September 13. It covers three points: Trump and the far right, the mood of the working class, and the state 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 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 […]

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 […]