Without the Holocaust, the state of Israel probably wouldn’t have been founded. Zionists recruited immigrants to the state of Israel from among the thousands of Holocaust survivors whose communities in Europe were destroyed.
Marxist Education
Is Marxism Eurocentric? (Part II)
In this two-part series, ISP’s Lance Selfa seeks to refute the “conventional wisdom” about Marxism that Marxism is “Eurocentric,” and, therefore, has little to say to the mass of the world’s population in the 21st century globalized world.
Is Marxism Eurocentric? (Part I)
In this two-part series, ISP’s Lance Selfa seeks to refute the “conventional wisdom” about Marxism that Marxism is “Eurocentric,” and, therefore, has little to say to the mass of the world’s population in the 21st century globalized world.
Marxist economics with minimal huffing and puffing
Hadas Thier’s A People’s Guide to Capitalism is written to explain Marxism to young activists in today’s America. However, this book is more than just an introduction to political economy…
The myth of Lenin’s elitism
Lenin was fundamentally anti-elitist—not in the sense of anarchists who simply deny the necessity of leadership in struggle, but in the sense of grasping that leadership is a product of the uneven development of consciousness and activity in the working class…
Marxism, unions, and class struggle
It is no coincidence that levels of class inequality today mirror those of the laissez faire capitalism of Gilded Era of the late nineteenth century, when robber barons enriched themselves by fighting tooth-and-nail against every attempt by workers to organize into unions.
Lenin and today’s resistance
Change the World Tens of thousands of young activists have taken to the streets this summer and fall. The response to the minimal slap on the wrist for the police in the Breonna Taylor case is only the latest example of this movement. The marchers are not only calling for […]
How should socialists approach the 2020 elections?
A number of recent articles on this web site have spelled out an overall assessment of the 2020 elections and explained why we consider opposition to the Democratic Party to be a fundamental cornerstone of class politics. The purpose of this article is to explain socialist strategy and tactics in […]
Imperialism, nationalism, and war
The understanding of the nature of the world system is, or should be, a central question for the Left in the United States. We live in what the Left used to call “the heart of the beast”—the largest world power on the planet—armed to the teeth with weaponry capable of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Plekhanov: an alternative assessment
Reading the literature of not only academic Marxism, but also of the Marxist tradition overall, it would be easy to conclude that Plekhanov, the founder of the Russian Marxist movement, had very little, if anything, to contribute to Marxism. Indeed, if his name is mentioned at all, it is to […]
Principles, strategy, culture, and revolutionary organization
This article first appeared as a document in ISO preconvention bulletin #43, February, 2019. It more or less accurately predicts that the then-current trajectory of the ISO could lead to its liquidation into the DSA/Democratic Party. Though the ISO collapsed before this outcome came about, a month after this article was […]
Unity with whom and to what end?
“Unity” is a tricky slogan. Every trade unionist knows that the foundation for a successful strike is unity in the ranks—if a majority supports the strike, all workers, no matter how they voted, must honor the picket line and not cross. That’s a pretty clear-cut case where unity advances the […]
