More...

Debates

Finding reasons for the ISO’s liquidation

While most articles on the ISP website address issues of interest to the broader socialist left, the following contribution provides a critical assessment of the International Socialist Organization’s (ISO) dissolution that is especially relevant to former ISO members. François Laforge is a research scientist at Princeton University. He has been […]

Marxist Education

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 […]

Marxist Education

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 […]

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 […]

Marxist Education

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 […]

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 […]