In the age of information, progressive social movements rage on. Yet some security-minded activists insist on extreme or onerous measures to ensure privacy, including self-censorship and blurring photos of protesters on social media. This essay, written by a member of Denver Communists in response to an ongoing debate about protest photos, examines the conflict between this kind of so-called security and successful militant struggle.
The recent attacks on abortion rights in the U.S. prove once again that under capitalism, reproductive rights will never be safe. We need a mass grassroots movement to fight the ruling class and the right wing for abortion rights and bodily autonomy for all — not just a privileged few.
Palestinians have been under siege, colonial occupation, expulsion, dispossession, oppression and repression for over 75 years. They have resisted Zionism and imperialism for even longer. Much of this resistance has been nonviolent or at most the hurling of rocks. On...
Stop the genocide Israel’s settler-colonial project has again shown its true nature. In retaliation for the new military phase of the Palestinian liberation movement that started on October 7th, the Zionist entity is committing open genocide against Gaza. Israeli...
Repression has always been a problem for people seeking social change. From direct physical attacks by police and vigilantes to the firing and evicting of union activists, the ruling class doesn’t make it easy to challenge their power. Contemporary methods of...
Whenever the “international community” starts talking about Israel’s right to self-defense, Palestinian civilians head to the bomb shelters. Or they would, if they had any — the Israeli government prevents the Gaza Strip from importing the necessary construction...
“We don’t have a mass revolutionary party. If we did, I would join. Once upon a time, a revolutionary vanguard existed. After the defeat of the New Left, the vanguard has to be rebuilt. We need to knit together activists. Without soviets there would have been no...
I want to start off by admitting that I am totally what you might call a “basic girl.” I love overpriced oat milk lattes, and going to Target as a form of therapy. For the past two years in a row, I was in the top .03% of Taylor Swift listeners on Spotify. It’s a...
The starting point for developing a revolutionary Marxist approach to the Niger crisis begins with the recognition that the right to determine who governs Niger and how it is governed belongs to Nigeriens and them alone. This is an especially important lesson of the...
Forging closer ties and meeting new comrades In our first appearance as Firebrand, we brought a contingent of ten, five Denver Communists, two Seattle Revolutionary Socialists, one Greensboro Revolutionary Socialist, and two contacts to the 2023 Socialism Conference....
In Indianapolis on Labor Day last September, a group of about thirty neo-Nazis from an organization called Patriot Front marched downtown. Cosplaying in their faux military garb and carrying shields and colonial-themed US flags, this crew of sad grotesques was easily...
Dear Natalia and Tempest comrades, I am writing here in response to your article, “The blush is off the rose.” Some of your assessments are spot on. I disagree sharply with others. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is clearly in decline and has been...
Andor is a breath of fresh air for the Star Wars franchise, and for television in general. A prequel to 2016’s Rogue One, the Disney+ series is unexpectedly one of the most compelling and gripping in memory. Its combination of dark, dystopian mood, wrenching suspense,...
Earlier this month, I attended Socialist Alternative’s Socialism conference in Sydney. For readers outside Australia, I’m referring to the Australian Trotskyist organization (which was a cousin of sorts to the ISO in the US before the latter disbanded), and not the...
The July 25 tentative agreement (TA) comes up short. Gains like the gradual addition of air conditioning in package cars, no forced overtime for drivers on days off, the end of two-tier classification for 22.4 drivers, protections against subcontracting, and partial...
“There really is an upper layer of the working class, supported by a thousand kinds of ‘direct and indirect’ benefits flowing from imperialism. Its starkest expression is a massive labor bureaucracy that’s becoming more integrated into the imperialist capitalist...
In the eyes of the capitalist ruling class, workers are deprived of their humanity and are reduced to profit-producing machines. Our basic human needs are locked behind a paywall, leaving us the choices of starving to death or purchasing our right to survive another...
Too often morality is the only guide to politics on the left. Oppression and exploitation are obviously disgusting — however, overcoming them takes analysis and strategy, not just outrage. One example of this is the widespread dismissal of workers in the United States...
Continued from Part One After my first experiences with the International Socialist Organization (ISO), what convinced me to join was the sincere belief that my views and actions mattered. After meeting up with some comrades from the organization in early 2011, we...
A revolt contained, but polarization continues In 2020, we witnessed the biggest wave of protests in the United States in the past 50 years, if not ever. The George Floyd rebellion was the highest phase so far in a long series of cycles in the recent Black liberation...
The anti-racist and anti-police brutality movement has turned toward abolitionism in recent years. It has called for the complete elimination of police and prisons. This is a radical turn and to be applauded, but it does have its problems. One of the key arguments for...
Introduction “Trotsky considers the opportunist current and its leaders somewhat as victims of circumstances… There is no doubt that opportunism, like all else in the world has its objective causes in external conditions. But in politics more than anywhere else, to...
What kind of party do we need? Or what kind of party should revolutionary socialists be focused on building? I want to propose some answers to the organizational questions we’re facing. But more than that, I want to invite those who are asking the same questions to...
Every year I teach an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course. In the section in which we focus on socioeconomic class, I ask my students to read and interpret the famous first pages of the Communist Manifesto. These are the pages in which Marx and Engels broadly...
In recent years, mutual aid has overtaken protest as a dominant form of Left political action. When the US government failed to address anything more than the barest of needs during the pandemic, communities organized themselves. After this same government repressed...
A specter is haunting communism: the specter of “socialism” Reformists and Stalinists, social democrats and communists alike have invented “socialism” as a replacement for Karl Marx’s revolutionary communism. They try to divert the left-wing movement from its goal of...
On May 2, 2022, a draft opinion of the United States Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision was “accidentally” leaked. As it stands, the decision — concerning a Mississippi law seeking to ban abortions past the 15th week of pregnancy — would...
“A supporter of the theory of scientific communism does not take anything on word. He judges everything by reason and experience…. Bureaucratic and artificial discipline has crumbled to dust at the moment of danger. Revolutionary discipline does not exclude but...
The authentic Marxist tradition has always stressed that democracy is fundamental to socialism. Marx defined socialism as the “self-emancipation of the working class.” In the Communist Manifesto, he and Engels said that the first step on the road to socialism and then...
We have enacted a policy prohibiting our members from holding dual membership in our organization and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). This policy is based on our commitment to working-class independence and revolutionary socialism, because we understand...
The U.S. government and most of the press are trying to whip up support for the U.S./NATO intervention in Ukraine. Labeling Putin a war criminal helps that effort. VP Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and President Joe Biden have solemnly pronounced...
Sharp divisions among revolutionary socialists The question of war has always been a key division among socialists. It divides reformist supporters of the capitalist state from revolutionary opponents of the capitalist state. Since the late 1800s, it has divided soft...