The turmoil and depravity of the second Trump administration must be understood not as an aberration but as a result of the long-term decline of US imperial primacy. State violence against the oppressed, the instability of the “America First” agenda, and open support for genocide are all desperate attempts to shore up the power of the increasingly reactionary US capitalist class.
Ridding society of the police is both a practical demand in the struggle against oppression, and an integral part of socialist revolution. brian bean’s new book, Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, is an excellent intervention in the debates on a future without state violence. As bean argues, the movement to abolish the police is really the movement to abolish capitalism.
The history of leftist efforts to realign the Democratic Party demonstrates that strategies like the “dirty break” and the “party surrogate” are not ways forward for the left, but traps instead. Beyond sabotaging left Democrats like Zohran Mamdani and their proposed reforms, a greater danger is the party’s ability to absorb them. Instead, we need an independent socialist workers’ movement.
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...
Many people probably know about the proposed ban on TikTok. Biden, the Democrats, and Republicans are coming together in bipartisan unity to limit free speech. They’re attacking an app that many of us not only use for funny and stupid videos, but also for political...