The Swiss-Syrian academic and activist Joseph Daher has contributed an excellent Marxist perspective on the Palestinian struggle. Providing clarity on important questions that remain contentious for the movement — from the “Zionist lobby” to support for armed resistance — the book is a valuable intervention on the meaning and methods of Palestinian liberation.
Stalinist academic Grover Furr has dedicated his career to zealous defense of the Soviet Union with cherrypicked data and crude falsehoods. His latest book, Trotsky’s Comintern Conspiracy, is no exception. Filled with conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, it justifies Stalin’s show trials with the logic of fairy tales and the Inquisition.
The US Civil War was a major influence on the development of Marxism. For Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the war against chattel slavery was an important phase in the global struggle against human bondage. Their commentary on the war is compiled in The Civil War in the United States, an essential volume for those seeking a Marxist understanding of the most pivotal conflict in US history, as well as the relationship between oppression and labor.
The Black Antifascist Tradition, by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill Mullen, is an extensive overview of the politics of anti-racist struggles by Black people in the United States. Published earlier this year by Haymarket Books, it is, first of all, a very interesting and...
In Marxist theory, primitive accumulation is, as Marx defined it in Capital Volume I, “the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production.” Occurring at different times in different regions around the world, primitive accumulation is the...
The ongoing genocidal annihilation of Gaza and the racist pogroms in the West Bank, both conducted by the Israeli apartheid state with the full support of its imperial sponsor, the United States, have rightfully provoked the rage of tens of millions across the world....
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,...
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...