Maoism is a political tradition with enduring appeal on the left, especially for its association with the Chinese revolution and other liberation movements. Thus it is important to understand the ways Maoism diverges from Marxism. Maoism’s orientation on guerrilla warfare, its view of “labor aristocracy,” and its dismissal of the self-emancipation of the working class contradict revolutionary socialism and are doomed to failure.
The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolitionism by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill Mullen is a thorough and engaging new history of Black struggle in the US. However, its central argument, that all historic anti-racist struggles fit under the umbrella of anti-fascism, is theoretically flawed, and leads to bad organizing strategy and political defeat.
Primitive accumulation is the historical process through which capitalists stole their wealth or took it by force. Canadian ecosocialist Ian Angus has contributed an excellent new book on this history, covering the violent transition from feudalism to capitalism in depth while demonstrating its continuing relevance to the modern world.
Auraria Campus, Denver Report by James Radek A protest encampment in solidarity with Palestine was established on Thursday, April 25 on Denver’s Auraria Campus, which is home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University, and Community College of...
Marxism represents a complete and vigorously materialistic world-view. A complete world-view differs from an eclectic one in that each of its aspects is connected in the closest way with all the others, and therefore one cannot with impunity eliminate one of them and...
A free Palestine from the river to the sea is the demand that has been taken up by the unprecedented global protest movement in the wake of Israel’s brutal war and genocide in Gaza. Most sincere supporters of the Palestinian cause can understand why the dismantling of...
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...
“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...
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....
“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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...