a communist organization
Firebrand is committed to revolutionary socialism, internationalism, liberation from all oppression, and the political independence of the working class. We stand in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, and Luxemburg. We intervene in social movements and labor struggles to the best of our ability, in order to advance those fights and win our fellow fighters to revolutionary conclusions.
Our Latest Writing
The Rise of Christian Nationalism in the US
The religious right-wing, made up largely of white evangelicals, holds a great deal of political power in the United States. They form a formidable voting bloc, with presidential candidates seeking and depending on their endorsement. As a dominant force among...
Advances, Limits, and Lessons of the Student Intifada
The eruption of Gaza solidarity encampments on college campuses around the world has been a welcome and unexpected shot in the arm for the Palestine liberation movement. In hindsight, the pot simmered on campuses for months before boiling over. Last fall, universities...
Why Kautsky Was Wrong (and Why You Should Care)
Karl Kautsky’s grandson John told a very revealing anecdote about attitudes towards his grandfather in the 1960s. He recalled a historian named Georges Haupt, who had many discussions among students about the history of the Second International. During those talks,...
Ian Angus’s The War Against the Commons: A Vital New History of the Bloody Rise of Capitalism
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...
On the Ground with the Student Intifada
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...
Solidarity with Jodi Dean, and with All Victims of McCarthyist Attacks on Intellectual Freedom
On April 13, 2024, the President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state summarily dismissed Jodi Dean, professor of politics, from her teaching position at the institution. The dismissal is ostensibly temporary, pending an investigation into claims...
What Is Fascism? Strategy and Tactics in the Struggle Against the Far Right
Fascism arose in the 20th century as a capitalist response to its own crises and the increased threat of the communist movement after the Russian Revolution. Fascism is a symptom of capitalism in decay, and is especially centered on the ruined petty bourgeoisie and...
Out of the Voting Booth, Into the Streets: Revolutionaries and Electoral Politics
According to the dominant view on the broad liberal-left, to achieve progressive change we must elect officials with progressive politics. Liberalism claims we can eliminate the problems inherent in capitalism without eliminating capitalism itself, and by using the...
Neither Dogmatism nor Eclecticism, But Marxist Dialectics
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 Communist Military Veteran on Aaron Bushnell, Imperialist War, and Resistance
My radicalization began with my time in the military. I served 10 years as an army infantryman. The simplest job description for an infantryman is someone who engages in ground combat. I grew up a poor trailer-trash kid from a small town in Wyoming. As soon as I...
Aaron Bushnell: Martyr for Palestine
Last Sunday, February 25, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty airman in the United States Air Force, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, in what he called “an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian...
What Will It Take to Liberate Palestine?
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...
Palestine, Revolutionary Morality, and Liberation: A Reply to La Botz and Shalom
The current debate in Tempest between Dan La Botz and Stephen R. Shalom on one side, and Jonah ben Avraham and Sean Larson on the other, is an important one for the left. La Botz and Shalom have claimed ben Avraham and Larson are too soft on October 7. The latter have...
Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists Suspended Over Palestine
Our comrades in Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists are facing outrageous repression from Ohio State University, who suspended their campus chapter in December on grounds that their activities in support of Palestine “pose a significant risk of substantial harm.”...
The French Turn, the DSA, and Revolutionary Regroupment
In March 2020, several longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America published an essay entitled “The Dangers of Factionalism in DSA,” warning about the dangers of entryism by organizations such as Socialist Alternative. Using the example of the “French...
Our Locals
We’re also trying to make trouble in Austin, Kansas City, New Orleans, and Oakland.