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.
If the “micro-sect” isn’t the problem, why do so many socialist organizations suffer from a lack of democracy? And why haven’t we built a mass revolutionary party yet? As Firebrand’s E. Reed argues, charting the history of the socialist movement shows how inheritances from the past continue to weigh us down.
In the wake of the 2018 collapse of the International Socialist Organization, some socialists have argued that this disaster is proof that the small group as a model to build the movement is a dead end. History proves them wrong. A look at the past development of socialism shows a small organization with discipline and clear ideas is often the best starting place for growing mass revolutionary politics.
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...
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...