Over the month since Charlie Kirk’s death, nearly all political stripes have condemned political violence. Meanwhile, Trump has declared war. But while many believe political violence is alien or a threat to capitalist democracy, both state and extra-state violence are baked into this system — and most often committed by the right.
Rodney Hinton Jr., who allegedly killed a sheriff’s deputy after cops murdered his teenage son in Cincinnati, has become a folk hero and lightning rod for rage against the system of racist policing in the US. Though vigilante violence is not the way forward, we find political significance in Hinton’s actions, and he has our unconditional solidarity.
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.
Earlier this month, I attended Socialist Alternative’s Socialism conference in Sydney. For readers outside Australia, I’m referring to the Australian Trotskyist organization (which was a cousin of sorts to the ISO in the US before the latter disbanded), and not the...
Continued from Part One After my first experiences with the International Socialist Organization (ISO), what convinced me to join was the sincere belief that my views and actions mattered. After meeting up with some comrades from the organization in early 2011, we...
Introduction “Trotsky considers the opportunist current and its leaders somewhat as victims of circumstances… There is no doubt that opportunism, like all else in the world has its objective causes in external conditions. But in politics more than anywhere else, 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...