Slavery and Prior Accumulation in Venezuela

Cira Pascual Marquina Enrique S. Rivera is a historian, journalist, and documentary film producer. He teaches at UCLA, and his recent book, The Untold History of Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation and the Anti-Slavery Revolution (2021), focuses on the 1795 anti-slavery rebellion in the west of what we now know as Venezuela, but it also examines the origins of…

Economy Must Be ‘at the Service of Life’: Resisting Debt and Neocolonialism in Africa

Tanupriya Singh An image from the music video ‘IMF’ by Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 (Knitting Factory Records) featuring Dead Prez’s M1, directed by Jerome Bernard and produced by Duck Factory A dossier and accompanying discussion hosted by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research interrogates the vicious cycle of debt rooted in neocolonial extraction that…

The Roots of Cowardice of Today’s Subaltern Intellectuals

Yusuf Serunkuma Yusuf Serunkuma slams the cowardice of intellectuals today, who display self-censorship and contentment with the status quo, in contrast with an earlier generation of activists and subaltern scholars. Serunkuma argues that this did not happen overnight, rather it has taken years of manufacturing conformity and consent. There is a less discussed component about…

A Fraternal Hand: The American Tradition of Socialist Democracy and Chinese Socialism

Carlos L. Garrido There is a glaring paradox at the core of the American project. On the one hand, it proclaims its national self-determination with the values of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, right to revolution, and to a government of, by, and for the people. On the other hand, the rights to life, liberty,…

US Empire of Debt Headed for Collapse

Pepe Escobar Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, “The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed. Prof. Hudson’s main thesis…

China is Governed in the Interests of Working People, the US in the Interests of Capital

In this interview with Global Times, Sara Flounders – a contributing editor to Workers World and a member of our advisory group – shares her analysis of the escalating New Cold War and the US’s global hegemonic project. Comparing the West’s approach of war, sanctions, coercion and destabilisation with China’s vision of a human community with…

Liberal Democracy in Africa

Nicholas Mwangi March 20, 2023 saw major street protests held in Kenya, Tunisia, and South Africa. The latter was aimed at a total shutdown of the economy and the resignation of President Cyril Ramaphosa amidst the energy crisis and load shedding. The protests were led by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party. In Kenya and Tunisia, the…

Nicolas Maduro: Has He Become a Neoliberal?

Thierry Deronne Caracas, April 20, 2023. Meeting with the president of Bolivia Luis Arce Lucho Arce, the president of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro proposes to make of the two nations a public industrial pole that will produce and guarantee the necessary fertilizers to the peasants of Latin America and the Caribbean. In various sectors of the…

How Canadians Lost Medicare

Dr. Susan Rosenthal Ontario’s Bill 60 has delivered a death blow to public medicare. The provincial medical system will no longer operate as a public service but as a profit-taking business managed by the private sector. While defenders of public medicare blame Conservative Premier Doug Ford, British Columbia, Quebec, and Saskatchewan are going down the same road. If we hope…

Western Capitalism’s Historic Crisis as People Realize There’s Actually Socialist Alternative

Finian Cunningham Western capitalism and its supposed democracy are in terminal crisis as increasing numbers of people reject the system’s abysmal economic failure: record levels of poverty, inequality and relentless militarism and warmongering. Professor Jodi Dean, the author of The Communist Horizon (Verso), says we are living in a rare historic situation of social, economic…

The Existence of the Poor Must Be a Fight Against Social Injustice and Political Oppression

Robert Lodimus The world proletariat suffers from the injustice of the oligarchic clans that have been robbing the banks of common wealth for thousands of years ©Benjamin Petit/AFD “If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu Writing has become for us this restless…

Neo-Compradors: The Leftist Foot Soldiers of Imperialism

Sammy Ismail A review of James Petras “NGOs: in the Service of Imperialism” “NGOs: In the service of Imperialism” by James Petras scientifically unpacks imperialism in contemporary communities of the global south. Prompted by the premise that capitalism, and by extension imperialism, is constantly evolving in an effort to perpetuate itself. James Petras takes neo-compradors…

The Conformist Rebellion: Marxist Critiques of the Contemporary Left

Philipp Nolz Elena Louisa Lange and Joshua Pickett-Depaolis (eds) The Conformist Rebellion: Marxist Critiques of the Contemporary Left Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2022. 326 pp., £100.00 hb ISBN9781538160152 Already a century ago, political thinkers and philosophers were confronted with an apparent paradox: the failure of revolution. Just when the material conditions and the political organisations of the popular…

Give Peace A Chance: China and the World Today

This presentation by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was given at a webinar organised by the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) Education Commission on the theme ‘Give peace a chance – China and the world today.’ The webinar took place on 22 January 2023. Carlos discusses the current state…

$70+ Billion for a Failing Warplane: A Dubious Canadian Project

Barbara Waldern Demonstration by the Hamilton Stop the War Coalition in Burlington, ON, on January 8, 2023 as an event of the cross-Canada set of actions to protest the F-35 program. It disrupted MP Karina Gould, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development at her levee at the Art Gallery. [Photo by Graham Paine of…

How NATO Exploits the Crises it Creates

Rainer Shea Maidan The North Atlantic Treaty Organization represents the stage of capitalism where the imperialists, after making nuclear annihilation a possibility, have taken advantage of this horrific reality that they themselves engineered. The equivalent has happened with Covid-19, in which the IMF has used the pandemic as a pretext for imposing further austerity measures onto 81…

Colombian President Petro’s Davos Proposal and What it Reveals

Eder Peña The Colombian president went to present his concern about the global environmental crisis to those who are generating it  On January 17, Colombian President Gustavo Petro participated in the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, which brought together heads of state and world leaders, and presented Colombia’s proposals to address the climate…

White Supremacy

Jemima Pierre, Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús White supremacy should not be identified solely with self-proclaimed white nationalists. It is a centuries old, international, economic, and political system that cannot be eradicated with slogans and wishful thinking. In recent years, the concept of white supremacy has been associated with extreme racist groups and ultranationalists, as well as…