Should Marxism be rooted in inter-species liberation? Or is it already, unbeknownst to most of us? Leigh Claire La Berge has delved into what she considers an unrecognized trove of evidence for Marxism’s deep engagement with the feline as a way of making sense of class society — and what would be necessary to leap … Continued
The call to abolish the family and liberate its members has been one of the central pillars of the radical left historically. Yet today that venerable tradition is almost forgotten, abandoned with the ebbing of the Sixties. Sophie Lewis renews the argument for abolishing the family and replacing it with collective forms of care. Resources: … Continued
Twenty years ago, Against the Grain came on the air for the first time, in the midst of turmoil, protest, and impending war. In the second half of a two part retrospective, historian Iain Boal discusses the context out of which Against the Grain emerged, from the media reform, global justice, and antiwar movements at … Continued
Mike Davis was an exceptional thinker and writer: a deeply committed socialist who dazzlingly illuminated the unfolding ecological and social contradictions of late capitalism. Whether writing about his native Southern California, or contemplating the fate of billions in the world’s mega-slums, Davis gave us new ways of seeing — always with a post-capitalist world in … Continued
Rising rents, rising food prices, rising gas prices — the price of basic necessities has been going dramatically up. Pundits are wringing their hands, worrying about a return to the tumultuous 1970s, while the Federal Reserve has begun a series of interest rate hikes designed to slow the economy down, and potentially put people out … Continued
Leo Panitch, the great Marxist political economist, was one of the many losses we have suffered from the coronavirus. His frequent collaborator and lifelong friend Sam Gindin reflects on the enormous contributions that Leo Panitch made to a radical understanding of the state and capitalism on a global scale, as well as the limits of … Continued
How can we manage to think about, and move toward, a better world in the bleakest of times? Argentinean critical theorist Ana Cecelia Dinerstein talks about capitalism, the state, and our own collective power. She also discusses the tradition of Open Marxism and why we should be skeptical of a universal basic income, which has … Continued
This special edition of “Economic Update” is devoted to Understanding Marxism, the title of a short new book just published by Democracyatwork. Today’s program, like the book, explains Marxism’s systemic insights into capitalism now. We discuss Marxism’s basic criticisms of capitalism and also its complex relationship to socialism. Finally, we offer a survey of the … Continued
Within the left, debates rage over whether we should focus on race, class, or gender as the primary form of oppression today. Josh Fattal points to the writings of CLR James and Raya Dunaevskaya as a way out of the conundrum: they saw the struggles of one oppressed group acting as spores for spreading revolt … Continued
The term socialism has, amazingly, gone from one consigned to Cold War obscurity to the self-description of several prominent US politicians. But what does socialism mean and how could we ever manage to get there? Jacobin magazine founder Bhaskar Sunkara argues that socialism is achievable — and maps out a path to emancipation, first through … Continued
