Articles

July 14th, 2024

Unexpected Result of French Election Bars a Neofascist Victory, Constituting a Moral as Well as a Political Victory for the Left

This article was published in International Marxist-Humanist, July 8, 2024.

As French parliamentary elections pushed the leftist New Popular Front into first place, a pleasant sort of shock greeted revolutionary and progressive-minded people in France and around the world who had feared the triumph of the neofascist National Rally party. To be sure, recent elections in India and Turkey have seen the authoritarian right lose […]
January 03rd, 2024

İki Diyalektik Yıldönümü, Lukács ve Dunayevskaya

This article was published in English in International Marxist-Humanist, Dec. 13, 2023

This article was published in English in International Marxist-Humanist, Dec. 13, 2023. We are publishing the Turkish version, translated by Yener Çıracı, which appeared in Birdunyaceviri blog.
December 23rd, 2023

Францыя: Паўстанне маргіналізаванай моладзі супраць паліцыі кідае выклік усяму грамадскаму парадку

This article was published in English in International Marxist-Humanist, July. 11, 2023

This article was published in English in International Marxist-Humanist, on July 11, 2023. The Belarusian version appeared in ZNet Belarusian on July 23, 2023.
December 15th, 2023

Two Dialectical Anniversaries, Lukács and Dunayevskaya

First published in The International Marxist-Humanist on December 13, 2023.

In a fortunate coincidence, the year 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of Georg Lukács’s epochal History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923) and the 50th anniversary of Raya Dunayevskaya’s ground-breaking Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao (1973). One difference between these luminous works is that the one by Lukács is widely held to be […]
December 13th, 2023

Kissinger, Mao and the Undermining of the 1960s Revolutions: Recalling Raya Dunayevskaya’s Prescient Analysis

First published in The International Marxist-Humanist on December 10, 2023.

The war criminal Henry Kissinger, who died at 100 in December, has been celebrated as a skilled strategist of the U.S. empire, especially for his — and the equally criminal Richard Nixon’s — China diplomacy, which brought that country back into the web of great power alliances and competition in the early 1970s. At the […]
October 20th, 2023

The Middle East and the World After October 7, and Israel’s War on Palestine

First published in The International Marxist-Humanist on October 15, 2023.

The October 7 attack by Hamas militants from Gaza into Israel, across one of the most closely guarded borders in the world, constitutes nothing less than a global turning point.
July 15th, 2023

France: Anti-Police Uprising of Marginalized Youth Hurls Challenge to the Entire Social Order

First published in The International Marxist-Humanist on July 11, 2023.

In response to the police murder of a 17-year-old youth, Nahel Merzouk, in the banlieue [variously translated as working class suburb, or even “inner city”] of Nanterre outside Paris, marginalized youth across the country engaged in nearly a week of clashes on the streets with police. During those nights of unrest, they also attacked and set fire […]
April 15th, 2023

French Strikes and Popular Mobilizations Continue, Contesting Not Only Retirement Rollback, But Also Police Brutality and Authoritarian Politics

First published in IMHO Journal on April 4, 2023.

Since January, more-or-less weekly mass labor mobilizations have continued against a new law that would increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, even after it was rammed through without a vote on March 16. It should be noted that these days of action, ten of them so far, and two of them since March […]
February 24th, 2023

Democracy and the White Working Class vs. “Oligarchy” in the South: Insights from Varon’s New History of the Civil War

First published in IMHO Journal on February 15, 2023.

Elizabeth Varon’s book, Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, has just come to my attention, although it was published four years ago, in 2019. Whether intentionally or not, the book gives important illumination to Marxist debates over race, class, and slavery. And a briefer level, it also offers new insights the origins […]
January 30th, 2023

Millions of French Workers Come Out to Oppose Austerity

First published in IMHO Journal on January 25, 2023.

In 1920, Lenin wrote of how, in approaching “the decisive battle” against capitalism with any chance of success, “one must count in millions and tens of millions” of workers in motion (“Left-Wing” Communism — An Infantile Disorder, Collected Works 31:94). France is not there yet, for its recent strikes have not directly challenged capitalism; nor did they […]