Articles

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

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 […]

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

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 […]

Millions of French Workers Come Out to Oppose Austerity

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 […]

Will Joseph Ratzinger’s Grim Legacy Outlive Him?

The death of Joseph Ratzinger, who served as Pope Benedict XVI (2005-13), was announced just as I was finishing Beverly Gage’s biography of J. Edgar Hoover, a confluence of the personal and the global that brought a certain chill to the spine. While Hoover administered the U.S. FBI for 50 years, repressing socialists and dissidents […]

Donna, vita, libertà: le origini della rivolta in Iran

By Janet Afary, Kevin B. Anderson

This article will appear in Dissent’s Winter 2023 issue, out in January, and was published online on Dec. 2. The Italian version, trans. by Mauricio Acerbo, appeared in his blog,  Sandwiches di realtà.

Femme, vie, liberté : les origines du soulèvement en Iran

By Janet Afary, Kevin B. Anderson

This article will appear in Dissent’s Winter 2023 issue, out in January, and was published online on Dec. 2 here We are publishing the French version, which appeared in Entre les lignes entre les mots.

Kadın, Yaşam, Özgürlük: İran’daki Ayaklanmanın Tarihi Kökenleri

This article will appear in Dissent’s Winter 2023 issue, out in January, and was published online on Dec. 2. We are publishing the Turkish version, which appeared in fikrikadim. 

Woman, Life, Freedom: The Origins of the Uprising in Iran

By Janet Afary, Kevin B, Anderson

The massive protests in Iran, fueled by the audacity of young women and children, are rooted in over a century of struggle. This article will appear in Dissent‘s Winter 2023 issue, out in January. French Translation Italian Translation Turkish Translation  

Tunisia: End of the Democratic Republic Established by the 2011 Revolution

On October 3, Tunisia’s UGTT labor confederation threatened to launch street protests if authoritarian President Kais Saied went ahead with plans to negotiate further austerity with the IMF. Sadly, it is unclear if this threat by the country’s largest labor organization will have any immediate effect on the country’s increasingly rapid slide into authoritarian rule.

Louis Dupré, Dialectical Humanist

The January 2022 death at age 96 of philosopher Louis Dupré constitutes a real loss to Marxist and Hegelian thought, and to Continental Philosophy more generally. Even though he was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Yale University, no obituaries have appeared in the mainstream U.S. media, a shocking development that reveals both […]