Articles

Mészáros and Chávez: The Philosopher and the Llanero

Mészáros and Chávez: The Philosopher and the Llanero

by Chris Gilbert

June 1, 2022

What made István Mészáros's life so fascinating, and relevant to issues of socialist construction, was that, having seen both sides of the Cold War, he came to perceive both "real socialism" and twentieth-century capitalism as two variants of the same system. He called this the capital system. The basic commonality among most countries of both the East and the West in the twentieth century was the extraction of surplus labor from workers who did not control their own work processes.

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Mészáros and Chávez: “The Point from Which to Move the World Today”

Mészáros and Chávez: “The Point from Which to Move the World Today”

by John Bellamy Foster

June 1, 2022

István Mészáros was a global thinker strongly committed to anti-imperialist struggles. In this respect, he allied himself with those fighting for socialist transformation in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. He argued that in the descending phase of capitalism there was a "downward equalization of the rate of exploitation," by which he meant a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, enforced by a global system of monopolistic competition.

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The Roots of the Science-Practice Gap: A Materialist View

The Roots of the Science-Practice Gap: A Materialist View

by Ricardo Dobrovolski

June 1, 2022

The scientific development of humanity—that is, the ability to investigate the planet collectively, integrating reason and empirical data—allowed humans to understand the world with increasing precision and transform it powerfully. Despite this, attitudes against this knowledge have been widespread, both individually and collectively.

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Toward an Ecosocialist Degrowth: From the Materially Inevitable to the Socially Desirable

Toward an Ecosocialist Degrowth: From the Materially Inevitable to the Socially Desirable

by Alejandro Pedregal and Juan Bordera

June 1, 2022

We are facing today the most pronounced and remarkable of all contradictions: that between "capital's time" and "nature's time." As a result, a series of intertwined ecological and social crises have come together, posing existential threats to life on the planet.

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The Jakarta Method, Then and Now: U.S. Counterinsurgency and the Third World

The Jakarta Method, Then and Now: U.S. Counterinsurgency and the Third World

by Sarah Raymundo

June 1, 2022

Increasing numbers of left-wing activists around the world are turning to Vincent Bevins's The Jakarta Method to learn more about the horrific atrocities committed by the United States against peoples' struggles for the right to self-determination in the so-called postcolonial era. In particular, the book describes how imperialist expansion destroyed revolutionary struggles in the third world.

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‘Notes on Exterminism’ for the Twenty-First-Century Ecology and Peace Movements

‘Notes on Exterminism’ for the Twenty-First-Century Ecology and Peace Movements

by John Bellamy Foster

May 1, 2022

In 1980, the great English historian and Marxist theorist E. P. Thompson wrote the pathbreaking essay "Notes on Exterminism, the Last Stage of Civilization." Although the world has undergone a number of significant changes since, Thompson's essay remains a useful starting point in approaching the central contradictions of our times, characterized by the planetary ecological crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, New Cold War, and current "empire of chaos"—all arising from features deeply embedded in the contemporary capitalist political economy.

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Giving War a Chance

by Laurence H. Shoup

May 1, 2022

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the ultimate agenda-setting, strategic planning, and consensus-forming organization of the U.S. capitalist ruling class. The latest book to come out of the CFR orbit, Strategy of Denial (2021), thus provides an opportunity to concretely observe how the monopoly capitalist ruling class is preparing the people of the United States for what could be a catastrophic world war.

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