Money China is capitalist. It is capitalist both because it is fully integrated in the global capitalist system and because capitalist imperatives have penetrated all
The bankruptcy of a one-sided ‘anti-imperialism’ Some on the left still have trouble counting to two. Having two enemies and not just one, fighting on
Ruirui （a）If you’re a communist and you’re Chinese, why aren’t you a member of the CCP? How is this different from asking American or Japanese
The author’s perception of Washington’s role in the world has ossified into a theology, with the U.S. as a malevolent God From New Lines Magazine.
Earlier this week, the Polish parliamentary progressive left party, Razem, issued a statement in which they announce that they are cutting ties with two European
The invasion of Ukraine has been a shock not just to Eastern Europe, but to the post World War II international order. While the fundamental
The far right believe that the world can be structured into strict hierarchies and categories. This worldview seeps through every segment of their belief system
Those who don’t stand in solidarity with the oppressed cannot call themselves leftists. With Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine from three directions, Russian President Vladimir
David Harvey’s February 25 FocaalBlog post is presented as “An Interim Report” on “Recent Events in the Ukraine”. Harvey’s essay effectively covers some of the core forces
I began this paper as a contribution to discussions in the Internationalism from Below Group, whose members’ criticisms helped to improve it. I finished it
Rodrigo Nunes, Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization (London: Verso, 2021), 282 pp. Just over ten years ago, the Tunisian Revolution of
A New Lines investigation reveals a network of charities funneling millions into left-wing platforms that take Beijing’s side on the genocide allegations — and they’re
From New Lines Magazine As Latin American dictators marginalize and jail protesters, the leaders rely on backing from prominent but obtuse individuals and organizations What
From Himal Southasian Isabel Wilkerson’s recent book fails to unpack caste, but hints at potential for new solidarities. Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our
A dozen years after the end of Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war, traditional homelands of the minority Tamil population are still under military occupation, thousands
When Marjorie Taylor Greene found herself approvingly quoting Nation of Islam conspiracy theories and noting the “common ground” between the GOP and the NoI, many laughed.
For decades, historians have debated the question of whether concepts equivalent to race and racism existed in premodern Chinese ethnic discourse. Unfortunately, this discussion has
Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in ‘reeducation camps’ in China’s northwestern Xinjiang autonomous
Yige Dong is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Gender & Sexuality Studies at University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She co-authored ‘What
A new book uncovers letters by Jewish and Arab fighters from the 1948 war, highlighting the personal lives of those who fought to establish Israel
At this late stage in the game, one should not be surprised at how incredibly poor the western left’s understanding of China is. Many western
We are a group of leftist educators, scholars, and activists who support the Kurdish-led liberation struggle in Rojava and beyond. We write in a spirit
Five hours before the opening of the West Papuan waria beauty pageant, the salon of the Sorong community elders was busy with preparations. Among 10
There is a robust discussion inside the Left about antisemitism in its own ranks. This is not just related to Zionism, Israel, and Palestine, but
Contemporary left-wing feminist and queer politics finds itself in a double-bind between on the one hand neoliberal and corporate embracement of gender equality and sexual
Indonesians’ present-day notions of beauty are embedded in a long and complex relationship between skin colour and race Go to any mall in Indonesia and
Axel T. Paul is Professor of Sociology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Matthias Leanza is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at
Robert Hoyland is Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University, NY, USA. This article first appeared in Comparativ
James A. Reilly is Professor Emeritus of modern Middle East history at the University of Toronto (Canada). This article first appeared in Comparativ Vol. 30
Michael Khodarkovsky is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago (USA). He specializes in the history of Russia’s imperial expansion into the Eurasian borderlands. This
Matthew W. Mosca is Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington (USA). His teaching and research interests center on Chinese and Inner Asian
Looking for Empires: Japanese Colonialism and the Comparative Gaze, by Kate McDonald – 17 April 2021
Kate McDonald is Associate Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara (USA). Her research explores the social, cultural, and technological history of mobility in
Andrew B. Liu is an associate professor in the Department of History at Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA). His research interests include modern China, South and
[The following Open Letter was a collaborative effort of a group of Syrian writers and intellectuals and others who stand in solidarity with them. It
On the second day of Ramadan, in early May of 2019, the Doha-based television channel Libya al-Ahrar aired an episode of its hidden camera program
Open Letter to Editors of Jacobin and Monthly Review New Politics editor’s note: Last month, grassroots Indigenous and youth-led movements helped the ecosocialist Indigenous candidate Yaku
Catherine Liu, Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. Catherine Liu on the political spectrumThis essay
Since coming to power, former US President Donald Trump has attracted and maintained a remarkable following among the Chinese diaspora in and outside the United
Apologists for capitalism like to point to its historically progressive aspects, like its supposed use of “free labor” rather than older forms of labor compulsion.
African evangelicals align themselves with the American right and there are many parallels between American and African evangelicals that may explain why the latter support
The publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report, as well as the ongoing fallout from the Panorama documentary and subsequent legal wranglings,
New preface to Aufheben’s 2016 article “The rise of conspiracy theories: Reification of defeat as the basis of explanation“, published by Libcom in late 2020.
“Race and Racism in Africa and the Middle East” was part of the nationwide #ScholarStrike to halt academic business as usual and to instead host
On the evening of June 22, the East China Normal University-University of British Columbia Joint Research Center on China and the World organized a discussion
Bruce S. Hall is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. This article first appeared in Antropologia Vol. 7 No.
Laura Menin is an Italian anthropologist based at the University of Sussex, UK, whose research explores love, intimacy, political violence, racialisation, and the legacies of
When Meir Kahane, an extremist rabbi who advocated for Jewish supremacy through the use of violence, ran in Israel’s 1988 elections, the state’s Central Elections
Review of: Dmitry Shumsky. Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. In a thought-provoking, evidence-based
A “Letter Against US Imperialism” has been circulating in leftist circles. It views the protests in Iran in a reductionist manner and unequivocally rejects them.
Andrew Liu is an associate professor in the Department of History at Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA). His research interests include modern China, South and East
Abstract What place does the caste system have in modern India with its globally integrating market economy? The most influential anthropological approaches to caste have
What the Halle Shooting Tells Us About the European Far Right Today, by Ben Gidley – 24 October 2019
We recorded the sixth episode of the Talking Europe vlog series in October 2019. A week before, during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a gunman, heavily armed
From Jadaliyya Lior B. Sternfeld, Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), 208 pp. Jadaliyya (J): What
Late last year, a veteran of communist politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand decided to contribute to a march for the traditional working-class demand for reproductive rights
From AJS Review Abstract “Intersectionality,” a concept coined and developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, examines how our various identities change in meaning and valence
From +972 Magazine As the most oppressed group in Israeli society, Palestinian citizens of Israel have an obligation to stand with the Ethiopian Israelis protesting against racism and
On May 2nd 2014, National China Offshore Oil Corporation dispatched the Hai Yang Shi You 981 oil platform to disputed waters off the southern edge
Soon after I arrived in Ürümchi in 2014 I met a young Uyghur man named Alim. He grew up in a small town near the
Decades after the first Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel, the community still suffers from high poverty, discrimination, and recent police shootings have brought on mass
A conversation between Michael Dawson (The University of Chicago) and Nancy Fraser (The New School), in which they discuss race and capitalism. They debate Dawson’s
In the midst of the current global turn to the right, striking resonances across oceans emerge: strongmen and their allies point to specific and vivid
A look at recent attempts by religious fundamentalist reactionaries and conspiracy theorists to build coalitions with “gender critical” feminists. From Libcom Over the last few
2018 has seen a vast rise in anti-Semitic violence globally, culminating in the massacre of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh Synagogue in November. Similarly, violence
Omer Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University (United States).
Documentary films addressing the topic of slavery and the slave trade in Africa are rare. As a specialist in slavery and race studies focusing on
From Jadaliyya Over the last few decades a new term has emerged in France to indicate a form of dangerous leftist politics: (roughly–and awkwardly–translated as
From New Politics A CNN report last November about slave auctions in present-day Libya shocked the world.1 The existence of these slave auctions was widely treated
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, Christian
How did we get here? For an infection to spread, you need both a germ (a virus, a bacterium, a spore or similar) and a
Germ 1: Political confusion and despair I now wish to return to the question of the agent of the Red-Brown zombie plague, that is: what
Introduction: Conspiracy theories and “pod people” When I wrote “Against Conservative Leftism” just over two years ago, I considered it disturbing that socialists would rally
Once more the western ‘anti-war’ movement has awoken to mobilise around Syria. This is the third time since 2011. The first was when Obama contemplated
During his recent tour of Europe, disgraced former Trump strategist Steve Bannon declared “Italy is in the lead.” Amid the historic resurgence of the Italian far right that returned
From +972 Magazine Despite the hardships, Arab women are making gains in the Israeli legal establishment, local politics, academia, and even in the Islamic Movement.
From Viewpoint Magazine “Imperialism,” David Harvey announced at a roundtable last year, should be seen as a “sort of metaphor, rather than anything real.” This
In 1983, 23 years after its independence and the succession of several neo-colonial regimes, the Upper Volta was one of the most materially destitute countries
This long post started as an investigation about the Left and Syria which I started after I read the Sol Process blog’s publication of three
In an essay on “Left strategy after Charlottesville”, Max Elbaum makes “an argument for the left to interact with the post-Charlottesville surge of resistance by
This piece is a response to the wider debates continually raging around identity politics and class. It tackles the writing of Adolph Reed Jr., not
A central insistence of antiracist thought over the past several decades is that, as with any social category produced by regimes of power, you don’t choose race, power chooses it for you; it names you. This is why all the well-meaning identification in the world does not make a White person Black. Likewise, as much as I draw inspiration from the Jewish community, and as much as I adore my Jewish partner and friends, it was my organizing against antisemitism as a Black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around. I developed an analysis of antisemitism because I wanted to smash White supremacy; because I wanted to be free. If we acknowledge that White nationalism clearly and forcefully names Jews as non-white, and did so in the very fiber of its emergence as a post-civil rights right-wing revolutionary movement, then we are forced to recognize our own ignorance about the country we thought we lived in. It is time to have that conversation.
The Muselmann In Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith describes watching a film of a boat full of refugees being bombed by a helicopter “somewhere in the Mediterranean”.
Nancy Fraser is a US philosopher, critical theorist, feminist, and the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of
Five years after Mizrahi Israelis offered their solidarity to the young men and women of the Arab Spring, it is time to say it loud
If you had told a socialist or a radical of a few decades ago that Marxist socialists would not only be defending the Union Jack-emblazoned
Kapya Kaoma is a Zambian, US-educated scholar, pastor and human rights defender who is most noted for his ecological, and LGBTQI+ scholarship, particularly regarding Africa.
From Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 9: Iss. 2: 9-25.
The ‘Indigènes de la République’ have helped make visible a racism of the left, one rooted in the pervasive racism consubstantial with French society —
Sergey Nikolsky, a Russian philosopher of culture, says that perhaps the most important idea for Russians “from the fall of Byzantium until today is the
From Jadaliyya Brahim El Guabli (BEG): Why Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam? Chouki El Hamel (CEH): Written history about Morocco is
This article was first published in boundary 2 – an international journal of literature and culture Volume 40, Issue 1, Spring 2013 Melinda Cooper is
Eve Troutt Powell is a professor of History and Middle East and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a MacArthur Fellow
Ruh Jedida: A New Spirit for 2011. Young Mizrahi Israelis’ Open Letter to Arab Peers – 19 April 2011
We, as the descendents of the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, the Middle East and the Maghreb, and as the second and
Rajesh Venugopal is Associate Professor at the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He researches the politics of
As is well known, the period since the early 1970s has been one of massive historical structural transformations of the global order, frequently referred to
1. You reformulate the basic categories of Marx’s critique of political economy. According to you: where does Marxism reveal to be nowadays unsufficient, when it