The Moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. – The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Death as the Nexus for the Possibility of Meaning in Human Life In This Life, the philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that:[Read More…]
Capitalism is going through its greatest crisis since the 1930s. The banking system has been saved from meltdown (at least for the time being) only by extensive government intervention in the USA, Britain, and a number of other countries. Stock markets all over the world have plummeted. A long and deep recession is in prospect. Capitalism, it is sometimes said,[Read More…]
Aristotle famously starts his Metaphysics with the claim that “all men by nature desire to know.”[1] For Dubois, if there are a people in the U.S. who have immaculately embodied this statement, it is black folk. In Black Reconstruction, for instance, Du Bois says that “the eagerness to learn among American Negroes was exceptional in the case of a poor and recently emancipated folk.”[2] In The[Read More…]
In an 1875 letter to Wilhelm Bracke, Marx would say that “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.” This is the living spirit of Marxist analysis – the emphasis is laid on real struggles, on the forms of social formation these struggles discover in their overturning, to a lesser or greater extent, of the current[Read More…]
Since they were first published in the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx’s early writings on alienation have served as a radical touchstone in the fields of social and philosophical thought, generating followers, contestation and debate. It was in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 that Marx first developed his theory of alienation. His concept of “alienated labour” pushed beyond the[Read More…]
I would like to thank the International Manifesto Group for hosting this event, and for inviting me to say a few words about the relevance of that heroic experiment in socialist democracy which took place 152 years ago. My discussion of the Paris Commune’s relevance, and of the relevance of Marx and Engels’s reflections on it, will revolve around three[Read More…]
The evergreen Marxian socialist scholar and critic of Marxism, Paresh Chattopadhyay (PC) left us on January 14, 2023, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, at age of 96.He was emeritus professor of political economy in the department of sociology at the University of Quebec, Montreal. With in depth mastery of Marxism, PC made his readers think and reflect over what he wrote,[Read More…]
by Cheng Enfu & Lu Baolin Building on Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century Neoimperialism is the specific contemporary phase of historical development that features the economic globalization and financialization of monopoly capitalism. The characteristics of neoimperialism can be summed up on the basis of the following five key features. First is the new monopoly of production and[Read More…]
“Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” ,written by Christians for National Liberation and published by Foreign Languages Press earlier this year illustratively portrays the synthesis of Marxism with Christianity as practiced in context of the Philippines Revolution. Fitting that this year we commemorate 50th founding anniversary of CLN. It most symmetrically dissects every aspect of how the gap[Read More…]
Recently Arun Kumar Sinha posted in Marx_Forum, Murray Bookchin’s pamphlet ‘Listen! Marxist!’ This was published in the ’50s in which he admonished and rebuked the ‘Marxists’ community. To Marx_Forum Dear Arun, You are opening a Pandora’s Box by introducing Murray Bookchin. You are introducing Anarchism! Maybe time has come to introduce Anarchism to Marx_Forum although Marxists (including Marx) have never looked[Read More…]
Marcello Musto, Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2021). 164 pages Marcello Musto’s anthology of Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation[1] is both comprehensive and concise, containing within the span of 100 pages the three decades long development of the concept through more than a dozen published works and posthumously published manuscripts. Additionally, Musto’s introduction to the anthology[Read More…]
On April 24th we commemorated the 50th anniversary of The Communist party of Turkey -(Marxist Leninist) or TKP(ML).With the tenacity of a boulder withstanding a thunderstorm it resisted the Turkish bourgeois-feudal fascist state, giving a striking blow to religious fundamentalism.. Even after receiving the most mortal blows, it resurrected itself like a phoenix from the Ashes to enable new roses[Read More…]
Marx regarded peasants as incapable of revolution, and it was the industrial proletariat that Marxists reposed their faith to defeat the Capitalist class in Europe. However, it was a different case in China because China was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial society during Mao’s time. China was an agrarian society. So, Mao took advantage of the large population of peasants and aroused[Read More…]
Fascist groupings and their associated policies of religio-fanaticism are in the ascendant throughout the world. While some are emerging from the political peripheries – slowly but steadily gaining traction on the terrain of ideological hegemony – some have already taken the reins of state power. India is no exception to this global trend. In this political context, April 22, 2022[Read More…]
by Dr. Dilnaz Boga and Rohit Ranjan We are living in times when societies across the world are struggling with socio-economic, political, ecological and spiritual crises. Simultaneously, disparities between social classes in terms of resource appropriation and allocation are growing starker with time. Despite the severity of crises in all walks of human life in the twenty-first century, the question[Read More…]
The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography. By: Marcello Musto Marcello Musto’s The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography provides an illuminating glance at the work and life of Karl Marx during the most unexamined period of his life. Musto’s oscillation between Marx’s work and life provides readers with both an intellectual allurement towards research in[Read More…]
I do not find Vijay Parshad’s idea of the place of the individual in socialism very convincing.Though I salute the strength and courage of his conviction in the world-wide fight against imperialism it does not seem he has spared much thought for this crucial question.This hesitancy and silence marked all previous revolutionary leaders with possible exception in Che Guevara.All of[Read More…]
Some peoples possess shamans to explain how the world works. We have charlatan economists and politicians posing as intellectuals who claim to be able to reveal the mystery of running society. The ideas of Marx did not arise out of thin air but were grew from the works of many others before him. But the purpose of this short essay is not to explore[Read More…]
Tricontinental published their “One Hundred Years of the Communist Movement in India” on September 1, 2020 [1]. We are dealing with it only snappily. From here one can learn what may be called a ‘left’ way to rewrite history of the ‘communist’ movement; a ‘left way’, that is certainly different rom a ‘communist’ way – where the ‘left’ stands for decent[Read More…]
Arguably No Marxist thinker or leader today in the World or in the last few decades has had such a profound grasp of the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as Professor Joma Sison. Formally he was the Chairman of the Communist party of Phillipines who laid the base for the re-organisation of the party and the launching of the 2 line struggle[Read More…]
The British materialist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the fathers of social contract theory and modern political philosophy. His magnus opus – Leviathan[i] – is a text which á la Plato’s Republic covers a wide breadth of subjects from epistemology, science, religion, and moral and political philosophy. However, his text is most widely remembered for its monarchism-endorsing political[Read More…]
Edward Baptiste’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism attempts to provide a material analysis of the development of Slavery in the United States leading up to the Civil War. In doing so he reveals the origin of capitalism, and Western Economic Supremacy, to be the Southern Slave Plantations, who provided Northern and English Capitalists with[Read More…]
Karl Marx’s 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy[i] represents one of the clearest reflections of the development of his and Engels’ thought. In what amounts to a short four and a half pages, Marx concisely exhibits the resulting conclusions of more than two decades worth of studies – from his first encounter with the economic[Read More…]
Posing the Question This year marks the 57th anniversary of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964). This text, although plagued with a pessimistic spirit, was a great source of inspiration for the development of the New Left and the May 68 uprisings. The question we must ask ourselves is whether a text that predates the last 50 years of neoliberalism has[Read More…]
In her 2020 text Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism, Ashley J. Bohrer sets out to demystify the erroneous conception that the traditions of Marxism and Intersectionality are incompatible. In finding that in academia the interactions between these two traditions have been “grounded more in caricature than in close reading,” Bohrer sets out to expose and[Read More…]
“And the first birthright of capital is equal exploitation of labor-power by all capitalists.” Marx thus describes a reality dominated by capital. Today, in this pandemic point, when death is sweeping away thousands of lives in countries, in India and Brazil, in cities, in New Delhi, Mumbai and Reo de Janeiro, when ordinary citizens are gasping for oxygen, when their[Read More…]
As the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic intensifies in India, migrant workers are returning back to their villages. Imposition of new restrictions to contain the virus – like the announcement of a night curfew in Delhi – has instilled fears in workers that they will be rendered jobless and get stuck in the industrial centres where they are precariously[Read More…]
A ghost goes through Europe: The ghost of communism This year it is 200 years since Friedrich Engels was born in the German town of Wuppertal in the Rhine district. I have visited the Wuppertal on that occasion and here are a few political reflections. Engels is one of the most significant personalities of the 19th Century, who has influenced[Read More…]
The most romantic and probably the only proletarian insurrection of the subcontinent is also the most tragic and the most damned. The Punnapra-Vayalar revolt of October 1946 was Travancore’s ill informed imitation of the Great October Revolution, misled by the Brahmin-Bhadralok leadership and un-Marxist Marxism it preached. The insurrection was based on a single, broad issue – the rejection of[Read More…]
Today the International Communist Movement faces a major task of averting the crisis within the International Communist Movement of re-organizing the Communist International. It is plagued by many trends like Trotskyism, Post-modernism, Revisionism, ‘Avakianisim’ as well as ‘Gonzalo thought.’ In 1984, without subjecting factors prevailing, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement was formed. Without any sufficient development of Communist parties or Movement[Read More…]
Without doubt late Comrade Harbhajan Sohi or HBS was one of the finest theoreticians in the history of the Communist Movement and amongst the greatest leaders and protagonists of the massline.No Comrade contributed so much to shape the massline of Tarimela Nagi Reddy as Harbhajan Sohi or HBS.With the meticulous skill of an architect he shimmered its flame as a[Read More…]
Orientation From the macro to the micro When it comes to stereotypes of the masses of revolutionary people, the masses have built barricades that look like forts which they hide behind, armed with guns. But if we trace the behavior of masses back far enough to pre-revolutionary situations, masses become groups. In order to understand how masses of people become[Read More…]
Today, March 18, is a red letter day for the working class and all true friends of the workers in the country and throughout the world. For, on this day, one hundred forty-seven years ago, in the municipality of Paris, in France, the Parisian workers garnered a historic greatest achievement. Their proletarian revolution triumphed and established the first working class[Read More…]
“It is true that Marx did not believe in drawing up recipes for the cookshops of the future, but he did describe the basis of the society he thought was going to replace[Read More…]
In this book, we, like Marx and Engels, have used the names “communism” and “socialism” to mean the same relation of production. Marx and Engels had used the two names alternately to signify the post-revolutionary democratic world system of “cooperative”, “communal”, or universal ownership. Why they preferred communist identity at the beginning of their studies and organization whilst socialist at[Read More…]
Ever the clear-eyed realist, Lenin knew what the Revolution had failed to achieve. And this knowledge tormented him in the last weeks of his life. Vladimir Lenin in the summer of 1923 There is a photograph of Lenin in a wheelchair, from sometime in the summer of 1923, in which he is flanked on one side by his[Read More…]
The living Karl Marx was a dismal failure. He passed most of his life in poverty, dependent on the charity of the capitalist Friedrich Engels. His writings were never sufficiently in demand to earn a living. He had great difficulty in finishing anything, and the bulk of what he wrote he never saw in print. His revolutionary activities ‘came to[Read More…]
Dear Comrade Dr. Pravat Ranjan Sethi, Thank you for your most knowledgeable reflections on revolutionary theory and practice. I enjoyed them and benefited from them, as I am sure many others did as well. I would like to respond by putting a slightly different perspective on the subject. First, revolutionary thought is always “dialectical” because the dialectic is inherently[Read More…]
Karl Marx was possessed of demonic genius that was to transform the modern world. —Saul K. Padover (1978) For all the horrors committed in Marx’s name, the German philosopher has for more than a century struck an inspirational chord among workers and intellectuals disenfranchised by global capitalism. The development of Marx’s doctrine after his death first followed the course of a[Read More…]
There is a long standing debate as to whether Marxism played any role in the Dalit’s struggle for social emancipation and justice. The debate is characterized by two currents of thoughts one favours, advocates and project the communist system as an ideal landscape for the social emancipation and freedom of Dalits and another takes a view of communism as an[Read More…]
Marx was not aloof in the Bangladesh socio-economic-ideological-political reality. Incessant class struggle in the society along with development of ideas cropping up in the soil of class conflict was a home for Marx, the scientist-theoretician of the revolutionary proletariat. The society’s antagonistic classes compelled him to play a role in defining goals of the society, of the exploited in the[Read More…]
Quotes from Karl Marx’s works reverberated in the unprecedented 5-day long conference organized by the Asian Development and Research Institute (ADRI), participated by the delegates from 18 countries across the 5 oceans, held in Patna, the capital of Bihar that has witnessed many revolutionary and counter revolutionary movements and uprisings. Gist and the central message of the conference in one[Read More…]
The principles of Marxism and the Indian communist movement “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling materialforce of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectualforce. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls at the same time the means of[Read More…]
Misrepresentation creates confusion, and confusion misleads many. Misrepresentation is unfair also as it carries seeds of injustice. A recent two-parts-article in a Dhaka English daily (“Karl Marx in Bangladesh”, The Daily Star, Dhaka, May 5 and 6, 2018, https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/perspective/karl-marx-bangladesh-1571515 and https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/perspective/karl-marx-bangladesh-part-2-1571884) is an example of this practice. The article narrates, as it claims, “the intellectual or conceptual footprints of Marx[Read More…]
On the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, this excerpt from “The Material Basis and the Method for Making Revolution,” a talk given by Bob Avakian in 2014, speaks to the turning point and significance of Marx’s contributions—bringing into being a scientific, materialist understanding of capitalism and of the potential for revolution to emancipate humanity. What Marx Brought to Light[Read More…]
![Economics and Politics in Early-Soviet Russia and Lenin’s Stand [Part II]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/lenin-200x150.jpg "Economics and Politics in Early-Soviet Russia and Lenin’s Stand [Part II] 90")
Lenin creates controversy as the Bolshevik leader stands against exploiters; and consequently, theoreticians defending exploiters don’t spare any opportunity to condemn Lenin. Immediately after the Great October Revolution, Lenin had to encounter a reality, which was beyond perception of theoreticians busy with bourgeois ideas strengthened by petty-bourgeois imagination. In the situation immediately after initiating the Revolution, Lenin describes “the incredible[Read More…]
Chapter 1. Part 2 The psychopathology of capitalism is, as I have proposed above, rooted in the delusion that there exists anabstract, exclusionary “one” or “I”. This delusion negates the existence of an “inclusionary One” or a larger temporal/spatial natural and social whole of which the “individual” is but a particular moment and manifestation. That is to say, it is[Read More…]
[Part I] Lenin yet, about 150 years since his birth, creates controversy. Funny figures make funnier statements while a group of scholars, white, pink and “red” in color, continue condemning the Bolshevik leader – a bold show of class conflict in the areas of ideology and politics. This reality makes it an imperative to reiterate Lenin’s analysis and class position[Read More…]
Marx Bicentennial Lecture by Ravi Sinha at Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur, March 16, 2018 etaddhastidarshanaivajatyandhah That is like people blind by birth viewing an elephant. (Shankaracharya’sbhasyaon Chandogya-Upanisad18.1)[1] It was six blind men of Indostan, To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. John[Read More…]
19th Century witnessed many revolutions in the realm social movements and theories. The ordinary people, the working population, the wretched of the earth [Fanon] who entered in the arena of political theory through Rousseau in the 18th century found a profound spokesperson in the genius of Karl Marx in the 19thcentury. Marx, as a student of jurisprudence, history and philosophy, at a time when[Read More…]
It was 1830, the July Revolution forced abdication of king Charles X in France, and Louis Philippe became constitutional monarch. Twenty-eight years prior to this development in France, in 1802, the first factory law was introduced in England; and the law pertained to child labor. In the same year, John Dalton introduced atomic theory into chemistry. In the Congress[Read More…]
Both Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Mohan Karamchand (“Mahatma”) Gandhi (1869-1948) would be very alarmed by the U.S. elections of 2016 and what we are now facing with President Donald Trump and the Trump Administration. They would be alarmed by the campaigns and elections, the language used, the power relations, the role of money, the role of the media, and the[Read More…]
“The educator himself has to be educated”– Marx, Theses on Feuerbach. There is no confusion and hesitation is saying that established left parties have arrived to a deadlock with a lurking ideological stagnation. From CPI, CPM to CPI Maoist there is very much a visible political-ideological deadlock. CPI has become a non-relevant party who abandoned Marxist politics decades ago. Similarly,[Read More…]
Rights of Older Persons must be fulfilled! 
Lies about the Green Revolution Having Saved India from Hunger Can be Very Harmful for Policy 
Manipur needs healing touch and Trust building – Not AFSPA 
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Commemoration of Swaminathan Calls for a Revisit of Green Revolution 
Antarctica Hits Records as Global Heat Looms Large for 2024 
Book Review: Building A Just World Order 
Canada Needs Urgent Reforms to Bring Long-Delayed Justice to its Indigenous People 
Ukraine: Peace Comes through Mutual Respect 
Canada’s Proclivity To White Wash Its Nazi Citizenry & Nazi Affiliation Past 
Clamour for Teachers Grows in Jharkhand – Parents Write to CM 
Rifts in INDIA Alliance 
At the Brink? Contemplating the Unimaginable Costs of a Nuclear War 
Cruel Prerogatives: Braverman on Refugees at the AEI 
The Perilous Path From Western Domination to De-Dollarization 
From the Contemporary History of the Balkans: Greece and Slavo-Macedonians (1913-1993) The Ethnic Violence in Manipur, India, Explained 
New Report Exposes Grave Injustice to Villagers in the Name of Expanding Tourism and Parks in Tanzania 
Ending Opioid Addiction and Deaths through Creative Strategies 
Solitude: A Source of Empowerment 
Dr.K.S.Sharma Turns 90 
The Unholy Origins of Castes in India 
Union Health Ministry placing a cap on new medical colleges in States on the basis of the population criterion violates federalism 
Reflections on the Revolutionary Legacy of Makhan Singh in Kenya 
Armenian civilians flee Nagorno-Karabakh after new offensive by Azerbaijan 
Manipur: a statement of concern and suggestions for peaceful resolution 
Global Leaders Plead for Peace in Ukraine at UN 
Ghosts of the Past: For Israel, War on UNESCO is an Existential Battle 
Keeping Cattle on Public Land Is Bad for People, Cows, Wildlife, and the Planet 
The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023) 
Canadian Youth At Risk and the Discrimination of Marginalized Demographics 
While Searching Worldwide for Terrorists, Uncle Sam Should Also Look in a Mirror 
American Abrams tanks roll into Ukraine 
An open letter to JNU VC – Your association with RSS defies humanism, anti-colonial struggle Indian democracy! 
From Education to Incarceration 
Tunakataa! Saying ‘No’ to Capitalism and Imperialism in Kenya 
Rising Islamophobia and Communal Discord: An Alarming Trend in BJP-Ruled States 
Speak Truth to Power and Pay the Price! 
USA’s Wars Took 12 Million Lives in The Last 25 Years US to send long-range ATACMS missile to Ukraine 
My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
