Beyond Socialist Purity:From Beatific Otherworldliness to Messy Transition
OrientationInternational political economy at a crossroads As most of you know the world economy is peppered with fault lines. On one hand we have the rising in the East of…
Socialism
Neoliberal Micro-Psychology vs Communist Macro-Psychology:From Flatland to Spaceland Part II
Summary of Part IIn Part I of this article I contrasted sixteen ways in which communist macro-psychology differs from liberal micro-psychology as it is practiced in the United States. I…
Neoliberal Micro Psychology vs Communist Macro Psychology – From Flatland to Spaceland Part I
OrientationThis article is about the differences between the micro psychology of liberals and the macro psychology of communists. Differences include: how society and the individual is configured; the impact of…
Take Your Clothes Off and Keep Your Mouth Shut: My Twelve Years in a Union as a Fine Arts Model
OrientationHow I got involved in modelingMy father’s family was very poor. He was one of seven kids who lived in Brooklyn New York, the sons and daughters of an Italian-American…
Fantasies of Progressive Capitalism
The Nobel laureate economist Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz continues to advocate for capitalism in a progressive form and its potentials for human wellbeing. Prof. Joseph E. Stiglitz in his New…
What is a Working Class Hero? A Socialist Organizer Like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
OrientationWhat are the characteristics of a hero? Do you have to be famous to be a hero? How valuable or counter-productive is it for celebrities to be our heroes? Some feel that even having…
Our Only Hope: Socialism!!
The embedded mainstream media, owned by this Military Industrial Empire, has made Socialism synonymous with Communism. That makes the ( sadly) dumbed down public think of the old Soviet Union…
The Collective Creativity of Workers
From Unconscious Sleeping Giants to Conscious Builders of Barricades Part I Orientation One purpose of this article is to get you to think of creativity in a whole new way.…
Recapturing White Rhetoric For Socialist Agitating, Overcoming Dark Rhetoric in the Service of Propaganda
OrientationLeninist and anarchist shortcomings in relation to rhetoricA little over three years ago I wrote an article about how bad Mordor Leninists and anarchists are about knowing about, let alone using rhetorical…
Airliners Fall Apart in the Sky — What Is a Communist Solution?
Lately, airliners have lost parts and suffered equipment malfunctions one week after another. When a United Airlines flight from San Francisco arrived at Medford, Oregon on March 15, people on…
A Dialogue On New Socialism
An Interview with the Editor of ‘The New Socialist Reader’ Reader: What are the aims of your journal? Editor: As the bold lines at the bottom of every page in…
What Is to Be Done?
In 1863, the Russian social critic, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, published a novel entitled “What Is to Be Done?” Its story revolves around a central heroine, Vera Pavlovna, and her four dreams.…
Santa Claus and the Contradictions of Bourgeois Ideology
A comrade recently pointed my attention to a comedy skit by Foil Arms and Hog called “Santa is Captured by the Russians,” where for two minutes Mr. Clauss is interrogated by the…
Socialism’s Self-Criticism and Real Democracy
Democracy is incompatible with class-divided economic systems. Masters rule in slavery, lords in feudalism, and employers in capitalism. Whatever forms of government (including representative-electoral) coexist with class-divided economic systems, the…
In Search of Kindness
Now is the season when priests proclaim, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men” and mainstream media soothe us with stories and images of kindness. But why do peace and goodwill…
Dilemmas of The Left
Nowadays leading newspapers and channels are barring their doors to anything written from a prominently left point of view.This has been a trend since the early years of the second…
Why Capitalism Cannot Finally Repress Socialism
Socialism is capitalism’s critical shadow. When lights shift, a shadow may seem to disappear, but sooner or later, with further shifts of light, it comes back. Capitalism’s ideologues have long…
Why Study Socialism?
Look back at the history of Africa. That is where the need for socialism comes from. One of the recommended readings on Pan-Africanism in the Kenya Political Study Guide records…
Millennial Socialists in Europe
Once upon a time, the question, why is there no socialism in America? bugged a young German economist. And so, in 1906, Werner Sombart published his book called Why is there no Socialism in the…
The Crushing of American Socialism
The Never-Ending Impact of a Forgotten Blitzkrieg Against the American Left Donald Trump has had the urge to crush many things, including the last election. So I must admit I found…
Creating the Good Anthropocene: Towards a Socialist Future
Capitalism has always had a chorus of sirens that have striven to allure Homo sapiens from thinking they had any chance to escape its clutches. Margaret Thatcher proclaimed ‘there is…
Socialism And The Individual
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…
Working For The ‘Man’
Spanning some 60 years of employment, this writer has some conclusions. Of course, these are from my own personal experiences. Yet, having spoken with a myriad of working stiffs over…
Imagining the Impossible
Now that the American election is all over, it should be the time to debate our future political activity. The Left insisted that Trump was the anti-Christ and that working…
Time for a new revolution
What Happened As the presidential election draws near both contestants make fatuous appeals to America’s near-sainted Founding Fathers and that almost sacred scroll known as the Constitution. History has seen…
My Journey To Socialism: From 9-11 Through The Great Recession
Here are three questions I would propose to the people who read this article: Other than being a Red Diaper Baby, what is the process by which people came to…
Communism, Socialism: Any Difference?
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…
Road-Map To Socialism -Democracy is the road to socialism
Win the battle of democracy Do away with private property Abolish the wages system altogether End employment to end unemployment Achieve abundance for all and inscribe on the banners: From…
The Impossiblist’s Way
“There are but three ways for people to escape their wretched lot. The first is via the liquor-store, the second is the path of the temple; but the third is…
Facing The Music: Religion, Nationalism And Sports Have Enchanted The Working Class; Socialism Hasn’t
Religion, nationalism and sports as propaganda for the ruling class In the closing section of my course Brainwashing Propaganda and Rhetoric: Dark Psychology in the 20th Century, I ask my students to compare…
Socialism: What it is and how to fight for it
A student and youth group fighting for genuine socialism at MIT Students and young people are entering into political life amidst an unprecedented political crisis within the state apparatus, a…
The Democratic Socialist Alternative—What Is It?
American Capitalism in Crisis Americans in large numbers are becoming puzzled and agitated. Every day newspaper headlines blare out that the US is in trouble, together with our Western free…
Do You Socialists Have Any Plans? Why We Need Socialist Architects
Claim and Qualification For the first time in well over 70 years, the words “capitalism” and “socialism” can be circulated among the general public in the United States. However, what…
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