by Roland Boer Communism has ‘failed’, or so the common observation goes. More often, one hears the opinion that the Soviet Union ‘failed’, or that the communist countries of Eastern Europe did so as well. But what does ‘failure’ mean … Continue reading The ‘Failure’ of Communism: a ‘Fall’ narrative
Central to George Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society was a government so powerful that it not only dominated all of the major institutions in a society, but it also was quite adept at making invisible its inner workings of power. This is what some have called a shadow government, deep state, dual state or corporate state.[1] In the deep state, politics becomes the domain of the ultra-wealthy, the powerful few who run powerful financial services, Continue reading Beyond Orwellian nightmares and neoliberal authoritarianism
by John Reed I. What is Bolshevism? Bolshevism is the Social Revolution to which Socialists have looked forward for more than half a century. It is the inevitable struggle which must accompany the transition of society from Capitalism to Socialism. … Continue reading Aspects of the Russian revolution
by Henry A. Giroux The use of new digital technologies and social media by ISIS has drawn a great deal of attention by the dominant media not only because the extremists have used them as a form of visual terrorism … Continue reading ISIS and the spectacle of terrorism: Resisting mainstream workstations of fear
by Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish We wrote The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity in order to bring clarity and sharpness to the idea of the radical imagination as it operates in and animates social … Continue reading Taking notes 40: The Radical Imagination: materials for struggle
by Ismael Hossein-zadeh Many liberal economists envisioned a new dawn of Keynesianism in the 2008 financial meltdown. Nearly six years later, it is clear that the much-hoped-for Keynesian prescriptions are completely ignored. Why? Keynesian economists’ answer: “neoliberal ideology,” which they … Continue reading Keynes is Dead; Long Live Marx!
by Henry A. Giroux Seventy years after the horror of Hiroshima, intellectuals negotiate a vastly changed cultural, political and moral geography. Pondering what Hiroshima means for American history and consciousness proves as fraught an intellectual exercise as taking up this … Continue reading Remembering Hiroshima in an Age of Neoliberal Barbarism
by Roland Boer The reputation of Friedrich Engels has often not fared well in the Marxist tradition. At a minimal level, he is regarded as the lesser intellect in relation to Marx, while more commonly dismissed as one who seriously distorted Marx’s thought and thereby derailed the subsequent socialist tradition. According to this assumption, not only did he make a mess of his editing work, after Marx’s death, with the second and third volumes of Capital, but he also distorted the later tradition by means of his ‘Dialectics of Nature’ and his very popular ;Anti-Dühring’ and ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’. … Continue reading In defence of Engels
by Henry A. Giroux The spectacle of violence and terrorism looms large in the post 9/11 world. As the recent beheading of James Foley by Islamic extremists makes clear, mass-mediated terrorism is now joined with the spectacle of violence, torture, … Continue reading Taking notes 39: Beyond the Spectacle of Neoliberal Misery and Violence in the Age of Terrorism
by Henry A. Giroux The recent killing and then demonization of an unarmed 18-year-old African-American youth, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri by a white police officer has made visible how a kind of military metaphysics now dominates American life. The … Continue reading Taking notes 38: The Militarization of Racism and Neoliberal Violence
Philosophers for Change 