How can we make the decade 1965-1975 come alive again, how can we highlight what was at stake in the world and in France, its scope, our commitment, our activist universe? Through analysis certainly, but reinforced by lived experience, which is necessarily more personal. This is a delicate exercise, with a constant coming and going between general considerations, the transmission of a political history that is sometimes specific (that of my political current) and its individual, daily implications. To this end, I am mobilizing my own memories - and I am wary of memory and especially of mine, which I know is incomplete. I am therefore appealling for a confrontation of recollections (or archives) that could lead me to correct or qualify some of my remarks.
The Eternal Hunt for the Red Man
2 May 2018, byThe dramatic events in Russia and Ukraine over the past two years have begun a new phase in the struggle over the legacy of communism in the post-Soviet space. As the concrete features of “real socialism” become blurred and vanish, those necessary for the production of ideology become ever more sharply defined. It’s often argued that communism, buried a quarter of a century ago as living practice, has since acquired an afterlife in the form of a restless corpse, a remnant, a regurgitated survivor from the past, blighting the lives of new generations.
Global Migration
27 April 2018, byFrom the middle of the 20th century, migration has been a decisive political issue. International organizations estimate that the number of people moving within and across national borders has grown to greater extent than ever since World War II. These type of estimates are never neutral – how far, and under which circumstances, do you have to move to be counted as a migrant, for instance? It is the same with statistics; you always have to make some qualification.
The Russian Revolution, Black Bolshevichki and Social Reproduction
10 April 2018, byIn his 1981 book on the February Revolution, Tsuyhoshi Hasegawa includes the story of a young girl walking towards a line of Cossack troops who had come to confront women demonstrators on International Women’s Day.
Did the Russian Revolution Matter for Africa? (Part I)
23 March 2018, byIn the first of a two-part blogpost, Matt Swagler looks at the first years after the Russian revolution (1917-1935), he discusses the impact of the revolution on African liberation movements before World War II. In the second part he will consider the impact of the Soviet Union on African politics, development and activism in the decades after the war.
Imperialism Today: A Critical Assessment of Latin American Dependency Theory
21 March 2018, byBrazilian economist and sociologist Ruy Mauro Marini (1932-1997) was a prime exponent of what became known as dependency theory, an attempt to explain the systemic unequal relations of the Latin American countries in particular with the developed economies of the imperialist “North.” He was a close collaborator of, among others, Vânia Bambirra and the recently-deceased Theotónio Dos Santos. Marini’s best-known work, first published in Spanish in 1972, is Dialectics of Dependency.
Trump and the Labor Movement
16 March 2018, byWe working people live in darkening times. When the Trump presidency ends in four years—if it does—we may no longer have an organized labor movement. As one of my colleagues, Ed Ott of the Murphy Institute, the City University of New York’s labor school, said to me, “We are at the beginning of the end of the U.S. labor movement based on a partnership with capital.” We are at the twilight of an era. Labor unions and collective bargaining stand to be swept away, and with them the institutions that have sheltered us in the workplace and provided us with a modicum of job security, living wages, health insurance, and pension benefits. [1]
MLK: To the Promised Land
28 February 2018, byMichael K. Honey is the author of the new study, To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice, to be published on the 50th anniversary of King’s April 4, 1968 assassination. He was interviewed by Charles Williams of the Against the Current editorial board. Their discussion of Michael Honey’s earlier book Going Down Jericho Road is here.
The strategic role of the soviets in the class struggle
22 January 2018, byRegardless of one’s opinion on The Russian Revolution and the subsequent development of Russian society, the self-organized workers’ councils – the soviets – remain an important breakthrough. For the most part, the discussion of the centenary of the revolution has conveniently steered clear of this subject. Nonetheless, understanding the soviets and its council structure remains central to understanding both how the revolution came about, and what its goals were. “All power to the soviets”, the slogan went, but what power, and what are soviets actually? These are central questions for any future attempts to change the world.
On the contribution of the outstanding Hungarian Marxist philosopher István Mészáros (1930-2017) to critical thinking
16 January 2018, byIstván Mészáros, an outstanding Hungarian Marxist philosopher, died on October 1st 2017 in London. Born in Budapest in 1930 into a working-class family, brought up by his mother, he began working in industry at the age of twelve. He actually lied about his age, claiming to be sixteen, in order to be accepted by the factory. Thus, "as an adult", his pay was higher than that of his mother, a qualified employee of the US transnational Standard Radio Company. The considerable difference between their weekly earnings was his first and most tangible experience of the particularly severe exploitation of women by capital. This was in 1942...
Footnotes
[1] This article is based on a talk titled “The Election of Donald Trump and Its Impact on Labour” that the author presented as part of a panel on “North America as a Space for Labour Solidarity” at the Confronting Global Capital: Strengthening Labour Internationalism and Transnationalism in Canada Today at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, October 12-14, 2017.
