Capitalism and the Chinese State: How was capitalism restored in China?

This article was first published in 2015 in the Greek magazine Marxist Thought. It is now published in English for the first time. In March, China’s ornamental “parliament” the National People’s Congress (NPC) held its annual session for ten days in Beijing. Rather than real debates and deliberations, the NPC and its twin chamber the […]

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Democratic Republic of the Congo — 60 Years of Neo-Colonial Plundering

On Tuesday, June 30th 2020 the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will be celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of its independence from Belgian colonial rule. Celebrations are set to be subdued in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Tshisekedi announced that the funds destined for a grand celebration will be redirected to fight the pandemic […]

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Review of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane McAlevy, Oxford University Press (2016)

Tony Wilsdon is a member of Socialist Alternative in the US. The spark ignited by West Virginia teachers in 2018 has given new energy to the labor movement. The dynamic teacher strikes which spread from “red states” to big urban areas like Los Angeles and Oakland, centered around mobilization of teachers themselves with active support […]

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Billionaires Are Not Our Friends: The Limits of Planet of the Humans

Michael Barker is a member of Socialist Alternative (England, Wales & Scotland). Planet of the Humans demands our attention and most of all it demands our action Planet of the Humans demands our attention and most of all it demands our action. This widely-watched documentary, directed by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore, presents a […]

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COVID-19, War and Economics

The metaphors of war have been in abundance since the onset of COVID-19. In Britain, the Queen, in a speech, evoked the WW2 song, “We’ll Meet Again.” The Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, also invoked WW2 when he used Winston Churchill’s words to talk about Italy’s “darkest hour.” Donald Trump has described himself as a […]

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Keynesianism and the Crisis of Capitalism

George Martin Fell Brown and Tony Gong are members of Socialist Alternative in the US. Is the Problem Neoliberalism or Capitalism? The current economic crisis may have been triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, but its roots lie in a deeper crisis of capitalism going back to the financial crash of 2008–9. This ongoing crisis lays […]

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The Second World War

Per-Åke Westerlund is a member of Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (ISA in Sweden). Review of The Second World War by Anthony Beevor, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2012 Seventy five years ago, the European continent and large areas of Asia and Africa were on fire in the second world war, with inhuman suffering of the worst kind caused by […]

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End of WW II in Europe: Soviet Flag Raised over the Reichstag

Paddy Meehan is a member of the Socialist Party (ISA in Northern Ireland). Friday 8th May marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. Friday 8th May marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. In the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown, the […]

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International Workers’ Day: Capitalism is the Virus: Socialism is the Only Cure

Five Reasons to Fight for a Socialist World in 2020 Five reasons to join the ISA. May Day – International Workers’ Day this year has a special significance at a time when the world is in the grip of the Coronavirus and facing perhaps the worst economic crisis for a hundred years. Even before the […]

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Lenin — 150 Years Since His Birth

Rob Jones is a member of Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa (ISA in Russia). Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his revolutionary alias, Vladimir Lenin, was born in the city of Simbirsk, now known as Ulyanovsk, on Russia’s Volga river a century and a half ago. By the age of 30, he had earned the reputation as one […]

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