S & D in Real Time
From the Editors
Our vital double-issue (long-promised in these updates) is almost ready. We have revised its contents to include articles recently published online - topics include Russia, Ukraine and imperialism in the semi-periphery, re-reading the 1970s and full employment, and what went wrong with Social Democracy. We also publish a new interview with... Read more
S&D in Real Time
S&D Real Time is a place for commentary, discussions and debate on matters of concern to the working class as a whole. Content shared here is curated by the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy but does not necessarily reflect any “official” perspective or endorsement. Unlike our journal, published three times a year, the content shared here are not subject to a peer-review process.
For 20 years, the motto of the World Social Forum has been another world is possible… As we meet today that question is overshadowed by another one. Is this world possible? And the answer is “no.” This world is not possible. This world is hurdling to self-annihilation. And only the creation of another world can reverse this course. Luckily, another world is still possible, though the chances of... Read more
Two critical updates from Socialism and Democracy's Editor-at-Large, Victor Wallis.
Report #1: S&D contributor Kevin "Rashid" Johnson has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The first indications of this were already evident last October, but it was not until 7 months later that he got a full diagnosis. You can read Rashid's own account here.
The... Read more
The new album It Is Right to Rebel by Mat Callahan & Yvonne Moore and friends is out now on vinyl and all major streaming platforms.
It is Right To Rebel is an exciting and thought provoking new record from Mat Callahan & Yvonne Moore and friends. The double LP consisting of 15 tracks is mostly rooted in american folk music, but incorporates elements from rock, blues, spirituals and roots music. Lyrically it... Read more
The Struggle Against COVID, Creative Commons photo from Présidence de la République du Bénin
Following a lengthy and sometimes heated movement listserv debate over COVID and related public health measures, Matt Meyer was prompted to write the message below. While Matt's email is addressed to the specific list's subscribers and posters, the debate is of broader interest and playing out on multiple platforms. Matt's email has been lightly edited to remove list-specific references.
From Matt: I write with... Read more
Rails, Stock Photo, Creative Commons
Joel Sronce's poem, "A Tremble in the Rails," has just been published by S&D (visit journal page at Taylor and Francis to view the original). Joel is a writer and organizer from North Carolina. His work has been featured in Jacobin, Socialist Worker, Piedmont Left Review, Third World Resurgence, as well... Read more
Downtown Waverly, VA
After mere weeks of white public outcry over landfill odors in Bristol, VA senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner hurriedly announced they've joined forces at the highest level of the U.S. government to show their solidarity with the grieving... Read more
It’s not enough to judge a left journal by its cover. A recent case in point: people in left social media circles of late have been taking shots at the democratic socialist magazine Jacobin’s latest issue, with its provocative (and maybe confusing) cover bearing the slogan “Lower the Crime Rate.” A range of radical voices online have reacted to this cover... Read more
Against the Grain host C. S. Soong and Joe Ramsey look back at the legacy of Richard Wright in an interview inspired by Ramsey's 'Sifting the “Stony Soil” of Black Marxism: Cedric Robinson, Richard Wright, and Ellipses of the Black Radical Tradition.'
What would the negation or even transcendence of "whiteness" look like? In this essay by Joseph G. Ramsey, an S&D editorial board member, Guy Endore's Babouk is used to think through this question. It takes the apparently impermeable stratification of the 18th century slave ship as a microcosm for considering the social distance between white and black layers of the emerging global proletariat as its starting point... Read more
On the 113th anniversary of your birth, Sept. 4, 1908.
Today, September 4, marks the 113th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wright (1908-1960), one of our most important modern American writers, a crucial figure in both the Black radical and Marxist traditions. A path-breaking revolutionary artist, a searing social critic, and a powerful transnational truth-teller, Wright dramatized crises afflicting the USA and the... Read more