S & D in Real Time
From the Editors
Our double issue (#86-87) is still in preparation in tandem with issue 88 (March 2022) and 89 (July 2022) however we moving the special section addressing political education and alternative institutions into issue 88. The double issue includes papers on the concept of the common good, Cuban democracy, full employment, Isaiah Berlin's... 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.
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
Cedric Johnson’s contributions to this New Politics Symposium challenge us to confront the complexity of actually existing Black political life without falling back on the homogenizing assumptions of a “Black exceptionalism” that denies African Americans the same level of class, cultural, regional, and ideological diversity routinely extended... Read more
On June 10th, the Deputy Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents the City of the University of New York’s professional staff, passed a resolution that supported the Palestinian people’s rights and in so doing condemned Israel’s depredations against the Palestinian people. This far-reaching... Read more
I don't know if there is a record for the forced transfer of state (as distinct from federal) prisoners. If so, it may belong to frequent S&D contributor Kevin "Rashid" Johnson (see S&D ##38, 43, 61, 66), who has been "compacted" from one state system to another six times in the last nine years. Originally incarcerated in 1990 in his home state of Virginia, he has been moved since 2012, in succession, to Oregon, Texas,... Read more