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“Left Pole/Mainstream,” a rather self-explanatory phrase, is the strategic dictum expressed recently by one of my well-respected academic colleagues and political comrades.

Disequilibrium has created the conditions for a profound ideological shift if we can seize the moment.

The United States government pounced on the collapse of the twin towers to launch a campaign for the complete redesign of Planet Earth’s geopolitical architecture.  While the monetary and military basis for US power has remained intact – for the time being – the predictability of international relations, even and especially from the imperial point of view, has diminished profoundly.

Despite its prevalent usage, the concept of feminism continues to remain alien to many male discourses from both left and liberal perspectives.  Less attended to is the notion of global feminism, despite the recent surge of interest and data on international inequality in this globalized capitalist world, plagued by imperialist wars, violence and terror.  Why should we heighten our awareness of global feminism?  Why should we incorporate global feminism into our thinking about war and violence?

During the last five hundred years humanity has witnessed its own true capacities for boundless genius and inhumane ruthlessness, for visionary innovation and short-sighted self-destruction, for oppression and survival, for tradition and change, for loving and hating with passionate and violent certainty. Today, at the height of our technical sophistication, material accumulation, and rhetorical tolerance, we cannot ignore the enormous injustices that exist for the multitudes generally, and for our communities specifically...

I

During the Underground Railroad movement of the mid-19th century, people escaping the enslaved South were instructed to follow the Drinking Gourd, the constellation in the northern sky which points to the North Star and Canada, out of the reach of the U.S. slave system.  It provided a point of reference that would always bring the travelers back on course no matter what detours the terrain and their pursuers made necessary.  My argument in this paper is that the irrelevance of the Left in the recent U.S.

The election of 2004 will be picked over like carrion for years to come; yet its skeletal outlines are well in place and there to be reflected upon by anyone with eyes to see. The election represents, in effect, the interaction of a number of tendencies that have long been observed and decried by observers on the left, in particular:

The Editors

Hans Aage is Professor of Economics at the University of Roskilde, Denmark. He is the editor of Environmental Transition in Nordic and Baltic Countries (1998) and the author of [in Danish] Economic Upheaval in Russia and Eastern Europe (1994) and Karl Marx (2004). He has served as a consultant in Eastern Europe and in former Soviet republics for the Danish government and for the EU Commission. <hansaa@ruc.dk>

Political corruption is generally considered personal gain at the expense of public responsibility. If the elections of 2000 and 2004 have revealed anything, it is that the forms of corruption in the US have become more profound than ever, and touch on every aspect of our existence—economic, political, structural, informational, as well as financial and moral. Much of it is not new; it has been around long enough for us to get used to it. But its depth of penetration and impunity are greater than ever before.

Forms of Corruption