News from Around the Web

US intelligence has assessed that little to no Fentanyl trafficked to the US is being produced in Venezuela, contradicting recent claims from US President Donald Trump to justify airstrikes on alleged drug boats, Drop Site News (DSN) ...

‘Father of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton has called for ban on AI Superintelligence along with other prominent figures from across the sectors inlucing politics, entertainment and technology.

A group of scientists and public figures, in a statement put out by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, has called for a ban on developing Superintelligent AI until there is broad scientific agreement...

Spoiler alert – it already has. This is not a glib answer but a comment on the nature of the conflict. The US mission to wrench Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution out from its roots has a quarter-century pedigree. Stick around to the end of the article for an assessment of the likelihood of an overt military attack inside Venezuela. But first a little historical context.

After decades of defeats for working people and the Left, it almost felt like a dream to witness Zohran Mamdani make history last night. Sometimes the good guys win. As David Hogg wrote last night, “BREAKING: Not everything has to suck.”

Absorbing the key lessons of this campaign is essential for the fights ahead, not just in New York City but across the United States.

1) Zohran’...

1. Introduction

The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.¹ With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United...

On Sunday, April 6, the KPFA-Radio Berkeley Sunday Show opened with an hour on Saturday’s nationwide “HANDS OFF!” rallies, which had taken place in cities across the country. The first guest, University of San Francisco professor Rebecca Gordon, opened by saying she’d seen some great signage at the rally she attended, the first being,

Trump Has His Head So Far Up...

Socialists since the time of Marx have been proponents of democracy, but they have argued that democracy in capitalist societies is fundamentally flawed. In capitalist societies, the wealthy have tremendous social and economic advantages over the working class that undermine political equality, a presupposition for viable democracy. In addition, under capitalism the most important economic...

Laura Carlsen is the Director of the Meixco City-based international relations think tank, Mira: Feminisms and Democracies, and Coordinator of Political Analysis and Global Solidarity with Just Associates. She holds an interdisciplinary degree in Women’s Studies and a Masters in Latin American Studies, both from Stanford University. A dual Mexican/US citizen, she works as an international...

In a new essay, published in Capitalism Nature Socialism, S&D's editor-at-large, Victor Wallis, looks at how the political Right has taken advantage of the Left's failure to extend its anti-capitalist perspective to address Big Pharma's influence on the public health agenda. Readers for whom the above...

S&D Editorial Board member, Joe Ramsey recently joined C. S. Soong of KPFA's Against the Grain (AtG) to discuss Ramsey's recent essay, "Never Throw Away the Key: The Compassionate Radicalism of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy...

Milton Fisk (1932-2022) was a dedicated and distinguished philosopher/activist. His principal link to our journal was an article he published in 2000 entitled "Neoliberalism and the Slow Death of Public Healthcare in Mexico" [This issue of S&D (#27) is not available on the gratis S&D website, but I still have a...

 I want to honor Steve McGiffen, who died in August.

Steve was a regular contributor to S&D over the past decade, beginning with his organizing a special section in issue #56 (2011) entitled "Democracy vs Neoliberalism in the European Union." My collaboration and friendship with him date back to the huge May 1998 gathering in...

Our dear friend George Comninel passed away suddenly yesterday [August 18, 2022].

Born in 1951, George was a faculty member at the Department of Politics of York University since 1990. During his career, he was the author of remarkable theoretical contributions.

His first book –...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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, ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

S&D has paid close  attention to the Cuban revolution and more generally to the Caribbean, including to developments in Haiti. Generally, scholarly and policy insights into the revolutions have strenghthened the partisan anti-imperialist and emancipatory interests of our authors. Recently our co-sponsored project, Shelter & Solidarity...

In a world that viewed portrait painting as an affectation of the rich, Alice Neel (1900-1984) believed all people had a right to have a portrait painted. On canvas, Neel depicted everyday people in a way that dignified them and viewed them as agents for change. She gave her subjects both personality and character, a feat that revealed their capacity to endure and to struggle. They are never...

The facts are undeniable. In response to Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians fighting to prevent evictions from their homes in East Jerusalem, Hamas, a spin-off from the Muslim Brotherhood, began firing short-range missiles manufactured from scrap metal into Israel. Within a few days, powerful American-made missile launchers, guided by the most sophisticated technology, began bombarding...

In a year with few historical parallels and to better understand the conjuncture, Meyer and Moodliar reached out to John Holloway who has devoted a considerable amount of work to understanding the relationship between the rule of capital and the grounds for hope. In the resulting interview, one that takes a conceptual turn, a series of distinctions are evoked to clarify the contradictions that...

In a wide-ranging presentation, one often drawing direct experience, Victor Wallis introduces his audience to Social Practice: Histories and Theories. Wallis's methodical study of Marxism is brought into dialogue with his support for the Cuban revolution, work with political prisoners, activities as a teacher, life in Chile...

In a short presentation to the Post Capitalism Conference: Building the Solidarity Economy, Humboldt State University, April 25, 2021, Suren Moodliar joined a panel on the topic of "racial capitalism." Acknowledging the term's contested status, Moodliar nonetheless finds value in the term:

Toni Morrison describes “a friend of your mind,” as one who gathers the “pieces I am… and give...

March 18, 2021, marked the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. Given the seismic nature of the events, laying bare underlying class antagonisms, S&D writing has frequently revisited the topic. In 2016, we published Joe Cleffie's review of Kristin Ross's Communal Luxury: The Poltical Imagionary of the Paris Commune. ...

Contributors to the S&D special issue, Movements at the Millennium: Seattle +20 (34:1), came together for a spirited 2-hour conversation about the evolution of our movements from the 1990s through the 2020s. It was both a moment of celebration of the social movement creativity and sober reflection on the tasks of the day, addressing the articulation of organizational forms and strategy in...

When I was invited to speak on behalf of Mumia, one of the first things that came to mind was how long he's been in prison. How many years of his life had been stolen away from him, his community, and his loved ones. He's been incarcerated for 38 years. Mumia has been in prison longer than I've been alive.

When I first spoke with Mumia on the phone, I did very little...

1. What is the legacy of the Sanders insurgency? What is the state of left organization? Are we closer to a proto-workers party?

JWL: The Sanders campaign accomplished two historical achievements that progressive activists can build on going forward. First, the campaign united millions of mostly working-class Americans behind a progressive...

There is no revolution without crisis. But crisis does not necessarily lead to revolution.

Over the last months, diverse movements, rallying under the banner #BlackLivesMatter, outraged by repression and exhausted by forced isolation, have stood up to militarized cops in every U.S. state, knowing that doing so risks horrific outcomes—losing an eye to a rubber bullet or gas canister,...

The Marxist sociologist, William DiFazio, died March 10, 2020, at the age of 72 from complications related to diabetes. I met Bill in 1975 when we were both students at the CUNY Graduate Center. We remained friends for the next 45 years. 

Bill DiFazio wrote three books:

• ...

On Tuesday, May 26, 20120, starting at 10:00 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time), a global network of scholars, trade unionists, development specialists, and democracy movement activists are launching the second online Global Teach-In to address the COVID-19 crisis and economic depression. Speakers include Hillary Wainwright, David Graeber, and Dario Padovan. To learn more about the Teach-In, visit...

In a recent op-ed, Victor Wallis, S&D’s Editor-at-Large, contrasts how capitalist and socialist imperatives shape our responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Wallis addresses the full range of issues from distributional questions including access to health care and prevention to macroeconomic matters and the immediate demands that we should address both...

A taut editorial published in the British Medical Journal provides a concise indictment of Donald Trump’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Put simply: “He downplayed the risk and delayed action, costing countless avertable deaths.” The editorial concludes with an appeal to social movement action:

To get through this, the US will need unprecedented social mobilisation....

In this excerpt from the first Shelter & Solidarity* episode, Johanna Fernández, a historian at Baruch College and most recently the author of The Young Lords, A Radical History (UNC Press 2020), explains the history of mass incarceration. She traces it to the anti-imperialist uprisings in the Global South and with the United States. The reactionary, harsh “law and order” response...

In a recent post, James Hansen, who first sounded the catastrophic climate change warning bells before the US Congress, notes the public’s increased literacy about the nature of growth curves and particularly the impact of early interventions. Regrettably, at this stage, we are late in the game of carbon...

You may know Lee Camp from his amazing show “Redacted Tonight” (available online), a unique blend of deep journalism and biting comedy. Well, here it is in book form, and it doesn’t disappoint. It consists mainly of short essays that were the basis for some of his shows. Although we miss the physical performance, we are compensated by being given full documentation for all his factual...

Sounds odd, right?  How could the coronavirus, which has killed thousands around the world and thrown the global political and economic system into crisis, be considered an ally?  Instead, shouldn’t it be seen first and foremost as the common enemy that we all face and that needs to be defeated?

Of course, the virus needs to be controlled and we need to inoculate ourselves from it. ...

Dear Friends:

Due to the pandemic, all our concerts and public appearances have been canceled. This includes the US tour we planned in April as well as concerts in Switzerland. Plans for visits to England, Ireland, and Italy are on hold. We can’t predict when the epidemic will end or when it will be possible to resume live concerts and other public gatherings. Nevertheless, we know it...

A few hours ago, the House passed a $2-trillion relief package to stimulate the economy. We will share analyses of the measure in the coming days. However, Senator Bernie Sanders has used his Senate platform to offer a critique, one that writer John Nichols believes models the role of an...

In this article, S&D editorial board member and DigBoston’s Executive Editor, Jason Pramas, brings a laser-like focus to the practice of physical distancing. We share his introduction below and link to the original article. Future posts on this blog site will address other dimensions and impacts on our lives and practices, including practical matters – like earning a living!

How will the police respond to environmental direct action groups like Extinction Rebellion as climate breakdown reaches critical mass?

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is a direct action group organised on a global scale. The main target of their protests is are national governments who have demonstrated extreme inaction in the face of climate breakdown, despite stark warnings from the...

NEW YORK, (IPS) - On a recent morning in Bazar-Korgon, southern Kyrgyzstan, Khadicha Askarova was giving hasty instructions to her daughter about what needed to be packed.

They were about to set off: first for the capital Bishkek, some 600km from where they live, and then another 70km to a prison colony where her husband,...

We republish Steve Martinot’s 2013 historical/theoretical interpretation of a phenomenon that, despite its recent explosion into universal public awareness, has been plaguing US society from the beginning. - VW

For months, the Blueford family begged the Oakland City Council for answers to why and how their son Alan had been murdered by an Oakland police...