Marcus Aurelius

How Should You Be? (161)

2 minutes | English

How should you be? You should be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds. It stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, “How unlucky that this should happen to me.” But not at all. Perhaps say instead… [read more]

György Lukács

Hegel and the Nazis (1943)

59 minutes | English

The relationship of Hitler’s fascists to Hegel’s philosophy is basically very simple: they resolutely reject it. Alfred Rosenberg, the main Nazi theorist, sees in the connection between Hegel and Marx an essential reason to define the Hegelian philosophy as hostile to the… [read more]

Antonio Gramsci

The Movement and the Goal (1932)

4 minutes | English Italiano

Is it possible for a movement to sustain itself without having a notion of its end goal? Bernstein’s principle, that “The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing,” though it claims to be an “orthodox” interpretation of dialectics, belies a purely mechanistic conception… [read more]

Stephen Houlgate

Hegel’s Views on Language (2006)

14 minutes | English

Gadamer accepts that Hegel acknowledges a connection between thought and language. But he believes that for Hegel language is nothing more than “a self-effacing and temporary medium of thought or merely its casing.” For Gadamer himself, by contrast, language is the permanent… [read more]

Karl Marx

Wage-Labour and Capital (1849)

79 minutes | English | Marx & Engels

From various quarters we have been reproached for neglecting to portray the economic conditions which form the material basis of the present struggles between classes and nations. With set purpose we have hitherto touched upon these conditions only when they forced themselves… [read more]

Zhenli

Daniel Burke and the LaRouche Cult (2022)

34 minutes | English

There is this weird cult I’ve encountered quite a few times now, of people who associate themselves with a politician named Lyndon LaRouche. Many media outlets describe them as “far-right,” but LaRouchites, as I will call them, themselves decry this label, insisting they are not… [read more]

Colin Darch

The Myth of Nestor Makhno (1985)

37 minutes | English

The so-called “green” peasant rebellions against the Bolsheviks immediately after the revolution in Russia are of some contemporary interest not only within Soviet studies, but also for students of rural revolt in the Third World. This is the case both because the green movements… [read more]

Mao Zedong

On Practice (1937)

43 minutes | English | China

Before Marx, materialism examined the problem of knowledge apart from the social nature of man and apart from his historical development, and was therefore incapable of understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, that is, the dependence of knowledge on… [read more]

Sean Sayers

Materialism, Realism, and the Theory of Reflection (1982)

82 minutes | English

Of course, illusions and false ideas must be criticised and rejected as false and illusory. But one understands very little of religion and dreams if all that one knows of them is that they are false. The realist theories of knowledge that I have been criticising go no further than this. The dialectical materialist theory, however, seeks to understand these false ideas as reflections of reality. [read more]

Karl Marx

Marx to Ruge (1843)

13 minutes | Deutsch English | Marx & Engels

I am very pleased to find you so resolute, and to see your thoughts turning away from the past and towards a new enterprise. To Paris, then! That ancient bastion of philosophy — absit omen! [May this be no ill omen!] — and the modern capital of the modern world. Whatever… [read more]

Thucydides

The Melian Dialogue (400 BC)

28 minutes | English

The Melians are a colony from Sparta. They had refused to join the Athenian empire like the other islanders, and at first had remained neutral without helping either side; but afterwards, when the Athenians had brought force to bear on them by laying waste their land, they had… [read more]

José Saramago

The Acid Test (2008)

4 minutes | English Português

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, or to attacks upon his honor and reputation.” And further, “Everyone has the right to the protection of the… [read more]

AROC

Thoughts on the Marxist Center Conference (2018)

28 minutes | English

Over the weekend of November 30th, more than twenty revolutionary organizations from across the United States came together in Colorado Springs to unite under the banner of the Marxist Center. This put a new layer of formality onto what has been until now an informal, if still… [read more]

E. H. Carr

What is History? (1961)

58 minutes | English

What is history? Lest anyone think the question meaningless or superfluous, I will take as my text two passages relating respectively to the first and second incarnations of the Cambridge Modern History. Here is Acton in his report of October 1896 to the Syndics of the… [read more]

J. D. Bernal

Psychoanalysis and Marxism (1937)

14 minutes | English

In the decade after the war Freud’s theories dominated the narrow circles of British intellectuals. His psychoanalysis was accepted warmly for many reasons. It was new and exciting, it was shocking, it debunked religion and morals, it promised an internal liberation from all… [read more]

J. D. Bernal

Engels and Science (1935)

52 minutes | English

If Engels had not been the constant companion in arms of Marx in the revolutionary struggles of the 19th century, there is no doubt that he would be remembered chiefly as one of the foremost scientist-philosophers of the century. It was an ironical tribute paid to the correctness… [read more]

Harry Kelber

AFL-CIO’s Dark Past (2004)

79 minutes | English

For nearly 30 years, George Meany, a New York Irish Catholic plumber, who rose to be the undisputed leader of the American labor movement, collaborated with Jay Lovestone, a Lithuanian-born Jew, who was secretary general of the American Communist Party from 1927 to 1929, until he… [read more]

Alice Malone

Elisabeth’s Nietzsche (2024)

42 minutes | English

Nietzsche’s left-wing advocates often brush away any criticism of the philosopher’s judeophobic and pro-eugenics views with the explanation that his work was corrupted by his sister. The charge goes something like this: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, a fascist-sympathizer who… [read more]

Michael Roberts

Marx and Keynes in Berlin (2018)

17 minutes | English

It’s 200 years today since Karl Marx was born. And it’s just over 100 years since the great 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes wrote about Marx’s contribution. Keynes wrote then: “how can I accept the (Communist) doctrine which sets up as its bible above and beyond… [read more]

Roderic Day

The Syllogism (2024)

12 minutes | English | The Crew

Let’s discuss Nietzsche’s explicit hatred of the syllogism and its enduring relevance to reactionary politics more generally. According to him, “the knife-thrust of the syllogism” is how “Greek taste undergoes a change in favour of dialectics,” how “the rabble gets on top.” “That… [read more]

Lu Xun

Reply to a Letter from the Trotskyites (1936)

5 minutes | English | China

Your “theory” is certainly much loftier than that of Mao Zedong; yours is high in the sky, while his is down-to-earth. But admirable as is such loftiness, it will unfortunately be just the thing welcomed by the Japanese aggressors. Hence I fear that it will drop down from the sky, and when it does it may land on the filthiest place on earth. [read more]

G. W. F. Hegel

Dialectics (1812)

13 minutes | Deutsch English

The dialectical moment is when definite concepts supersede themselves and transition into their opposites. But, especially in philosophy, if the dialectical principle is applied outside of the context of complete understanding, it becomes skepticism, and the… [read more]

Roderic Day

On Three Short Stories (2024)

7 minutes | English | The Crew

In the first few weeks of 2024, amid intensifying news of world war and a flare-up of the global pandemic, I made the strange decision to focus on readying for publication three short fiction stories. On some level this is just because of my mood. However, I also chose the three… [read more]

Liu An

The Lost Horse (139 BC)

1 minutes | English Español 中文 | China

It can be difficult to foresee the twists and turns through which fortune brings ruin and ruin brings fortune. There once was a man, skilled in divination, who lived close to the Northern frontier with his son. One day for no reason, the son’s horse ran away to the nomads across… [read more]

J. V. Stalin

Stalin on Churchill (1946)

6 minutes | English | The Soviet Union

Mr. Churchill and his friends bear a striking resemblance to Hitler and his friends. Hitler began his work of unleashing war by proclaiming a race theory, declaring that only German-speaking people constituted a superior nation. Mr. Churchill sets out to unleash war with a race… [read more]

Ian Paul Wright

The Transformation Problem (2016)

93 minutes | English

The transformation problem has provoked controversy within Marxism and derision from without for more than a century. Bourgeois economists in particular (beginning with Ladislaus Bortkiewicz, and continuing, most notoriously, with Paul Samuelson) have seized on it to argue for… [read more]

Lz. A.

On Anthony Bourdain (2018)

96 minutes | English

As of March 2018 Patrick Radden Keefe, a journalist who typically covers El Chapo and ISIS, can add to his list of accolades a nomination for a James Beard award, given for excellence in culinary writing. What’s a writer who used to work for the Department of Defense doing… [read more]

CC of the CPC

On the Question of Religion (1982)

52 minutes | English | China

Religion is a historical phenomenon pertaining to a definite period in the development of human society. It has its own cycle of emergence, development, and demise. Religious faith and religious sentiment, along with religious ceremonies and organizations consonant with this… [read more]

Alice Malone

Labour and Labour-Power (2023)

17 minutes | English | Marx & Engels

Why can’t capitalists treat workers better? Why do we get paid so much less than the value of what we produce with our labour? That capitalism exploits workers is obvious to anyone who has worked for wages, and Marx was not the first person to point it out. Utopian socialists… [read more]

Hồ Chí Minh

Letter To Old People (1945)

3 minutes | English

I am talking with you as an elder like you. A saying runs that “talents are exhausted with the coming of old age,” and our elders generally believe it. Whatever happens, they say, “old people must live in quietness, we are old, we have no more ambition. It is up to our children… [read more]

Antonio Gramsci

Real Dialectic (1921)

3 minutes | English Italiano

Events are the real dialectic of history. They transcend all reasoning, all personal judgements, all simple and irresponsible wishful thinking. Events, with the unbreakable logic of their development, teach the working and peasant masses, who are conscious of their destiny, these… [read more]

Antonio Gramsci

An Address to Anarchists (1920)

13 minutes | English Italiano

Italian anarchists are very irritable because they are very conceited. Their longstanding conviction that they’re oracles of revealed revolutionary truth has become “monstrous” ever since the Socialist Party, through the influence of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik… [read more]

Karl Marx

On Proudhon (1865)

18 minutes | Deutsch English | Marx & Engels

Yesterday I received a letter in which you demand from me a detailed judgment of Proudhon. Lack of time prevents me from fulfilling your desire. Added to which I have none of his works to hand. However, in order to assure you of my good will I will quickly jot down a… [read more]

Michael Parenti

Dividends Are Not Royalties (1996)

11 minutes | English

It has been frequently noted that IQ examinations, while professing to measure innate intelligence, are riddled with racial, gender, and class biases. Thus a low-income, inner-city youth, confronting a seemingly innocuous phrase like “behind the sofa” on an IQ test, may find it… [read more]

Nia Frome

Long, Queer Revolution (2018)

16 minutes | English | The Crew

Is it possible for a single mind to fully fathom the transition from capitalism to communism? I can, without too much trouble, imagine a group of about twenty people doing something like communism, but if the size of the group grows much beyond that, I’m at a loss. What’s more… [read more]

Antonio Gramsci

The Communist Party (1920)

28 minutes | English

Since Sorel, it has become a cliché to refer to the primitive Christian communities in assessing the modern proletarian movement. It must be said at once that Sorel is in no way responsible for the small-mindedness and intellectual crudity of his Italian admirers, just as Karl… [read more]

Roderic Day

Nihilistic Resignation (2023)

3 minutes | English | The Crew

There is much talk these days about World War 3. This anxiety is a very well-justified reaction to loud saber-rattling. However, fear runs the risk of becoming nihilistic resignation. The uncritical adoption of an incorrect theory of social behaviour, even in protest… [read more]

J. V. Stalin

Remarks to Yaroshenko (1952)

50 minutes | English | The Soviet Union

Some time ago the members of the Political Bureau of the C.C., C.P.S.U.(B.) received a letter from Comrade Yaroshenko, dated March 20, 1952, on a number of economic questions which were debated at the November discussion. The author of the letter complains that the basic… [read more]

Paola Tabet

Hands, Tools, Weapons (1982)

146 minutes | English

There is in ethnology an aspect of the sexual division of labor which up to the present time has neither been studied globally nor considered in an appropriate fashion: that of the tools which men and women use. The question is to know if there exists a sexual differentiation in… [read more]

Roderic Day

Diodes (2023)

8 minutes | English | The Crew

There’s a very common cliche in rhetorical political argumentation that goes something like this: “I am concerned about the quality (or style, or approach) of your argument. Not for my own personal sake — no, I’m actually very ambivalent (on your side, even!). I’m raising my… [read more]

Domenico Losurdo

What is Fundamentalism? (2004)

99 minutes | English

What is fundamentalism? One immediately thinks about the Middle East and Islam, but the term first appeared in U.S. Protestant circles, regarding a movement that developed prior to World War I whose followers occasionally referred to themselves as “fundamentalists.” Although this… [read more]

Michael Parenti

Against Psychopolitics (1992)

62 minutes | English

A critical examination is made of political psychology, specifically psychoanalytic and “depth” psychology as applied to the study of politics. I argue that psychological explanations for political leaders and movements (a) tend to be reductionist and based on interpretations… [read more]

Alice Malone

Concessions (2023)

31 minutes | English Ελληνική

Capitalism sucks for workers. It’s common to see the obvious failures of our current system as new horrors, and to conclude that we need to return to some time when things were better. Maybe the “better time” is vague — just a general hand-waving and an exhortation to make things… [read more]

Michael Parenti

The Logic of U.S. Intervention (2003)

53 minutes | English

Human motives are impossible to observe in any direct empirical way. We can view behavior and listen to utterances but we cannot observe the actual intent that is attributed to such things. People may profess all sorts of intentions, but they are also capable of outrageous… [read more]

Prabhat Patnaik

Socialism or Reformism? (2010)

57 minutes | English | South Asia

We live at a time when resistance to the inequities that exist in this world and the struggle for a better world are almost totally detached from any striving for socialism. Climate change, imperialist aggression, forcible dispossession of peasants in the name of “development”… [read more]

Roderic Day

On Hegel (2022)

24 minutes | English | Philosophy The Crew

Liberal academics like to couple, on the one hand, some of Hegel’s absurd lines about non-Western civilizations (Asian, African, Indigenous-American), and on the other, his defense of the virtues of the State and his opposition to the celebration of incipient liberal democracy… [read more]

Bhagat Singh

Our Opportunity (1931)

15 minutes | English | South Asia

Indian freedom is not perhaps any longer a far distant dream; events are moving apace and it may become a reality sooner than we expect. British Imperialism is admittedly in a tight corner. Germany is about to topple down, France is tottering, even the United States is shaky. And… [read more]

V. I. Lenin

Civilized Barbarism (1913)

2 minutes | English | The Soviet Union

Britain and France are the most civilized countries in the world. London and Paris are the world’s capitals, with populations of six and three million, respectively. The distance between them is an eight- to nine-hour journey. One can imagine how great is the commercial… [read more]

Nia Frome

On Jargon (2016)

2 minutes | English | The Crew

To the novice, any two dense texts (e.g. Heidegger vs. Hegel) are equally impenetrable. Same goes for most of the Marxist tradition, which has never shied from developing its own jargon. But this opacity to outsiders is a false equivalence; that is, it’s concealing a difference… [read more]

S. B.

Ways of Objectifying (2013)

25 minutes | English | Art & Propaganda

When people complain about sexually objectified images of women in advertising and other media, a typical MRA troll move is to counter that men are also sexually objectified. Male models are sex objects too, says the troll: impossibly ripped and handsome studs, sexy and… [read more]

Mao Zedong

On Contradiction (1937)

93 minutes | English | China Philosophy

The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics. Lenin said, “Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects.” Lenin often called this law the essence… [read more]

Xi Jinping

Democracy is Not an Ornament (2021)

14 minutes | English | China

Democracy is a common value of humanity and an ideal that has always been cherished by the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people. Over the past hundred years, the Party has led the people in realizing people’s democracy in China. The Chinese people now truly hold in… [read more]

Roderic Day

Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” (2022)

76 minutes | English Español Svenska | Anarchism Art & Propaganda The Crew “Brainwashing”

I’ve become very skeptical of the concept of “brainwashing.” Over the past few months this skepticism has boiled over into open and explicit disagreement with even well-meaning pushers within the Marxist-Leninist corner. I often find it difficult to explain concisely why it is… [read more]

Joseph Heller

Clevinger (1961)

1 minutes | English

Clevinger knew so much because Clevinger was a genius with a pounding heart and blanching face. He was a gangling, gawky, feverish, famish-eyed brain. As a Harvard undergraduate he had won prizes in scholarship for just about everything, and the only reason he had not won prizes… [read more]

Mark Twain

The Two Terrors (1889)

1 minutes | English | Art & Propaganda

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the… [read more]

Qi Xin

Theory and the Gang of Four (1977)

41 minutes | English | China

This article is a further attempt to analyze the Gang of Four. After my first article entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Gang of Four” was published, I received many letters from readers questioning certain points made and asking about other aspects. In this article, I again use… [read more]

Deng Xiaoping

Marxism is a Science (1992)

40 minutes | English | China Science

I was here in Guangdong in 1984. At that time rural reform had been under way for several years, and we were just beginning to introduce urban reform and to establish special economic zones. Eight years have passed since then. This time, during my trip here, I have found that the… [read more]

S. B.

The Banality of Genius (2013)

17 minutes | English | Art & Propaganda

You can identify a Very Important Person because they get the proper VIP treatment: they come surrounded by an entourage of PR gurus, secretaries, agents, media handlers and bodyguards. Access to the VIP is limited and controlled, their public appearances are stage managed, their… [read more]

Roderic Day

“Potato Sack” History (2022)

3 minutes | English | Science The Crew

If the goal is emancipation, there’s no alternative to relentless, impeccable, fact- and trajectory-focused historical education. We all need to become decent students and able teachers of history. The teaching of history as a “sack of potatoes” is a vulnerability in capitalism… [read more]

Nia Frome

Losurdo and Roberts (2022)

20 minutes | English | The Crew

Domenico Losurdo and William Clare Roberts are not often mentioned in the same breath. While they are both central theoretical reference points for Red Sails, it must be admitted that they make for an odd couple. Losurdo is concerned primarily with criticizing Western… [read more]

Roderic Day

Understanding Lenin (2021)

5 minutes | English | Anarchism The Crew

I do not like to get into useless fights about “what Lenin truly meant” or “what Lenin would have wanted.” It’s not a discussion I can settle, and not even a discussion I care to settle. Instead, I want to explain what I take from his work. To this end, I will refer to… [read more]

Walter Rodney

Marxism in Africa (1975)

43 minutes | English | Black Liberation

First of all, we must understand the background for this kind of debate. When one is asked to speak of the relevance of Marxism to Africa at this particular point in time one is being asked to involve oneself in a historical debate, an ongoing debate in this country, particularly… [read more]

Roderic Day

On Crypto (2021)

6 minutes | English | Technology The Crew

In 2013, in the wake of the boom of the canonical “BitCoin,” using some of the same technological principles but tapping into contemporary internet-meme culture, “DogeCoin” was born. Despite its origins as a joke, on 5 May 2021 it reached a market capitalization of… [read more]

Lori Watson

The Woman Question (2016)

22 minutes | English | Feminism and Gender

The dispute between some self-identified feminists and trans persons, trans women especially, and trans-supporting feminists has erupted into a full-scale ideological war. Once at the level of conflict, officially undeclared, we have moved into the territory of “you are either… [read more]

Nia Frome

Two Cthulhus (2021)

11 minutes | English | Art & Propaganda The Crew

At the beginning of every essay, a writer has to decide how familiar their intended audience is with the terms they’ll be using. The focus of this essay, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, occupies a strange position in that it’s both niche and mainstream (e.g. spellcheck… [read more]

Roderic Day

The Virtual Factory (2021)

15 minutes | English | Technology The Crew

Factories were designed by capitalists as exploitative panopticon enclosures. Nevertheless, they socialized workers, and became sites of organization and struggle. Yasha Levine’s superb research into surveillance technology should not lead to numbing cynicism about the potential… [read more]

Karl Marx

Third Manuscript (1844)

104 minutes | English | Marx & Engels Philosophy

The subjective essence of private property, private property as activity for itself, as subject, as person, is labor. It, therefore, goes without saying that only that political economy which recognized labor as its principle (Adam Smith), and which therefore no longer regarded… [read more]

Roderic Day

Everyday Subkulak (2021)

22 minutes | English | The Crew

A while back a friend was illustrating the many ways in which Slavoj Zizek fell short as a Marxist theorist (I had retained some sympathies from when I first discovered him as a liberal) with a pretty bad bit of writing on Mao Zedong. To Zizek’s credit, as usual, it’s at least… [read more]

Roderic Day

On Chomsky (2020)

32 minutes | English Ελληνική | The Crew

Far too much has already been said and written about Noam Chomsky, and some of it has the counter-productive effect of further enhancing his myth. This is because his fans often read his being attacked from “both the right and the left” as inherent proof of his brilliance. The… [read more]

Bob Page

The American’s Job (2020)

6 minutes | English Ελληνική

“Free market capitalism” is in terminal decline, to be replaced in this century or early in the next with state capitalism and other presently undeveloped form of socialist hybrid states. The decline is structural, political, but also social and cultural. By the end of February… [read more]

Jones Manoel

Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture (2020)

17 minutes | Deutsch English Español Français Ελληνική Italiano Português Türkçe | Latin America

There is a fundamental contradiction in many of the Marxist studies that are produced in the West. Every time that they speak of Marxism in Asia — in China, Korea or Vietnam — or when they speak of popular movements in Africa such as in Egypt or Libya, they highlight the… [read more]