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Our Alternative

Bhaskar Sunkara Jacobin
We need a socialist politics that challenges the Democratic Party's leadership, not just the Right.

The Rebel Girl

Mary Anne Trasciatti Jacobin
As we build a movement to thwart Trump and win genuine social change, the activist life of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is instructive.

Fighting Faux Populism

Joseph M. Schwartz Democratic Left
Brexit has come to the United States. For thirty years now, in Europe and the United States, a bipartisan neoliberal consensus has embraced the benefits of globalization and the rise of the "knowledge economy." If only workers would go back to school, retrain, and send their children to college, the good jobs that disappeared would somehow return. But those good jobs did not arrive, and voters have opted for a faux populism that promises to reverse globalization.

books

Antonio Gramsci Jr: On Remembering His Grandfather

Antonio Gramsci, Jr. New Left Review
Through the use of family archives and other new sources, the grandson of Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci seeks to reconstruct the cultural and political saliance of his grandfather's contributions to building and defending the Italian working class movement and international socialism in the face of Stalinist distortions, capitalist enmity and today's reactionary Russian regime.

Starting a Socialist Sunday School

Hae-Lin Choi and Maxine Phillips DSA Democratic Socialists of America
I grew up going to a Korean church in Germany, learning all about kindness, sharing, and helping each other in a wonderfully warm, communal, and nourishing space. That really had a positive impact on me (in addition to my socialist parents!).

Tidbits - December 22, 2016 - Reader Comments: Time's Trump Cover; Trump Passing Secrets to Putin or is Borowitz Satire or Reality Check; Trump Nominee Meets Austrian Nazis; Teachers; Trump Jobs Plan; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Time's Trump Cover Is a Subversive Work of Political Art; Reader's Disagree - Is Trump Passing Secrets to Putin - or is Borowitz Satire or Incredible Reality Check; Why Does the Media Misjudge Fascists; Trump Nominee Meets with Austrian Nazis; Teacher Shortages; Trump's Job Plan; Hotel Workers Beat Trump; Los Angeles Fashion Industry; Discussion - Building Mass Socialist Party; Cuban Art Exhibit in New York; and more...

Fidel Castro and the Question Of Power

Van Gosse Portside
Fidel Castro's life, and the example of the Cuban Revolution, demonstrates the enduring relevance of state power. It is fundamentally irresponsible for anyone on the left to think one can avoid the question of power, and let someone else face its contradictions and deformations. Somebody will exercise it, for good or ill. Fidel Castro embraced this question, choosing to wield power in as many ways possible for what he deemed social goods, even on the global scale.

A Summary of Democratic Socialists of America's Strategy Document

DSA Democratic Socialists of America
For the foreseeable future our primary focus will be on building a vibrant, independent democratic socialist movement and helping to cultivate progressive coalitions capable of wielding political power at all levels. But we should never lose sight of the democratic socialist vision that serves as the guiding thread tying together the many struggles for freedom and equality in which we are constantly engaged, day in, day out.

Venezuela's Economic Crisis: Does It Mean That the Left Has Failed?

Mark Weisbrot Truthout
International media has provided a constant stream of stories and editorials about the collapse of the Venezuelan economy. Shortages of food and medicine, hours-long lines, incomes eroded by triple-digit inflation have dominated press reports. Adherents to this explanation say the downward spiral will continue until the chavistas are removed from power, either through elections or through a coup (most pundits don't care which). The reality is more complicated.

books

Does Gareth Stedman Jones Inflate or Deflate Marx's Heritage?

Alex Callinicos International Socialism
The reviewer faults the book's author for deflating both Marx's and the author's own earlier stance as a creative British Marxist historian of the working class. While the reviewer grants that Jones offers solid accounts of developments in the British working class movement and in European radical politics that made the First International possible, he faults Jones for relying on a narrow reading of Marx's political economy at the expense of its revolutionary core.
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