John Steinbeck was one of the most prolific and, in my view, significant American novelists of the twentieth century. He was influenced by and synthesized his own politics and personal experience with the political culture and movements of the 1930s.
BBC gang drama series draws on the extraordinary life of a passionate Communist trade union activist who made history in the 1920s
On the centennial of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's first-hand look at the uprising of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors is fit reading about a mass movement that overthrew the old aristocracy and then the bourgeois class itself. An exposition on ordinary people making history for themselves, the book is a gripping account of events in Petrograd, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks lead the various workers councils in finally seizing state power.
This new book by Enzo Traverso is "a master class in historical analysis," writes reviewer Alan Wald. This "full-on riveting reconceptualization of 1914-1945 as a 'European Civil War,"' he adds, "is a benchmark achievement in the flowering of socialist scholarship by the generation identifying with May 1968."
Reader Comments: Panama Papers fallout; Controversy over whites as part of the working class; Mine Safety and Blankenship Jail Sentence; Minimum wage hikes discussion; Bernie and labor, Wisconsin victory; Wall Street and Glass-Steagall; Hillary and labor, Wall Street and fracking; Pope Francis;
Announcements: Gerald Horne book signings - Baltimore, Washington and New York; China Labor Relations; Communists in the Civil Rights Movement
Reader Comments - Baltimore and Martin Luther King on Protesters Who Use Violence; How to Help - Baltimore-Ferguson Legal Defense Committee; US `World Leader' in Child Poverty; FBI Faked Testimony; Yemen; El Salvador; Venezuela; Ukraine; South Africa; Turkey; Peace Movement; The Symbolic Left; 2016 Elections; TPP; More Responses to The Tragedy of Party Communism;
Announcements (all New York): May Day Against Waltons; She's Beautiful When She's Angry; Mayor 1% - Forum
Reader Comments - Today's Student Protests; Vietnam War History, My Lai; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Israel - Right Wing Nation with Nukes; Unions Key to Fighting Inequality; Women Fighters; Venezuela Sanctions; Socialists, Socialist Movement and Socialism; Human Genome Tinkering;
Hey, World! Let's create a nuclear-free future -- April 24-26, New York City
Remembering Jean Hardisty, Geraldine Blankinship and Grace Paley
Syriza is not the only left-wing party in Greece, and by some measures it’s not even the largest. In organizational terms, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is bigger. Ignoring it, as most of the Left is content to do, means ignoring a force with important roots in the trade union movement and the longest history of all surviving Greek parties.
Leo Robinson was a leader of the longshore union in San Francisco. He died this week. For many of us, he was an example of what being an internationalist and a working-class activist was all about.
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