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books

Thomas Piketty: The Making of a Socialist

Robert Kuttner New York Times
What makes this noteworthy is that it comes from an economist who gained his reputation as a researcher with vaguely left-of-center sensibilities but was far from a radical. The times are such that even honest moderates are driven to radical remedies

Martin Luther King Was a Radical, Not a Moderate

Peter Dreier Common Dreams
Martin Luther King called himself a democratic socialist. He believed that America needed a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.” He challenged America’s class system and its racial caste system. He opposed US militarism

Pedagogy of the Occupied

Rodrigo Nunes Verso Blog
How can Paulo Freire, who would have turned 100 this year, help us think the limits that Occupy encountered ten years ago?

‘Socialism’ Isn’t a Dirty Word Anymore

Sarah Jones New York Magazine
Most Americans still think positively of capitalism, but that’s beginning to change among young adults...If capitalism has begun to lose its shine, what solutions do people prefer? Socialism, for one.

books

Red Flag over the White House?

Benjamin Kunkel New Left Review
In left history, the two poles of “reform” and “revolution” are often counterpoised, and for good reason. In the book under review, the author tries to square the circle. The reviewer critically but comradely weighs the author’s successes.

books

Unstable Histories

Steffan Blayney Radical Philosophy
In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, radical psychologists and psychoanalysts sought to transform their profession. This book shows how those efforts intersected with the radical cultural and political movements of the day.

The Enduring Power of Anticapitalism in American Politics

Jamelle Bouie The New York Times
From Debs to Sanders to Ocasio-Cortez, an ideal persists. If Sanders actually makes it to the White House, then he’ll be able to continue this work from the summit of American politics. If he doesn’t, then unlike Debs, he’ll have a natural successor.

Antislavery Wasn’t Mainstream, Until It Was

Matt Karp Jacobin
After Republicans lost their first election in 1856, the nineteenth-century Nate Silvers were happy to declare the antislavery movement a radical, fringe idea. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln won on a radical program of change.
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