Category Archives: Lit Review

This essay explores the historiographic ideas and political experiences that influenced the work of Mike Davis, the prolific Marxist historian who died in 2022. — Read on read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article/22/2/76/399901/Mike-Davis-The-Road-to-City-of-Quartz-and-Beyond

Seen in this light, the tariffs are neither a more or less rational policy choice, nor solely an elaborate grift. They are part of a two-front, worldwide class war unfolding between national bourgeoisies, on the one hand, and between them and the proletarians of their respective countries on the other. That is, the tariffs areContinue reading “Tariffs as a Class Offensive – Heatwave”

In the early 1940s, the Frankfurt School developed a body of work—most of it only published posthumously decades later—that has been given the name ‘racket theory.’ That body of work is the topic of Section 2 of this essay. The other subject of this essay is the French (post-) Marxist theorist Jacques Camatte. In whatContinue reading “From Racket Theory to Real Domination | CTWG”

In recent years, the rise of platform monopolies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft has sparked a growing discourse among scholars and … Digital Lords or Capitalist Titans? Critiquing the Techno-Feudalism Narrative

Immanuel Wallerstein’s intellectual journey toward developing world-systems analysis began with his significant involvement in African studies during the 1960s. This article explores how Wallerstein’s decade as an Africanist, marked by his deep engagement with the decolonisation movements across the continent, laid the foundation for his later Marxist-oriented critique of the capitalist world-economy. — Read onContinue reading “Immanuel Wallerstein as Africanist: from modernisation to Marxism in the 1960s – ScienceOpen”

What follows is the first English translation, by Alex Jreisat, of the Palestinian revolutionary intellectual and martyr Basel al-Araj’s essay Al-dhakirah al-jarīhah lil-nakbah (“The Wounded Memory of the Nakba”), which explores political questions of memory during and after catastrophe through unflinching portraits of several geographies that faced Zionist annihilation campaigns from 1947 to 1949, includingContinue reading “The New York War Crimes | “All the Consent That’s Fit to Manufacture””

What I remember most isn’t anger or shock, but loneliness.  The feeling was pronounced.  I was saddened by what I viewed at the time as a betrayal.  (I view it now as normal protocol.)  But the sense of being alone on the issue, embedded in every Palestinian’s consciousness, felt almost brutal.  Indeed, calling Zionist colonizationContinue reading “No Resurrection: The Life and Death of the Modern University – Steve Salaita”

Telling somebody who is traveling to the United States or expressing unpopular opinions inside the United States to “be careful” seems perfunctory, the kind of thing one says (or hears) without thinking too much about it.  This time it didn’t feel perfunctory, though.  It managed to convey the severity of the moment.  — Read onContinue reading “Care and Carefulness in Today’s United States – Steve Salaita”

A recent conclusion to the series of articles chronicling the movement against Cop City offers an impressive benchmark for analyses of ongoing struggles, but many of our descriptions of the ruling bloc still presume that it is a unified, wholly self-conscious force, whose true motives are unknown to us. As an attempt to think inContinue reading “A Conspiracy of Dunces | Lake Effect Collective”

An interview with Palestine Action. — Read on newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/tactics-of-disruption