henryjwallis

Alice Celik writes about the dissolution of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK):

“[...] armed struggle is over; now is the time for a political strategy. A risky but calculated move, in response to a profound popular aspiration.”

Adam Jones reads “AI” politically:

“Data centres function as an increasingly central part of the nervous system of an imperial, techno-capitalist order. Democratic politics holds the right to question their present and future existence.”

Francis Parny calls for mobilization on May Day against Trump and the war-mongering capitalist class that he serves:

“Only the people can rise up and make themselves heard, opposing this global chaos”

Olly Haynes reviews Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Hollande's new books:

“Where Hollande identifies himself with the state, Mélenchon identifies himself with the people—the mass of humanity organised as a collective actor.”

Tom O'Shea writes about James Connolly on this anniversary of the Easter Rising:

‘His thought and his life stand as compelling exemplars of a figure he would rightly praise: “the Socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom”’

Emre Öngün writes about the revolt in Turkey, the “peace process” with Öcalan and the Kurds, the growing youth movement, and the resurgence of Kemalism.

Youssef Bouchi writes on the importance of American socialism from his perspective as an Arab immigrant in Canada:

"Grassroots movements in the U.S. already understand this [...] Our task from the outside is to support them."

John Duncan calls the Left to ‘recognise the divisions hidden by shallow liberal universalist attacks on “woke” and instead build a truly universal movement defined by solidarity.’

John Duncan calls the Left to ‘recognise the divisions hidden by shallow liberal universalist attacks on “woke” and instead build a truly universal movement defined by solidarity.’

By writing The Peoples’ Era in 2014—a revolutionary theory for a “citizens’ revolution”—Mélenchon performed a Marxist analysis of contemporary capitalism and its crisis. He redefined the notion of “the people”, those for whom revolution is now necessary. He shed light on the objective necessity to break with the capitalist order. This break, this politics of rupture, is perfectly communist. And this is the heart beating in all the work of the France Unbowed: to unite the people around a program of rupture.

Jean Jaurès is not well-known or much-translated in English. The hero of turn-of-the-20th-century French socialism was revered across the international left following his assassination in 1914. This article discusses why he was loved by everyone from social democrats to individualist anarchists, and what can we learn from him today.

Citizen Marx is a new book that studies Marx’s intellectual development in conversation with 19th-century republicanism. I thought it was quite good.