Editor's note: A Spanish translation of this article is available here. In the suffering of the Global South, the brutality of capitalism lies bare. In a footnote toward the end of Capital, Marx wrote that the colonized subject reveals “what the bourgeois makes of...
Paulo Freire’s centennial: Political pedagogy for revolutionary organizations
All revolutionary processes are educational. From organizing meetings and study groups to writing protest speeches and propaganda before the revolutionary moment to creating new revolutionary educational and cultural institutions and training teachers and specialists...
Beyond the sprouts of capitalism: China’s early capitalist development and contemporary socialist project
This article was originally published at Monthly Review Online on March 03, 2021, and has been lightly revised with approval from the author. Introduction The contemporary political economy of the People’s Republic of China, the nature of the Chinese system, has been...
What is ideology? An introduction to the Marxist theory of ideology
Editor’s note: A Spanish translation of this article is available here. Introduction Marxist ideology is one of the most potent weapons the working and oppressed classes have, a weapon that our class can and has used to not only win reforms but to build revolutionary...
Hammer and hoe: Alabama communists during the Great Depression
Robin D.G. Kelley first published Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression in 1990, although he began working on it as a doctoral student in the 1980s. In the book, Kelley narrates the emergence of the communist movement in Alabama during the...
Reading Kelley’s “Hammer and hoe” as organizers today
This article accompanies Liberation School's new study guide for Robin D.G. Kelley's, Hammer and Hoe. As the re-popularization of socialism continues, the practical lessons today’s organizers can learn from the history of the communist movement in the U.S. become...
Assata Shakur: The making of a revolutionary woman
< In commemorating Black August, we commemorate the struggle of those who have fought before us and faced violent repercussions from the state. We uplift the revolutionary history of the Black working class and its fundamental position in forging and leading the...
Relative surplus value: The class struggle intensifies
Introduction Toward the end of our earlier introduction to surplus value, the heart and motor of the class struggle, we wrote that: “The rate of surplus value for the capitalist is the rate of exploitation for the worker. By merely prolonging the working day, the...
Walter Rodney’s revolutionary praxis: An interview with Devyn Springer
The following interview, facilitated by Derek Ford, took place via e-mail during June and July in preparation for Black August, when progressive organizers and activists deepen our study of and commitment to the Black struggle in the U.S. and the anti-colonial and...