While the lifeblood of capitalism—the pursuit of profit—remains the same, the specific ways capitalist’s pursue profit and protect their rule are constantly changing. Marx and Engels identified this trend in their 1848 Communist Manifesto, writing that “the...
Anyone who aspires to be a real communist or to understand the theory of modern communism must study Lenin’s pamphlet The State and Revolution. Lenin was able to nearly finish this monumental contribution to Marxism and revolution while on the run, living underground...
After Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey--whom he had praised during his presidential campaign--the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal re-entered public discourse in a serious way. Parts of the political establishment who are opposed to Trump are comparing...
In the opening weeks of the Trump administration, thousands of progressive students on college campuses in Seattle and Berkeley shut down professional demagogue and Breitbart propagandist Milo Yiannopoulous. Leftists in the United States were unanimous in their...
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has just declared a State of Emergency. It includes the creation of a Unified Command of police forces and the activation of the National Guard to “ensure public safety” in the face of new social unrest. This can only mean that an announcement...
Police brutality is one of the sharpest and most widely recognizable reminders that we live in a society dominated by an oppressing class. The cops commit some of the most shocking atrocities against poor and working people on a regular basis, and a broad section of...
Tools of repression For decades, into the 1980s, school districts across the country employed the “Officer Friendly” program that brought local cops into kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Their point was obvious: to “educate” children with the belief that the...
The following is adapted from Puryear’s book “Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America” (Liberation Books, 2013) In August 1971, a lawyer for big tobacco in Richmond, Va., sent a memorandum to an acquaintance at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with...
An updated study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement revealed that every 28 hours, on average, law enforcement officers in the United States killed a Black person in 2012. The pandemic of police violence is largely concentrated against Black communities, but the...