The recent layoff of 500,000 employees by the Cuban government brought very different responses from socialist groups. For instance, the Party for Socialism and Liberation wrote about it here, and the International Socialist Organization here. How should we read these
Reflections on history
Given that today is the 20th anniversary of a pivotal event in history, perhaps some reflections on history are in order. But “optimism” is not the right word for it; neither is “pessimism”. Certainly, if we emphasise the world wars,
Socialism as saintliness
As part of my ongoing efforts to understand humans, I recently read William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience”. (Now, if only there were a book “The Varieties of Capitalist Experience”!) As you might expect, I do not share James’
Ideology survey
Extremely interesting statistics. This is a national survey of 1,000 US adults, a couple weeks ago, 95% confidence interval is +/- 3 percentage points. Which is a better system – capitalism or socialism? 53% Capitalism20% Socialism27% Not sure That is,
The Nation Reimagines Socialism
There is a lot of discussion happening on broad vision at the moment. In particular, the Nation has a whole Forum on “Reimagining Socialism”. This looks fantastic. I haven’t read everything there yet, but it looks great. There’s a lead
Dissecting d'Amato
A response to a couple of articles in the Socialist Worker, brought to my attention by a friend: Refusing to be ruled over How do anarchists see change happening? I think this is a very interesting discussion. It is a
Things to learn about the world
I am interested pretty broadly in radical politics, and especially in alternatives, vision for a better world, and strategy of how to get there. This means alternatives in all realms of society: politics, economics, kinship, environment, gender relations, race relations,