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Presented with an introduction to Marxism in the Age of Trump (2018)1 and “Why I wish Hillary had won”2 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, December 4, 2019. Video recording of presentation and audience Q&A discussion available online at: <https://youtu.be/EaOfsnrmSo0>. “Nothing’s ever promised tomorrow today. . . . It hurts but it might be the only way.” Kanye West, “Heard ‘Em Say” (2005) “You can’t always get what you want / But if you try, sometimes you find / You get what you need. [Read More]

A CENTRAL PLANK OF BERNIE SANDERS’ CURRENT BID for the nomination of the Democratic Party and of Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for Prime Minister before it collapsed is the Green New Deal. The proposals of Bernie’s Green New Deal are certainly possible — even if Bernie’s ability as president to form the political coalition necessary to implement them appear less plausible. The idea is: take leadership of the Democratic Party to gain access to state-power, then use Keynesian economic tools to transition to a carbon net-zero economy and gain the support of the working class through public investment and job creation. [Read More]

STARTING WITH THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, there have been two contrary tendencies in the development of social production: increased automation lowering socially necessary labor-time; and the desperation of people rendered superfluous as workers. For Marxism, this presented a social and political task for the working class to demand higher wages for fewer hours. An alternative to this would be for workers to try to fight against technology — the Luddites. Conversely, the capitalists could invest in machines instead of labor. [Read More]

Author’s note: This article was originally presented as a teach-in on the history of the Labour Left[^1] given to the Platypus chapter at the London School of Economics on December 5, 2019, a week before the UK election, in which Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide majority and inflicted a resounding defeat on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. The argument follows that of my article “‘Last illusions’: The Labour Party and the Left,” published in issue 97 of this review in 2017. [Read More]

THE RECENT AND PREDICTABLE CONSERVATIVE VICTORY in the UK General Elections has produced much outrage and wringing of hands on the European Left and abroad. They had hailed Corbyn as the promise of a return to working class politics, a chance to redeem the Labour Party from its recent Blairite past, and the man who would finally give a voice to the people. But the people decided to give its voice to a different man, and suddenly the working class is idiotic, racist, fascistic even. [Read More]