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Marx and Engels on Karl Kautsky
. That Vladimir Lenin and his fellow revolutionaries of 1917 considered the Social-Democratic leader Karl Kautsky a pedant and a philistine is well known. Lenin pinpointed the reason...
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Materialism, postmodernity, and Enlightenment
Jacobin published an article just over a week ago entitled “Aliens, Antisemitism, and Academia,” written by Landon Frim and Harrison Fluss. “Alt-right conspiracy theorists have...
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David Riazanov and the tragic fate of Isaak Rubin
Reportedly, the Russian revolutionary and pioneering Marxologist David Riazanov once insulted Stalin to his face at a party meeting held during the mid-1920s. At the time, the...
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Gary Johnson, Syria, and the apocalypse
. The best we can do right now with respect to Syria and various other world-historical phenomena is predict likely outcomes, since we have no ability to meaningfully alter the course of...
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Moar like Absurdo, amirite?
. Following the missile strike on Shayrat in Western Syria last Thursday, a wave of protests broke out across the United States. These proved something of a mixed bag, as one might expect. In...
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Leon Trotsky, “demon” of the revolution
. Comrades, we love the sun that gives us light, but if the rich and the aggressors were to try to monopolize the sun, we should say: “Let the sun be extinguished, let darkness reign, eternal...
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Marxism and historical predictions
. Because Marxism addresses itself principally to history, its adherents often traffic in historical predictions. This was true of Marx and Engels no less than their followers, and...
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Solidarity after Charlottesville
Like everyone else watching the Charlottesville protests, I was appalled by the violence and hateful rhetoric displayed by white nationalists over the weekend. I cannot, however, say I was surprised....
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Antifascism: Pros and cons
Saturday’s lopsided standoff between fascist and antifascist demonstrators in Boston, in which the latter outnumbered the former roughly a hundredfold, has been occasion for some relief among liberals...
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Georg Lukács, philosopher of Bolshevism
I’ve posted about Georg Lukács in the past: here, here, and here. Lukács’ excellent polemic against Kautsky, from 1924, was also featured. Though he was denounced in 1924 by the vulgarian Zinoviev, and...
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CLR James, critical theory, and the dialectic
The writings of the Trinidadian Marxist and revolutionary Cyril Lionel Robert James contain some of the noblest reflections on human freedom ever put to page. Obviously the present author does not...
View ArticleHillel Ticktin’s contributions to Marxist theory
South African Trotskyist Hillel Ticktin first made a name for himself in the 1970s and 1980s, with a groundbreaking reexamination of the political economy of the USSR. Much of his work has been...
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Kandinsky
Art as rhetoric Boris Groys Particular Cases . . In light of recent discussions about art as knowledge production and the ways art should or could be taught, it seems fitting to look back at the early...
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Five hundred glass negatives by Lucia Moholy
Mary Jo Bang Paris Review 09.17.2017 . In 1915, twenty-one-year-old Lucia Schulz wrote in her journal that she could imagine herself using photography as “a passive artist,” recording everything from...
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A hundred years since the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht
On this day exactly a century ago Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were brutally murdered in cold blood by Freikorps troops under the command of the Social Democratic Party. It decapitated the...
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