history
Ten years since the biggest protests in history
February 22, 2013 – Green Left TV – The
Day of the people: Gracchus Babeuf and the communist idea
Doug Enaa Greene delivered the above talk to the Revolutionary Students Union at the Un
‘Toward the United Front’: Recovering revolutionary memory for 21st century socialism (+ video)
Part 1.
February 16, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – On February 3, 120 socialists took part in a Toronto meeting to celebrate publication of Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, available in paperback from Haymarket Books. This 1300-page volume is the seventh book of documents on the world revolutionary movement in Lenin’s time edited by John Riddell. Riddell’s address to the Toronto meeting, below, explains the purpose of the book and the publishing project. The video of the event, filmed by Left Streamed, begins above and continues below. It was moderated by Abbie Bakan, with additional commentary by David McNally, Greg Albo, Suzanne Weiss and Paul Kellogg.
50 years since ‘The Feminine Mystique’
By Suzanne Weiss
January 31, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- Fifty years ago, on February 13, 1963, the publication of US writer and activist Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique sparked a new awakening in the thinking of women across North America. Friedan denounced the repression women suffered in the aftermath of World War II, when they were forced out of wartime jobs and convinced to accept the role of keepers of the home.
Profiteers of the market launched an unrelenting but subtle propaganda campaign to venerate women as wife and mother. This role, Friedan said, was the “feminine mystique”.
This domestic existence became, Friedan wrote, “a religion, a pattern by which all women must now live or deny their femininity”. In submitting to this concept of womanhood, women gave up their self-respect, recognition of their talents and abilities, and — most importantly — their identities. Fundamentally, Friedan said, this was a scam to sell more consumer goods to women, who were to be the major purchasers for home and family.
A massive rally was held in Caracas in defence of the
Paul Le Blanc on Martin Luther King: Christian core, socialist bedrock
January 22, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The following article was first published in Against The Current #96 (January/February 2002) and is one of the first to focus on the fact that Martin Luther King was a socialist from the time he war a college student until his death. It is posted at Paul Le Blanc's suggestion and with his permission.
For more on Martin Luther King, click HERE.
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The life and example of Martin Luther King, Jr. are central to any quest for a better world—in part because he so effectively illuminated, and helped people struggle against, the realities of racism, highlighting the link between issues of racial and economic justice. I will argue here that his outlook represents a remarkable blending of Christian, democratic, and socialist perspectives.