Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, many tens of thousands of people have taken to the street in protest — some for the first time. Now the question is: What’s next? What can be done? Biden has within his power many different executive authorities that would provide abortion access in all 50 states. But it will require a big struggle to make it happen. With trigger laws pending to go into effect it is essential that the movement make these demands now! Watch the webinar onli...
Jun 29, 2022•49 min
The past, as they say, is never truly past. In recent months, Soviet nationality policy, a topic many thought consigned to academic backwaters and communist happy hours, has been thrust into the forefront of public conversation. The war raging in Ukraine has brought to the forefront questions about the borders, languages, and ethnicities of the country. How did they get that way, who is responsible, and how do these questions impact the causes and consequences of the current crisis? The conversa...
Jun 15, 2022•33 min
Women’s History Month is a time to recommit ourselves to the unfinished struggle for women’s liberation, and this year it is even more crucial than ever. The conservative leaning Supreme Court is considering gutting or even overturning Roe v. Wade, which would roll back women’s hard-won and fundamental right to abortion. The current attacks on abortion rights are the culmination of decades of reactionary organizing to establish extreme reproductive control by challenging birth control access, cr...
Jun 14, 2022•23 min
The overthrow of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War restructured global imperialism and all of world politics. Without an understanding of the internal logic of imperialism, some hoped that now there would be a “peace dividend,” a period after the Cold War where the United States and its junior partners would have no reason to initiate more wars and invasions. The illusion was that the lone superpower would not be threatened by any potential rival, and therefore peace and calm would re...
Jun 06, 2022•57 min
On Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin undertook what he referred to as a “special military operation…to de-militarise and de-Nazify Ukraine.” Western bourgeois media immediately decried these stated goals, regularly repeating that the allegations of Nazism in Ukraine are nothing more than Russian “fake news.” Former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, went so far as to flatly state that “there are no Nazis in the Ukraine.” Similar claims resound throughout the mass media’s echo cha...
May 25, 2022•29 min
On May 11, the U.S. Senate voted down the Women’s Health Protection Act, 49-51. The WHPA would have made abortion legal, eliminating the role of the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion and nullifying the pending Supreme Court decision, the draft copy of which has already been leaked to the media. The Democratic Party leadership is responsible for this catastrophe because they refused to forcefully defend abortion rights and women’s rights over the past two decades. It was not a priority for t...
May 13, 2022•4 min
The Supreme court has declared war against women and our basic rights to control our own bodies. Now is the time to fight back. Millions of people going into the streets would make it clear that without justice there can be no peace. A heroic individual has leaked to the public the decision by the Supreme Court to end abortion rights by overturning the Roe v Wade decision, and the later Casey decision. Read the full statement here: https://www.liberationnews.org/supreme-court-declares-war-on-wom...
May 04, 2022•5 min
Brian Becker gives a virtual lecture on the importance of V.I. Lenin's State and Revolution, and how important it is to understand and maintain the revolutionary nature of Marxist theory and practice. Brian is a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, and a host on The Socialist Program with Brian Becker (https://soundcloud.com/thesocialistprogram). You can watch the original video of the presentation here: https://www.youtube....
Apr 29, 2022•20 min
Karl Marx wrote to Lincoln in 1864 that he was sure that the “American anti-slavery war” would initiate a “new era of ascendancy” for the working classes for the “rescue…and reconstruction of a social world”. The Black historian Lerone Bennett, writing 100 years later, called Reconstruction, “the most improbable social revolution in American history”. Clothed in the rhetoric and incubated within the structure of “American Democracy,” it was nonetheless crushed, drowned in blood, for being far to...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Richard Becker speaks at the Party for Socialism and Liberation's forum "Crisis in Ukraine & Anti-war Analysis", discussing the latest events in Europe, and the roots of the crisis.
Mar 22, 2022•16 min
The Biden administration announced a major escalation in its sanctions against Russia yesterday with a ban on the import of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal to the United States. A White House press statement said that the United States made this decision “in close consultation with our allies and partners around the world” and with bipartisan consensus. This move from the U.S. government fuels the flames of global tensions to the benefit of giant energy and military corporation...
Mar 18, 2022•5 min
The war in Ukraine is ushering in a new period of heightened danger in world politics and the threat of a global conflict that would devastate humanity. Socialists and people who want peace need to recognize that the entire U.S. foreign policy and military establishment is now organized around “great power conflict” against Russia and China as the defining strategy for decades to come. It is essential to recognize that Russia, China and other countries are not being targeted fundamentally becaus...
Mar 14, 2022•7 min
Originally from Chicago, Ill, George L. Jackson grew up in California. In 1961, a young Jackson convicted of armed robbery for allegedly stealing $70 from a gas station. Outrageously, Jackson was sentenced to one year to life, despite assurances from his attorney of a favorable deal if he plead guilty. Jackson would experience the racist injustice of the U.S. system at the height of the global liberation movements of the era, which couldn’t help but bleed into the rapidly expanding U.S. prison s...
Mar 08, 2022•17 min
La operación militar rusa en Ucrania pone de manifiesto que el mundo ha llegado a una peligrosa bifurcación. Es de vital importancia que la gente en Estados Unidos, la que obtiene gran parte de la información de los medios de comunicación burgueses que funcionan como una cámara de eco del gobierno, sepa que la crisis actual es el subproducto de un largo esfuerzo del Estado estadounidense para establecer una dominación absoluta en toda Europa. Su política tiene como objetivo socavar la seguridad ...
Feb 27, 2022•14 min
The crisis in Ukraine dramatically escalated over the course of the last week, culminating in yesterday’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics by Russia and the subsequent deployment of Russian troops into these areas. The United States and European powers are now rolling out sanctions targeting Russia, including Germany’s suspension of the critical NordStream 2 gas pipeline. The sanctions announced so far by the Biden administration in particular targets the financial secto...
Feb 26, 2022•14 min
The Russian military operation in Ukraine highlights that the world has reached a dangerous fork in the road. It is critically important for people in the United States, who are receiving the bulk of their information from the capitalist media that functions as an echo chamber for the U.S. government, to know that the current crisis is the byproduct of a long effort by the United States to establish absolute domination throughout Europe. The U.S. policy is aimed at undermining Russia’s security ...
Feb 25, 2022•12 min
From its beginning, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” in Canada has been a vehicle for the far right to promote their views and press their reactionary demands. Despite being labeled the “trucker protest” by the corporate media, it does not represent the interests of workers in the trucking industry or otherwise. Its leadership from the beginning included far-right political figures and former police and security state employees. If met, its main demand — to end vaccine mandates — wouldn’t improve ...
Feb 23, 2022•20 min
When the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed in October 1949, the country’s economy was in a shambles, devastated by decades of war and ravaged by inflation triggered by global forces beyond local control. The Communist Party of China and the new revolutionary government faced tremendous challenges in restoring order to rural and urban areas, securing the country’s territory from foreign influence or invasion, and establishing conditions of stability and security within which the people co...
Feb 19, 2022•52 min
In November 2016, shortly after the election of Donald Trump, U.S. diplomats in Cuba began to complain about hearing strange noises and experiencing various symptoms including nausea, headaches and hearing loss. Those noises were ultimately shown to have been common crickets. But the U.S. government’s claim that its diplomats had been “attacked” (at first by sonic weapons and later by microwave weapons) and were suffering “Havana syndrome” not only persisted, but expanded in the years that follo...
Feb 04, 2022•6 min
Although Marx himself only mentioned the “base” and “superstructure” in (by my count) two of his works, the base-superstructure “problem” remains a source of serious contention for Marxists, our sympathizers, and our critics. Despite its outsized role in Marxist debates, the model can, when contextualized and understood in its nuances, be quite useful for analyzing capitalist society and organizing for socialism [1]. Marx explicitly introduces the distinction between the base and superstructure ...
Feb 03, 2022•21 min
The contemporary political economy of the People’s Republic of China, the nature of the Chinese system, has been the subject of much discussion and debate in mainstream academic, media, and political circles, as well as on the left. Since the end of the 1970s, China has pursued policies of “reform and opening” to develop its economy, a process that has resulted in the massive growth of production, China’s emergence as a major player in global trade, and the lifting of around 800 million people o...
Jan 28, 2022•1 hr 2 min
The Biden administration, Pentagon and NATO allies are conducting a dangerous and reckless campaign against Russia — one that has the potential to turn into a catastrophe for the people of the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the world. The aim is to strengthen the U.S. position as the dominant world superpower, a thoroughly bipartisan goal. In recent months, Russia has been the object of intense media demonization designed to win over the U.S. public to support this campaign. The Party for So...
Jan 27, 2022•8 min
Workers across the country are wondering with increasing desperation: Will the COVID crisis ever end? Two years after the first case of the virus was detected, society is becoming increasingly, bitterly divided over how to address this crucial question. All the while the death toll continues to mount. The situation is not hopeless. Although right wing demagogues have slowed the vaccination process and intensified the spread of the virus by sowing doubt about the most basic public health measures...
Jan 19, 2022•6 min
Editorial Collective Note: This is a new introduction to alienation that replaces our earlier introduction written in 2006. It’s part of our renovation and expansion of our “Fundamentals of Marxism” series and other articles on Marxist theory and the class struggle. Offering a brief introduction to Marx’s theory of alienation is not a straightforward task. This is due, in part, to conflicting interpretations of key aspects of Marx’s project directly related to alienation, the timing of the publi...
Jan 13, 2022•17 min
As the Omicron variant causes record levels of infection in the United States, the end of the pandemic seems as far away as ever. But far from preparing a robust response to defeat the virus, the Biden administration is preparing to surrender and encourage the public to “learn to live with” COVID indefinitely. When the Party for Socialism and Liberation pointed out the fact that China has in fact succeeded at virtually eliminating deaths from the virus, we were attacked by far-right pundits like...
Jan 10, 2022•19 min
Environmentalists have long stressed limits to human interaction with nature. It’s commonly argued that transgressing “natural limits” caused the environmental crises we face today. While this sentiment might direct our attention to the severity and scale of destabilizing contradictions in our relationship with nature, its underlying analysis is unable to grasp and overcome the root cause of these contradictions: capitalist production. A deeper and more critical understanding of society’s relati...
Dec 21, 2021•22 min
El Partido por el Socialismo y la Liberación se une a millones de personas en todo el país para expresar nuestra completa indignación por la absolución de Kyle Rittenhouse de todos los cargos. Una vez más, el sistema judicial de Estados Unidos ha funcionado para proteger a un asesino racista, que salió a las calles de Kenosha el 25 de agosto de 2020 para hacerle guerra a la gente que protestaba por los disparos de la policía a Jacob Blake, un hombre negro de 29 años. El veredicto es un exasperan...
Dec 17, 2021•16 min
Después de pasar semanas llevando a cabo negociaciones en la trastienda con el senador Joe Manchin, la senadora Krysten Sinema y otros demócratas de derechas en el Congreso sobre el presupuesto del programa social, el gobierno de Biden anunció ayer un “marco” que abandona algunos de los elementos más importantes de la propuesta original. Como parte de la capitulación de la administración ante los derechistas, ha acordado recortar a la mitad la asignación total a los programas sociales: de 3,5 bi...
Dec 11, 2021•11 min
The Russian revolution marked the beginning of a new period in human history. It was the first time that the oppressed were able to come to power – to take power and hold onto power. It truly had a transforming effect on the world. In this part of this series, we will lay the basis for later discussing what was to become the most famous split in political history: what is known as the Trotsky-Stalin split. We have to keep in mind that these names do not represent just individuals, but political ...
Nov 30, 2021•48 min
The Party for Socialism and Liberation joins with millions of people across the country in expressing our complete outrage at the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges. Once again, the U.S. court system has functioned to protect a racist murderer, who went out into the streets of Kenosha on August 25, 2020 to wage war on people protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man. The verdict is an infuriating reminder of the fundamentally white supremacist nature of the...
Nov 20, 2021•13 min
