by Rick Wolff, 23.12.09 The 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States (and especially Tables 574 to 650), published by the US Census Bureau, provides many statistics that can update understanding of today’s working class and possibilities of its movement.  The Abstract counts 154 million people as members of the US labor force in 2008. [...]

Gramsci and hegemony Antonio Gramsci is an important figure in the history of Marxist theory. While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provided a rigorous analysis of capital at the social and economic levels – particularly showing how capital antagonises the working class and gives rise to crisis – Gramsci supplemented this with a sophisticated theory [...]

By Mihael A. Lebowitz (chapter 5 of. Build It Now).. Socialism Doesn’t Drop from the Sky Talk presented to the National Conference of Revolutionary Students for the Construction of Socialism of the XXI Century in Merida, Venezuela on 22 July 2005 Some people think you can change the world without taking power. No, they argue, [...]

“Communism is for us not a stable state which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from premises now in existence” – Marx. By Bertell Ollman I As is [...]

Beyond Capital: Marx’s political economy of the working class Karl Marx speaks to us today and that he is very relevant to the reality we face — the task of going beyond capital and building socialism for the 21st century. By Michael A. Lebowitz February 16, 2009 — It is well known that when Karl [...]

by Rick Wolff     The transition out of feudalism to capitalism in Europe, mostly from the 17th to the 19th centuries, took multiple forms.  It was uneven as well, happening in different ways at different rates in different places.  Marx studied that transition’s various dimensions because they offered valuable lessons for the different transition [...]

Resolution adopted by the International Assembly of the Anti-imperialist Camp, Italy, December 6, 2009 The historical systemic crisis of capitalism, new geo-political conflicts and the Anti-imperialist Camp’s tasks a) The collapse of the world economy following the financial crash which erupted in the USA on September 2008 (a crash which had been announced by several [...]

By Michael A. Lebowitz [Presentation at the launch of El Camino al Desarrollo Humano: ¿Capitalismo o Socialismo? (The Path to Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism?) at the Venezuelan International Book Fair, Filven, in Caracas on November 8, 2008. The English version of the pamphlet will be published in a forthcoming edition of Monthly Review.] The [...]

Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and Che Guevara  This is the Preface to Manifesto: Three Essays on How to Change the World published by Ocean Press If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you [...]

Class is not simply about the life chances of a given individual or a family; it is the prime mover in the constitution of modern society, governing both the distribution of power and the potential for social change. It therefore permeates all aspects of social existence…By focusing on class and class struggle our underlying purpose [...]