REVIEW In a very well-known passage, Marx said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” Elsewhere, he said, “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs [...]

Everyone is rightly upset about what the army did in Tahrir Square last night.  Let’s remember, however, the military already moved against peaceful protesters in Suez and is accused of involvement in arrest and torture of hundreds during the uprising. And almost every day there is a statement from the army warning strikers and protesters, [...]

“I have a specific personal experience with Man Against Myth which, I believe, bears retelling. This may even be of some benefit to the younger members of the academic community. As I acquired some reputation as a teacher, I also stood charged with being a teacher with a ‘bias’, possibly the most damning charge that [...]

There are plenty of symptoms that the working class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has for some time been moving in the wrong groove ; that the present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusively, keep it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that [...]

The capitalist class had also become unable to manage the immense productive system of this country; that they on the one hand expanded production so as to periodically flood all the markets with produce, and on the other became more and more incapable of holding their own against foreign competition. Thus we find that, not [...]

Seeing the root of the failure of the  approaches to the study of society in their implicit (or explicit) acceptance of the unreconciled antinomy of subject and object of knowledge. A genuine way out is attainable only through a radical dissolution of that antinomy itself by recognizing the dialectical unity of subject and object. As the [...]

“As a matter of fact, the independence of trade unions in the class sense, in their relations to the bourgeois state can, in the present conditions, be assured only by a completely revolutionary leadership…” Leon Trotsky 1940 (The manuscript of the following article was found in Trotsky’s desk. Obviously, it was by no means a [...]

This collection of essays  of personal reflection and journey through the world of Mike Yates from the early 1950s to the present explorehis collection of essaya explore how a person’s class “position,” life experience, and interaction with the dominant capitalist culture shapes family, jobs, work life, personal choices, attitudes towards others, self-awareness, and self-confidence. The [...]

Stand up, all victims of oppression For the tyrants fear your might Dont cling so hard to your possessions For you have nothing, if you have no rights Let racist ignorance be ended For respect makes the empires fall Freedom is merely privilege extended Unless enjoyed by one and all Chorus: So come brothers and [...]

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 [...]