Moving against the stream

This blog is about revolutionary democracy, socialism, and exactly what that means in the United States in the 21st century.

Activists without a Movement: Antiwar in the Age of Obama

During the Bush years, it seemed for all the world like there was a mass antiwar movement. We had hundreds of thousands of people coming out to Washington, tens of thousands in New York, local rallies could net over a thousand people on a rainy day. Literally hundreds of groups around the country had sprung up and there was real sentiment against the wars. Particularly after 2005, sentiment turned brutally against George W. Bush, and the retaking of Congress in 2006 by Democrats seemed to turn on this very issue. But something was amiss.

An Unfinished Revolution: the United States

This is the first part of a multi-part essay that will, I hope, form something of the theoretical backbone of the site. This installment is about what I see as the unfinished nature of the American Revolution and the tasks still facing us here in the “Belly of the Beast.”

The Kim Dynasty and Socialism

Hereditary succession is underway in what is ostensibly a socialist state, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. The accession of Kim Jong Un to what amounts to the throne is a surreal mockery of workers’ democracy, in one of the final gasps of world Stalinism as the autarkic dictatorship tries to survive along the transition. Wailing and gnashing of teeth – quite literally – are the order of the day in North Korea, as Kim Jong Il’s leadership is mourned with a grief so false that it almost becomes real. But for Marxists, it means that we need to analyze and understand what is really at work in the DPRK.

Introduction

We are living in an epoch of tremendous revolutionary potential. The democratic revolutions in the Arab world, the anti-austerity and anti-Wall Street movements that have rocked Europe and the United States, a worldwide crisis of the capitalist system – all have shaken up a period where truly transformative, socialist politics seemed to be off the agenda. Yet the far left is in disarray. This site, at its heart, is a reaction to the state of the left.