Protestors at the Philadelphia Tea Party on April 18, 2009. Source:Wikimedia Commons Editorial note: This essay was originally published in the now defunct journal The North Star, on October 8, 2013, during the US government shutdown crisis. It references several other articles by Horras and others which were published around the same time in 2010, on the website Information … [Read more...] about Slouching Towards Shutdown: Left Reflections on the Tea Party, Then & Now
Among the Ruins of Victory
Post and Grant Avenues looking northeast after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (credit: National Archives and Records Administration) Donald Trump was a test run. Worse than him is coming down the road within the decade. Get busy building. Movement activists who supported Biden emphasized that his presidency would give the movement breathing room. Okay. We have … [Read more...] about Among the Ruins of Victory
Organizing the Unorganized: The Left’s Task in the Labor Movement
Strike pickets in New York (1910) Image via Wikimedia Commons The utter rout of the Labour Party in the 2019 British elections has raised serious questions about the immediate viability of an electoral road to socialism “across the pond.” Some commentators have since tried to distance the democratic socialism of Jeremy Corbyn from that of his American counterpart … [Read more...] about Organizing the Unorganized: The Left’s Task in the Labor Movement
Goodbye Revolution?
Red Guards patrol at a fire in the Smolny Prospekt (1917)Image via Wikimedia Commons “In the eyes of the reformist, “hopes” for revolution seem vague because they do not understand the depth of the contemporary economic and political contradictions.”— Lenin, "Reformism in the Russian Social-Democratic Movement" (1911) In the wake of the disastrous 2008 financial crisis, … [Read more...] about Goodbye Revolution?
Base-Building: Activist Networking or Organizing the Unorganized?
Photo by Stephanie Olechowska. Philadelphia Tenants’ Union members confront wealthy slumlord Ajay Raju of Cross Properties, which is behind the mass eviction of Penn Wynn tenants in the Wynnefield section of West Philadelphia. The dominant left-wing political forms of our present moment are either amorphous “movements” without formal structures, or nongovernmental … [Read more...] about Base-Building: Activist Networking or Organizing the Unorganized?