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The Benevento Uprising
In anarchist history, 8 April 1877, a group of anarchists including a young Errico Malatesta marched into the small village of Letino. Chaos ensued as they looted the town safe and burned the village tax documents and property deeds in the streets. It was one of the earliest examples of a new anarchist strategy: “Propaganda […]
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Is There a Future for the Left?
…the Left narrative, no matter how accurate and intellectually powerful it may be, cannot expect to catch the imagination of the citizenry without including a vision for a real alternative future. Moreover, working-class institutions need to be reinstituted for the enhancement of class consciousness and authentic socialist parties need to be rediscovered for the Left […]
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Paradise: A Dystopian Anti-Capitalist Gem
The 2023 German film Paradise went virtually unnoticed by commentators on the socialist left. Yet, it is amongst the best dystopian anti-capitalist films produced in the decade. The film follows the life of Max, an employee of Aeon, a company that buys life years from the poor to give them to the rich. Yes, you […]
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Santa Claus and the Contradictions of Bourgeois Ideology

A comrade recently pointed my attention to a comedy skit by Foil Arms and Hog called “Santa is Captured by the Russians,” where for two minutes Mr. Claus is interrogated by the Soviet police. Below are some excerpts from the conversation: Santa: I think there has been some sort of a mistake. You see I […]
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In Search of Kindness
Now is the season when priests proclaim, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men” and mainstream media soothe us with stories and images of kindness. But why do peace and goodwill remain just dreams? Why is kindness so rare in the world today? Why is it limited to the personal sphere? Why is the wider world […]
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The Intimate Embrace Between Liberalism and the Far Right

For Comrade N. Sankaraiah (1922–2023) One of the curiosities of our time is that the far right is quite comfortable with the established institutions of liberal democracy. There are instances here and there of disgruntled political leaders who refuse to accept their defeat at the ballot box (such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro) and […]
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An Overdue Look at the Environmental Crisis
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s […]
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Native Son: Big Bill Haywood
[The] barbarous gold barons do not find the gold, they do not mine the gold, they do not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belongs to them. — Big Bill Haywood, addressing commencement of miners’ strike, Colorado, 1903. Work taught him of injustice early and converted him to socialism. His […]
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The Coup Against the Third World: Chile, 1973

In anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the 11 September coup against Chile’s Popular Unity government, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Instituto de Ciencias Alejandro Lipschutz Centro de Pensamiento e Investigación Social y Política release a new dossier analysing the coup and its effects on the Third World and non-aligned countries. On 11 […]
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Marx, Gandhi and Primitive Accumulation: A Response to Akeel Bilgrami
Akeel Bilgrami’s article “Gandhi and Liberal Modernity: The Vexed Question of Caste” undertakes a materialist interpretation of Gandhi’s thought against the background of capitalism and the agrarian question. Gandhi’s idealization of precapitalist communities is given “descriptive” dignity as an implicit grasp of the inapplicability of the Marxist notion of “primitive accumulation” to India. While those […]