Past Posts by Descending Date

This Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library session covers the attacks on the pro-Palestine, anti-genocide movement being made in the name of "fighting antisemitism," A group discussion  follows several short presentations on the subject ...

The 200-year history of the Monroe Doctrine is a history of US imperialism. Among Washington’s recent junior partners, Israel stands out as an accomplice to the US imperial project not only in the old world but in this hemisphere as well.  Beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the course of what is labeled Manifest Destiny (term was applied in 1845) will be charted through the 19th century.  The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 is a continuation of the planned expansion across the North American continent. As the 19th century proceeded apace, the North defeated the South during the 1861-1865 Revolt ...

This talk will cover from the late 1970s to present, with main focus on the past few years. Two aspects: far rightwing direct action (e.g., direct attacks on racial, religious, gender, communist and other political attacks) and legislative rollbacks on the same groups (e.g., Moms for Liberty attempts to promote reactionary education policies). Also, it will cover various groups and their ideologies, chief social traits and international interconnections among them. Finally, some proposals to counter them. Our speaker, Al Sargis, is the founder of the Friedrich Engels Institute of Marxist War and Military Analysis ...

In the face of a renewed global crisis of overproduction, the imperialists have determined that, in the present conditions, their best chance of saving themselves and their system remains in huddling together under the military and economic leadership of the USA and aiming their combined force at the destruction of the primary centers of independence and sovereignty in the world – Russia and China. In doing so, they hope to bring about a repeat of the carnival of pillaging they enjoyed after the collapse of the USSR. They want to break Russia and China into pieces, subdue their peoples, and ...

Nora Barrows-Friedman of The Electoric Intifada will present and lead our discussion Nora Barrows-Friedman is a journalist, editor, radio broadcaster, musician, and mother. Since 2012 she has served as associate editor and audio production director for The Electronic Intifada, an independent publication focused on Palestinian issues. She is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014) ...

Palestinian-American Professor Rashid Khalidi has described Gaza as "a pressure cooker" that "had to explode." Israeli holocaust scholar Raz Segal has decried Israel’s assault on Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide.”The Palestinian military action in Gaza this week shows that "the colonial powers can no longer believe they can force people to live under the conditions Israel has subjected Palestinians to and expect no retaliation of the oppressed" says Khalidi. The Palestinian rebellion is a historic development in the Palestinian struggle that also signals a paradigm shift in the world situation. After brief presentations, ICSS will host an open ...

According to our speaker, the Biden administration’s lawfare against Trump issupported by the left because of their own McCarthyism. The national security state,through the Biden administration, is engaging in lawfare to eliminate Biden’s onlyserious challenger and fix the 2024 election. Much of the progressive movement, ratherthan protest and stop police state interference, is supportive of it, even though thislawfare will be used against them in the future. The cause for the silence among liberalsand leftists is their own McCarthyism: people are baited, and fear being baited – not asReds, but as Trump supporters. This left McCarthyism pushes people towards voting ...

This program will address how the Korean peninsula was tragically split, why it remains so, and its contemporary implications. Once part of the Japanese Empire, the Korean conflict degenerated into a stalemate. Most important was the admission by then US Secretary of State Dean Rusk on how the 38th Parallel was agreed to as the infamous demarcation line; why the decision was made to cross the 38th parallel; and how George Kennan urged Truman not to. This last development is most significant. And, how the stalemate in Korea impacted whether the U.S. would intervene in North Vietnam in April-May 1954 ...

Noah will discuss the issues that often arise when connecting Marxism and the working masses.  Noah Khrachvik is a proud working class member of the Communist Party USA and co-director of the Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis. He is 42 years old, married to the most understanding and patient woman on planet Earth (who puts up with all his deep-theory rants when he wakes up at two in the morning and can't get back to sleep) and has a thirteen-year-old son who is far too smart for his own good. When he isn't busy writing, organizing ...

The United States was a leading democracy two centuries ago. Now many other nations have leap-frogged over the US by developing better political/electoral systems. As a consequence, they also have better systems for healthcare, higher education, housing, and justice combined with increased personal safety.     The locked-down two-party system has joined with the vast inequality of wealth and power in the US in order to raise hurdles to block solutions that people want, create, and support. We will take a good look at those hurdles, many of which are now being highlighted during the presidential campaign of Cornel West, who is ...

The Modi led BJP is in its 10th year governing India. India is 5th largest economy, has landed a mobile land rover on Moon's South pole, improved industrial infrastructure and has reduced absolute poverty. In 2023, India also surpassed China in population, but the per capita income remained low, with unemployment rising, and widened income and wealth disparity under the neoliberal economy. Social tensions have risen with its aggressive Hindutva ideology. India is in BRICS, SCO, and G20, of which it is the president in 2023. With its strong ties with the US cemented in his visit to Washington this ...

President Obama famously announced the US foreign policy pivot to Asia: “To preserveUS hegemony, we have to make sure that America writes the rules of the global economyor China will." The US ruling class has pushed this topic of China to the top of ouragenda. US imperialism’s hostility to China is increasing with military threats, new rounds ofsanctions, and increasingly wild fabrications. The media have been saturated withallegations of human rights abuses, forced labor, religious persecution and “genocide.”Addressing these topics from an anti-imperialist perspective will be Sara Flounders.She will comment on the recent BRICS summit, flashpoints Xinjiang and Taiwan, andthe ...

Labor Day is more than just a holiday or a day for sales. From the first Labor Day March in 1882 in New York City to the the historic Pullman Strike of 1894, Labor Day has its roots in struggle. It was brought to you by the same folks who gave you the weekend: the Labor Movement. Labor Day is the twin of May Day! Let’s reclaim our history! Gene Ruyle is aetired union memtber with the California Faculty Association, a formeer delegate to the LA County Federation of Labor, and President of Veterans For Peace, East bay Chapter. He ...

MaryLouise Patterson, is the daughter of Langston Hughes’s cherished friends Louise Thompson Patterson, and William L. Patterson. Hughes was a frequent guest at the Patterson's home and was like an uncle to MaryLouise.   In 2016 she co-authored with Evelyn Louise Crawford a book entitled “Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond” in which they attempted to show Langston’s belief that a better world was a worker’s world had never died.   MaryLouise will start by showing a 17 minute video that introduces an audience to her parents, her co-author’s parents and their 40+ year relationship ...

Turkiye has come to the end of its rope, living the “good life” without producing but borrowing constantly and selling off its assets, pennies-to-the-dollar. Now the country is in a total collapse with the bills becoming due and nothing to show from all the years of endless wasting away of the national resources under capitalism.  Neocolonialism was created to be like this. Imperialism holds the client states in constant disequilibrium, debt, and violence, yet nurtures the hope of sitting at the table with the big boys one day. Unless there is a workers' revolution and a planned economy to reverse ...

On the night of January 12-13, 1948, Solomon Mikhailovich Mikhoels, a prominent actor and director in the Yiddish language Soviet theater and winner of the Stalin prize in 1946, together with a friend, Vladimir Golubov, were killed in a hit-and-run accident on a dark street in Minsk, Byelorussian SSR. Mikhoels was buried with honors and praised in the Soviet press. Nevertheless, rumors that he had been murdered by the Soviet state began to circulate almost immediately. During the 1960s these rumors multiplied, occasionally being repeated in official sources. Beginning in 1991 documents began to appear claiming that Joseph Stalin had ...