BACK ISSUES
2008
*Crisis: 'Worse than they want you to think'
*Bill Gates' plan to Fix Capitalism'
*How Red Was Plato?
*Abolish Money?
*Review: John Gray's Black Mass Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
*Alternatives to Capitalism
*Can Social Work change anything?
*Crisis in News and Letters Committees
*Split in News and Letters Committees
* Cyril Smith 1929-2008
*Trying to Save Capitalism from Itself
*Review: Paul Mason Live Working or Die Fighting
*Unpopular Capitalism?
*Reification in the 21st C: Lukacs' Dialectic – the First 100 Years
*Iranian Regime Arrests Socialist Students
*Review: Anselm Jappe and the 'automatic subject
*Talk to the Anarchists
*Darfur: ”This is not a clash of civilizations”
*The Limits of Stoicism in the crisis

By David Black

As Raya Dunayevskaya put it in Philosophy and Revolution (1973): “Because the transformation of reality is central to the Hegelian dialectic, Hegel’s philosophy comes to life, over and over again, in all periods of crisis and transition, when a new historic turning point has been reached, when the established society is undermined and a foundation is laid for a new social order.”
In 2009 the undermining is well under way, but where is the foundation for a new social order? READ IN FULL

Comments from George Shaw and Russell Rockwell

Franklin Rosemont: poet, surrealist activist 1943-2009

From New World Resource Center, Chicago - 13 April 2009 - Franklin Rosemont, celebrated poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and surrealist activist, died Sunday, April 12 in Chicago. He was 65 years old. MORE

'The Destruction of Capital' and the Current Economic Crisis

In contrast to some radical theorists who maintain that the current crisis has little or nothing to do with Marx's law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit, Andrew Kliman argues that the crisis has a lot to do with it - though not in the sense that a recent fall in the rate of profit 'caused' the recent crisis). Kliman's new analysis of the roots of crisis focuses on the concept of 'destruction of capital', the tendential fall in the rate of profit, and the debt. The paper can be read at http://akliman.squarespace.com/crisis-intervention/ (there's a 'NEW!' bug next to it).

The Capitalism of Philosophy?

Sohn-Rethel on Intellectual and Manual Labour Reconsidered

David Black of The Hobgoblin gave a talk at the Long-Range Tactical Critical Theory session organised by Principia Dialectica on 9th January 2009 in London. MORE.

Mode of Production or Empire of Plunder?

Rome: Empire of the Eagles by Neil Faulkner [2008] takes issue with the 'orthodox' Marxist view that Roman civilization was based upon a 'slave mode of production'. The core argument is that the Roman Empire is best understood as 'a dynamic system of military imperialism' sustained by a constant drive for new conquests. MORE

Ten Days That Shook the British Left: the Oil Refinery Wildcats

EDITORIAL: "The current British reaction to out-of-control capitalism resembles the people asleep on a train who wake up to find nobody is driving it and then carry out panic attacks on the other passengers." Read in full

Students under attack by Iranian regime condemn Israeli atrocities in Gaza

A statement by the students organisation, January 16, 2009, says that "the Israeli army has committed a crime against humanity."  Of their own government they say it is "using the crisis in Gaza to achieve gains for themselves.  They suppress independent forces inside Iran and try to turn public attention away from internal problems and crises. "  SEE IN FULL

Gambian Journalist and Human Rights Campaigner Abdou Karim Sanneh Faces Deportation

Sanneh has been released pending a Home Office decision... MORE

The Return of the Israeli 'Refuseniks'

In 2002 the pain and suffering inflicted upon millions of innocent civilians in the name of the "settlements" in Gaza and the West Bank lead a group of 50 combat officers and soldiers of the Israeli Defence Force to draft a devasting critique of the IDF known as The Combatants Letter. MORE

The Israeli offensive against Gaza must stop immediately !

The shocking case of Baby P, who died after being “used as a punchbag,” despite being on theHaringey child protection register, shows that the question John Campbell posed in The Hobgoblin a few months ago, Can Social Work Change Anything? is still relevant. Campbell argued that “there needs to be links built between struggles of social workers and the theoretical study of Marxism and how it relates to live struggles, specifically in terms of the type of society that we want to build.” Now, another social worker, Charlie Porter, has sent us a critique of Campbell’s article from a 'Trotskyist' perspective. MORE