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Nonracialism Through Race (and Class)

By Betsy Esch and David Roediger

This article challenges us to go beyond an either-or approach to race and class. It is a very slightly edited version of an article originally published in 2006 in issue 56 of the print magazine New Socialist.

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Austerity with a Smile: The 2014 Ontario Election

By James Cairns

It’s always good to see Conservatives lose. And Tim “Zillion Job Cuts” Hudak was the biggest loser on election night in Ontario. Hudak’s macho version of Austerity-by-Sledgehammer failed to win broad support. The Conservatives lost legislative seats, and their share of the popular vote dropped. Of course, they’ll be back, refreshed by a new leader, and perhaps by the directionally-intriguing “enema from top to bottom” Doug Ford has kindly offered to give the party. For the moment, however, I certainly am relieved not to be waking up in Premier Hudak’s province.

Coasting on Borrowed Time: Making Sense of Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century
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Coasting on Borrowed Time: Making Sense of Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century

By Barry Finger

Review of Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard University Press, 2014)

French economist Thomas Piketty’s latest book, which first appeared in 2013 and was published in English in 2014, has stimulated a great deal of much-needed debate about the ever-growing level of social inequality in contemporary capitalism. It has certainly encouraged liberals, who seek an alternative to austerity policies that they believe might save capitalism from a profound social crisis. At the same time, it has baffled and irritated Marxists and other heterodox economists of the left, who feel the book misdirects our analysis of the nature of capitalist inequality.

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Queering Anti-Capitalist Organizing

By Alan Sears

These are challenging times for the anti-capitalist left. Despite the enormous attacks being waged in the name of austerity, there is little in the way of sustained resistance in the streets, workplaces, neighbourhoods or schools. The Left’s limited resources are being strained to the limits in struggles to organize against the tide.

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NGOization: Depoliticizing Activism in Canada

By Dru Oja Jay

Across Canada, movement organizations are preparing for the People’s Social Forum, coming up in August. There’s a buzz of excitement and anticipation in the air as committees elect delegates, and strategies are debated. When hundreds of activists gather in Ottawa in a few months, we will be drawing from a rich, long-simmering cauldron of theoretical discussion and insight issuing from astute on-the-ground observations.

Against Austerity: A Crucial Reference Point for the Left
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Against Austerity: A Crucial Reference Point for the Left

By Alan Sears

Review of Richard Seymour, Against Austerity: How We Can Fix the Crisis They Made (Pluto Press, 2014)

Richard Seymour’s new book is an unflinching and insightful analysis of the current situation in which the radical left finds itself. These are hard times for radicals in Northern Europe and North America. You would think this would be a period of mass radicalization, given the glaring inequality being produced by blatant attacks on social programs, wages, migrants’ rights and job security. Yet there are few effective fightbacks, and activist circles in some places are actually getting smaller.

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Hands Off Venezuela! What Has Been Happening since February and Why It Matters

By Susan Spronk

The recent destabilization campaign waged by the right-wing opposition has yet again made Venezuela a darling of the international media. While there is always a deafening media silence when the Bolivarian government wins an electoral mandate, throughout the month of February 2014 viewers were assailed with images of “innocent” student protesters—mostly from the academic bastion of the Venezuelan elite, the Central University of Venezuela—being brutalized by state security forces. 

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Unforgotten Wounds: Remembering Ali Mustafa

By David McNally

Toward the end of his review of the moving film, 5 Broken Cameras, came words that stayed with me. Celebrating this documentary of one Palestinian village’s resistance to colonization, Ali Mustafa quotes its cameraman and co-director, Emad Burnat: “Forgotten wounds cannot be healed. So I film to heal.”[1]

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Quebec Election 2014: What the Heck Happened, and What Does It Mean for the Left?

By Jeremie Bedard-Wien and Alain Savard

Two years after the defeat of the Charest government, Quebecers have chosen to give a strong mandate to the Liberals (PLQ). As a backdrop, a dramatic election campaign saw the Parti Québécois (PQ) rise and fall precipitously. What lessons should progressives draw from the re-alignment of the Quebec electoral map?

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Costa Rica Shuffles to the Left

By Elena Zeledon

The results of the second round of the presidential elections, won by Luis Guillermo Solis of the Citizens Action Party (PAC) with an astounding 77% of the popular vote compared to the 22% garnered by the pre-election favourite Johnny Araya of the National Liberation Party (PLN), represent the end of an entire historical period for this small but strategically important Central American nation.

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A Major Blow to the Right to Strike in Nova Scotia

By David Bush

In the dead of night on March 31 the Liberal government of Nova Scotia skulked into the provincial legislature and introduced essential service legislation, Bill 37, that stripped nearly 40 000 workers of their right to strike.

Three Years of Revolt in Syria
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Three Years of Revolt in Syria

By Joseph Daher


“Three years of hunger and suffering, but three years of pride and dignity.” Photo courtesy Joseph Daher.

The recent death of Canadian photo journalist and New Socialist Editorial Associate Ali Mustafa in a Syrian military bomb blast was a grim reminder of the brutal war that’s ongoing in Syria. Joseph Daher wrote a series of six articles in 2012 that analysed the Syrian rebellion. These articles can be found here. In this article Joseph Daher analyses the many forces of reaction within Syria, and celebrates three years of courageous struggle for democracy and social change.

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Hassan Husseini’s CLC Challenge

By Cindy McCallum Miller

This year’s Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) convention might be worth attending after all. With a presidential challenge in the air, labour leaders will have to trade in their silk shirts for a pair of overalls to show they still are connected to the working class in order to seek the support of delegates. But it will take more than a fashion change to rebuild the dormant and disillusioned labour movement. That is what activists hope challenger Hassan Husseini will bring to the House of Labour.

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Crimea: a Divisive, Dangerous Assault

By Gabriel Levy

The Russian military action in Crimea is dividing working people, socialists in Ukraine are warning. The threat of war will exacerbate Ukraine’s economic crisis – which is already driving the new neo-liberal government in Kyiv to attack living standards.

The Mass Popular Uprising in Bosnia-Herzegovina: 20 Years After the War
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The Mass Popular Uprising in Bosnia-Herzegovina: 20 Years After the War

By Gal Kirn
Year 1995, Dayton, Ohio. The end of three year war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is announced, the end of the war that in the most brutal ways materialized the idea of “end of history” with the global triumph of liberal democracy and transition to capitalism. Many “ordinary” citizens thought everything was going to be better.

Two decades later, BiH seemed to be one of the last places where any kind of political uprisings or emancipatory politics could take place. A collective sense of despair, passivity and helplessness prevailed. But this month, nineteen years after Dayton, the biggest protests in recent decades have taken place in the region.

No Shortcuts to a New Left
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No Shortcuts to a New Left

By David Camfield

This article was first published by Canadian Dimension as part of a series of online viewpoints about challenges and prospects for the left. 

Derrick O’Keefe recently wrote in a piece on the Canadian Dimension magazine website that “beyond some very marginal formations and small publications, the left is missing. It’s just not there, organizationally.”

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Austerity U: Preparing Students for Precarious Lives

By Alan Sears and James Cairns

Almost everywhere you look around the world, policy-makers are introducing big changes to university systems and pondering deeper transformation.It isn’t surprising that these changes take different forms on campuses in countries as different as Canada, Britain, the United States, Chile, Greece, and India, but there are also important common themes in the change agenda globally. These include rapid increases in tuition fees, new models of university governance, new ways of teaching, a significant shift in subject matter, an attempt to depoliticize campuses, and major alterations in employment relations.

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Catastrophism: A Climate Justice Activist’s Perspective

By Harold Lavender

Review of Sasha Lilley (ed.), Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth (PM Press, 2012)

Images and talk of catastrophes are pervasive in today’s world. Much discussion of the subject ignores issues of social justice and is not very favourable to a left-wing perspective. Yet the spectre of catastrophic climate change haunts the future. Climate change is wreaking destruction on many, is getting worse and poses a potential threat to life on the planet. This raises many serious questions about how the Left should respond.

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