. Magno reminds us: “
The socialist historian C. L. R. James was born 120 years ago today [4 January]. His landmark text, The Black Jacobins, is a majestic account of the Haitian Revolution and is still the authoritative history of a heroic struggle for freedom and dignity.” [Read the full interview at
]
In a 1980 interview, C. L. R. James stated that he wanted to be remembered above all for his serious contributions to Marxism. In
Douglas’s book traces the development of James’s thought over more than thirty years, from his intellectual activities as a Pan-Africanist in London and Paris in the 1930s to his political militancy as one of the founders in the 1940s of the Johnson–Forest Tendency (born from a split with the American Trotskyist organization, the Workers Party). Douglas also revisits James’s engagement with the Black Power and Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and gives special consideration to his work as a playwright. James’s constantly transformi
North Carolina has taken a wrong turn
Published January 7, 2021
Sixty years ago this week, a new Governor set North Carolina on a new course.
In his inauguration speech on January 5, 1961, Terry Sanford said the state should build its future not on low taxes, but on better education. Calling education “the rock upon which I will build the house of my administration,” he said:
“We must give our children the quality of education which they need to keep up in this rapidly advancing, scientific, complex world.
“They must be prepared to compete with the best in the nation, and I dedicate my public life to the proposition that education must be of a quality which is second to none. A second-rate education can only mean a second-rate future for North Carolina.”
Abstract
“A Fascism for Our Time” focuses on how the accidental convergence of global capital and the COVID pandemic, by traveling the same route, has inadvertently unveiled unraveling circumstances in our political, economic, and social life that easily point to the possible formation of a fascist political imaginary in the United States, if not its final realization in the near future. The essay seeks to show how the coming together of affirmative avowals attesting to the appearance of fascism and the acknowledged historic weaknesses of the received constitutional and institutional endowment have enabled the possibility of what very much looks like an unwanted transition to a form of authoritarian rule that resembles a fascist autocracy arising within a democratic society. The essay does not dwell on the kinship of conditions and content marking historical episodes of fascism but rather on the form’s aptitude for adapting to new challenges in different temporal registers an
“Ecosocialismo: Envisioning Latin America’s Green New Deal” is a virtual event hosted by
NACLA. It is the first in a special three-part series of online events on some of the most pressing issues facing the region, while also celebrating
NACLA‘s 50-year history of promoting hemispheric solidarity and critical analysis. The event takes place on February 4, 2021, 7:00-9:00pm. [A Zoom meeting link will provided prior to the event.]
About the Event: A radical Green New Deal for the Americas calls for thinking beyond U.S. borders. This event brings together scholars and activists from across the Americas to dig into the underlying idea of a Green New Deal injecting massive public investment into a rapid, democratic green transition and to share lessons, insights, and proposals from their research and organizing experiences. Their conversation will tackle pressing questions around mobilizing investment in support of climate justice and the underlying principles of a Green Ne