Articles in this section

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  How politics became a contest dominated by two kinds of elite

  5 August 2021, by GETHIN Amory , MARTINEZ-TOLEDANO Clara , PIKETTY Thomas

  Studying hundreds of elections, we found that political parties increasingly cater to only the well educated and the rich.
  Given the steep rise in economic inequality in many parts of the world since the 1980s, one might have expected to see increasing political demands for the redistribution (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  Discussion Article: What do we mean by a Global Police State?

  5 May 2021, by HEARSE Phil

  Phil Hearse explains the theory behind the concept.
  Supporters of the A*CR have used the term ‘Global Police State’ to describe the situation facing the exploited and oppressed worldwide – and the radical movements that defend them.
  But surely it is exaggerated to call the situation in Britain (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  Book Review: Howard Botwinick on Competition, Inequality & Class Struggle

  1 September 2019, by MOODY Kim

  Review of Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity Under Capitalist Competition. By Howard Botwinick. Haymarket Books, 2018, 370 pages, $28 paper.
  PERSISTENT INEQUALITIES, BY former union organizer and continuing workplace and political activist turned political economist Howard Botwinick, was (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  The Silent Counterrevolution: Caste and fascism in India – “How one understands caste in the space of modes of production”

  10 August 2018, by JAL Murzban

  “I have not the shadow of doubt that Hinduism owes all the great traditions that the Brahmans have left for Hinduism. They have left a legacy for India, for which every Indian, no matter to what varna he may belong, owes a deep debt of gratitude.” M.K. Gandhi,1921. This essay is on how one (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  On fascism in the Global South: ’Trust me, I am the one who will drain the swamp’

  January 2018, by BELLO Walden, SCHAFFAR Wolfram

  Since the election of Narendra Modi in India in 2014 and Donald Trump in the USA in 2016, political analysts and commentators around the globe have increasingly used the concept of fascism to capture the rise of new right-wing authoritarianism in various countries.
  Activists and academics in (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  Theory – How Not To Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class

  31 October 2015, by BHATTACHARYA Tithi

  Factory Complex (Heung-soon Im, 2014)
  “…labor-power is a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why does he sell it? It is in order to live.”
  – Karl Marx, Wage, Labor and Capital
  Since its very formation, but particularly since the late twentieth century, the (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  Scotland : Why is the British state so undemocratic – « It has its roots in the partial character of England’s seventeenth century revolution »

  9 novembre 2014, par MOSTYN Piers

  The massive surge in support for Scottish independence in the recent referendum was motivated more by democratic than nationalist sentiment. It was an expression of long term working class alienation from the political decision-making process. The spur was a Tory-imposed austerity the Scots (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  Has working class consciousness collapsed? – The ’crisis of the working class subject’

  1 July 2010, by HEARSE Phil

  Class consciousness: ”The awareness of individuals in a particular social class that they share common interests and a common social situation. Class consciousness is associated with the development of a ‘class-for-itself’ where individuals within the class unite to pursue their shared (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  From Captain Swing to Pancho Villa. Instances of peasant resistance in the historiography of Eric Hobsbawm

  2000, by LÖWY Michael

  Eric Hobsbawm is a man of the Enlightenment: does he not define socialism as the last and most extreme heir of the eighteenth century’s rationalism? [1] So it is not surprising that the distinction between ’modern and ’primitive or ’archaic has an important place in his work. [2] However, examining (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  History, Culture and the Communist Manifesto—Part 3 – On ideology and historical ideas

  1 January 1998, by BRICK Howard

  “What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”
  AT THE UNIVERSITY of Chicago, where Economics is taught according to (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  The Retreat of the Intellectuals – “Civil society”, two contrary impulses. On relations of exploitation and domination

  1990, by #ausnahmslos (“noexcuses”), WOOD Ellen Meiksins

  Ellen Meiksins Wood saw a great danger in the reluctance of today’s intellectuals to criticize capitalism. The death of Ellen Wood on January 14 represents an immense loss for socialists everywhere. As a frequent contributor to Socialist Register since her first essay in 1980, special co-editor (...)

• Social Formation, classes, political regime, ideology

  Historical Materialism and the Capitalist State

  1980, by MANDEL Ernest

  Originally published in German in Marxismus und Anthropologie, Bochum 1980. Later published in Flemish in Toestanden (Antwerp), vol.1 no.3, August 1981. Never before published in English. Translated by Juriaan Bendian. * [Presentation from Ernest Mandel website]
  Historical materialism elevates (...)