Editor's note: We're republishing this article, originally posted in 2008, on the 174th anniversary of the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party in celebration of Red Books Day. The Communist Manifesto stands among the most well-read books of all time....
Introduction Cities across the U.S. are rapidly transforming. “Gentrification-style” luxury developments are replacing neighborhood landmarks and low-income housing. Sky-high rents are pushing poor residents increasingly further from city centers. These trends are...
Karl Marx never intended to spell out what the communist future would look like or how we would get there. His writing that comes closest to doing this is a short letter he wrote in 1875, given the title Critique of the Gotha Programme. Published 130 years ago—in...
Editorial Collective Note: This is a new introduction to alienation that replaces our earlier introduction written in 2006. It’s part of our renovation and expansion of our “Fundamentals of Marxism” series and other articles on Marxist theory and the class struggle....
Although Marx himself only mentioned the “base” and “superstructure” in (by my count) two of his works, the base-superstructure “problem” remains a source of serious contention for Marxists, our sympathizers, and our critics. Despite its outsized role in Marxist...
Environmentalists have long stressed limits to human interaction with nature. It’s commonly argued that transgressing “natural limits” caused the environmental crises we face today. While this sentiment might direct our attention to the severity and scale of...
Editorial Collective Note: This is a new introduction to imperialism that replaces our earlier introduction from 2006. It’s part of our renovation and expansion of our “Fundamentals of Marxism” series. In the suffering of the Global South, the brutality of capitalism...
Introduction Marxist ideology is one of the most potent weapons the working and oppressed classes have, a weapon that our class can and has used to not only win reforms but to build revolutionary societies where the people, and not profits, are in control. As the PSL...
Toward the end of our earlier introduction to surplus value, the heart and motor of the class struggle, we wrote that: “The rate of surplus value for the capitalist is the rate of exploitation for the worker. By merely prolonging the working day, the capitalist...