Editor’s note: Beginning with overturning Roe v. Wade, the ultra right-wing Supreme Court continues to attack hard-won and elementary democratic rights in the United States, from affirmative action to the Indian Child Welfare Act. The following article is the second...
Haunted by the ghost of “Marbury v. Madison:” Judicial review and abolishing the Supreme Court
Editor’s note: Beginning with overturning Roe v. Wade, the ultra right-wing Supreme Court continues to attack hard-won and elementary democratic rights in the United States, from affirmative action to the Indian Child Welfare Act. The following article is the first in...
Of, by, and for the elite: The class character of the U.S. Constitution
Contrary to the mythology we learn in school, the founding fathers feared and hated the concept of democracy—which they derisively referred to as "tyranny of the majority." The constitution that they wrote reflects this, and seeks to restrict and prohibit involvement...
The U.S. state and the U.S. revolution
It is no exaggeration to say that the principal disputes between activists, organizations and political trends in U.S. social movements have hinged on different understandings of, and attitudes toward, the state. What distinguishes a revolutionary communist...
The Supreme Court: Last line of defense for the ruling class
This article was originally published as Chapter 6 in Democracy and Class Society," a book produced by the PSL in 2008, and is being republished in response to the recent news that the Supreme Court has decided to overturn Roe v. Wade. "I give you, gentlemen, the...
Clarifying and inspiring revolution for 130 years: Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme”
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...
The state and revolution
Lenin wrote The State and Revolution between August and October of 1917, while he was living and organizing underground, hiding from the police. He pushed through these difficult circumstances to write the pamphlet not in order to intervene in the revolutionary...
Antonio Gramsci: A communist revolutionary, organizer, and theorist
On January 1, 1916, just about 10 years before Mussolini's fascist regime imprisoned him, Italian communist Antonio Gramsci published a short article in Avanti! (Forward!)--the Italian Socialist Party's (PSI) daily newspaper--about why he "hates" New Year's Day....
The U.S. “justice system:” Sanctuaries of sexual abuse
Editor's note: This is a longer version of an article originally published in Breaking the Chains magazine. In December 2019, 14 women, both former and current inmates at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, filed a lawsuit accusing the Florida prison of creating...