The long and torturous road to the Third Chinese Revolution
Part 7 of China in the age of American decrepitude When the sudden decline of US industry in the 1980s and 1990s opened the possibility, for the first time in […]
Category Archives: revolution
The Kavanaugh appointment – the crisis of bourgeois rule in the United States spreads to engulf another institution
Two years ago, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination, and then the Presidency of the United States, against all expectations. It was an unmistakable sign of the crisis gripping the […]
What is a social revolution and how does it come about?
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to watch Maestra, a short documentary about the 1961 mass mobilisation to eradicate illiteracy in the early years of the Cuban revolution.1 […]
The nervous moment of insurrection
The October revolution which brought to power the Bolshevik regime in Russia one hundred years ago was both the greatest achievement of the working class, and a watershed which conditioned […]
Larissa Reisner and the German revolution of 1923
In a vain effort to escape from the disgusting trivia of the New Zealand elections, I have been reading Hamburg at the Barricades, Larissa Reisner’s1 account of the failed German […]
The socialism of mining villages, lumber camps and company towns
The capitalist mode of production comes into existence by uprooting people from the land and drawing them into urban industrial concentrations. Great industrial cities are a characteristic feature of capitalism, […]
The Twitter Bonaparte casts a shadow: two articles on Bonapartism
Part 1: the second Bonaparte (and the first) In 1848 the continent of Europe was engulfed in the flames of revolution. Absolute monarchies, princes and dukes were overthrown in Denmark, […]
Fidel Castro’s ‘moral armour’ and courage under fire
In one of the videos of Fidel Castro that have been circulating since the revolutionary leader’s death, a reporter is accompanying Fidel on the plane trip to New York, where […]
The difficult birth of independent Mongolia
“Let every Mongolian, Russian, Tibetan, and Chinese person know that we have heard that the Chinese have revolted against the Manchu and the Qing empire is presently in collapse. Mongolia […]
A visit to the museum of propaganda posters in Shanghai
I have never been very keen on Maoist poster art – not even in the period of my life when I was attracted to Maoism – and I probably would […]
A communist at large 