“Bevins chronicles the protest movements that made the 2010s the most politically active in history, considering why such unprecedented mass protests so often had the opposite effect from what the protesters intended. Still, rather than focusing solely on these losses, he tracks the small wins, as well as the lessons learned and edifying counterfactuals disseminated…
Category: the Left
Mario Tronti interviewed: “I am defeated”
Nostalgia for revolutions?“No, if anything the twentieth century was the century of revolutions. But not only that. Where are the grand ideas, the great literature, the grand politics or the great art? I don’t seen anything like what the first half of the twentieth century produced.”
CrimethInc.: “Learning from the Flames”
“The succession of high-intensity movements in France has showed that the conditions that could trigger a revolutionary movement are present. At the same time, it has also revealed the factors that are delaying the emergence of such a movement. Generally speaking, when violent repression extinguishes a revolt, the consequent trauma stifles the rebellious desires of…
Silvia Federici: “The revolution is now”
“Enough with this idea of the revolution which has become in the future, so one day the children of my children will live better. No. The revolution is now. We have one life. Every day is precious. We cannot think of the revolution in the future. If we struggle, it is because the life that…
Marcello Tarì’s “There Is No Unhappy Revolution” reviewed by Chrys Papaioannou
“Written from the standpoint of an intellectual who remains committed to the political project of insurrectionary communism, Tarì’s monograph-cum-manifesto will no doubt rouse readers who take textual pleasure in the insurgent lyricism of militant collectives such as The Invisible Committee, Tiqqun and Colectivo Situaciones.”
Julia Kornberg: “In Rocinante’s Stirrups: Che Guevara’s quixotic journey”
“Wherever there has been oppression, wherever there is some kind of revolutionary spirit left, Che’s image—not Guevara’s, but that of the nicknamed icon—accompanies and surveys, watching lopsidedly from the distance in Alberto Korda’s historical image. But what lies behind it remains elusive, his name now reduced to an almost empty signifier for individuals on the…
Alain Badiou: “Thirteen theses and some comments on politics today”
“We could thus define the maximum ambition of future political work: to realise for the first time in history the first hypothesis, so that revolution will prevent war, rather than the second, i.e. that war will provoke revolution.”
Jared Marcel Pollen: “How the 1905 Revolution Inspired Rosa Luxemburg’s Vision of Emancipation”
Review of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume IV: Political Writings 2, “On Revolution” (1906–1909), edited by Peter Hudis and Sandra Rein (Verso, 2022)
Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski: “The failure of May 1968”
“The nature of revolution changed. It ceased to be a collective project based on economic considerations, pursued to change society. Revolution became privatised, reduced to the domain of inner lives.”
Steve Ellner: “The impasse of the Latin American left”
“As the left returns to power across Latin America, the lessons of the Pink Tide have become increasingly relevant. ” A review of The Impasse of the Latin American Left. Franck Gaudichaud, Jeffery R. Webber, and Massimo Modonesi, eds. Duke University Press, 2022.