February 20, 2024
On July 5, prolific author Gerald Horne appeared at Sankofa Video, Books & Cafe in Washington, DC to discuss two of his latest books, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music and White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela
February 20, 2024
Winner of the 2018 Paul M. Sweezy – Paul A. Baran Memorial Award for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism, Intan Suwandi’s Value Chains examines the exploitation of labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within global value chains—vast networks of people, tools, and activities needed to deliver goods and services to the market and controlled by multinationals—Suwandi offers a deft empirical analysis of unit labor costs that is closely related to Marx’s own theory of exploitation.
February 20, 2024
“I grew up in Jim Crow St. Louis with working class parents with roots in Mississippi. From an early age I recall a guitar in our house, that our father would pluck from time to time. Undoubtedly, my younger brother Marvin Horne—who has played with such giants as percussionists, Chico Hamilton and Elvin Jones, and as part of Aretha Franklin’s band just before she expired—was influenced to pick up this instrument because of its ubiquitous presence in our small house….”
February 20, 2024
One point to make about Helena Sheehan’s political odyssey—from a conservative Catholic upbringing, through the radicalism of the US left in the 1960s and early 70s, on to Official Sinn Fein and the Communist Party of Ireland, and then into the Irish Labour Party—is that it demonstrates the importance of the theory of state capitalism for revolutionary politics….
February 20, 2024
The supposed social media disinformation campaign that helped sway American voters was carried out by a private company based in St. Petersburg, Internet Research Agency (IRA), whose connection to the Russian government has never been established and probably never will….
February 20, 2024
Sanders specifically advocated for the reinvigoration of an economic bill of rights, which would guarantee a livable wage, free health care, and affordable education. ¶ This latter program is honorable; however, the boldness of Roosevelt and Wallace’s platform rested as much with their foreign as their domestic policies….
February 20, 2024
Starting with Adam Smith and David Ricardo two central questions have dominated the history of economic thought: Does capitalism, as a social economic system, provide social harmony? And, is capitalism inherently stable? Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, the two most preeminent Marxian economists in America during the second half of the twentieth century, played a vital role in the debates surrounding these two questions in the 1960s….
February 20, 2024
Much of Harris’s early political history is obscure, but we do know that she was an unknown 29-year-old lawyer in the early 1990s when her career was kick-started through a romantic relationship with master politico Willie Brown…
February 20, 2024
Why write an autobiography? Who do I think I am? Why should anybody be more interested in my life than anyone else’s life? … I’m not a celebrity. I haven’t starred in Oscar-winning movies getting reviews of mesmerising performances…. ¶ I’ve lived a life that was not headline-making, but not totally obscure either, as an activist, academic and author…”
February 20, 2024
Sheehan’s autobiography is an important book, not just for documenting her times and the very interesting circles she moved in but in allowing the reader to explore in some depth a crucial question for us all: how do I know my current belief system is right?
