Against the Current No. 231, July/August 2024

Student encampments sprung up on campuses across the country in opposition to genocide in Gaza.

WHILE THE GENOCIDAL Israeli-United States war on Gaza and Palestine continues — amidst all kinds of diplomatic posturing and UN resolution-splicing — the one really hopeful development is the outpouring of activism in many U.S. communities, most visibly the magnificent movement on college campuses organized in encampments demanding an immediate permanent ceasefire, and divestment from corporations tied to Israel’s machinery of massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people....

The wreckage on March 28, 2024, two days after the Dali cargo container hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Photo: National Transportation Safety Board

THE COLLAPSE OF the Francis Scott Key Bridge, after it was hit by the Dali cargo container ship in the Baltimore metropolitan area, was headline news. The background is less well publicized.

The 947-foot ship with four generators, lost all power, not once but twice, just before the crash that brought down the bridge. In mid-May, preliminary results....

May 28, 2024 encampment set up by students at the Wayne State University in solidarity with the victims of Israeli bombing in Gaza. The university responded by canceling classes "until further notice." Ali Hassan, president of the WSU Muslim Coalition, speaks to journalists at the camp. Photo: Jim West

SIX MONTHS INTO Israel’s escalated and open genocide in Palestine, there were signs that the global antiwar movement was beginning to flag. Rallies and marches had filled streets in hundreds of cities in the United States and Canada every week since October, and solidarity activists in many places were carrying out an impressive and diverse array of actions just as consistently.

Direct actions blocked rail lines, highways, ports, bridges, and all sorts of roads. An early morning action even blockaded the delivery....

Turkey's election results have set back Erdoğan's party and its authoritarian rule.

TURKEY’s RULING JUSTICE and Development Party (AKP) received a major defeat in municipal elections in March of 2024. In addition to losing the country’s three largest cities — Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir — the party lost control of 195 municipalities, most of them to the People’s Republican Party (CHP), a centrist social democratic party....

2023 BRICS Summit — alternative to imperialism or an expression of the southern transactional capitalist class?

THE CRISIS OF globalization has created growing national tensions. No longer do we hear about the wonders of global free markets and world integration. Instead, talk has turned to “decoupling” from China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and multi-polarity breaking up imperial Western leadership.

As multi-polarity grows, there are some who see this as a new stage....

“If you do not expect the unexpected you will not discover it; for it is hard to track down and difficult to approach.” — Heraclitus, c. 500 BCE

WORLD WAR I was a turning point in many ways. One important change became visible in the economic analyses of the revolutionary left. Very clear was this with Lenin: building on the work of Bukharin, Hilferding and Hobson, he saw an extensive and probably irreversible decline of world capitalism.

The rapidly increasing power of the monopolies...

Abhish K. Bose

RENOWNED POLITICAL SCIENTIST, academic and writer, Achin Vanaik (b.1947) is a well-known scholar and commentator on global politics and international relations. He graduated in economics and statistics from the University of Bristol, England in 1970. Subsequently, he became actively involved (1971-1974) with the Free University of Black Studies for promoting political awareness of non-white immigrant communities in Britain....

Hafsa Kanjwai

THIS INTERVIEW WITH Kashmiri Historian, Hafsa Kanjwal is reprinted from the valuable Ukrainian online journal COMMONS. To support their important work, visit their website.

The first part of the interview, which appeared in our previous issue (Against the Current 230, May-June 2024), focuses on the general history....

“UNJUST BUT NOT UNEXPECTED” — this is how Suzi Weissman, spokesperson for the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, described the June 5 decision of a Russian court to reject Boris Kagarlitsky’s appeal against a five-year jail term for supposedly....

“Universal suffrage

“. . . universal suffrage . . . indicates with the most perfect accuracy the day when a call to armed revolution has to be made.” —Engels, 1891

“Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal.” —Eugene V. Debs, 1911

“. . . those who imagine that extremely important political matters can be solved , , , merely by voting.” —Lenin, 1919

IN LAUNCHING HIS reelection bid President Joseph...