David McNally (Activist and Author)

09/24/2024

Fred Jameson's writing crackles with the utopian moment of dialectical thinking. And for Jameson, as for Hegel and Marx, utopia is inseparable from the question of genuinely world history. This afternoon I will pay tribute to him in my graduate seminar on "History from Below in Global Perspective," where I will read the following passage from Marxism and Form: "Only now, when the world is becoming one . . . can we begin to have even a vague realization of what human life would be like if it were a single project, had a single meaning, constituted a single 'totalization in course.'"

05/19/2024

Happy 99th birthday, Malcolm X. Never forgotten.

05/06/2024

Encampments up at SOAS, Oxford, Cambridge, and Liverpool unis

04/25/2024

In a Vietnam moment, repression does not stop the movement.

01/17/2024

South African lawyers suing US and UK for complicity in genocide
(Info in Comments)

01/17/2024

12/09/2022

Video of my wonderful conversation with Abdullah Yusuf this week on his show, "Conversations with Politics," as we discussed capitalism, slavery, blood and money. We moved through John Locke and Isaac Newton (and their ties to colonialism and the slave trade) to the George Floyd uprising and the movement to defund the police today!

On this edition of Conversations with Politics, I welcomed David McNally, an activist and the NEH Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at t...

05/09/2022

Friends, here is the link to the video stream of Ruthie Wilson Gilmore's George Floyd Memorial Lecture this Thursday at 6:30 PM Central Daylight Time.

The lecture is entitled, "Global Solidarity or Global Policing: A Lecture in Memory of George Floyd."

Please share and spread the word!

Discussion on where we are 2 years after the death of George Floyd.

05/05/2022

Here is my take on Karl Marx and his meaning for our times. Thanks to Bob Buzzanco and Scott Parkin for our conversation on their topnotch Green and Red Podcast. Check it out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRBla4v6c8M

David McNally is one of the more important Marxist scholars in the world, and we talked to him today on the anniversary of Karl Marx's birth--May 5th, 1818. ...

04/14/2022

Sharp, clear intervention on war and imperialism in the Ukraine conflict from my Spectre comrades A Ron Jaffe Zachary Levenson and Vanessa Wills. Essential reading for the left.

"just as we don’t side with Russia because we’re critical of NATO’s imperialist motives in the region, we also don’t align ourselves with NATO just because we condemn Russian aggression."

"The notion that we need to support this or that capitalist bloc is but a symptom of the lack of an organized antiwar movement. Thus, the task of the left is not to choose sides amid inter-imperialist rivalry, but to raise mass consciousness regarding the history and present circumstances of international conflicts and to build a mass internationalist, anti-imperialist, antiwar movement . . ."
https://truthout.org/articles/a-hunger-within-the-us-left-for-action-on-ukraine-is-driving-us-astray/?fbclid=IwAR3a7m-6N9fy1gf06665OMBs55n-T5Dk_XEamwH6BHRLde5zZ2tKTMmUTkA

The task of the left is to build a mass anti-imperialist, antiwar movement capable of intervening on the side of peace.

03/17/2022

Over 100 socialist feminists around the world issue a Feminist Manifesto Against War

Feminists from around the world write to condemn the war on Ukraine

03/05/2022

Happy birthday, Rosa Luxemburg--born on this day (March 5) in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune.

"A day will come when another volcano lifts its voice of thunder: a volcano that is seething and boiling, whether you need it or not, and will sweep the whole sanctimonious, blood-splattered culture from the face of the earth. And only on its ruins will the nations come together in true humanity . . ."
-- Rosa Luxemburg (1902), writing in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption in Martinique

03/01/2022

Anti-war statement from Spectre journal

"We must oppose Russia’s war and demand the withdrawal of all its forces. We must oppose the US and NATO from turning this invasion into an inter-imperial war for dominance in Europe. We should call for them to open their borders to all Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, as we demand the same for all migrants and refugees fleeing oppression anywhere in the world."

Neither Washington, nor Moscow, but the working class worldwide!

02/26/2022

Anti-war petition in Russia--whose initiators have been arrested--now has over 600,000 signatures.

"Become part of the anti-war movement, oppose the war. Do this if only to show the whole world that there were, are and will be people in Russia who will not accept the meanness perpetrated by the authorities, who have turned the very state and peoples of Russia into an instrument of their crimes.”

A prominent Russian human rights activist has formed a new movement calling itself “Russians against war with Ukraine,” and more than 603,000 people have already signed the group’s petition since it was posted Thursday on change.org. The response to...

02/25/2022

Wonderfully sharp and clear statement from the socialist movement, LeftEast:

"In the revolutionary spirit and in solidarity with the peoples of Ukraine, Russia, and the region, we say “No!” to Moscow today and “No!” to the false choice between Moscow and NATO in the future. We call for an immediate ceasefire and return to the negotiating table. The interests of global capital and its military machines are not worth one more drop of the peoples’ blood. Peace, land, and bread!"
https://lefteast.org/lefteast-condemns-putins-imperial-war-against-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR3lhjg33DynnT-hnWR5vGqzUIeFQYaYLOLQZ_sDe0b9btZUYAyIab05TpA

The members of LeftEast collective are aghast at the violent military aggression that has escalated into war in Ukraine. It threatens to cast our region into bloodshed of a scale that has not been seen in decades. We unequivocally condemn the Kremlin’s criminal invasion and call for the withdrawal...

02/11/2022

"There is no 'capitalism with a human face.' It is impossible to exploit people humanly. And capitalism is impossible without exploitation, profit extraction is its inherent condition. The regional differences between capitalisms correspond to the differences in the material development of the regions in question. Both Putin’s regime, brought to us by US-backed liberals; and Ukrainian nationalists, who rose from the yeast of the US-backed Maidan, are products of the market empire and its triumph in 1991. I see no point to break it down into 'good' and 'bad' capitalism. We all live in the same interconnected historical reality." --Anatoli Ulyanov
https://lefteast.org/impossible-interview-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR1KpRHuhbNvS3s2I5THhpjxVrfydnlpgxksAlcXODu-WYMVJgtMyGJj7b0

In 2000s Ukraine, Anatoli Ulyanov co-made online media dedicated to art, culture, and politics, and became recognized for his provocative writing style. After a series of violent attacks from the government-hired right-wing mercenaries, in 2009 Anatoli and his partner Natasha Masharova were forced t...

02/07/2022

Happening tonight -- not to be missed!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/building-palestine-solidarity-after-the-bowman-affair-tickets-258271154977?fbclid=IwAR3QaoPuBZ5kHbUfJGSn5HhRqaxwOpDPPOjGlHi0C1NpTECNnawO63SPxkg

Join us for a discussion on how to build solidarity with Palestine and escalate the BDS movement in the wake of the Bowman Affair.

02/07/2022

Novelist Jordy Rosenberg says, Show Spectre some love--"Because a revolutionary organ of thought and debate is critical."

It's the last week of our Valentine's subscription special: 25% off until Valentine's Day. Now's the time.

Link to discount subscription in Comments below.