Communism Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

Arise, Ye Workers From Your Slumbers

Episode 68: A conversation with Maurice Isserman about American radicalism, past and present, and his new book, Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism

February 19, 2025 • by Claire Potter

For years now, those of us who are paying attention have heard a range of political positions, from those held by moderate Democrats to socialism, described by MAGA Republicans as something called “the Left.” Sometimes “the Left” is simply invoked by the shorthand “they,” as in: “They tried to assassinate ...

Europe & Central Asia

The French Politics of the Pantheon and the Monumental Hypocrisy of Emmanuel Macron

How recognizing the heroism of past immigrants serves as cover for a nation’s anti-immigrant present

April 8, 2024 • by Mitchell Abidor

It was striking that a center-right president like Emmanuel Macron, who has recently hardened his position on immigrants and immigration, would grant such a high honor to two immigrant Communists. ...

The French Politics of the Pantheon and the Monumental Hypocrisy of Emmanuel Macron

Podcast

Lavender and Red

June 7, 2023 • by Claire Potter

A conversation with historian Bettina Aptheker about her book "Communists in Closets: Queering the History, 1930s-1990s"...

Europe & Central Asia

Part 1: A Just War?

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

September 7, 2022 • by James Carroll

In nations bracketing the North Atlantic a great sigh of relief could almost be heard: how great to be free once more to demonize Moscow....

Uncategorized

For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

February 1, 2022 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Marci Shore

How do we understand both the uses and disadvantages of thinking across time and space? How do we negotiate the fact that in any biography or historical event, there are both elements that are unique, and elements that are universal? For me, these questions belonged to a larger question: namely, ...

Capitalism

China’s Thirty-Year War between State and Capital Has Taken a Decisive Turn

If the financial complexities and implications of the Evergrande case could be boiled down to a tabloid headline, it would read: “XI TO BUILDER: DROP DEAD.”

September 28, 2021 • by Mark Frazier

As part of its recent campaign to regulate capital and to rein in capitalists, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has set their sights on the China Evergrande Group. Last week, Asian and global markets sank quickly on the news that Evergrande was unable to ...

China’s Thirty-Year War between State and Capital Has Taken a Decisive Turn

Europe & Central Asia

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

September 7, 2021 • by Maria Bucur and Kristen R. Ghodsee

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania. “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

Capitalism

The Communism of Love

How the COVID pandemic has revealed anew the importance of Marx’s Gemeinwesen

May 5, 2021 • by Richard Gilman-Opalsky

_____ Marx was transfixed by the Gemeinwesen, a German word meant to grasp the essence of human community, the state of human relations. Marx did not think a world of exchange built around the relation of labor to capital made for the healthiest Gemeinwesen, and he wanted a different one. He ...

Migration

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

A conversation between Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Dwayne Betts

April 22, 2021 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Irena Grudzińska-Gross, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Marci Shore

Marci: As you know, the original impetus for this forum was horror of the children being taken away from their parents at the American border, and my saying to Stephen Naron that we should use material from the Fortunoff archive to prepare a film about parent-child separation during the Holocaust. ...

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

North America

The Case for Creating a National Lustration Commission for the United States

It’s a way to stabilize fragile democratic institutions

April 1, 2021 • by Monika Nalepa and Colleen Murphy

_____ The storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6 has made it clear that a surprising number of police and military veterans are currently affiliated with armed right wing militias. But suspending and firing a few police officers and soldiers in response likely won’t suffice. And any mass ...

The Case for Creating a National Lustration Commission for the United States

History

Good and Evil

An excerpt from On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt

February 5, 2021 • by Ann Heberlein

_____ Goodness exists, even in the darkest of moments. It is worth remembering this—that the violence and brutality of the war did not only bring out the worst in people. The darkness also inspired goodness, bravery, and responsibility. There are countless examples of people who, often at great risk to themselves ...

Activism

Varieties of Antifascism

Russian notes towards a global debate

October 15, 2020 • by Mischa Gabowitsch

_____ A question may bе raised as to why, if we wish to explore new resources for combating fascism, we do not give as much attention to the "potential antifascist." The answer is that we do study trends that stand in opposition to fascism, but we do not conceive that they ...

Communism

Arise, Ye Workers From Your Slumbers

Episode 68: A conversation with Maurice Isserman about American radicalism, past and present, and his new book, Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism

The French Politics of the Pantheon and the Monumental Hypocrisy of Emmanuel Macron

How recognizing the heroism of past immigrants serves as cover for a nation’s anti-immigrant present

Lavender and Red

Part 1: A Just War?

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

China’s Thirty-Year War between State and Capital Has Taken a Decisive Turn

If the financial complexities and implications of the Evergrande case could be boiled down to a tabloid headline, it would read: “XI TO BUILDER: DROP DEAD.”

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

The Communism of Love

How the COVID pandemic has revealed anew the importance of Marx’s Gemeinwesen

On the Uses and Disadvantages of Historical Comparisons for Life

A conversation between Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Dwayne Betts

The Case for Creating a National Lustration Commission for the United States

It’s a way to stabilize fragile democratic institutions

Good and Evil

An excerpt from On Love and Tyranny: The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt

Varieties of Antifascism

Russian notes towards a global debate

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