The relationship between socialism and feminism has been getting more attention in online discussions recently. This is both for good reasons — such as the article by Sharon Smith of the International Socialist Organization in the US that looks critically at how the...
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Marxism, feminism and women’s liberation | by Sharon Smith
Sharon Smith, author of the soon-to-be-republished Women and Socialism: Essays on Women's Liberation, examines how the Marxist tradition has approached the struggle to end women's oppression, including its attitude toward other theories, in this article based on a...
The Weirdness Closes In
On the face of it, Mamphela Ramphele's long political Calvary has not seemed so strange. It has been clear ever since she returned to South Africa, flushed with neoliberal propaganda and plugging effortlessly into the right-wing smear campaign against President Mbeki,...
After the World Ended (IV): But How Can It Be Done?
What has to be overthrown in the ANC is a party which nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted for, and which is led by some of the shrewdest and most unscrupulous politicians in the country. Somehow those people have to be persuaded to stop supporting it, and those...
All That Is Solid Melts Into Sewage
February 14, 2013 The hyenas awake! (Apologies to actually existing hyenas, who are deeply impressive and sexually progressive beasts apart from their scrawny hind-legs.) The cannibals are sharpening their carving-knives! The vultures circle in the sunset! The...
Euro crisis: the economics of class warfare
Conversation with Özlem Onaran From the start, the neoliberal project in Europe was marked by a striking pro-capital redistribution of income, wealth and power. This seemed to be a good solution to overcome the profitability crisis, but it sowed the seeds of another...
What the Marikana Massacre Highlights
by Shawn Hattingh The sight of policemen gunning down striking workers at Marikana was truly galling. Reports too have now emerged that on the day of the shooting some workers may have been executed far from the view of the press’s cameras; and allegations have also...
Chancellor House | by Eleanor Momberg
Chancellor house has become symbolic of the precariously close nexus between the state and the ruling party, and the creation of fortunes not only for maintaining power but also to benefit individual members of the ruling elite. Though controversy stalks the ANC...
Reconstituting emancipatory activism
Debates about the meaning(s) of activism have been perennial pre-occupations in postcolonial societies. In South Africa, the contours of this debate have been shaped, on one hand, by those who argue that attaining formal democracy renders struggle and activism...






