It is important for the Egyptian revolutionaries to build new structures outside of parliament and outside of the rigged game that is called elections. BACKGROUND OF THE NEWS I have been monitoring the flames and demonstrations that erupted in Egypt while I have been...
sense
Lies, damned lies and statistics
Lies. damned lies and statistics. It’s a cliché that has been used several times in this column over the years. I have used it because statistical data, especially about employment and the cost of living, can influence attitudes, opinions and policy decisions. As...
Job protection leads to shrinking workforce
Brian Kantor, the chief strategist and economist at Investec Wealth and Investment, responds to the debate about wages and productivity between Dick Forslund from AIDC, Simon Eppel from SACTWU and Loane Sharp from Adcorp (published in Business Report, December 13, 14...
Freedom never rests an interview with James Kilgore | by Andre Marais
Kilgore’s remarkable debut novel We Are All Zimbabwean Now (2009) is a wonderful piece of fiction. It tells the story of an idealistic young American’s growing disenchantment with Mugabe. A member of the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army, a US left-wing urban militant...
Imperialism And Democracy: White House Or Liberty Square? | by James Petras
The relation between imperialism and democracy has been debated and discussed over 2500 years, from fifth century Athens to Liberty Park in Manhattan. Contemporary critics of imperialism (and capitalism) claim to find a fundamental incompatibility, citing the growing...
On the Wall Street occupation – What it will take to win concrete victory | by Richard Pithouse
In ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, John Steinbeck's novel about the Great Depression, Tom Joad, the novel's central character, a man who has been made poor and who is on the run from the law, tells his mother in the climactic scene that: ‘I been thinking about us, too, about...
The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative | by Samir Amin
1. The Democratic Fraud Challenges Us to Invent Tomorrow’s Democracy Universal suffrage is a recent conquest, beginning with workers’ struggles in a few European countries (England, France, Holland, and Belgium) and then progressively extending throughout the world....
The Unlikely Secret Agent, Ronnie Kasrils, Jacana Media, 2010
Ronnie Kasrils has just received the Alan Paton Award for his recent book, The Unlikely Secret Agent. He shares here with Amandla! his experience and the process of writing the novel, and expresses himself on the tragedy of losing his life partner, Eleanor.I had...
The Struggle – for Socialism – Continues | by John S. Saul
This article seeks to identify ways in which those engaged in socialist practice in South Africa might hope to more clearly navigate their way forward. It asks, in short, what is to be done – and how?I. Beyond the “working class”: expanding the constituencyMarx had...


