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radical history


  • Can the Left Take Back Identity Politics?

    by Umut Özkırımlı

    Recovering the liberatory potential of identity politics means going back to the term's source—the Combahee River Collective—and recognizing its radical roots and embrace of coalition-building and politics.



  • MLK: Christian, Radical

    by Jonathan Eig

    Veneration has hollowed out Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy, and obscured the way that his political leadership always aimed at radical transformation of American society, argues the author of an acclaimed new biography. 



  • Chad Williams on W.E.B. DuBois and the First World War

    Michelle Moyd and David W. Blight comment on Chad Williams's discussion of DuBois's unfinished manuscript about the deep questions of race, democracy, and world affairs raised by the first World War. 



  • Review: The Paradoxes of CLR James

    by Gerald Horne

    A new biography by John L. Williams examines the connections that the pathbreaking radical intellectual CLR James drew between the Haitian revolution and global struggles for emancipation in the 20th century. 



  • Martin Sostre's Vision of Collective Liberation

    by Garrett Felber

    Martin Sostre's refusal to allow the New York prison system to subject him to invasive and violating searches showed how he placed bodily autonomy at the center of a radical critique of racial oppression. At what would be his 100th birthday, his legacy is considered. 



  • Black Power is a Love Story

    by Dan Berger

    While the movement is popularly associated with anger, love was the emotional force that enabled activists to struggle for justice against powerful opposition. 



  • Why We Need Pirates

    by Paul Buhle, Marcus Rediker and David Lester

    Though vilified in popular culture, the history of piracy shows that many crews were egalitarian bands of maritime workers escaping their exploitation at the hands of merchant companies and navies. A new graphic adaptation of a recent history of piracy tells the story. 


  • Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

    by Sam Ben-Meir

    The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 



  • No Socialism in America?

    by Michael Kazin

    Utopian socialist Robert Owen's heralded visit to Congress in 1825 shows that doubts about the relationship of liberty and economic inequality, and the proposal of socialism as an alternative, have been part of the American political scene from the beginning.