The U.S. occupation of Iraq has turned into a quagmire of nightmarish proportions, with many now calling it the most serious setback for U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War. At the same time, some on the left like Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein have fallen into uncritical support of fundamentalist forces that oppose the US, most notably the Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. As the controversy over Bosnia showed, attitudes similar to Stalinism persist after the collapse of the USSR – Editors

An appreciation of the Czech Marxist Humanist Karel Kosik’s Dialectics of the Concrete, 40 years later – Editors

An analysis of the September 11 Commission Report – Editors

An analysis of the revelations of the torture of prisoners by US guards at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and its implications for the region – Editors

An assessment of Rosa Luxemburg’s life and work on the occasion of the publication of the Rosa Luxemburg Reader.  Among Luxemburg’s concepts discussed are socialist democracy, her critique of Lenin, and her analysis of imperialism. Recently Eduardo Galeano has referred to her concept of democracy in a critique of Cuba, while Slavoj Zizek has distorted her critique of Lenin in order to attack her – Editors

The new form of imperialism eschews direct territorial control and is driven by the tendential decline in the rate of profit.  More than oil, current US imperialism’s militarization creates an image of power that attracts needed foreign capital, but this is a shaky foundation – Editors

A discussion of Hegel’s concept of absolute negativity as ground for Marxist dialectics, in light of the work of Gillian Rose and especially Raya Dunayevskaya, as well as the differing forms of the dialectic found in the writings of Georg Lukacs and Theodor Adorno – Editors

George W. Bush’s illegal, unwarranted and barbarous war against Iraq clearly has nothing to do with “liberating” the Iraqi people and everything to do with extending U.S. global power at the expense of both the Iraqi AND American populace. The U.S. war against Iraq is rooted in its drive for single world mastery. It’s been with us since the end of World War II, when the U.S. contended with Russia for world domination. By 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union forced one side to drop out of this drive for world domination. Yet the U.S. continued its drive, unencumbered by competition from another superpower  – Editors

Of the many issues facing the effort to rethink the idea of revolution today, few are more vexing than that of state power. Does social revolution center on the political seizure of state power? If it doesn”t, what must be done instead? Can a revolution transform human relations so fundamentally that we will not again be confronted with a statist bureaucracy after the overthrow of the old?

What is new today is not that the U.S. is willing to unilaterally invade other countries, but that Bush has declared the right to do so against any country, at any time, at any spot on the globe. There is a growing base for building a movement that is totally opposed to both Bush’s war against Iraq and his effort to plunge this country into permanent military adventurism. Yet to realize this potential it is essential for anti-war activists not to repeat the mistakes of the past by simply projecting a narrow, knee-jerk reaction to U.S. policies. We cannot afford to ignore the crimes of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein just because we oppose Bush. We cannot ignore the suffering of the Kurds just because some of their leaders are being used by the U.S. – Editors

Through his brutal attacks on Gaza, reminiscent of his criminal actions in Lebanon in 1982, Israel’s Ariel Sharon is trying to rid the minds of Israelis and Palestinians of the very idea that they can ever live in peace with one another – Editors