Paul D'Amato

  • The practice of cloaking military invasions in idealistic garb has a long history--to hide the real aims of conquest, colonization and exploitation. February 23, 2010

  • A rebellion of slaves in the ancient world still thrills us today with its size--and the way it humbled the greatest empire of its day. January 15, 2010

  • Non-human animals don't possess the attributes that would allow them to engage in activities we associate with "liberation" and "rights." October 25, 2009

  • Capitalism depends for its survival on divisions created in the working class, so the struggle for a new society must challenge those divisions. October 8, 2009

  • Marxists reject the idea that history is made by charismatic "great men." But that doesn't mean they view individuals as cogs in the machine. September 10, 2009

  • There's a misconception that Marxists believe history follows a predetermined course as a result of economic laws, which human beings can't affect. August 27, 2009

  • Anti-imperialists don't pick and chose what countries to defend against the U.S., but we also should not allow ourselves to ignore the nature of regimes like that in Iran. August 17, 2009

  • "Common sense" says that there isn't enough to go around, and this is what accounts for famines and poverty in the world. But common sense is wrong. August 2, 2009

  • In the struggle to get to a future society, some forms of organization must mirror what we are fighting against, rather than what we are fighting for. May 26, 2009

  • Karl Marx's critique of capitalism seems prophetic today, but his economic analysis can't be separated from his vision of a revolutionary new society. May 10, 2009

  • Arguments made by some anarchists tend to discount the possibility that workers will fight for anything more than reforms that improve their own conditions. March 25, 2009

  • Marxism is almost universally--and wrongly--identified with the idea of state ownership of the economy, and, by extension, with strengthening the state. March 6, 2009

  • My experience as a teenager, and I suspect that of many socialists, was that as I first became aware of the world's injustices, I found my way to anarchism first. February 27, 2009

  • South Africa under the former apartheid regime had a history of close ties to Israel--based on the two countries' identification with each other's racist cause. January 29, 2009

  • Apologists for U.S. intervention talk about "saving" another country by invading it, but this ignores America's brutal history. December 3, 2008

  • There is a clear connection between poverty and wealth--those who do not work live off the wealth produced by the labor of others. November 19, 2008

  • Anyone who has ever gotten involved in even the smallest struggle knows that without organization, little can be accomplished. November 6, 2008

  • The old saying of the Industrial Workers of the World, "An injury to one is an injury to all," is a crucial slogan for the labor movement. October 7, 2008

  • Capitalism divides the working class, based on sexual, racial and national distinctions, with specially oppressed groups suffering the most. September 11, 2008

  • The countries that have masqueraded as socialist--from the former USSR to China and Cuba--turned the basic tenets of Marxism on their head. August 27, 2008

  • U.S. intervention has to be opposed, whether it is in the name of humanitarian intervention, spreading democracy or defending the "homeland." July 17, 2008

  • U.S. politicians and employers have always used anti-immigrant laws not so much to prevent the entry of all immigrant labor, as to control it. June 24, 2008

  • Since capitalism is an international system, the working-class struggle to overcome capitalism must also be international. May 27, 2008

  • Without its own political party, leaders and political representatives, the working class will remain subordinated to the Republicans and Democrats. May 8, 2008

  • The U.S. political system creates an institutional arrangement whereby only two parties are presented as legitimate options. April 24, 2008