Marxism — Bunk History

Photo of Karl Marx

Red Like Me

A new book shows that Marxism in the US "was never constrained to the reiteration of a set of dogmatic principles one associates with party ideologues."

by Alan Wald via New Politics on July 24, 2025

Karl Marx's face in the American flag

The Marxists Are Coming

Calls to defund the Marxist left and similar mobilizations against rumors of a new red dawn are nothing new.

by Mathias Fuelling via The Baffler on June 10, 2025

Cover of book. Red text on a blue background with stickers of Karl Marx's face arranged like the 50 stars.

Marx: The Fourth Boom

Were you to vanish Marx from every library, you’d destroy the central interlocutor around which most of capitalism is built.

by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 27, 2025

Karl Marx gazing off into the distance while surrounded by books

Karl Marx’s Legacy in the United States

For two centuries, Karl Marx’s thoughts have significantly impacted US politics. In turn, his close study of the US informed the development of his ideas.

by Andrew Hartman, Cal Turner, Sara Van Horn via Jacobin on May 18, 2025

W.E.B. DuBois, seated in garden reading book, while Shirley Graham DuBois waters plants.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.

by Jeff Goodwin, Jonah Birch via Jacobin on February 17, 2025

John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard.

American Marxism Got Lost on Campus

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.

by Russell Jacoby via Jacobin on December 8, 2024

Illustration of W.E.B DuBois

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Abolition Democracy

The enduring legacy and capacious vision of "Black Reconstruction."

by Gerald Horne via The Nation on May 3, 2022

Illustration of Cedric Robinson by Joe Ciardiello.

Cedric Robinson’s Radical Democracy

Rejecting the resignation of the 1970s and ’80s, Robinson found in the disinvested ruins of the city a new egalitarian form of politics.

by Jared Loggins via The Nation on April 18, 2022

Robin D.G. Kelley

The Future of L.A. Is Here

On L.A. solidarity and the Black radical tradition.

by Robin D. G. Kelley, Vinson Cunningham via Los Angeles Times on March 17, 2021

Marx in the United States

A conversation with the author of a forthcoming book about the twists and turns of Marx's legacy in America.

by Andrew Hartman, Magnus Møller Ziegler, Tobias Dias via U.S. Intellectual History Blog on October 4, 2017

Three members of the Wages for Housework campaign running a table and handing out pamphlets.

Home Is Where the Unpaid Labor Is

A new history traces the development and influence of the global Wages for Housework movement from its founding to present day.

by Hannah Rosefield via The New Republic on March 19, 2025

Front cover of the 1940 issue Anvil by John C. Rogers showing a muscular man in bold red strokes.

Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism

Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.

by Marc Blanc via Jacobin on February 23, 2025

A group of adult students at Highlander Folk School holding class outside.

The Left Needs Its “Schools of Enlightenment and Revolution”

Throughout the entire history of left-wing organizing in the United States, the building of institutions of political education has been key.

by Nelson Lichtenstein, Steve Fraser via Jacobin on February 9, 2025

Senator J.D. Vance and Patrick Deneen at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Toward a Christian Postliberal Left

A truly Christian postliberalism would imagine and enact an alternative modernity with a different standard of progress.

by Eugene McCarraher via Commonweal on October 22, 2024

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifying before the Senate Budget Committee in 2009.

The Intractable Puzzle of Growth

The key measure of a healthy economy has long been growth, yet if production and consumption expand at their current rate we risk the health of the planet.

by Benjamin Kunkel via The Nation on August 26, 2024

Sailors singing a sea shanty.

There’s No Such Thing as “Just a Song”

What we can learn from the history of maritime folk music.

by Katy Kelleher, Stephen Sanfilippo via Nautilus on May 29, 2024

San Francisco Communist Party marching in May Day parade, 1935.

California Communism and Its Afterlives

A new book explores the Communist Party's western base and its alliance with the labor movement.

by Matt Ray, Matthew Wranovics via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 27, 2024

An FBI insignia on an officer's jacket.

To Fix the FBI, Abolish It

A new study of the national security apparatus finds the existing Bureau incompatible with republican government.

by Phillip Linderman via The American Conservative on May 25, 2024

Sandinista rebels ride a tank in Managua in 1979.

The U.S. Isn’t the Main Character of This History

Researching the Sandinista Revolution from Nicaraguans’ perspective.

by Mateo Jarquín via HNN on May 14, 2024

Hand throwing crumpled dollar bills into pile

Extravagances of Neoliberalism

On how the fringe ideas of a set of American neoliberals became a new and pervasive way of life.

by Melinda Cooper, Benjamin Kunkel via The Baffler on May 13, 2024

Boiling House at the Sugar Plantation Asunción, Cuba, 1857.

Slavery Was Crucial for the Development of Capitalism

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World.

by Robin Blackburn, Owen Dowling via Jacobin on April 10, 2024

A newspaper article from the Inner City Voice in Detroit with the headline, "Black Workers Uprising."

Acid Rhythms

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.

by William Harris via n+1 on April 10, 2024

Walt Rostow testifying in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C., February 1962.

The Real Washington Consensus

Modernization theory and the delusions of American strategy.

by Charles King via Foreign Affairs on October 24, 2023

Lionel Trilling

Liberalism in Mourning

Lionel Trilling crystallizes the cynical Cold War liberalism that sacrificed idealism for self-restraint.

by Samuel Moyn via Boston Review on August 30, 2023

The Sullivanians of the train from Amagansett, ca. 1972–76.

Where Egos Dare

The secret history of a psychoanalytic cult.

by Hannah Zeavin via Bookforum on August 29, 2023

Black Panther Party members demonstrating outside the New York County Criminal Court, April 11, 1969.

The Black Radical Tradition Can Guide Our Struggles Against Oppression

Uncovering a tradition of African American radicalism that was—and is—a crucial part of the American left’s history.

by Robin D. G. Kelley, Daniel Denvir via Jacobin on July 6, 2023

Painting of of C.L.R. James.

The Dialectician

The paradoxes of C.L.R. James.

by Gerald Horne via The Nation on April 18, 2023

J. Edgar Hoover in 1924.

How J. Edgar Hoover Went From Hero to Villain

Before his abuses of power were exposed, he was celebrated as a scourge of Nazis, Communists, and subversives.

by Jack Goldsmith via The Atlantic on November 22, 2022

Photograph of author Mike Davis.

Mike Davis Revisits His 1986 Labor History Classic, Prisoners of the American Dream

The late socialist writer's first book was a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened.

by Mike Davis, Daniel Denvir via Jacobin on October 31, 2022

‘Hell, Yes, We Are Subversive’

For all her influence as an activist, intellectual, and writer, Angela Davis has not always been taken as seriously as her peers. Why not?

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via New York Review of Books on September 1, 2022

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