Political Strategy

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Connexions Library

Action Will Be Taken: Left Anti-Intellectualism and Its Discontents
Featherstone, Liza; Henwood, Doug; Parenti, Christian
Article
2004
Marxism's decline isn't just an intellectual concern -- it too has practical effects. If you lack any serious understanding of how capitalism works, then it's easy to delude yourself into thinking tha...
The Activists' Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Participatory Democracy
Ricketts, Aidan
Book
2012
A guide to grassroots activism.
Critique of Nonviolent Politics: From Mahatma Gandhi to the Anti-Nuclear Movement
Ryan, Howard
Book
1984
Ryan accepts that sometimes nonviolence can be effective, but says that sometimes it is not: "a principled insistence on nonviolence can in some circumstances be dangerous to progressive social moveme...
Easily Led: A History of Propaganda
Thomson, Oliver
Book
1999
From Ancient Sumer to modern Poland, Thomson traces the use of propaganda and its influence on human events.
Framing the Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People
Horn, Bernie
Book
Polls show that most Americans favor progressive policy, but they also embrace conservative philosophy. George Lakoff and other analysts have shown that, in order to reclaim America for all Americans,...
From Dictatorship to Democracy
Sharp, Gene
Book
2002
A short, serious introduction to nonviolent struggle, its applications, and strategic thinking. Based on pragmatic arguments, this piece presents nonviolent struggle as a realistic alternative to war ...
Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals
Smucker, Jonathan
Book
2017
Hegemony How-To is a practical guide to political struggle for a generation that is deeply ambivalent about questions of power, leadership, and strategy.
"Hegemony How-To": Rethinking Activism and Embracing Power: A review of Hegemony How-To: a Roadmap for Radicals, by Jonathan Smucker
Levine, Bruce
Article
2017
"How many times, I wondered, had I favored a particular action or tactic because I really thought it was likely to change a decision-maker’s position or win over key allies, as opposed to gravitating ...
How to End the Tea Party (and Scare Obama at the Same Time): A Black / Brown Coalition
Smith, Sam
Article
2010
One of the reasons the left doesn't do better is because it tends to view the right's transgressions as a moral issue rather than as a pragmatic problem as, for example, a baseball coach would do if t...
In and against the state
Mitchell, Jeanette; Mackenzie, Donald; Holloway, John; Cockburn, Cynthia, et al
Book
1979
The state is not neutral. It does provide services and resources which most of us need – education, health care, social security. But it does not do so primarily for the good of the working class. It ...
In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives
Panitch, Leo; Gindin, Sam; Albo, Greg
Book
2010
Political economists Albo, Gindin and Panitch lay bare the roots of the crisis, which they locate in the dynamic expansion of capital on a global scale over the last quarter century – and in the inner...
Is that an archive in your basement... or are you just hoarding?: Sources News Release
Article
2012
Are you an 'accidental archivist'? Have you been saving the publications and documents produced by the social justice projects you've been involved in? Then Connexions would like to hear from you.
Lenin On The Need For Political Compromise
Riggins, Thomas
Article
2013
Considering the nature of compromises and how to deal with them.
Losing Toronto: How Olivia Chow and the left may be giving away an election
Laxer, Michael
Article
2014
As we head into the Labour Day weekend that may be accurately deemed to be the start of the homestretch of Toronto's very long mayoral and council election season, the news is not good for leftists or...
Manifestos, Programs, Visions: Selected Manifestos - Political Statements - Programs
Website
1649
A selection of left manifestos, programs, poltical statements and visions from the 1600s to today.
A Movement Without Demands?
Deseriis, Marco; Dean, Jodi
Article
2012
We claim that far from being a strength, the lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement. We also claim that demands should not be approached tactically but strategically, that ...
Nader, Greens and Socialists: Against The Current vol. 91
Hawkins, Howie
Article
2001
Blaming Ralph Nader for Bush is like blaming the abolitionists for slavery. The Greens ran Nader to end corporate oligarchy, not to support one wing of the oligarchy as a lesser evil against the other...
No Cheers For Anarchism
Berman, Sheri
Article
2015
A successful movement requires compromise, organization, and yes, even leadership, to actually get things done, none of which appeal to anarchists.
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 11, 2017: Left Parties
Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
In recent years, there have been repeated attempts to build left political parties and coalitions, i.e. parties to the left of the established social democratic parties which have long become part of ...
Politics without Democracy, Democracy without Politics
Malik, Kenan
Article
2011
The aim of the Occupy movement is to create a big tent, to represent the 99%, in the name of democracy. But democracy requires not big tent politics, but the very opposite. It requires the drawing of ...
Presenting Insurgent Notes
Article
2010
We take our Marx and Engels seriously. Recent history, beginning perhaps (in the US) with the UPS strike of 1997 and the 'battle of Seattle' in 1999, now quickened by the abject financial and ideologi...
A progressive dialogue on the future: Six questions for leftists
Podur, Justin
Article
2011
Leftists don't spend enough time or energy working on important strategic questions. If we could resolve a handful of these, even tentatively, and try out some solutions, we would be far more successf...
The Prophet Alarmed: The Extreme Center: A Warning (Book Review)
Wald, Alan
Article
2015
Review of Tariq Ali's The Extreme Center: A Warning. In The Extreme Center, Ali gives more than just a pungent and entertaining smack-down of corruption in British politics.
Publicity and the Canadian State
Kozolanka, Kirsten
Book
2014
A collection examining the state's relationship with public practices and the "permanent campaign," the constant search for politicians and their strategists for popular consent.
Rebuilding the Left in a Time of Crisis
Panitch, Leo
Article
2011
The type of organizers we need to develop need to be those who have developed the skills and capacities and depth that allow them to be good at taking a defensive struggle and saying we can both fight...
Reform and Revolution
Gorz, Andre
Article
1967
An essay taken from Andre Gorz's Le Socialisme Difficile in which he discusses how socialist strategy can aim to crate the objective and subjective conditions which will make mass revolutionary action...
Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Political Writings
Luxemburg, Rosa (edited with an introduction by Robert Looker)
Book
1972
A selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings which highlight her outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism.
The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
Luxemburg, Rosa. [Anderson, Kevin; Hudis, Peter (eds.)]
Book
2004
A definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings.
Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution in the Twenty-first Century
Scott, Helen
Article
2010
Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform and Revolution, written at a high point of socialist struggle, contains invaluable lessons for today's new generation of activists as they confront the political and organizati...
SDS
Sale, Kirkpatrick
Book
1973
The rise and development of the Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that became the major expression of the American left in the 1960s -- its passage from student protest to institutio...
Shades of Grey -- A Left Chapter look at strategy, tactics and endorsements in the 2015 election
Laxer, Michael
Article
2015
With just under two weeks to go until election day, anti-capitalist leftists are in something of a quandary.
Socialism and Revolution
Gorz, Andre
Book
1967
Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and...
Spinwars: Politics and New Media
Fox, Bill
Book
1999
An examination of media manipulation in late 20th Century North American politics.
2013 Unoccupied: Sun Tzu's Messages to the Occupy Movement
Giambrone, Joe
Article
2012
The ”Occupy” movement has apparently receded into the long night. The structural challenges remain the same, and opposition is still needed. What has been exposed as fruitless, however, is the idea...
The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism Since Lenin
Howard, Dick, Klare, Karl E.
Book
1972
The radical intellectual tradition of European post-Leninist Marxism, so different from the dogma of the orthodox leftist parties, is an unknowwn dimension. This anthology sets out to recover this Mar...
What Needs To Be Done: A Socialist View: Published in Monthly Review, Volume 61, Number 6 - November 2009
Magodff, Fred; Yates, Michael D.
Article
2009
What is worth fighting for? Perhaps this severe recession offers us an opportunity to ask this question. This crisis has revealed the rotten foundation of our economy and called into question the neol...
What to do with a tin of beans? Food banks, the left and the movement
Snowdon, Alex
Article
2013
Acts of collective practical solidarity are a springboard to participation in campaigning against austerity and the Tory war on the poor.
Where Is Indonesia Going?: Against The Current vol. 87
Miah, Malik
Article
2000
For both admirers and critics of Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, the picture is disturbing: At the presidential palace in Jakarta there are signs of a new “royal court” in the making. Official...

Connexions Directory of Groups & Websites

Marxists Internet Archive
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
News and Letters
An organization of Marxist-Humanists standing for the abolition of capitalism, both in its private property form and ins its state property form. We stand for the deveopment of new human relations; wh...

Sources Experts & Spokespersons

From the Connexions Archives

Marxists Internet Archive
Website
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
News and Letters
Serial Publication (Periodical)
Articles from a Marxist-Humanist perspective.
The Red Menace
A libertarian socialist newsletter
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1975
Articles on topics such as socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, jargon, prostitution, obscenity, science fiction, ...