1. The Abolition of the State
   Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives
   Resource Type: Book
   First Published: 2007
   Both Anarchists and Marxists believe that it will be possible to do away with the state. But what do they mean by that? What is the state, after all? What institutions, if any, would be necessary to replace its functions? Would a transitional “dictatorship of the proletariat” be needed or will it be possible to immediately abolish the state? Does modern technology require a centralized institution such as the state? Throughout the history of revolutions, the people have created workplace councils and neighborhood assemblies--how could these replace the state?
2. After Pakistan's Election
   Against The Current vol. 133
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2008
   Throughout Pakistan the massive anti-Musharraf vote on 18 February, 2008 spoke volumes: We do not like the military dictatorship; we want Musharraf out.
3. Asian American Activism Stirring
   Against The Current vol. 91
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2001
   For a brief but wonderful moment in 2000, the Ralph Nader/Winona LaDuke Presidential campaign drew widespread public attention to its central theme of restoring democracy by challenging corporate power. Speaking to thousands of supporters at “super rallies” and millions of television viewers, Nader hammered home the three general points that corporate power has:
4. Beyond Voting
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2000   Published: 2016
   By all means vote if you feel like it. But don't stop there. Real social change requires participation, not representation.
   
5. A Blueprint for a New Party
   With the rise of Donald Trump, we need to think seriously about what it would take to form a democratic organization rooted in working class
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2016
   A proposal for a national political organization that would have chapters at the state and local levels, a binding program, a leadership accountable to its members, and electoral candidates nominated at all levels throughout the country.
6. Bolivia's Autonomist Right -- A Dangerous Threat
   Against The Current vol. 135
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2008
   Autonomist right-wing forces in the Bolivian department (state) of Santa Cruz — acting through the offices of the prefecture (governorship) and Santa Cruz Civic Committee — held an illegal May 4 rerendum on departmental autonomy. According to the consulting agency Captura Consulting the “yes” side won 85% of the votes cast, with 15% against. However, many organizations within the left-indigenous bloc of the department had called for a boycott of the referendum, and were successful in obtaining an abstention rate of over 40%. Compare that to the remarkably low abstention rate of 15% in the December 2005 general elections that brought Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, to office at the national level. Nonetheless, the right declared results a triumphant victory.
7. Canada: Activists Face the Future
   Against The Current vol. 91
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2001
   Electoral politics present challenging problems for labor movements all over the world. In the absence of strong working class parties, labor activists are often compelled to support parties that implement anti-worker legislation simply because they represent a lesser evil. While reforms are certainly necessary, the investment of activist energy and resources into the electoral process can often distract union and social justice organizations, preventing them from undertaking the important task of generating solidarity within more impoverished segments of the working class.
8. The Canadian Elections: Cover-Up and Steal (Again)
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2015
   The opposition parties in Canada's 2015 federal election are sticking to a careful PR-driven script, refusing to even mention the fact that Stephen Harper's Conservatives broke the law and committed fraud in winning the 2006, 2008, and 2011 elections. The mainstream media and the political parties scrupulously ignore this reality.
9. The Caribbean Left's Legacy
   Against The Current vol. 112
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2004
   Sara Abraham interviews Eusi Kwayana of The Working People's Alliance (WPA) in Guyana. The WPA continued to organize and build its ranks through a democratic socialist multi racial agenda, but has continuously been marginalized by the two party system, wining only one or two seats in each election.
10. Elections and Regime Crisis
    Against The Current vol. 124
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Will the Democrats "regain control of Congress"? Will Joseph Lieberman change parties? Will Hillary Clinton be the Democratic frontrunner for 2008? How much does any of this matter?
11. Get Up, Stand Up 
    Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2011
    Levine offers insights into the epidemic of political passivity in America and analyzes how major U.S. institutions have created helplessness and fatalism. He proposes ways of recovering dignity, energy, and unity in order to wrest power away from the corporatocracy.
12. GovernmentSources.ca
    Resource Type: Website
    A portal with information about government, Canadian and international, with articles, documents, books, websites, and experts and spokespersons. The home page features a selection of recent and important articles. A search feature, subject index, and other research tools make it possible to find additional resources and information.
13. Harper, Serial Abuser of Power: The Evidence Compiled
    The Tyee's full, updated list of 70 Harper government assaults on democracy and the law.
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have racked up dozens of serious abuses of power since forming government in 2006. From scams to smears, monkey-wrenching opponents to intimidating public servants like an Orwellian gorilla, some offences are criminal, others just offend human decency. Here are 70 instances of abuse of power by the Stephen Harper government.
14. The History of Democracy 
    A Marxist Interpretation
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2013
    Roper traces the history of democracy from ancient Athens to the emergence of liberal representative and socialist participatory democracy. He argues that democracy cannot be understood separately from the social and economic contexts in which democratic states operate.
15. Inventing Reality 
    The Politics of News Media
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1993
    Parenti sets out to demonstrate how the news media distort important aspects of social and political life and why they do.
16. Korea: The Elections and Sexual Violence
    Against The Current vol. 87
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    In the April 13 South Korean parliamentary elections, the closest the Democratic Labor Party came to victory was in the Hyundai company town of Ulsan. Their candidate was defeated by a small margin (43% to 41.8%) by the Grand National Party, the traditional party of the military dictatorship, anticommunism, and Kyongsang chauvinism (Ulsan is in South Kyongsang Province). The combination of money, regionalism and boss politics still exerts influence in the working class.
17. The Left and the Elections
    Against The Current vol. 110
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Two electoral paths will be taken by those left of center this year, and all the spilled ink in the world won't affect the choices.
18. Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    The recent calls for the British left either to “reclaim Labour” (Len McCluskey) or to build a new party capable of emulating Syriza’s successes in Greece (Ken Loach) demand serious consideration on these pages. At their core these proposals reflect a widespread desire, shared by members of the Socialist Workers Party, to fight the cuts, alongside revulsion at the Labour Party’s failure to do so. They also reflect a genuine excitement across the left about the prospects for new left formations such as Syriza and France’s similar Front de Gauche.
19. Lenin and the Tsarist Duma
    A review of August H Nimtz, Lenin’s Electoral Strategy from Marx and Engels through the Revolution of 1905: The Ballot, the Streets—or Both
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2018
    Donnelly reviews Nimtz's two volume account of Lenin's pre-revolution electoral strategy and summarises the thesis that Lenin's critique of reformism in parliamentary democracy was rooted in the conclusions of Marx and Engels.
20. Nader, Greens and Socialists
    Against The Current vol. 91
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 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 wing. Nevertheless, the Democrats, their liberal satellite organizations, and the corporate media are playing the blame game for all it is worth.
21. Of Hegel and Bernie Sanders 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    My concern is not with Bernie Sanders (basically a New Deal liberal) but with the social dynamics of the Sanders phenomenon. What is going on when we see a surge of mass support for someone who identifies himself (however inaccurately) with socialism? What is the social process driving this unexpected shift in political goals and ideas toward the left? What lies behind the re-entry of socialism into the mass vocabulary of political life?
22. Our Generation
    Volume 20 Number 1
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1988
    
23. The Policy of Abstention
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1887
    Morris argues that socialism should be fought for using mass action rather than parliamentary action.
    
24. Power and Protest: The Electoral Tactics of Leftist Social Movements
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    The central difficulty for left social movements is determining electoral tactics that will enable them to win both in the short run and in the middle run. On the surface, it seems that winning in the short run conflicts with winning in the middle run.
25. Publicity and the Canadian State
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 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.
26. Race, Incarceration, and American Values 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2008
    Glenn Loury argues that the extraordinary mass incarceration rate in the USA is not a response to rising crime rates. Instead, it is the product of a decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies.
27. Reverend Wright and Black Liberation Theology
    Against The Current vol. 134
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2008
    The groundswell of broad support for Barack Obama (both among Blacks and whites) is a phenomenon that deserves a serious analysis and understanding. It cannot be down played by passing it through the lens of pure-and-simple lesser-evilism.
28. Rigged
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2016
    The 2016 Republican presidential primary was rigged. It wasn't rigged by the Republicans, the Democrats, Russians, space aliens, or voters. It was rigged by the owners of television networks who believed that giving one candidate far more coverage than others was good for their ratings. The CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves said of this decision: "It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS." Justifying that choice based on polling gets the chronology backwards, ignores Moonves' actual motivation, and avoids the problem, which is that there ought to be fair coverage for all qualified candidates (and a democratic way to determine who is qualified).
29. Rosa Luxemburg 
    Selected Political Writings
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1972
    A selection of Rosa Luxemburg's writings which highlight her outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism.
30. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2004
    A definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings.
31. Spain: Madrid and Barcelona show -- the greater the unity on the left, the bigger the win
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    Once the results of Spain’s May 24, 2015, local and regional elections became known the main lesson for the anti-austerity and anti-capitalist left was simply and starkly obvious: the more united and more involving of ordinary people its election campaigns were, the greater its gains and the greater the losses for the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) -- its main rival for the popular and working-class vote -- and for the ruling conservative People's Party (PP).
32. Spain on Edge
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2015
    An interview with Podemos spokesperson Pablo Iglesias.
33. Strategic Thinking and Organizing Resistance
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    Argues the need for strategy and vision, and effective organizing, in forming a resistance movement to the Trump presidency, and provides several suggestions for organizers.
34. Thieving Sons of Bushes
    Against The Current vol. 91
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    “Never Trust a Son of Bush” was one of many signs at George W. Bush's presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. on January 20. Some 25,000 marched in Washington and 15,000 rallied in San Francisco. The D.C. protest was the largest one at a presidential inauguration since 1973 -- at President Nixon's second term.
35. 25 Years After the Gdansk Uprising
    Against The Current vol. 121
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    Suzi Weissman interviews David Ost. The occupation of the Gdansk shipyard by Polish workers in 1980, demanding recognition of their independent trade union Solidarnosc, rocked the Eastern bloc and inspired the world. A quarter century later, Communist rule is only a bad memory but the present realities for the Polish working class are a grim choice between neoliberalism and reactionary psedo-populism. The following interview with David Ost, conducted by Suzi Weissman November 28, 2005 for her radio program “Beneath the Surface” on KPFK in Los Angeles (90.7 FM), explores what’s happened to post-Solidarity Poland. It has been edited for publication here.
36. Waiting for Democracy
    A Citizen's Journal
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1989
    Rick Salutin's account of the pivotal 1988 "free trade" election. Waiting for Democracy makes a strong case that our political system is anything but democratic, though it offers little hope of changing it.
37. Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues 
    Resource Type: Article
    An introduction to cognitive policy – the values, frames, and arguments that make sense of the political process.

Experts on Politique ‚lectorale in the Sources Directory

1. Marxists Internet Archive