Despite what bourgeois economists, the priests of property and profit, would have us believe, capitalism isn’t the eternal way of things. It had a beginning, and it will have an end. As we begin our discussion of political economy, let’s draw upon historical materialism to examine how capitalism arose.

Thanks to Marxism, we know that ideological superstructure of society arises from and supports the material, economic base of society. What we think is shaped primarily by our practical activity in production, class struggle and scientific experiment. Furthermore, Marx was fundamentally a revolutionary organizer, interested in helping the working class to understand and overthrow its exploitation. This is why Marx devoted the bulk of his theoretical work to an analysis of political economy.

Detroit, MI – A group of activists in the Detroit area joined the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) in June 2022. This expands FRSO to an important and historic city for labor and Black struggles. The young workers and activists organized together during the George Floyd rebellion of 2020, and continued protesting through 2021, when they formed their own study group.

In the ideological terrain today, Marxism must struggle against postmodernism. What is postmodernism? In The Postmodern Condition, the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard summed up the postmodern view as the rejection of “metanarratives.” By “metanarratives” Lyotard means any theory that claims to be able to explain the totality of social, historical and cultural phenomena. This includes the Enlightenment and Marxism. In other words, postmodernism opposes the idea that the world can or should be objectively and rationally understood. The idea that the world as a whole is rational and comprehensible is thus deemed “modern” and postmodernism claims to have gone beyond modernism.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization has announced nation-wide zoom study sessions on the Fight Back! News Red Theory article series by J. Sykes. The first group of four sessions will cover the first five articles in the series and will occur biweekly, with the first session happening Thursday, July 14. You can find all the articles in the series here.

Join FRSO leaders for a report back on the organization's recent 9th Congress. We will also discuss the importance of mobilizing to defend Roe v. Wade. Hosted by Tom Burke, FRSO Organization Secretary and Standing Committee, Chrisley Carpio of the Standing Committee, and Andy Koch, FRSO National Organizer.

Marxist-Leninists are practical people. This has been true since Marx wrote his famous Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Many Marxists might even consider themselves “pragmatists.” But Marxism and pragmatism, though there may be some superficial similarities, are, in fact, fundamentally opposed. So, let’s look more closely at this. What is pragmatism?

In our exploration of the fundamental concepts of historical materialism so far, we have looked closely at the economic and material base of society. We’ve talked about the forces and relations of production that make up a mode of production. But every mode of production which forms the base of society has a superstructure that arises from it and in turn reinforces it. So, let’s look now at what the superstructure is and the relationship between it and the base.

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Much is made of what is often referred to as the urban/rural divide. There is a fundamental disconnect, we are told, between the people from the cities and the rural population. Marx and Engels called this contradiction the division between town and country. Marxism-Leninism can help us understand this contradiction, how it arose historically, and how it can be overcome.