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We greet you with our fifth dossier!
For our first three dossiers, we focused on theoretical topics, while for our fourth we took on the question “Could China and Russia constitute a new political axis?”. This dossier serves as a continuation to the previous one. The discussions of a new axis in some respects indicates a relative retreat of US hegemony. In this dossier which we proudly present to our readership, we grapple with the US from historical, sociological, economic and political perspectives.
British Marxist economist Michael Roberts analyzes the structural reasons for the global crisis on its tenth anniversary, in his illuminating piece which provides an economic perspective on the matter. Roberts, marshalling a theoretical framework as well as empirical data, puts forwards the thesis that the US economy is stalling due to a structural decline in profit rates.
Political sociologist Kumru Toktamış and journalist/sociologist Abby Scher analyze the impact of the #MeToo movement which started in the US and spread across the globe. This piece, which presents the historical development of the women’s movement in the United States through brief sketches, discusses the conditions which could facilitate the realization of the radical potential of the #MeToo movement.
Another Marxist economist, Daniel Younessi, analyzes the complex social and economic relations which emerge from the trifecta of migration, race, and class. This thought-provoking piece not only sheds light on the development of a fragmented structure of the working class in the US from a historical perspective, but also discusses how it is reproduced in the context of the accumulation of capital.
In his analysis entitled “Historical notes on the crisis of US imperialism” writer and researcher Alp Altınörs indicates the various stages that US global hegemony has passed through in the process from the Vietnam War up until the present day and points out the relative decline US hegemony has undergone, concentrating specifically on the cases of North Korea and Venezuela.
In our dossier, there are three articles on the present-day US left and its recent rise to renewed prominence. Yasemin Yılmaz discusses the timidity of left politics, which has only just begun to emerge from a long period of confinement in a narrow circle, within the context of the effects of post-modernism on the intellectual world. (available only in Turkish)
Doug Harrington analyzes the structure of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has begun to directly intervene in the politics of the country, as well as its relationship with the
mainstream left.
Muhsin Yorulmaz carries out a comprehensive interview with Kate Doyle Griffiths, acting as a spokesperson for Marxist Center, another new focus for the left. The interview, which encompasses a variety of topics from theory to history, from an independent revolutionary class movement to internationalism, provides the reader both with a closer understanding of the US left, as well as the opportunity to make important comparisons with different national contexts.
Lastly, noting the appropriateness of the topic to the dossier, we are re-publishing Muhsin Yorulmaz’s piece Afro-America which was published in our journal in the past months.
We hope that our dossier can be a ray of light on a practical or intellectual level for our friends and comrades across the globe who dream of a world without class or exploitation!
Dossier editors
Dilek Uygül
Güney Işıkara