Archive of History

Researcher and activist Pascal Bianchini describes the lasting effects of the 1960s–70s student movement in Senegal and the condition of the Senegalese left today. 

Max Elbaum wrote Revolution in the Air in 2001 to reclaim the lessons of the New Communist Movement for militants who, like their early sixties’ predecessors, became activists when the radical left was fragmented and weak. How relevant is this history and the lessons he draws for us now, in this new period of left upsurge?

“I feel sorry for nothing," Valerie Solanas told reporters after shooting Warhol. “Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am." 

In this excerpt from the epilogue to his landmark 1986 Prisoners of the American Dream, Mike Davis sketches the necessary conditions to build an independent left politics that has real and effective social anchorage in the United States. 

In this excerpt from his classic City of Quartz, Mike Davis examines the home security arms race that erected gates, walls, and thousands of "Armed Response" lawn placards across suburban Los Angeles in the Reagan era.

Historian Margaret Stevens discusses transnational connections between Black radicals during the interwar years, the interplay between militant Caribbean workers’ uprisings and Communist Party leadership, and the lessons of Communist anti-racist and anti-imperialist organizing. 

Ernest Mandel's biographer describes the Supreme Court decision that kept Mandel out of the United States — and set a precedent for the Muslim travel ban.