As you may have noticed, PoliticalAffairs.net has a new “culture and values” page for the purpose of dealing with just what the title suggests. We’re dedicating ourselves to searching far and wide, dredging the nether-reaches of the internet and other strange realms for artistic media so you don’t have to.

Attention all Marxists! If you thought class struggle was the motive force of history, as certain manifesto writers have claimed, you are sadly mistaken. A new book by Daniel Lord Smail ("On Deep History and the Brain", California, 2007) has come up with the true motive force.

My feeling is exactly what I write in the article, which is to say, I am very hopeful, but I lack sufficient information to be more than hopeful. I wasn't saying that only others need more information, though many other people do, of course.

Sellars was an analytic philosopher, a member of a school stemming back over a hundred years, that grew out of the rejection of the European philosophical tradition growing out of German Idealism, especially Kant and Hegel. Marxism also grew out of this German tradition.

A friend of mine called me a few days ago to comment on a scene he didn’t like on the Cuban soap opera presently being aired on television (Polvo en el Viento) in which some criminals hired by a dishonest female cashier beat up a couple as revenge for having reported her.

As capitalist industrial practices spread throughout the globe, the associated environmental problems were similarly dispersed and environment questions were actively posed for an increasing number of nations and an increasing portion of the global population.

It is possible that the successes of the Left and progressive forces, the labor movement, Marxist parties, etc., helped preserve capitalism from its own contradictions.

“America is weak,” the Russian military officer boldly shouted at us, a group of closely-shaved raw recruits in our second week of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was a cold February morning, and we had marched to a training site for classes, ironically, on patriotism.

There is an entire genre of theory explaining why the Western capitalist democracies did not undergo socialist revolution in the 20th Century, as Classical Marxism had predicted. Not surprisingly, most of this material comes from the Left itself.

Former Vice President Al Gore in a speech in Washington this week called for a policy that would lead to the elimination of all fossil fuel based electrical power production in the US and its replacement by solar, wind, and other renewable energy source.

There is an inseparable link between human beings and nature. They are interconnected and the actions of people have their consequences in the natural world. That is what we are witnessing today in climate change. The hole in the ozone layer is a direct consequence of CO2 emissions by man.

The essay “How to Read and Understand History” was originally written in 1943. My copy is from a reprint published in 1957 by The Philosophical Library.

El salto de una sociedad movida por la ambición individual y la competencia, a otra que descanse en la solidaridad y la ayuda mutua, tropieza con muchos mas obstáculos materiales y trabas mentales que los que podrían haber imaginado Carlos Marx, sus precursores y todos sus seguidores en busca de la utopía socialista.

The passage from a society driven by individual greed and rivalry to another one based on mutual solidarity and assistance comes up against many more material obstacles and psychological barriers than Karl Marx and all of his forerunners and followers could have ever imagined as they searched for a socialist utopia.

It would seem there's no topic worthy of addressing that would not bore our patient readers, after the “Round Table” program of June 12, which dealt with the new edition of a book published in Bolivia 15 years ago, featuring now a prologue I wrote.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and its aftermath, the so-called "War on Terror," and the Iraq war, have given rise to instances of celebrated "western" figures using bigoted images of the "east."

David Ricardo, the outstanding predecessor of Marx, had visualized the process of capital accumulation getting constrained by the non-availability of adequate supplies of land.

The struggle for the votes from the working class has never been more openly discussed. In the mainstream media, we've heard the phrase “working class” far more than the classless phrase “middle class” in recent weeks. This is new feature for national elections.

Every child in the US is taught that a system of "checks and balances" between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, keeps the US from being a dictatorship.

In the wake of the widespread U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis, speculative funds began to flow into the oil and grains markets, pushing up their prices. The trend is so powerful that it is very difficult to keep these moves under control. Observing this situation, some economic analysts are saying, “Capitalism is reaching its limits.”