Category Archives: BOOKS & PAMPHLETS

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM VS. THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: TOWARDS A GREEN APPROACH TO FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IN THE U.S.

  by Mitchel Cohen The following was written a decade-and-a-half before the outbreak of the SARS COV2 Covid-19 pandemic. THE FIGHT FOR FREE, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE is even more critical today than it was a decade ago when Hillary and Bill Clinton sacrificed it to the greed of the insurance companies and HMOs. Yes, health […]

ZEN-MARXISM 101: PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS

The question of freedom and determinism — or, in Rosa Luxemburg‘s prescient query: “Reform and Revolution” — is what got me started writing my zen-marxism series of pamphlets, of which the philosophical chapters in “The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides” are the most current outgrowths. If conditions freely determine, can we be […]

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NEUROSIS

by Mitchel Cohen When 20-year-old Marja announced that she was joining the Red Balloon Col­lec­tive at SUNY Stony Brook in the mid-1970s, her Long Island sub­urban mother went bal­lis­tic: “This is the freest country in the world. If they don’t like it here, why don’t they go back to Russia?” Marja’s mom forbade her to […]

AN AMERICAN IN CUBA

IN THE SUMMER OF 1992, I visited Cuba as part of a delegation to the Fourth Conference of Cuban and North Am­er­i­can Philosophers, organized by the U.S.-based Radical Phi­lo­sophy Association. The trip occurred during what Cu­bans call the “Special Period” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s most important trade partner and benefactor. 

A TALK IN HAVANA

Giant mural at University of Havana in support of Occupy Wall Street. Details list hundreds of corporations and their profits for the year. A talk by Mitchel Cohen at the “Seminar on Socialist Renewal and the Capitalist Crisis – A Cuban-North American Exchange”, Havana, Cuba: June 16-30, 2013 in association with the Center for Global […]

THE STRUGGLE FOR ECOLOGICAL AGRICULTURE IN CUBA

by RICHARD LEVINS with an into by Mitchel Cohen With the indiscriminate spraying of toxic insecticides on the people of NY and the natural environment, this article — originally written in 1991 and updated in 1995 — becomes even more useful. In it, Richard Levins discusses, among other things, the use of ants and natural […]

REMEMBERING CHE GUEVARA (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967)

Guided by Great Feelings of Love: The Revolutionary Legacy of Che Guevara, on the 46th anniversary of his assassination. by Mitchel Cohen Che was captured, tortured and murdered in Bolivia under the direction of the CIA on October 9, 1967. Forty-six years have passed. Still Che is remembered, not as some ancient and hazy patriarch, […]

A RESPONSE TO CHRIS HEDGES: VIOLENCE, TACTICS, REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY & OCCUPY WALL STREET

This essay is available as a hardcopy booklet. Please drop an email to MitchelCohen@mindspring.com to obtain a copy. Note: I was not going to comment further on Chris Hedges’ widely published essay, “The Cancer in Occupy,”1 concerning tactics for Occupy Oakland (and by extension Occupy Wall Street). In that article, Hedges condemned tactics he attributed […]

WHERE THE CRISES INTERSECT: LAWRENCE SUMMERS, AL GORE, AND U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL & ECONOMIC POLICY

Introduction OBAMA’S WINTER OF NEO-LIBERAL DISCONTENT by MITCHEL COHEN President Obama’s chief economics adviser, Lawrence Summers, left the cabinet a year ago as rebellions against the neoliberal, austerity and anti-democratic programs he authored washed over Tunisia, Egypt, and Europe. But hopes for a shift in government policy were dashed, as President Obama continued to pursue […]

THOUGHTS ON “THE CAPITALIST INFESTO”

Marxists and the Ecological Dimension: Is Marx’s Critique of Science and Technology Radical Enough? By Mitchel Cohen FOR YEARS, AS I’VE BEEN ACTIVE IN SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVE­MENTS I’VE WORKED WITH PEOPLE WHO CALL THEMSELVES MARXISTS. I taught an underground course at Stony Brook for 16 years called “Marxism for Beginners”. And the group that I […]

THE CAPITALIST INFESTO (Part Two: What Is To Be Undone?)

What Is To Be UnDone? With all of this in mind, I offer the following six proposals for greening Marxism, which is essential if we are going to both save the planet and transform society in a socially and economically meaningful way. I call this framework “Deep Marxism”: (1) Oppose genetic engineering not only as […]

THE CAPITALIST INFESTO (Part One)

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!   – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar A specter is haunting this planet — the specter of biological devastation and ecological catastrophe. It is ravaging the ecosystems sustaining life. Butterflies, frogs, bees, whole familiar species are in sudden danger […]

Z Magazine Publishes My Article On Lawrence Summers in February Issue

In February 2011, Z Magazine printed my article, Lawrence Summers, Goodbye and Good Riddance: Obama’s Winter of Neo-Liberal Discontent. You can view it at the link above or download it via the Z-Mag PDF version here: lawrence-summers-goodbye-and-good-riddance-by-mitchel-cohen. Check it out! Here’s the full article (before Z Mag edited out the parts about Al Gore and […]