https://znetwork.org/category/topic/broad-theory/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:13:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/category/topic/broad-theory/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-marx-tells-us-about-why-gen-z-revolutions-failed/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-marx-tells-us-about-why-gen-z-revolutions-failed/#respond Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:09:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294872 Extreme inequality, precarious labour, corporate power and political alienation have intensified rather than receded in the era of late capitalism. Karl Marx’s importance lies in his method of analysing society through material relations, class power and exploitation. Late capitalism has not transcended Marx’s critique. It has confirmed many of its central insights. Marx insisted that [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-marx-tells-us-about-why-gen-z-revolutions-failed/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/politics-is-everywhere-so-why-do-people-feel-so-powerless/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/politics-is-everywhere-so-why-do-people-feel-so-powerless/#respond Tue, 17 Feb 2026 17:15:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294847 Halfway through his acclaimed novel Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico inserts a particularly revealing episode. It is 2015 and Anna and Tom are both graphic designers, working in one of Berlin’s trendiest neighborhoods. Their comfortable life is suddenly interrupted, however, when a picture surfaces on social media and soon goes viral. It is an image of Alan Kurdi, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/politics-is-everywhere-so-why-do-people-feel-so-powerless/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/up-for-grabs-polycrisis-2-0/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/up-for-grabs-polycrisis-2-0/#respond Mon, 16 Feb 2026 20:54:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294781 Whatever happened to the “polycrisis”? A couple of years ago it was the buzzword of the world, describing a concatenation of interacting crises that aggravated each other and made solutions appear impossible. In the year since the inauguration of Donald Trump his words and actions have so dominated world events that discussion of the polycrisis [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/up-for-grabs-polycrisis-2-0/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/liberal-class-compromise-a-devils-bargain/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/liberal-class-compromise-a-devils-bargain/#respond Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:21:45 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294690 ‘Of course there’s class warfare,’ US billionaire Warren Buffet once quipped in The New York Times, ‘but it’s our class that’s making war, and we’re winning.’1 This truism of respectable middle-class politics reflects the class-consciousness of the Haves just as surely as it (perversely enough) reflects their desire to suppress it in the collective awareness [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/liberal-class-compromise-a-devils-bargain/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-historical-blockage-to-radical-rupture-the-ontological-revolution-of-socialism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-historical-blockage-to-radical-rupture-the-ontological-revolution-of-socialism/#respond Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:44:12 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294509 ​The intellectual framework of new socialism gains meaning through the transcendence of the three main pillars of modernity: statism, industrialism, and hierarchical rationality. These three pillars have been reproduced in different forms throughout history. Capitalism reinforced them through the dogmas of growth, competition, and the market. Traditional socialism, on the other hand, preserved these three [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-historical-blockage-to-radical-rupture-the-ontological-revolution-of-socialism/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/is-trumpism-fascism-reflections-on-leon-trotskys-fascism-what-it-is-and-how-to-fight-it/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/is-trumpism-fascism-reflections-on-leon-trotskys-fascism-what-it-is-and-how-to-fight-it/#respond Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:45:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294068 “The […] United States working class is [in] very many important respects […] the most progressive working class of the world.” Leon Trotsky wrote these words in 1944 not as flattery, but as a warning against fatalism. His essays on fascism were born from a conviction that catastrophe was not inevitable, that history turned on [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/is-trumpism-fascism-reflections-on-leon-trotskys-fascism-what-it-is-and-how-to-fight-it/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-people-vote-for-trump-10-ideologies/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-people-vote-for-trump-10-ideologies/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293842 One of the most challenging questions of democracy might indeed be: why did so many people vote for Adolf Hitler even though he acted against their interests? Virtually the same can be said for those who voted for Brexit in the UK, voted for Germany’s neo-fascist AfD – even when Germany’s capital side openly stated [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-people-vote-for-trump-10-ideologies/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/does-the-unthinkable-happen/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/does-the-unthinkable-happen/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293703 Modern history is replete with events so extraordinary, aberrant, revolting, and surprising that one feels like exclaiming: how is this possible!? Normally, this exclamation, as a generalized phenomenon, does not arise at the moment such events take place, but years or centuries later: how was this possible!? The astonishment is such that, often, what has [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/does-the-unthinkable-happen/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/donald-trump-americas-auditor-how-one-leader-exposed-democracys-fault-lines/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/donald-trump-americas-auditor-how-one-leader-exposed-democracys-fault-lines/#respond Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:01:53 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293649 What happens when a political outsider acts as an unsanctioned auditor of the system? Trump’s presidency exposes weaknesses in American democracy that had long gone unnoticed. Every system eventually encounters the user it was never designed to survive. In finance, that user is the bad actor who ignores best practices, exploits loopholes, and treats safeguards [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/donald-trump-americas-auditor-how-one-leader-exposed-democracys-fault-lines/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/shackles-in-mentality-and-ocalans-revolution-of-mentality/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/shackles-in-mentality-and-ocalans-revolution-of-mentality/#respond Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:03:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293387 ​The radical breakthrough quality of Abdullah Öcalan’s thought stems not only from exceeding the limits of the classical leftist paradigm but from the structural critique he directs toward the entirety of modernity. This critique is aimed at analyzing the integrated system of power that modernity has built around progress, growth, rationality, the nation-state, capitalist economy, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/shackles-in-mentality-and-ocalans-revolution-of-mentality/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-start-a-revolution-in-2026/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-start-a-revolution-in-2026/#respond Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:03:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293393 This is my most complete piece of work since prison. I’ve just published a three-hour video laying out, in practical detail, how real political change actually happens in the conditions we now face: climate collapse, democratic breakdown, and the rise of authoritarian politics. The full video is linked here, and there’s also a podcast version for those who [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-start-a-revolution-in-2026/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-firewall-of-separation/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-firewall-of-separation/#respond Sat, 10 Jan 2026 15:51:32 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293317 It is a belief held by most people in society that the internet is a novel danger. That it is a threat to freedom and democracy unparalleled in the history of our species. It is often asked, “How do you stop the internet being used as a vector for radicalisation, hate-mongering, incitement to violence?” The [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-firewall-of-separation/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/attitude-2/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/attitude-2/#respond Wed, 07 Jan 2026 22:05:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293179 Charles Dickens wrote, “Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.” It was an advisory. An attitude. Your neighbor might write, “Nothing is possible. People suck. It is what it is. Paste on a smile. Take a selfie. Make the best of it.“ It is an advisory. Another attitude. You might go with one of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/attitude-2/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-the-beginning-is-joy-and-hope/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-the-beginning-is-joy-and-hope/#respond Sun, 04 Jan 2026 15:08:52 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293091 At the start of this year, it is clearer than ever that joy and hope are drifting apart. There is joy, but, without hope, joy lasts only as long as a lit match. When night falls, joy has to take sleeping pills to get to sleep. If we look hard enough, we can also find [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-the-beginning-is-joy-and-hope/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/historical-blockages-of-the-left-and-the-radical-rupture-of-ocalan/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/historical-blockages-of-the-left-and-the-radical-rupture-of-ocalan/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:27:28 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292894 ​To understand the historical blockage of the Left, one must first expose its internal contradictions. The Left claims to criticize the state but fails to interrogate the state’s ontology. It asserts a rejection of power, yet fails to realize that its own visions of authority reproduce the same hierarchical patterns. ​While the Left emphasizes its [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/historical-blockages-of-the-left-and-the-radical-rupture-of-ocalan/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/i-do-not-think-therefore-i-am/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/i-do-not-think-therefore-i-am/#respond Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:15:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292456 Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum) has been the subject of immense discussion in modern and contemporary philosophy. Is it an inference or a performance (Hintikka)? Was it a central phrase in his philosophy or did he only use it in a didactic context (Cassirer)? Is it an original idea [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/i-do-not-think-therefore-i-am/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-here-there-and-everywhere/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-here-there-and-everywhere/#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2025 18:18:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292181 It is hard not to notice the word “socialism” appearing steadily more often in steadily more places. Some appearances of the word aim to register dismissal or hate. But many appearances aim to register elevation and desire. Socialism in polls. Socialism as epithet. Socialism in Gracie Mansion. Socialism buried. Socialism resurrected. Socialism past. Socialism future. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-here-there-and-everywhere/feed/ 2 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-did-the-pkk-dissolve-itself-and-what-comes-next/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-did-the-pkk-dissolve-itself-and-what-comes-next/#respond Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:36:16 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292158 The long historical journey of the Kurdish freedom movement is a multi-layered series of breaks that have transformed not only the political geography of the Middle East but also the fundamental assumptions of modern revolutionary thought. ​One of the most striking breaks accompanying this journey is the PKK’s decision from the 2000s onwards to overcome [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-did-the-pkk-dissolve-itself-and-what-comes-next/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/let-comedians-say-anything-why-comedy-is-societys-last-honest-mirror/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/let-comedians-say-anything-why-comedy-is-societys-last-honest-mirror/#respond Wed, 03 Dec 2025 19:15:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291903 Comedy isn’t merely entertainment—it is a civic instrument, a mirror held up to the collective self, reflecting truths that polite society refuses to see. Consider a single joke, tossed into the world, capable of eliciting both laughter and discomfort in equal measure. In that moment, the joke does what politics cannot: it names contradiction, exposes [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/let-comedians-say-anything-why-comedy-is-societys-last-honest-mirror/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jineology-a-paradigmatic-rupture-and-the-quest-for-the-science-of-womens-liberation/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jineology-a-paradigmatic-rupture-and-the-quest-for-the-science-of-womens-liberation/#respond Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291391 The crises of the modern world are multilayered: We are witnessing economic collapses, ecological destruction, and societal disintegration. Simultaneously, state violence, militarization, and the continuously reproduced dominance of patriarchy are fundamentally shaking not only the political and social order but also the mechanisms of knowledge production. ​In this age of crisis, one truth is starkly [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jineology-a-paradigmatic-rupture-and-the-quest-for-the-science-of-womens-liberation/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/human-rights-beyond-liberalism-ocalans-call-for-a-democratic-alternative/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/human-rights-beyond-liberalism-ocalans-call-for-a-democratic-alternative/#respond Mon, 03 Nov 2025 17:01:31 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290793 The allegedly free individual of capitalist individualism, who has been provoked into being at odds with society, essentially lives a life of abject slavery. ~Abdullah Öcalan1 For many years a human rights discourse has been the main point of reference for the Western-type liberal republicanism. What distinguishes the regimes of this kind from others, according [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/human-rights-beyond-liberalism-ocalans-call-for-a-democratic-alternative/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/what-happens-after-capitalism/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/what-happens-after-capitalism/#respond Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:44:34 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1289575 In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I examine what ecosocialism might look like in the future. From zero-carbon, accessible, and free public transit, to low-cost housing, all the way to a planned economy, an ecosocialist future would seek to bring better well-being to all people and the planet. Thumbnail art by: Aerroscape [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/what-happens-after-capitalism/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cancellation-inquisition-and-fatwa/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cancellation-inquisition-and-fatwa/#respond Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:16:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1289350 Conceptual Clarifications I am a social scientist and, as such, I feel obliged to address the issues I discuss with objectivity, though not with neutrality. I am against the control of ideas and behaviors through the mechanisms I analyze in this text, and I will try to explain why. I understand cancellation to mean the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cancellation-inquisition-and-fatwa/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/neoliberalism-assassinations-and-a-society-in-decline/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/neoliberalism-assassinations-and-a-society-in-decline/#respond Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:14:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1289349 The 1974 film The Parallax View concludes with a silhouette of a man with a gun in front of a doorway revealing white light. For the length of this film, the character of journalist Joseph Frady has been undercover investigating the Parallax Corporation, responsible for a series of assassinations, only to discover they have been [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/neoliberalism-assassinations-and-a-society-in-decline/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/legacies-of-scapegoating-and-persecution-in-the-palestinian-genocide/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/legacies-of-scapegoating-and-persecution-in-the-palestinian-genocide/#respond Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:59:16 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288884 In the waking nightmare into which middle eastern politics has degenderated, one question stands out above all others: how do ethno-fascist imperialists not perceive the historical continuity between their own genocidal mentality and their own historical experience? Jews, after all, have been persecuted for millennia, surviving attempted genocide after 20 centuries, so much so that [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/legacies-of-scapegoating-and-persecution-in-the-palestinian-genocide/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/strangled-by-formalities-bureaucracy-and-the-machinery-of-control/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/strangled-by-formalities-bureaucracy-and-the-machinery-of-control/#respond Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288782 Yes, you have been arrested, but that should not prevent you from going to work. Nor should anything prevent you from going about your daily life as usual.~Franz Kafka[1] Bureaucracy has become the water in which we swim. ~David Graeber[2] What is much needed today is the reignition of a critique of bureaucracy from a direct [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/strangled-by-formalities-bureaucracy-and-the-machinery-of-control/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/challenging-marxism-as-well-as-identity-politics-part-1-2/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/challenging-marxism-as-well-as-identity-politics-part-1-2/#respond Tue, 16 Sep 2025 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288650 [This is the second of a two-part article that examines both structural and processural paradigms of social theory. Part 1 can be read here. In this second part, a processural paradigm is advanced, with focus being on what is called a “Polyconflictual Model of Society,” which it claims that it can explain such social phenomena as [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/challenging-marxism-as-well-as-identity-politics-part-1-2/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ai-as-a-marxist-responds-to-enrich-or-transcend-marxism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ai-as-a-marxist-responds-to-enrich-or-transcend-marxism/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:10:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288304 [In what follows my prompts to the AI, ChatGPT, are in Italics. The AI’s responses appear in quotation marks. The text in brackets is commentary that I added after the fact. I have two aims. Further explore how AI operates and its possible consequences. And further explore the Marxist Tradition’s composition and its consequences.] I [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ai-as-a-marxist-responds-to-enrich-or-transcend-marxism/feed/ 4 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/challenging-marxism-as-well-as-identity-politics-part-1/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/challenging-marxism-as-well-as-identity-politics-part-1/#respond Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288292 [This is the first of a two-part article that examines both structural and processural paradigms of social theory.  This argues that the structural-based theories cannot do what they claim to do; in this case, explain the emergence of large-scale protest movements.  In the second part, a processural paradigm is advanced, with focus being on what [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/challenging-marxism-as-well-as-identity-politics-part-1/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/values-to-institutions-where-are-we-without-vision/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/values-to-institutions-where-are-we-without-vision/#respond Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:58:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1287873 Hardly anyone manages to go through their formative years without society pressing them to “have a plan,” “know where you’re going,” “plan ahead,” “get ahead,” “save up,” “save time,” “set goals.” As a question it’s “what do you want to accomplish?,” “how are you going to get there?,” “when are you going to achieve this?” [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/values-to-institutions-where-are-we-without-vision/feed/ 0