https://znetwork.org/category/topic/broad-theory/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:49:20 +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/the-paradox-of-tolerance-when-freedom-becomes-a-weapon-of-oppression/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-paradox-of-tolerance-when-freedom-becomes-a-weapon-of-oppression/#respond Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1297431 The paradox of tolerance, a theory that challenges a society’s ability to defend democracy from within, is at the heart of the political turmoil plaguing the United States today. The idea, first articulated by philosopher Karl Popper, suggests that a tolerant society must be intolerant of intolerance itself, or else the intolerant will exploit that [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-paradox-of-tolerance-when-freedom-becomes-a-weapon-of-oppression/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-without-illusions/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-without-illusions/#respond Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1297366 Among leftists, the question of why one continues to use the word “socialism” can for most seem almost unnecessary—until one notices how unstable the term has become even within our own ranks. We invoke it constantly, but often as shorthand for very different and sometimes incompatible political projects. For some it means Scandinavian social democracy [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/socialism-without-illusions/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-two-headed-hitler/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-two-headed-hitler/#respond Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:17:33 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1297153 In what is perhaps the best book on Hitler, Allan Bullock wrote in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny that Hitler’s philosophy is the natural philosophy of the doss-house, the philosophy of homeless shelters – a philosophy he learned while living in those shelters in Vienna for some time. Of course, Bullock forgot to apologize to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-two-headed-hitler/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/anwar-shaikh-shows-us-how-capitalism-works-and-how-it-fails/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/anwar-shaikh-shows-us-how-capitalism-works-and-how-it-fails/#respond Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1296877 Heretics always remain tied to the church. To break out, what you do is nail your theses on the door, turn around and develop your own framework.” Most students of Anwar Shaikh, including the coauthors of this piece, will have heard this bold statement in his classes. As one of the most important radical economists, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/anwar-shaikh-shows-us-how-capitalism-works-and-how-it-fails/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-fascism-and-the-antichrist/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-fascism-and-the-antichrist/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:15:43 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1296824 One of the most influential interpretations of 20th-century fascism is that fascism was a rebellion against the secularism of the modern era, which proposed a transcendent society both on a practical level (progress) and on a theoretical level (the possibility of transcending all limits). This rebellion led to the return of political religion (religion as [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-fascism-and-the-antichrist/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/are-we-good-americans/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/are-we-good-americans/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:07:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1296642 When I was in High School, I used to wonder how did the German people put up with Hitler and his regime? Was there something about the German language that destroyed empathy? Had someone spiked their water? And so on. I wasn’t wondering about the lunatics. I wasn’t wondering about the macho, sadistic souls gone [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/are-we-good-americans/feed/ 10 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/movements-need-the-critical-thinking-that-ai-destroys/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/movements-need-the-critical-thinking-that-ai-destroys/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1296629 Millions of people are now asking chatbots to summarize books, draft emails, and even explain political events to them. But what looks from one perspective like a productivity revolution may also be something more discomfiting: the quiet outsourcing of judgment itself. Writers on artificial intelligence have long claimed that it poses an existential risk because, for example, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/movements-need-the-critical-thinking-that-ai-destroys/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/there-are-nine-kinds-of-great-organizers-you-dont-have-to-be-them-all/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/there-are-nine-kinds-of-great-organizers-you-dont-have-to-be-them-all/#respond Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1296489 My first stint as a professional organizer was a dream. Four years on Chicago’s high pressure, high energy streets. Surrounded by brilliant comrades and generous mentors. Given the freedom, and support, to build a new young people’s organization. We even won a few minor victories on health care, higher education, policing, and voting.  Yet at [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/there-are-nine-kinds-of-great-organizers-you-dont-have-to-be-them-all/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-philosophy-and-politics-of-habermas/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-philosophy-and-politics-of-habermas/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:12:54 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295833 Among the many things that remain of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who died on 14 March 2026, are two things: firstly, that the crisis of capitalism – a word the social-democratic master philosopher hardly used – is the normal state of affairs; secondly, that Jürgen Habermas retained a strong belief in reason, particularly in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-philosophy-and-politics-of-habermas/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/surviving-a-pan-crisis/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/surviving-a-pan-crisis/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:45:40 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295660 We are not facing separate crises, but the simultaneous collapse of multiple historical orders unfolding in the present. Not only international relations and political science scholars but also the broader communities of social sciences—and increasingly even the natural sciences—are confronting a profound and widely acknowledged crisis, which is not merely “theoretical,” “disciplinary,” or “scientific” in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/surviving-a-pan-crisis/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/march-8th-between-the-legacy-of-working-womens-struggles-and-socialist-feminism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/march-8th-between-the-legacy-of-working-womens-struggles-and-socialist-feminism/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2026 16:03:58 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295574 The beginnings: when working women paved the way for us today On March 8, we do not recall a passing memory; we recall a history of fire, struggle, and confrontation against the conditions that weighed heavily on working women. This day was shaped by the hands of women workers in factories and raised by the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/march-8th-between-the-legacy-of-working-womens-struggles-and-socialist-feminism/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/armageddon-for-beginners-geopolitics-directed-by-trumps-global-and-balkan-marionettes/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/armageddon-for-beginners-geopolitics-directed-by-trumps-global-and-balkan-marionettes/#respond Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:22:31 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295507 To begin with, let me recount an old Soviet, Cold War–era joke about America. A Russian and an American are seated side by side on an airplane flying from Moscow to Washington. The American turns to the Russian and says: “I must admit, your state propaganda is truly impressive.” The Soviet smiles, thanks him for the compliment, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/armageddon-for-beginners-geopolitics-directed-by-trumps-global-and-balkan-marionettes/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-collapse-of-the-state-the-birth-of-society-iran/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-collapse-of-the-state-the-birth-of-society-iran/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:24:21 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295069 ​What is happening in Iran is not a “crisis.” A crisis implies a state of temporary imbalance. In Iran, however, what is collapsing is not a temporary order, but a historical political ontology. ​The popular movement that began in Rojhilat (East) Kurdistan in December 2025 and spread to various Iranian cities has exposed the exhaustion [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-collapse-of-the-state-the-birth-of-society-iran/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-power-of-power-structure-research/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-power-of-power-structure-research/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:32:29 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295001 Today, it’s almost taken for granted that activist campaigns and organizing drives, including within the labor movement, have some form of a power research component to help shape strategy and tactics. But this wasn’t always the case.  In the 1960s, power structure research — which maps who holds power in society, how those entities are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-power-of-power-structure-research/feed/ 1 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