Brooklyn Rail Contributor

Charlie Post

Charlie Post is a long-time socialist political activist who teaches at the City University of New York and is active in his faculty union. This essay is adapted from the conclusion to his book, The American Road to Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012).



The Republicans Have Been Trumped

by Charlie Post

| Field Notes

For over eighty years, the reformist left in the United States has sought to transform one of the capitalist parties into a “people’s” party. Both the Communist Party’s popular front strategy and the social-democratic strategy of “realignment” (formulated by the brilliant ex-Marxist Max Shachtman) sought to transform the Democratic Party.

WHITHER THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
The 2014 Election and the Future of Capital’s “A-Team”

by Charlie Post

| Field Notes

In most ways, the 2014 Congressional elections represented “more of the same” for mainstream U.S. politics. The Republicans’ increased majority in the House of Representatives and their capture of the majority of the Senate in 2014, despite appearances, does not represent any more of a “sea change” in public opinion than their 2010 victories.

“The Most Crucial Election of Our Lifetime?”—The 2018 US Midterm Elections

by Charlie Post

| Field Notes

On October 22, 2018, Barack Obama declared the 2018 midterm elections to be “more important than any I can remember in my lifetime, and that includes when I was on the ballot.”

Is Democracy Compatible with Capitalism?
Reconstruction in the US, 1863-1877

by Charlie Post

| Field Notes

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the Reconstruction Amendments, to the US Constitution. Addressing citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, it has been one of the most litigated portions of the Constitution. Field Notes asked historian Charlie Post to respond to this anniversary by drawing some central political lessons from the history of the Amendment’s establishment.

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