About

“We do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.” 

Karl Marx to Arnold Ruge, Letters from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (Kreuznach, September 1843)

Capitalism’s contradictions are sharpening. An accelerated accumulation of wealth produces deepening exploitation, abuse, extinction and death. A perfect storm of crises - economic, political, environmental, and now health - is bearing down on the capitalist system and on workers, young people, and the oppressed. 

From all corners of the world, the working class will respond with explosive movements. Furious worldwide protests against racist police violence are a harbinger of things to come. We face an ideologically weakened, politically fractured, and debt-burdened capitalist class that will not hesitate to devour the earth and all life on it in its pursuit of profit. How should Marxists respond? 

A new period demands new strategy, new tactics, and new forms of organisation. We must shake off the outdated schema and rid ourselves of ineffective and anachronistic methods. While working to construct a mass revolutionary party, we must strive to be more democratically organised and organically connected to all the real movements of workers and the oppressed. 

So too with our theory and analysis. While developing Marxist methods, we must broaden the terrain upon which we apply them - from capitalist social relations to the metabolic rift that capitalism has forced between nature and humanity. 

Rupture is a contribution to that effort from RISE members. In each issue, we aim to analyse current trends in capitalist society, explore new ideas and research to expand our understanding, and attempt to answer the question facing all revolutionaries - what is to be done in the 21st century?

Our homepage artwork, ‘Green New Deal,’ is by Val Ross, an artist-activist creating art to inspire, educate, and agitate.