JAMES PETRAS needs little introduction. He is a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, USA, and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia,Canada. He is a self-described "revolutionary and anti-imperialist" activist and writer—at times brilliantly controversial. He has worked with the Brazilian landless workers’ movement and the unemployed workers’ movement in Argentina. He is currently a member of the editorial collective of Canadian Dimension. Petras is the author of numerous books and articles on the effects of poverty, debt and imperialism in Latin America, as well as the pro-Israel lobby in the US.
CONTROVERSY
As a fearless intellectual, James Petras is often attacked from many angles, beginning with the right and the establishmentarians, and often the reformist left (i.e., liberals and social democrats). Sometimes he is engaged in polemics with fellow revolutionists, who share his passion for social change but disagree with aspects of his analysis. An example of the former is given below in Joan LANDY's, "James Petras Goes Over the Top", which represents the social-democrat critique of Petras, while the coreligionist critique is typified by David Raby, in "The Myths of James Petras."
U.S. Offensive in Latin America: Coups, Retreats, and Radicalization (2002)
The worldwide U.S. military-political offensive is manifest in multiple contexts in Latin America. The U.S. offensive aims to prop up decaying client regimes, destabilize independent regimes, pressure the center-left to move to the right, and destroy or isolate the burgeoning popular movements challenging the U.S. empire and its clients. We will discuss the particular forms of the U.S. offensive in each country, and then explore the specific and general reasons for the offensive in contemporary Latin America. In the concluding section we will discuss the political alternatives in the context of the U.S. offensive. [click here to read this essay].
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INTELLECTUALS: CUBA, THE U.S. AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Once again the intellectuals have entered into the center of a debate - this time over the issues of U.S. imperialism and human rights in Cuba. "How important is the role of the intellectuals?", I asked myself as we walked past the Puerto del Sol in Madrid on a sunny Saturday afternoon (April 26, 2003) and heard the anti-Castro slogans of a few hundred protestors echoing through the near empty plaza. Despite a dozen articles and opinion columns by well known intellectuals in the leading Madrid newspapers, and hours of television and radio propaganda and endorsements by the major trade union bureaucrats and party bosses, only 700-800, mostly Cuban exiles turned up to attack Cuba. "Clearly," I thought, "the anti-Cuban intellectuals have little or no power of convocation, at least in Spain." [READ MORE]
THE CUBA-VENEZUELA DOSSIER
A dossier on critical latin American areas, with contributions from various authors, including Petras [READ MORE]
