The tsunami disaster that hit the countries bordering the Indian Ocean caused widespread devastation, with more than 150,000 people dead, thousands injured, and still many thousands missing, most probably dead.

One of the late 20th Century’s most influential thinkers died last Friday (Oct. 8) in Paris. Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of "deconstruction" has influenced religion, psychotherapy, feminism, law, Marxism, literary criticism, architecture, art and cultural studies.

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Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong have edited a book called Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, 2003). In their introduction the editors discuss the contemporary relevance of the Confucian tradition (the purpose of the book). The question is – is Confucianism a dead tradition or is it meaningful for the contemporary world?

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It is good, at certain hours of the day and night, to look closely at the world of objects at rest. Wheels that have crossed long, dusty distances with their mineral and vegetable burdens, sacks from the coal bins, barrels, and baskets, handles and hafts for the carpenter’s tool chest.

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Two recent articles in Political Affairs indicate that more clarity is needed on the question of the socialist market economy. For example we read that "The socialist market economy is designed for transition from an early capitalist or even pre-capitalist society and the focus is to create the prerequisites for socialism." But an observer of the situation in China state to the contrary that "China is already a socialist society."

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Many advocates of information technology claim it brings greater democracy. This optimism is naive if blindly accepted. Information technology must be managed at every step by citizen oversight. The role of new technology will be largely determined by how democratized our institutions are before it is implemented.

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In a recent booklet, by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (P&G), "Global Capitalism and American Empire," Lenin’s theory of imperialism comes in for some heavy criticism. Let’s see if it is justified.

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Transport workers are on the move under global capitalism. This fact points to the continuing relevance of Lenin’s argument in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism that in the major imperialist countries heavy industry will have a tendency to decay and be replaced with light manufacturing and transportation accompanied by the incredible growth of finance capital as the principal motor of imperialist development.

Marxists and other progressive continually fight for legislation to meet the many needs that we consider human rights: free education; universal health care; free or low-cost child care; affordable housing; unemployment insurance; adequate pensions for retirement; the outlawing of all forms of discrimination based on race, nationality, ethnic background, religion, gender, and sexual orientation; affordable access to culture and recreation.

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According to the right wing, the liberal and progressive movements in the US are afraid to tell it like it is. They communicate in a humorless, effeminate doublespeak, and seem more concerned with maintaining a touchy-feely etiquette than with engaging the bread and butter issues that drive real-life politics.

“There is very little class consciousness in this country,” said a labor union leader I recently had the good fortune to work with. “So, if the labor movement is going to grow, build strength, win victories and win more political power, we need to build coalitions with the community,” he concluded. If this viewpoint weren’t widely held by many trade unionists, I might suspect him of being a Marxist-Leninist.

The socialist and communist idea has long inspired the search for a better way of life. Many things that are today taken for granted from Social Security to unemployment insurance come out of this quest. Indeed, it would be difficult to overstate its impact. This applies not only to day-to-day working-class struggles but also to the realm of ideas.

In Marxism-Leninism the question of state and economy, plan and market has been often intertwined with the transition period between capitalism (sometimes pre-capitalism) and socialism, and between capitalism and communism. Marx and Engels developed the concept of the transition period and dealt chiefly with its political aspects. They gave comparatively little analysis of the economic tasks of the proletariat after it seized political power.