Given its tumultuous rise to world prominence over a period of less than two centuries, it is no surprise that the history of political parties in the United States is equally effervescent. There has been a continuous and contradictory process of rise and fall, development, decay, and renewal of economic possibilities and interests, which is also expressed in politics. Today’s dominant parties have not always had their current grip on political power, and there have not always been just two major parties. At various times, third, and even fourth viable parties have emerged, sometimes succeeding in supplanting the parties of the day, sometimes appearing as just a blip in US history. What does the United States’ history of political parties tell us about the potential future political developments?

We lost a spirited voice of the oppressed and exploited January 27, as Pete Seeger drew his last breath. Having reached the age of 94, Seeger had lived, fought, and sung through several tumultuous periods of ebb and flow of the class struggle over many decades.

We republish here the Introduction to the first Urdu edition of Marxism and the USA. The book has been translated by the Pakistani comrades of The Struggle and will be launched the coming congress of the The Struggle in March.

The following interview, conducted in October 2012 by journalist Arash Azizi, was originally published in the Farsi-language journal Mehrnameh, the leading journal of humanities in Iran. In it, John Peterson gives a basic overview of the history of political parties and class interests in the United States, which shows that the U.S. political spectrum has not always been “the same,” and that things can and do change, often dramatically.

This article is a continuation of Texas’ History of Class Struggle (Part 1).

We are living in a tumultuous period of class struggle, characterized by the political reawakening of previously “apathetic” layers of society, and revolutionary upheaval around the world…Class struggle inevitably leads at a certain stage to open conflict. The role of the police force and the military are to protect private property and profits no matter what the cost, even if the cost is human lives…This is nothing new, and we need to look no further than the 1934 strike of Teamsters Local 574 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.