Help Us Give the Bourgeoisie Nightmares

Years in the making, Spectre launched on International Women’s Day in 2020. We’re going strong but need you to become a monthly donor to keep us haunting the bourgeoisie. What distinguishes Spectre from any other publication on the left and why should you donate?

First and foremost, our approach is resolutely internationalist, meaning that our editorial team situates ongoing struggles in the US in relation to struggles elsewhere. Only in thinking through strategic questions comparatively and relationally – across national borders – can we understand the capitalist world in which we find ourselves and organize to change it.

And second, at Spectre we understand struggles against oppression as constitutive of class struggle. We insist that struggles for dignity and self-determination are central to the project of collective liberation. The very concept of class formation can’t be understood without reference to fights against oppression on multiple fronts. The opposition of so-called “identity” struggles to “pure” class struggles is nothing but a scholastic abstraction. How the working class and the oppressed understand our own subjection must be our point of departure, full stop.

Since we launched over three years ago, we have published seven print issues and nearly three hundred articles on our website, which has now received over one million views. Our print issues have featured path-breaking contributions from major voices of the left today, including Robin D. G. Kelley, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Kim Moody, as well as writing from newer authors on the Marxist left.

Keeping Spectre going hasn’t been easy. A week after we launched, the US went into lockdown for the pandemic – this was early March 2020 – and meetings and conferences, along with our anticipated funding sources, shut down overnight. Instead of calling it quits, we managed to raise sufficient funds from our generous supporters, and it was these contributions that kept us going.

Unfortunately, print subscriptions alone don’t cover the cost of production – even though none of our editors are paid a dime. And once the pandemic shut down supply chains, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, which sent the cost of paper soaring to its highest level ever. We were financially sustainable until that moment, but now, with the cost of production increasing substantially, we need to call on our supporters once again to keep the Spectre alive – or undead!