Socialism is on the march, and capitalism’s defenders are on the ropes. Shawn Gude’s American Socialist: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V. Debs, a biography of the most prominent socialist agitator in American history, could hardly be more timely.
Neukölln, the Berlin District Where the Left Broke Through
Neukölln is a working-class, multicultural district of Berlin that embodies the turnaround in the German left’s fortunes. This has also made it the target of efforts to demonize socialist party Die Linke and disqualify its Muslim voters.
All Aboard Eugene Debs’s Red Special
In 1908, on one of his five presidential runs, legendary socialist organizer Eugene Debs embarked on a whirlwind tour across the country on his own train, the Red Special. His mission: spread the socialist gospel to any American who would hear him out.
In Russia’s Election, Nothing Happened, but Things Got Worse
The stability of Vladimir Putin’s rule has long relied on encouraging citizens to ignore politics. But last month’s wartime elections instead saw a different approach, staging popular support for a further centralization of power.
The Philips Curve Is a Tool for Waging Class War on Workers
The Phillips curve holds that low unemployment drives inflation, meaning that controlling prices requires putting workers out of work. Its continuing influence shows how power over the money supply shapes class power.
Is Trump Crashing the Dollar Empire?
Economist Mona Ali on how the United States wields the world’s most powerful currency to shore up empire and its own ruling class — and how Trump’s careless moves might blow it all up.
The real choice is not between globalization and deglobalization, free trade and tariff walls, but between empowering capital and empowering workers.
Publishers Killed the Paperback, Then Blamed Readers
In 1939, the 25¢ paperback made America a nation of readers, delivering thrillers, classics, and Pulitzer-winning books. So why did the Big Five publishers just kill the mass market paperback?
Robert Kramer Is the New Left’s Great, Forgotten Filmmaker
Robert Kramer’s films captured the New Left from the inside, from its promising beginning through its painful unraveling. He faded from view mostly because his work was so hard to see. In our new age of political volatility, he deserves a revival.
AutoZone Workers Won a Union. Then the Company Fired Them.
In September, workers in White Plains, New York, won the first union at any of AutoZone’s nearly 7,000 US stores, despite an aggressive anti-union campaign. The next day, the company fired a lead organizer. Then another.
How Much Liberty Should We Limit?
At its best, the Left has championed the cause of freedom against both political and economic tyranny. Does the spread of scourges like social media addiction and sports betting justify more restrictions on individual liberty than we’ve typically accepted?
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire became a campus sensation because it offered a master theory for globalization at a moment when old Marxist categories seemed exhausted. But the capitalist internationalism they saw as permanent has now crashed and burned.
La France Insoumise Won’t Cede God to the Far Right
Religious identity has become an unusually prominent battleground in next year’s French election. During the pope’s visit to the country last week, left-wing France Insoumise resisted ultraconservative attempts to monopolize Catholic identity.
The Strange Resurrection of Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry’s 1985 cowboy epic is finding a new generation of readers online. Its revival raises an awkward question for publishing: What happened to the big, bloody, male-coded literary novel and to the men who used to read and write them?
The Gospel According to J. D. Vance
J. D. Vance’s spiritual memoir is short on the spiritual and long on hypocrisy, oscillating between complaints about “the elites” and half-baked policy ideas that show little engagement with the Catholic social teaching he professes to admire.
The War in Ukraine Is Spiraling Out of Control
After years of warnings that the war in Ukraine could spiral into a full-on Russia-Europe conflagration, the conflict has reached a point where this is a real possibliity. It’s a prospect that threatens not just European lives but the entire globe.