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?
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.
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.
Greek Life Endures by Offering a Simulacrum of Solidarity
While unions, churches, and leagues are losing members, fraternities and sororities are drowning in new recruits. Their staying power comes from bundling belonging with elite advantage.
Germany’s Far Right Is Attacking Bauhaus Again
It’s been 100 years since the opening of Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building in Dessau, but the Alternative für Deutschland wants to cut funding from centenary events. The winner of recent state elections, the far-right party labels Bauhaus un-German.
Shawn Fain’s Slate Has Swept the UAW Elections
The message from United Auto Workers members in their recent internal elections, in which President Shawn Fain and his slate are poised to win big, is clear, argues former Fain Chief of Staff Chris Brooks: they want their union to keep fighting.
Anwar Shaikh’s Analysis of Capitalism Is Vital for the Left
In studying with Anwar Shaikh, economist Howard Botwinick learned that Karl Marx’s account of capitalist competition is far richer than his critics assumed. That insight, Botwinick argues in an interview, offers the working class a road map to victory.
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.
Online Pornography Created the Model for Platform Capitalism
Moral debates about sex work often overlook the wider effect of online porn in shaping our digital existence. More than just a corner of the internet, it has profoundly shaped how platforms keep our attention, and how we present ourselves online.
Abdul El-Sayed Isn’t Backing Down on Medicare for All
Some commentators are claiming that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed once supported Medicare for All and now merely backs a “public option.” Matt Bruenig explains why this is not true.
Eric Hobsbawm, Historian of Defeat
Eric Hobsbawm was in Berlin when Adolf Hitler took power, in Paris at the Popular Front’s peak, and in the Communist Party when it all came down. Emile Chabal’s new biography follows a historian who always asked what remained possible after defeat.
Pedro Sánchez Makes His Last Gamble
Pedro Sánchez’s coalition won reelection in 2023 based on a real record of measures to rein in the cost of living. Pulling off the same trick now may be much harder, after three years of institutional inertia.