Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to tax the superrich to fund universal childcare and other urgent working-class needs. The oligarchic city council Speaker Julie Menin is trying to block his agenda.
Politics After Literacy
Postliteracy won’t replace reason with madness, but it might give us madness of a new and different type.
Brazil’s Left After Lula
As Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seeks his final term as Brazil’s president, the Left’s electoral strategy — who runs, which factions align, and how the coalition balances pragmatism with principle — is already shaping the post-Lula era of Brazilian politics.
Jürgen Habermas’s European Illusion
The late Jürgen Habermas saw Europe as a vehicle for a social democratic, postnational politics. But as the real European Union increasingly diverged from this ideal, Habermas’s thinking failed to reckon with the project’s fundamental limits.
The Many Invasions Survived by Lebanon
Israel is again invading Lebanon and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. With Israel determined to crush all forms of resistance, Lebanon has been dragged into a war it did nothing to start.
If Zohran Mamdani is serious about delivering on his promises, he needs more than policies — he needs institutions that empower working people. Popular assemblies offer a way to build a new, bottom-up political culture in New York City.
Israel Has Nuclear Weapons. It May Use Them.
There is little sign that Israel is achieving its war aims against Iran. But Israel is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons — and it may use them if it feels like it has run out of options.
The Making of the Teenager
The teenager we know today came of age in the postwar era — but she owes her existence to the New Deal.
Sectarianism Has Never Ended a War
Amid the horrors of war, it’s always tempting for some on the Left to stake out more and more radical sloganeering. This was a dead end during the Vietnam War — mass action was not.
Match Week Is a Scam That Exploits Medical Residents
Every year, an algorithm assigns thousands of medical students to residencies they can’t leave, can’t negotiate with, and can’t refuse. The Match system creates a captive workforce that stiffs residents and generates billions for the health care industry.
Neoliberalism didn’t win an intellectual argument — it won power. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and ’80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms.
The Afghan-Pakistan War Is Spiraling Out of Control
Clashes between Pakistan’s military and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers took a bloody turn this week as an air strike in Kabul killed at least 100 people. With world attention focused on the Middle East, there’s little sign of either side backing down.
A Simple Demand: No Aid to Israel
Now is the moment for a presidential candidate who commits to cutting off all aid to Israel — whether it’s military or nonmilitary.
How Will the Future Judge Our Own Gilded Age?
At the end of the Gilded Age, Edwin Markham’s poem “The Man with the Hoe” became an ideological litmus test, polarizing the American public between an allegiance to either workers or the oligarchy in an age of massive inequality surpassed only by our own.
In the New Geo-Economic Order, Price Shocks Are Here to Stay
The US-Israel war with Iran has made energy prices soar across the globe. In a world increasingly dominated by imperial war and great-power conflicts, inflation will become an ordinary feature of politics.