“Eppur si muove” — Galileo’s alleged retort after he was forced to renounce his theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. It’s a delightful story, but the astronomer, in truth, prudently kept his mouth shut. The same could be said for many on the Left who drifted into political oblivion following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. In the face of a triumphant neoliberalism and intellectual barrages against the “metanarrative,” with the decline in working class militancy, how many radicals accepted defeat without truly renouncing a structural critique of capitalism?

The contradictions that punctuate class society haven’t gone anywhere. Nothing has been resolved since the retreat of the Left. With the upsurge of the past months this much has been obvious. Since we last published, the Arab world has erupted, driven not just by political oppression, but by unemployment, rising commodity prices, austerity, and the growing gap between the ruled and their rulers. Austerity has also sparked resistance in the Anglophone world. Facing cuts that threaten to lower the standard of living for a generation and rollback the gains won by working people throughout the last century, millions have been emboldened.

The response in Wisconsin has been especially inspiring and despite the setbacks of this past week, it does not seem likely that the mobilizations will peter out anytime soon. Indeed, as the resistance builds in Ohio and other states facing similar anti-union legislation and public service cuts, it seems possible that a revitalized labor movement is on the horizon. But what kind of labor movement will this be? The recent passing of a friend of Jacobin, labor journalist Bob Fitch, should cause us to reflect on the structural corruption he saw as endemic in American unionism. The model of unionism that Fitch critiqued has been in free-fall over the past forty years — a victim of capitalist assault, not of working class reform. The present uptick could augur its resurgence, result in another noble defeat, or the building of something radically different.