Biden administration officials like Antony Blinken and Brett McGurk have embarked on media tours trying to whitewash their records over Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Their excuses for enabling genocide are as flimsy and threadbare as their ethical codes.
The Problem With Homeownership
A new history traces the American idealization of homeownership. It lays bare the high social costs of organizing democracy around property values.
Why Our Obsession With Extending Lifespans Is a Distraction
Life expectancies have risen for most people across the world. But the gap between how long people live and how long they will live healthily is widening. Poor labor conditions and lack of health care are to blame.
Student Protests Are Making Their Mark on Serbia’s Election
After two years of massive, student-led anti-corruption protests in Serbia, polls suggest their electoral list could win the October 25 election. It’s less clear how their ideologically diverse list can redirect protest energy into changing institutions.
How Charles Manson Became a Hero of the American Far Right
The Tate–LaBianca murders established Charles Manson as one of the most notorious figures in modern American history. Manson’s very notoriety also made him into an iconic figure for neo-Nazis who embraced his vision of apocalyptic race war.
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.
The Wargame Is Wretched Propaganda
The new docudrama The Wargame imagines Britain responding to a Russian military attack. Its cast is full of real-life politicians — often figures with ties to the weapons industry using the show to demand more money for the armed forces.
A Portrait of Eugene Debs for Today’s Left
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.
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.
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.
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.