The anti-psychiatry movement advanced a radical critique of the role that capitalism and power play in the medical profession. Its motives were noble, but it ended up closing the door to understanding, and properly treating, psychological suffering.
The boundary-crossing social theorist Leo Kofler was one of postwar West Germany’s most important Marxists. Today, he is little known outside his homeland — yet his revolutionary humanism has much to tell us about freedom today.
Karl Marx died on this day in 1883. At his funeral, Marx’s lifelong friend and comrade Friedrich Engels delivered a eulogy predicting Marx’s work would endure through the ages. We reprint Engels’s speech here in full.
In Europe, the volunteers welcoming Ukrainian refugees are often the same people attacked for aiding refugees in the Mediterranean. That’s not just hypocritical, it’s inhumane — we should welcome all migrants fleeing war and terror.
A new documentary goes inside the making of the classic labor-feminist movie 9 to 5 — and shows how many of the problems it lampooned still plague working women today.
Canada’s New Democratic Party has introduced a new bill to decriminalize drug possession and improve harm-reduction measures. Passing it would need the support of the Liberals, who have thus far proved unwilling to fight for reform.
Pro-Putin pollsters maintain that most Russians support the “special military operation” against Ukraine. But artificial efforts to stir public enthusiasm can’t hide the disastrous effects the war is having on ordinary Russians.
In a pro–Bernie Sanders district with a strong union presence, a son of immigrant street vendors seeks election to LA City Council. Hugo Soto-Martinez wants “to create a new society: a world with good union jobs, universal health care, and affordable housing.”
Residents of Isparta, Turkey, were left without power for weeks after the city was hit by blizzards. This was no mere natural disaster — the lights wouldn’t have gone out if not for the chronic mismanagement of basic utilities by President Erdoğan’s cronies.
Cafeteria staff make learning and healthy development possible by providing balanced meals to kids who otherwise might not get them. In return, they bring home some of the lowest earnings of the generally underpaid K–12 workforce.
In an effort to damage his reputation, sections of the Mexican media are coming after Andrés Manuel López Obrador with baseless charges and concocted slander. Staving off these right-wing media attacks is an essential line of defense for the Left.
Vladimir Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has stirred calls for solidarity across the West. A useful response should focus on material aid to the war’s victims — and condemn war-hawk posturing.
By playing up a fake tabloid scandal involving his progressive opponent Jessica Cisneros, the scandal-plagued anti-abortion Texas House Democrat Henry Cuellar has only further disgraced himself.
Uber and Lyft continue their crusade to misclassify drivers as “independent contractors,” now with a bill in the Washington State Legislature. Unfortunately, they’ve hit on a new tactic: cutting deals to get labor union support.
The postwar Second Red Scare successfully smashed the American left. But in the midst of its devastation, a small number of old leftists refused to be shut up by the climate of fear. Without their heroism, the New Left could never have emerged.
The Nineties is, on the surface, a mixture of ’90s pop culture nostalgia and cultural critique. But it also has a political agenda: Chuck Klosterman wants the leftist kids to knock it off.
The fad of employers using workers’ “love languages” as an HR tool is a good reminder that the boss will do anything to avoid giving you a raise.
Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a chorus of voices is trying to convince ordinary consumers that paying higher gas prices is some kind of patriotic act. Big Oil doesn’t need the extra profits — it needs to have those profits taxed away.
Bankrolled by the finance sector, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has made the UK a safe haven for the dirtiest money in the world.
The price of oil and the myriad horrors of climate change that oil exacerbates make it too important for us to leave in the free market’s hands. The oil companies should be nationalized.