Mass culture is becoming a museum dedicated to itself, its artifacts curated by an ever-narrowing family of conglomerates. Nowhere is that clearer than in the decline of The Simpsons, whose groundbreaking satire was killed by monopoly capitalism.
Serious consideration of the archaeological record puts to bed the myth that human history follows an evolutionary arc from simple and egalitarian to complex and hierarchical, challenging the assumption that democracy can work in small groups while scaling up requires domination.
In her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett feigned ignorance of dark money groups. But she should be very familiar with such groups: new documents show that dark money bankrolled her Supreme Court nomination.
Illapa Sairitupac is a social worker and socialist running for New York State Assembly. In an interview, Sairitupac talks about his family immigrating from Peru, socialism’s history in Lower Manhattan, Christianity, and his plans to fight climate change.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are dead set on expanding commercial space flight — even though a single person taking one of their carbon-spewing joy rides will produce more pollution in a few minutes than people belonging to 1/8th of the world population will in their entire lives.
Democrats are going beyond refusing to give Americans an affirmative reason to vote for them: in sabotaging their own purported agenda around Biden’s Build Back Better bill, they seem to be trying to lose to the authoritarians in the GOP they claim to oppose.
Workers on Switzerland’s construction sites have been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic. Bosses’ efforts to use the crisis to undermine established labor rights have prompted an impressive wave of resistance.
In October, Australia introduced a new visa for seasonal agricultural workers that is supposed to create pathways to permanent residency. But history shows that seasonal workers can only guarantee their rights if they’re organized into fighting unions.
Before 1993, elections in New Zealand used a first-past-the-post system that marginalized the Left and helped unpopular governments keep a parliamentary majority. A broad campaign led by the labor movement and socialists took up the fight for democratic reform — and won.
At the center of the “dark academia” aesthetic is the fantasy of uninterrupted personal time and deep scholarly concentration in an elite campus setting. It couldn’t differ more from the reality of the hyper-capitalist modern university.
Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast casts today’s Chilean election as a battle to save “sacred property rights.” His campaign’s insistence that neoliberal dogmas belong to an unshakeable national essence highlights the antidemocratic impulses at the heart of the Chilean right.
Above all, the British establishment feared Jeremy Corbyn because he advocated forcefully for socialist internationalist foreign policy. This anti-imperialist politics was the first casualty of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party leadership.
If socialist Gabriel Boric can consolidate the left-wing votes among those committed to the constitutional process and those fearful of a return to Pinochet-era dictatorship and repression, he can win a majority of Chilean voters in today’s election.
Despite the Right’s surprisingly strong showing in Chile’s first-round elections, socialist Gabriel Boric is still favored to win the presidency tomorrow. But the Left needs to be laser focused on a broad working-class agenda to fully roll back neoliberalism.
Canadians spend billions on medical treatment not covered by the country’s supposedly universal health care system. Many people are unable to pay for these services and instead forgo the prescription drugs and dental care they urgently need.
Käthe Kollwitz was a radical printmaker with deep political commitments. From the last days of the German Empire until the end of the Third Reich, she gave visual expression to workers’ rebellion and loss, never losing hope in the socialist world to come.
US ambassadors to Mexico have long been a meddling presence. The latest to join the ranks is former interior minister Ken Salazar, who has already distinguished himself for trying to derail AMLO’s efforts to regain public control of the country’s energy sector.
Karl Marx’s groundbreaking account of labor alienation forms an invaluable part of his thought. For Marx, alienation was fundamental to grasping capitalism and how to dismantle it.
As novelists begin to turn their eyes to the pandemic and the destruction it has wrought, Gary Shteyngart’s latest stands out. He depicts a vision of America that is deeply unsettling: a collapse that is merely more of the same.
Every month, it seems a new corruption scandal emerges in Australian politics. These improprieties are not exceptions to the norm, they are the natural outcome of a two-party system that serves the wealthy elite.