Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
The progressive ACLU is trying to establish a precedent that would strike a huge blow against workers’ rights across the country and make union organizing much more difficult. Let’s hope the organization comes to its senses soon.
Switzerland’s labor unions have won a national referendum on raising pensions, while blocking a rival proposal to increase the retirement age. The vote showed a clear class divide, as lower-paid and lower-educated voters defied business leaders’ warnings.
Democrats are losing working-class votes. A new study from Jacobin, ASU’s Center for Work and Democracy, and the Center for Working-Class Politics shows how few Democratic Party candidates use populist rhetoric, propose progressive economic policies, or come from working-class backgrounds.
Yet another “return to normal” Oscars — briefly disrupted by a statement from Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza — only demonstrates just how boring even a “good one” can be.
New York congressman Jamaal Bowman is a democratic socialist incumbent under fire by AIPAC for his pro-Palestinian stances and corporate lobbyists for his progressive domestic policy. His defeat would be a serious setback for the Left.
In 1974, after years of grinding war in Vietnam had exhausted most of the antiwar movement, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda came up with a new strategy: an educational and lobbying push targeting Congress to stop funding the war machine.
Argentina’s biggest trade partners are Brazil and China, but President Javier Milei is making them into enemies. Desperate to suck up to US interests, Milei’s Cold Warrior foreign policy is an ideological relic, out of touch with a multipolar world.
Reformation-era preacher Thomas Müntzer’s menacing of elites and his role in the Peasants’ War won him a lasting reputation as a theologian of revolution. Müntzer fostered apocalyptic dreams of equality in a time of tyrants, only to find his head on a spike.
In Pax Economica, the historian Marc-William Palen argues that the Left has a long history of championing open markets as a bulwark against nationalism. Neoliberals quashed this idealism.
Pharmacy benefit managers push expensive medications and slash drug reimbursement rates, pocketing the profits for themselves. Congress looked set to regulate these shadowy middlemen — but $50 million in industry lobbying later, the effort has stalled.
The 1930s rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations led to millions of people being union members for the first time. The lesson of the CIO is that it’s necessary to harness the collective power of the working class on a grand scale.
French demographer Emmanuel Todd’s new book argues that secularization has left Western societies weak and divided. But his account of the US and Europe’s secular nihilism is deeply reductive, leaving no space for forward-looking political change.
Class dealignment posits that Democrats have been losing working-class voters in favor of middle- and upper-class voters. Is this actually happening? And to what extent is it a problem?
In 1972, black political leaders and activists convened in Gary, Indiana, to develop a unified black political program. But the convention’s emphasis on racial cohesion overlooked the realities of black class stratification and internal ideological divisions.
Canada’s former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney reshaped the country with a mix of free trade enthusiasm and privatization. Lionized in his passing by Canada’s press, his legacy of undermining the country’s working classes shouldn’t be whitewashed.
Best remembered as the partner of Indian revolutionary M. N. Roy, Evelyn Trent deserves to be recognized as a major figure in her own right. The Californian activist was a pioneering anti-colonial feminist who helped initiate India’s communist movement.
Kohei Saito’s degrowth rewrite of Marxist theory is not only incorrect — if taken seriously, it would lead to political disaster for both the socialist left and the environmental movement.
In 2022, Amazon workers at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island became the first in the US to win a union election. The new documentary Union gives a compelling glimpse behind the scenes of the victory — and the challenges that have come since.
Critics love Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days for its depiction of a happy and humble Japanese toilet cleaner. But it’s really a fantasy of escape — one that seems to appeal mostly to the affluent.
Pedro Nuno Santos heads into Portugal’s election with a promise to revamp the Socialist Party after eight years in power. But talk of him leading a left-wing turn is overblown — and among young voters, libertarian and anti-immigrant forces are gaining ground.