Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
In the 14th century, France experienced the biggest popular revolt in its history before 1789. Historians have often denounced or derided the rebels, but they mounted a sophisticated, well-organized challenge to noble power that was brutally repressed.
The French monarchy was abolished this day in 1792. Left-wing MP Antoine Léaument explains why the values of the French Revolution can still be an inspiration for the Republic — and why Maximilien Robespierre has been wrongly cast as a violent monster.
Children, the elderly, disabled people, and students continue to make up the vast majority of the US poor. We could easily slash poverty by increasing the generosity and reach of benefit programs for the nonworking population — but lawmakers refuse to do so.
Liberal policymakers want to incentivize private finance to make clean energy investments. But private investors are incapable of financing the world’s massive green infrastructure needs — we need robust public investment to drive a pro-worker transition.
For too long, multinational energy companies have extracted resources from Colombia’s Guajira Desert region without sharing any of the benefits with indigenous residents. A new green initiative spearheaded by President Gustavo Petro aims to change that.
For the middle class, homeownership is held up as the key to financial security. But there’s a dark side: government policies that prop up the homeowner-as-investor are deeply implicated in the housing crisis and rising wealth inequality.
Fifty years ago, socialist writer Raymond Williams’s The Country and the City challenged preconceptions about the gap between rural and urban life. His book exposed the realities of class exploitation — and imagined the abolition of the country-city divide.
After the Cold War, ideologues declared capitalism victorious. But war and far-right parties have once again returned to the continent. The root of this disorder lies in the neoliberalism of the 1990s and the defeat of the Left.
The UAW strike has put the GOP in a bind: keep pitching themselves as pro-worker or reveal their rhetoric as a masquerade. Yesterday, presidential candidate Tim Scott chose to say what Republicans actually think: “You strike, you’re fired.”
A new book, We May Dominate the World, attempts to provide a realist explanation of US foreign policy in Latin America. As with other such accounts, it treats differences of power as inevitable sources of conflict.
Since the 1990s, Los Angeles has been privatizing its public housing even as its residents repeatedly organize to defend their homes. That organizing demonstrates the importance of public housing — and why the Left should demand we build more of it.
An Agatha Christie murder mystery has once again been made a mess by director Kenneth Branagh, this time with A Haunting in Venice.
ShadowDragon, a company selling social media surveillance technology, is a contractor for the US government, including for ICE. These tools not only target social media but also gather data from video games and advice websites.
The UAW strike has rocketed into the presidential race, with Trump announcing a speech to autoworkers and the union trying to use Biden’s electric vehicle subsidies to open the sector to unionization. The strike’s result will have major political implications.
Acclaimed filmmaker Adam Curtis talks to us about his latest film, Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone, the fall of the Soviet Union and the war in Ukraine, and the massive upward transfer of wealth to a tiny elite in both the East and West.
With the UAW using a “targeted strike” against the Big Three, only a minority of workers are on strike so far. But many others are wreaking havoc on the companies by refusing overtime — forcing management to shut down some plants for this entire past weekend.
Last month, the Biden administration announced it would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, prompting right-wing hysteria about price controls. Yet Biden’s plans don’t go far enough: the state should fund R&D to further cut costs.
When it comes to AI and data regulation, Europe often leads the way. But the US Federal Trade Commission could spur a major shift on behalf of ordinary people against corporate interests — so long as there’s the political will.
The elite media loves to obsess about the Ivy Leagues. But great public colleges like the City University of New York, once dubbed the Harvard of the proletariat, are far more relevant to most people — and infinitely better at serving the working class.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pushing an agribusiness model on Africa that has failed. Rather than relieving the ongoing hunger crisis, it has undercut Africans’ ability to solve their own problems, free of do-gooder philanthropists.