Benjamin Case is a researcher, educator, and organizer living in Pittsburgh.
Defenders of the Federal Reserve often argue that we should just let the bank “do its job.” But a recent book shows that democratic forces have challenged this sharp separation between politics and economics throughout America’s history.
Canada has a long history of ignoring its class divide. In recent years, the divide has become a chasm and can no longer be ignored. Accepting that class division is central to the national makeup is the first step in bridging it.
The capitalist system may be turbulent, inequitable, and antisocial. But there is no “iron law” of capital standing in the way of a program of economic planning for sake of the climate.
The US childcare system is a crazy quilt of unaffordable, marketized options for working families. We could learn from Finland and Quebec, which treat high-quality childcare as a basic right underwritten by the state, not a money-making opportunity.
German director Uwe Boll was filming an NYPD drama in New York City last month. On the third day of shooting, crew members say that his producer showed up with a gun. Within a week, they were on strike.
Manchester in the 1980s was home to bands like Joy Division and the Smiths and a world-famous rave scene. The music rose from the conditions of life in postindustrial Manchester — and, ironically, it paved the way for a new wave of capital investment.
Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin’s center-left government lost this past weekend’s elections. Her administration had great promise — but it failed to take the measures that would have delivered real material gains for working-class Finns.
In Chicago’s mayoral runoff last night, Paul Vallas’s vision of budget cuts and law and order lost to Brandon Johnson’s promises to tax the rich and invest in social services.
When he faced prosecutors in New York yesterday, Donald Trump appeared worried about pending cases against him in Washington, DC, and Georgia. Those charges are far more serious than the New York case, indicating that his problems have only just begun.
Governor Kathy Hochul is pushing to gut New York’s signature climate law to effectively allow more methane emissions. She is doing so after receiving nearly half a million dollars in donations from energy corporations and lobbyists advocating for the move.
Since Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, some commentators have been waking up to the need for a socialization of deposit-taking banking. They’re right — but the same logic leads to a more radical conclusion: a fully socialized capital market, with no private banks.
Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel popularized the term “late capitalism” to describe the way the system had changed in the postwar decades. Mandel’s work was a landmark in the study of capitalism, and we can still learn a lot from his analysis today.
The idea that AI will wipe out all our jobs is generating lots of apocalyptic headlines these days. It’s no surprise why: in a society without an egalitarian welfare state and pro-worker policies, labor reallocation can be a disaster.
Born on this day a century ago, Ernest Mandel was one of the major political thinkers of his age. From his teenage activism in the anti-Nazi resistance to his final days, Mandel was an uncompromising defender of socialist ideals and working-class interests.
Over 60 Peruvians have now been killed at protests following the impeachment of Pedro Castillo. President Dina Boluarte and PM Alberto “the Butcher” Otárola must be brought to justice.
Canadian news media is in a panic about alleged Chinese influence in Canadian politics. Their coverage is promoting anti-Chinese sentiment and creating farcical levels of paranoia about foreign interference.
The far right won big in Finland’s parliamentary elections over the weekend. They’re now likely to join a ruling coalition led by the country’s main party of big business.
Joe Lieberman wants a “commonsense, moderate, independent” politics in America, to be advanced by his group No Labels. It’s a bankrupt “post-partisan” vision that has no solutions to any of the multiple dire threats facing Americans.
Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 55 years ago today while in Memphis standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. His life and radical words stand as a beacon of hope, urging us to keep fighting for economic and racial justice.
Martin Luther King Jr had a rich relationship with socialist politics: he sympathized with but ultimately rejected Marxism, and he settled on a Christian socialism that viewed the struggle against racism and class oppression as fundamentally intertwined.