Cristina Groeger is a history professor at Lake Forest College and a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.
Unrest gives viewers plenty that they won’t find in films elsewhere: a quietly gorgeous portrayal of the labor process, a lead role for the anarchist geographer Pyotr Kropotkin, and an exploration of how bosses wrestle with workers over control of their work.
International Workers’ Day traces its roots to the 1886 Haymarket affair, when labor radicals in Chicago were unjustly executed. Ever since, reactionaries have tried to tarnish their legacy — and leftists have honored them as working-class martyrs.
This May Day, don’t hang your head for the labor movement’s defeat. US unions are weak, it’s true. But there’s more excitement, more of a spirit of militancy and experimentation, and more hope in today’s labor movement than there has been in a long time.
Capitalism is built on the meritocratic idea that everyone gets what they deserve in the marketplace. This May Day, let’s reject that idea — wealth creation is a fundamentally social process, and the rich have no right to hoard all the resources and power.
May Day is not a holiday for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, much as he might pose as a working-class champion. For a more robust vision of freedom, we can look to the Florida Socialists and Tampa cigar workers of Eugene Debs’s day.
Mark Steven has delved into the history of revolutions to develop a vision of class war for our own time. His analysis would be stronger if he recognized how those revolutions produced broad social alliances through the shared experience of struggle.
From Ireland to the US, Jim Larkin helped organize some of the key labor struggles and movements of his day. Larkin also tried to build an Irish communist party, but his independent spirit clashed with a heavy-handed bureaucratic line from Moscow and London.
A new book by historian Matthew Dallek traces the John Birch Society’s enduring influence over American politics and reveals how the deep roots of the reactionary right stretch from Congress to the Supreme Court.
Tension is mounting as Israeli state repression and settler violence are being matched by an upsurge in Palestinian resistance. Palestinian liberation movement leader Khalida Jarrar says the situation is reaching a breaking point.
Former workers at major tech firms are coming forward to say they were paid six figures to do nothing, a strategy to hoard them from rival companies. It’s just one of many ways capitalists manipulate labor markets. The others aren’t so nice.
Forgotten for decades, Marxist novelist William Attaway’s 1941 Blood on the Forge is a brilliantly brutal depiction of the connection between racism and capitalism. Haunting and sublime, it will leave you feeling the scars of working-class life.
Australian politicians blame Aboriginal people for social problems. Alexis Wright’s Grog War shows that when First Nations communities fight to improve society, they are attacked at every turn.
Montreal’s 1993 hockey riot wasn’t about one nation’s anger at another’s victory — it was an expression of fury over Quebec’s experience of neoliberalism and deindustrialization in the province.
Tucker Carlson likes to posture as a bold populist truth-teller. But when push comes to shove, he sides with the ruling class and bosses, not workers.
After his death earlier this week, the whole world is remembering Jerry Springer’s trashy talk show. But nobody is talking about Springer’s 2004 role as an antiwar US president who took on the military-industrial complex and won.
The California senator Dianne Feinstein is losing her capacity to engage in basic Senate business, yet she refuses to step down. It’s a disgraceful finale to Feinstein’s career, which has been spent faithfully serving the rich.
Plato developed his philosophy in ancient Greece during an early experiment in democratic government that threatened the power of his class. He responded with an argument for rule by aristocratic elites that has appealed to conservatives ever since.
In Different Speeds, Same Furies, Britain’s preeminent Marxist, Perry Anderson, produces an idiosyncratic but dazzling account of Anthony Powell and Marcel Proust, arguably the two greatest novelists of the 20th century.
The Bronx’s Amalgamated Housing Cooperative opened in 1927 and has provided thousands of families with affordable housing since then. Now it’s facing an existential threat.
Did the Teamsters just successfully negotiate the first tentative agreement for Amazon workers anywhere in America? The fact that the workers are subcontracted means the answer to that question isn’t cut and dry.