Cristina Groeger is a history professor at Lake Forest College and a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.
Billionaires like Howard Schultz like to claim that that we should be grateful for all the jobs they create. But the ultrarich don’t create jobs in any meaningful sense — they just reap the rewards of asset ownership and the labor of their workers.
US reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar just introduced the End Child Poverty Act, which would set up a universal child benefit. It’s a major improvement on previous proposals to help poor and working-class families — and would instantly slash child poverty.
A blockbuster new story reveals that Clarence Thomas has been traveling around the world on a superyacht and private jet owned by billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow. Yet somehow, right-wingers continue to pretend that Thomas is an enemy of “the elites.”
Emmanuel Macron’s government has angered millions with its attack on the French pension system. But the strength of the protest movement owes to struggles that came before — and the organizations allowing a sustained challenge to the neoliberal agenda.
The arrest of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s husband has dealt another blow to her political legacy. She has left her Scottish National Party greatly weakened — and with its plans for independence in tatters.
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.