Cristina Groeger is a history professor at Lake Forest College and a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.
Thirty years ago today, the Soviet Union collapsed. Twentieth-century communism should be understood in all its complexity, as revolution and regime, a spur to anti-colonialism and an alternative form of social democracy.
In a 1914 essay, Eugene V. Debs pronounced Jesus “the world’s supreme revolutionary leader” and “as real and persuasive a historic character as John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, or Karl Marx.” We reprint the essay here in full as our Christmas gift to you.
Amid Cold War paranoia, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI set its sights on a potential source of communist subversion: Frank Capra’s Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life.
Oliver Stone’s new JFK assassination documentary struggled to reach US screens, only to meet with media ridicule when it did. But if there’s nothing to see here, why is the government still blocking the release of records 60 years later?
The Muppet Christmas Carol story rightly insists that greed is a sin and charity a virtue, and trumpets a future where there are no more Scrooges around.
Far-right pundit Éric Zemmour says he is running for the French presidency in order to stand up to elites. Yet far from a grassroots endeavor, his campaign has been driven by some of France’s biggest corporate media.
Edward Said’s Orientalism instilled an anti-imperial sensibility into an entire generation of Western scholars. But even while it castigated the imperial project, its actual analysis didn’t give us the intellectual resources to overturn it.
Buenos Aires’s neoliberal government has used the pandemic to impose austerity on the city’s primary and secondary school teachers. Argentine teachers are fighting back with a campaign of rolling strikes.
Canada’s ruling class is fond of praising the Westons for representing an ethical form of capitalism. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Westons made their fortunes by ruthlessly exploiting workers.
When socialists talk about creating a more equal society, we don’t mean a society where everyone has an exactly equal share of everything. We mean a society where power has been equalized by extending democracy into the economy.
Omicron is coming for America’s overcrowded jails and prisons. Prioritizing vaccines for incarcerated people and rolling back our massive prison-industrial complex is good public health for everyone.
Gabriel Boric’s victory in Chile is a vindication of the mass movement that took to the streets in 2019 — and points toward a country ready to bury Pinochet’s legacy and neoliberalism for good.
Joe Manchin’s blocking of the Build Back Better Act is maddening. But it was only possible because we live under a deeply undemocratic political system and are stuck with a Democratic Party still dominated by corporate interests.
For centuries, debt and indebtedness have had profoundly destabilizing effects on human societies. In the ancient world, rulers and their subjects had a solution: known as a debt jubilee, it involved a periodic, unconditional wiping out of debt. We need such a jubilee today.
The Biden administration has reneged on key promises that candidate Biden used to entice younger voters to turn out for him in 2020. Surprise: his approval ratings with the young are now in free fall.
With threats of sanctions and military aid, US saber-rattling over Ukraine is escalating an already tense confrontation with Russia. It’s a dangerous game that the United States should stop playing.
There are few fights as urgent in American politics as the one to reduce the reactionary, undemocratic power of the Supreme Court. To win that fight, reformers should examine how FDR took his case for court reform to the masses.
Fossil fuel companies tout carbon capture as a way to shore up their own profits. But the technology holds the potential for good — helping us to save the planet, and ourselves, from ecological catastrophe.
As the Omicron variant surges, an institute funded by the Koch network may be undermining government attempts to stop the pandemic.
The Biden administration’s U-turn on distributing millions of COVID tests free of charge — after White House spokesperson Jen Psaki ridiculed the idea two weeks ago — is a case study in how meaningless claims of “political impossibility” often are.