Frank Dikötter is the best-selling popular historian of China today. In his latest work on the post-Mao years, Dikötter joins a long line of those predicting the speedy demise of the Chinese system, letting ideology get in the way of analysis.
In recent years, the grand questions of strategy that once animated the Left have found a new home in the world of business and management. But strategy is an essential component of political activity, and it needs a Marxist analysis at its core.
For years, Austria’s Social Democrats have embraced the values of the free market and lost ever more working-class votes. Now, left-winger Andreas Babler has surged to the party leadership — and promises to transform his country’s politics.
In the wake of the Trump indictments, conservatives are concerned that the justice system is being used to target political enemies. They’re right about that — but as the repression of Cop City protesters shows, they’re wrong about who the real targets are.
Boris Johnson stepped down as an MP last week. The entitlement typical of Britain’s privately educated elite defined his career, but he added to it a unique brand of dishonesty and opportunism.
Just because you’re doing work for a massive company like Google doesn’t mean you’re technically working for them. And just because you’re a Google subcontractor doesn’t mean you can’t organize a union, as Ben Gwin and his coworkers did in Pittsburgh.
Republican senator J. D. Vance quietly amended his rail safety bill to allow the same unsafe tank cars that leaked chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, to continue circulating through US cities until as late as 2028, just as rail and chemical lobbies asked.
Workers at the Erie, Pennsylvania, train manufacturing complex Wabtec are poised to walk off the job should they decide the company’s contract offer is insufficient. One of their main priorities is a rarity for US unions: the right to strike over grievances.
The Bharatiya Janata Party saw last month’s state election in Karnataka as a crucial test of its ability to win votes in South India. The party’s loss to Congress suggests it could be more vulnerable than anticipated ahead of next year’s national election.
Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 chronicles how Labour ended many of the UK’s worst barbarities through socializing key industries and creating public goods like the National Health Service. That project is now on the back foot — but won’t ever be fully defeated.
US climate defenders have long faced serious threats, but the intensity of the crackdown on Stop Cop City protesters in Atlanta is an escalation. It’s reminiscent of conditions in Latin America, where climate protesters’ lives are frequently on the line.
A century ago, universities were hotbeds of reaction, and Ivy League undergraduates would leave class to break strikes. The Left has now built a base within the academy, but without ties to organized labor, these movements will achieve little.
Protests in the UK are at a low by historical standards. Yet Labour and Conservatives insist that bans on civil liberties are needed to protect public order. In truth, the UK’s authoritarian turn is a response to its economic stagnation and decline.
The spread between loan interest rates and deposit rates is at a record high, allowing big banks to make out like bandits while consumers miss out on hundreds of billions of dollars in potential savings.
Originally published in 1983 and recently reissued, My Search for Warren Harding follows a failing academic and self-loathing gay man who attempts to seduce his way into the life of a former president’s mistress. It’s a forgotten classic of biting humor.
Recently declassified documents have exposed former Mexican president José López Portillo as a CIA asset. The revelations are a reminder of his ignominious contributions to Mexico’s brutal “dirty war” against left dissent during the Cold War.
Cornel West has a compelling message. Instead of running a third-party campaign most voters won’t notice, he should grab the spotlight by challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
Donald Trump’s indictment was the biggest news of the week, but what was lost in the typical Trump absurdities of documents in ballrooms and bathrooms is the revelation of US plans to attack Iran.
Andreas Babler, a Marxist who has described the EU as a worse military alliance than NATO, is the new head of Austria’s Social Democratic Party. To win, he narrowly beat an anti-immigrant candidate. Now he must rout the Right within the party.
It’s sometimes hard to remember that five years ago, both Labour and Conservatives were in general agreement about the need to expand rights for trans people. But since then, both parties have drifted to the right on LGBTQ politics.