The diverse mosaic of European socialism engaged both reformists and revolutionaries, often driven by not just intellect but also profound religious conviction. Together, these elements shaped the democratic socialist tradition.
Beyond a Boundary turned 60 this year. The classic book by C. L. R. James used cricket as a window into the history of the West Indies as its people liberated themselves from British colonial rule, defying racism to find their place in the world as equals.
At the height of a calamitous war presided over by a Democratic president, the brilliant socialist organizer Bayard Rustin tried to forge a mass coalition to deliver progressive change. His failure to do so in the 1960s tells us much about building one today.
Even before Hamas’s attack on October 7, the Israeli state knew it couldn’t subject Gaza to an unlivable siege forever. Now Israel’s rage has turned huge swathes of the densely populated territory into a howling wasteland.
Cloaked in an impenetrable jargon, “decoloniality” dehistoricizes and culturalizes colonialism. It’s a political and intellectual dead end for socialists.
Left-wing forces in Spain, France, Germany and Greece all recently suffered damaging splits. They each stumbled over a common problem: how to influence institutions while focusing on priorities ignored by the dominant media-political class.
The history of socialist politics in the Global South shows that all capitalists want a government that will govern unapologetically in their interests — and would prefer the intervention of foreign powers than democracy and socialism at home.
As I covered the Hollywood strike this year, perhaps the best guide was a 1941 novel by a former Communist Party member about the dog-eat-dog scumbaggery of movie executives and the lying and artless bragging that Hollywood runs on.
Eighteen-year-old Israeli Tal Mitnick has just been sent to prison for refusing to enlist in the army and participate in what he calls a “war of revenge” in Gaza. He’s a hero.
Recently genealogists discovered that Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is a distant relative of Antonio Gramsci. Though they share little else, Meloni has engaged in a campaign for control over cultural institutions that Gramsci would understand well.
Historian Arno Mayer, who died this month at age 97, infused his work with a Marxism animated by attention to ideology, passion, and the open-endedness of history.
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has issued a decree with over 350 reforms tearing up labor rights and privatizing industries. The “shock therapy” plan marks a dangerous expansion of the president’s powers — but it also faces fierce opposition.
Last week, hundreds of health workers shut down the London HQ of Palantir to protest a tech company profiting off of Israel’s bloody war on Gaza.
The New York Times’s 1619 Project claimed to reveal the unknown history of slavery and racism in the United States. It ended up helping to distort the real history of slavery — and the heroic struggle against it — for a generation.
American federalism is often touted as a source of local democratic engagement, political innovation, and responsive public policy. But in practice, the American states have served not as “laboratories of democracy” but as laboratories of autocracy and inequality.
For years, conservative billionaires have treated Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas to opulent vacations and trips on their private jets. If these were anything other than disinterested gifts, then they’re taxable — and Thomas owes the IRS a huge bill.
Karl Marx started out in a liberal milieu where the primary concern was abolishing religious authoritarianism. In time, he came to believe that abolishing capitalism was necessary for true freedom — and that only the working class could do it.
A publicly owned intercity bus service with dedicated highway lanes could do for travelers what the US Postal Service does for letters and packages: let them criss-cross the country cheaply and quickly at their own convenience.
Christmas wasn’t always an apolitical holiday. During the Gilded Age, working-class Americans organized around a radical vision of Christ — until the Protestant establishment co-opted their energy.
The Christmas story reminds us that the hope of the world may come from the least likely places. Being a socialist means holding fast to this possibility.