“This Is a Systematic Problem With Policing in This Country”
Labour MP Dawn Butler talks about being stopped by the police, the far-right campaign of abuse which followed, and why she will keep fighting the racism that plagues policing in Britain.
19548 Articles by: Karl Leffme
Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
Capitalism Made Gay Identity Possible. Now We Must Destroy Capitalism.
Gay identity became possible thanks to capitalism’s emancipatory side: its liberation of the individual from material dependence on the family. But that sexual freedom wasn’t automatic — it required decades of militant struggle. Today, we need more such struggles to combat the oppressive aspects of capitalism, which keep gay and straight people alike from living fully free lives.
Rudolf Hilferding and the Austrian School of Anti-Capitalism
The Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding (1877–1941) produced an important and influential analysis of capitalism, and he played an active role in Austrian and German politics before falling victim to Nazism. He still has a lot to teach us about the way modern capitalism works.
To Talk About Racial Disparity and COVID-19, We Need to Talk About Class
It’s now widely understood that black Americans have been disproportionately hit by the coronavirus. But though mainstream commentators are willing to recognize this basic disparity, and the role of racism, they perpetually obscure the question of class.
Socialists Fought For and Won Our Basic Democratic Rights
The myth of our democratic rights is that they were handed down to us from on high by liberals. But the ruling class resisted extending the franchise at every turn — and socialists were the ones who fought them for the right to vote.
Trump’s Postal Service Chairman Has Led Senate GOP’s $100 Million Super PAC
Trump just installed a former Republican National Committee chair to lead the board that oversees the USPS. Now the agency faces allegations that it is being used to rig the 2020 election.
The Senate Just Abandoned the Working Class Without a COVID-19 Relief Package
Federal unemployment has dried up, rent is past due, evictions are proceeding, the cupboards are bare, and the Senate has adjourned without passing a new coronavirus relief package. Their abandonment of the working class is shameless, but hardly shocking.
Silicon Valley’s Big-Money Donors Are Very Excited About VP Kamala Harris
With her deep and long-standing ties to the Silicon Valley elite, Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate has corporate leaders breathing a deep sigh of relief. In picking the California senator, Biden couldn’t be clearer that his will be an administration dedicated to shoring up a crumbling status quo.
Belarus Is Cracking Down on Worker-Led Pro-Democracy Protest
In Belarus, a populist government that long claimed the support of its people finds itself repressing a historic protest movement — and its demands for a more democratic politics.
Bertolt Brecht’s Refugee Conversations Is a Book for Our Times
The German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht died on this day in 1956. His newly released book Refugee Conversations draws on his own years in exile to tear apart the anti-immigrant politics which still plague us today.
The Controversy Surrounding An American Pickle Is Better Than the Film Itself
Seth Rogen’s new film prompted him to ask some searching questions about Jewish education in the diaspora today and drew significant attention after his criticism of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. But An American Pickle is a superficial portrait of Jewish experience in the New World and a corny rags-to-riches story of immigration.
Surveillance Corporations Are More Than Happy to Ride the Wave of Police Reform
Widely publicized cases of police brutality have led to an incredible uprising across the United States and the world demanding an end to police violence. But those cases can also mean big business for companies selling technology based on the empty promise of providing greater police accountability and improving public safety.
Belarus’s Workers Are Going on Strike Against the Election Fraud
In the days after Alexander Lukashenko stole Belarus’s election, the state has unleashed intense repression against all who dared to protest. But now workers from metro drivers to oil refinery employees have gone on strike against Lukashenko’s fraud — a powerful stand for their democratic rights.
Amadeo Bordiga Was the Last Communist to Challenge Stalin to His Face
Founder of the Communist Party of Italy in 1921, Amadeo Bordiga is little known today, even among scholars of that country’s Marxist traditions. Fifty years after his death, the first English-language collection of his writings shows why Bordiga shouldn’t be overlooked.
The Dangers of Letting Racecraft Displace Class During the Pandemic
I worry that the racial discourse on COVID-19 could help pave the way for a eugenics-state that will ultimately do damage to poor black and brown people.
Coronavirus Has Made a Fool Out of Every Single Critic of Medicare for All
When the pandemic began, defenders of our for-profit health system — including many Democrats — scrambled to insist we didn’t need a Medicare for All system. Yet new infections are still surging in the US while countries with national health care programs have long since gotten a handle on coronavirus.
The Left Needs to Stop Falling for Absurd Sex Panics
The absurd allegations against progressive Congressional candidate Alex Morse have now been exposed as a hoax. But they couldn’t have been better calculated to excite a Left prone to mindless sex panics.
Happy Birthday, Fidel Castro. We’ll Forever Remember Your Solidarity With Our Struggle.
Fidel Castro inspired revolutionaries around the world — and also provided them with direct material aid. On what would have been Castro’s 94th birthday, veteran anti-apartheid fighter Ronnie Kasrils salutes the Cuban leader’s solidarity with liberation struggles in Southern Africa and beyond.
Racism Isn’t an Unchangeable Fixture of American Life. We Can Dismantle It.
Thinking about racism as some kind of existential “original sin” that will always be with us no matter what we do, no matter what efforts we undertake to fight it, is a political dead end. Through organizing, we have struck blows against racism in the past — we can do so again today.
The Cosmopolitan Socialism of Michael Brooks
Michael Brooks, who would have turned 37 years old today, wanted the Left to do better. In the last year of his life, he’d started to write a book about what that might look like.