Túpac Amaru’s Rebellion Lives On
In November 1780, Túpac Amaru led an indigenous uprising against Spanish control of Peru. Centuries on, he and his wife and co-organizer Micaela Bastidas are still potent symbols of liberation in the Andes.
20407 Article(s) by: Karl Leffme
Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
In Cyprus, the Golden Passports Scheme Shows Us How Capitalism and Corruption Go Hand in Hand
Al Jazeera’s Cyprus Papers have exposed a corrupt trade that sells citizenship on the Mediterranean island. But Cyprus is no rogue state: its “golden passport” scheme is firmly rooted in the logic of global capitalism, which makes everything — including citizenship — a commodity.
With Joel Fitzgibbon Gone, the Australian Labor Party Must Stop Appeasing the Fossil Fuel Lobby
After waging war on behalf of coal billionaires, Labor Right MP Joel Fitzgibbon has resigned from the party front bench. If the Labor Left wants to undo the damage he did, they need to start fighting for jobs and the environment as tenaciously as Fitzgibbon did for the coal lobby.
Without Another Massive Federal Stimulus, State and Local Governments Will Face Brutal Austerity
Even with Trump’s defeat, state and local government are facing brutal cuts to vital public services like education and health care. We can’t let the Biden years be four more years of austerity.
We Need a Shark Tank Without the Sharks
The entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank is saturated with the absurdity of twenty-first-century capitalism. But watching it, you can’t help but think about how its basic premise — helping ordinary people with extraordinary ideas implement them on a wide scale — could be carried out under socialism.
How Real Estate Agents Keep Cities Segregated
Under capitalism, housing is a commodity, which means it principally exists to make rich people richer rather than meet human needs. That gap between making money and making profit distorts a whole range of life outcomes for average people — and real estate agents play a critical role in that process.
Learning to Strike and Win
If we’re going to reverse the ravages of neoliberalism, we’ll need to rebuild a global labor movement that knows how to strike and win. A recent international “Strike School,” led by labor organizer Jane McAlevey, brought 3,000 trade unionists and activists from seventy countries to try to do just that.
From Your House to Our House
America’s experiment with public housing was far less successful than Europe’s — but this hasn’t made it any less influential.
The Collision of Self-Importance and Despair
In the United States today, as in 1990s Russia, for a lot of intellectuals, total nihilism seems more plausible than hope for even modest reform.
Failure Is an Option
Haunted by the specter of democracy, the Constitution’s framers blundered into a historic miscalculation. We’re still living with the consequences.
Down and Out in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas
A slice of life from a country in crisis.
The General Who Brought Down the American Empire
In 2002, the Pentagon staged a $250 million war game known as the “Millennium Challenge.” It was supposed to be a fixed fight — until a retired Marine lieutenant general, playing the role of a Middle Eastern country, brought the US military to its knees.
Message in a Bottle
In the United States of 2020, millions are desperate for help, and they’re forced to compete for scraps from Twitter philanthropists.
Where’s Our Gorbachev?
The United States today isn’t on the verge of a Soviet-style disintegration — but neither is there any force at the top willing and able to reform our political system.
The New American Exceptionalism
Effective states can enforce discipline on elites. The United States is not one of them.
Blue Order
In an increasingly unstable country, what if a “deep police state” threatens to undermine our electoral gains?
How Abraham Lincoln Fought the Supreme Court
It is not enough to question the decisions, the justices, or even the structure of the current court — we need to challenge, as Abraham Lincoln did, the foundation of its power to determine the law.
Socialists Should Be Republicans
The first generation of the GOP tried — and failed — to build a modern republic. Socialists today won’t get very far unless we finish their work.
Celebrating Ten Years of Jacobin
And our decades to come.
America’s Railroad to Nowhere
We know the US rail network is no match for trains in France or Japan. But Barack Obama’s plan for high-speed rail couldn’t even match that of Morocco or Uzbekistan.