Decades of Progress for Women Workers Are at Risk
This pandemic has the potential to erase much of the progress women have achieved over the past forty years. The solution is simple: labor organizing and struggling for jobs and fair pay.
19597 Articles by: Karl Leffme
Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
The Racial Wealth Gap Is About the Upper Classes
Here’s an idea: we should redistribute wealth from the largely white 1 percent to the poor and working class of all races — tackling both racial and class inequality simultaneously.
Workers at Four Pittsburgh Museums Are Unionizing
More than a century after the landmark Homestead strike against Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire, workers at four Pittsburgh museums — including three founded by Carnegie — are unionizing with the United Steelworkers. It’s the latest episode in a nationwide wave of museum organizing.
The “Camden Model” Is Not a Model. It’s an Obstacle to Real Change.
In response to radical demands to defund and disband the police, liberal reformers are pushing the “Camden model.” Don’t fall for it. Camden relies on mass surveillance to pacify its population — all to benefit business interests.
To Defund the Police, We Have to Dethrone the Law Enforcement Lobby
Police unions, prison guard unions, district attorney associations, and others in the law enforcement lobby have long wielded their power to nix any reforms that attack the carceral state. To defund the police, we’ll have to challenge their power head-on.
Why the New National Security Laws in Hong Kong Matter
The new national security laws that Beijing has imposed on Hong Kong criminalize dissent — and they could make it harder for workers in mainland China to organize, too.
It’s Time for Mexico to Tax the Rich
Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with a caste of superrich lording over a mass of urban and rural poor barely surviving. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transfer programs have gone some way toward distributing wealth, but much more needs to be done.
Eugene Debs’s Independence Day Address
On July 4, 1901, socialist luminary and labor agitator Eugene V. Debs proclaimed in a fiery speech: “I like the Fourth of July. It breathes a spirit of revolution.” We reprint the fiercely anticapitalist address here in full.
Tear Confederate Statues Down, Keep Union Statues Up, and Build New Antislavery Monuments
Confederate statues are monuments to white supremacy. Protesters are right to tear them down. But Union statues are the opposite: monuments to the antislavery cause. We should keep them standing — and build new ones commemorating freedom fighters like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown all over the country.
Big Business Still Has Enormous Control of American Politics at Every Level
Big business has long held an outsize role in US politics. In a plague year, and as politicians prematurely push to reopen the economy, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that its place at the center of American life is more grotesque than ever.
Germany Needs to Own Up to the Horrors of Its Colonial Past in Africa
Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust is widely taken as a model of historical accountability — yet it has proven far less willing to confront its colonial past in Africa.
Public Transportation Is a Human Right
For a century our cities have been transformed by the car industry, making way for drivers at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians. A renewed movement for urban public transport is pushing back.
Democrats Are Working With Liz Cheney to Prolong Dick Cheney’s Endless War
Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, is trying to prolong her father’s endless war in Afghanistan. You would think that every Democrat would be united in opposing such a policy, right? Well, you would be wrong.
No, Studying Marx Is Not Elitist
Reading Marxist theory isn’t just for highfalutin academics — just ask the millions of workers whose ideas about the role they could play in changing the world were transformed by both study and practice.
Kylie Jenner’s Clothing Brand Is Stiffing Workers. It’s Time to Organize the Stans.
Kylie Jenner’s clothing line is stiffing garment workers in Bangladesh, who have long lacked the bargaining power to improve their conditions. But the industry is changing — and consumer action linked to workplace militancy could actually win gains for these workers.
When Harlem Renaissance Novelist Claude McKay Decamped for the Port of Marseille
Struggling for cash in the late 1920s, Harlem Renaissance trailblazer Claude McKay found casual work as a docker in Marseille. Finally published this year, his Romance in Marseille illuminates the city with both personal emotion and a vivid class feeling — testament to the tough fight for solidarity among the migrant proletariat.
Larry Summers Is Not Your Friend
Recent reports indicate that Larry Summers is advising Joe Biden’s campaign. This is not good, because Larry Summers is very bad: his entire career has been spent protecting the wealthy few at the expense of the many.
COVID-19 Treatments Belong to the People, Not Price-Gouging Pharma Companies
A medical system that charges users $3,210 for remdesivir, a COVID-19 treatment that cost $10 to produce — and that took $70,000,000 in public money to develop — is a medical system that must be abolished.
Millions of Americans Face the Nightmare of Getting COVID-19 While Underinsured
Adults with underlying health problems are at increased risk of getting seriously ill or dying if they contract the coronavirus. These are also often the very same people who are least likely to have insurance.
Chief Justice John Roberts Is Carrying Out Corporate America’s Long-Term Plan Perfectly
In 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court because the business lobby believed he would turn the court into a corporate weapon — and that’s precisely what he has been doing ever since.