Lillian Cicerchia is assistant professor of political theory at the University of Amsterdam.
The Left envisions a future for Palestine in which people of all religions and ethnicities enjoy equal rights. But achieving this universalistic vision requires starting from the understanding that the state of Israel is a settler-colonial enterprise.
It’s not enough for socialists to point out capitalism’s many faults — we need to explain our positive vision of the future and how it lives up to our ideals of justice.
The end of Roe v. Wade is a disaster that voting alone can’t solve. We need an abortion rights movement that organizes beyond individual elections and fights for reproductive freedom as part of a federal universal health plan.
Despite majority support for abortion rights, we failed to build a majority coalition to defend reproductive freedom. We should honestly assess our failures — and then build a movement that ties together labor, feminists, and health care organizing.
Leftists have often dismissed liberal freedoms as a justification for capitalist domination. This is wrong. Exploited and oppressed people across the globe fought for these rights against an illiberal elite.
Critical theorist Axel Honneth accuses Marxism of having a narrowly economic idea of human emancipation. That’s wrong — and his own work could use a more structural understanding of social conflict and how progress really happens.
The Alabama abortion ban and the spate of draconian “heartbeat” laws are vicious attacks on reproductive rights. We have to fight back with an unequivocal demand: free abortion on demand.
Medicare for All is a powerful framework for advancing reproductive justice. But to permanently win the right to abortion, we’ll need to argue for it on its own terms as well.