Nick French is an associate editor at Jacobin.
A long tradition in US thought has emphasized the importance of economic security for ensuring individual liberty. But to truly realize equal freedom for all, we need a socialist politics fighting for democratic control over the economy.
Today Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to walk a picket line when he joined striking autoworkers. It says less about him than it does the electrifying effects of the strike — forcing politicians, and everyone else, to side with either workers or CEOs.
Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns galvanized a new generation to fight against inequality and corporate power. The spirit of that fight is now finding expression in the workplace — as seen with the massive strike the United Auto Workers just started today.
By many metrics, the US economy is doing well — but most voters still disapprove of Biden’s handling of it. If they want to win elections, Democrats should run on reviving the temporary COVID welfare state they let expire.
Socialists have demonstrated the tactical utility of running on the Democratic Party ballot line. But making our peace with the party would be a mistake — to accomplish our goals, independent political organization and identity is indispensable.
This year, Democrats used their control of the Michigan legislature to pass a suite of pro-worker reforms, including repealing right-to-work laws. We spoke with Michigan House member Joey Andrews about these wins and the current moment in labor.
The ideas of John Rawls, perhaps the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, have much to teach the Left. But Rawls’s theory of justice failed to grapple adequately with the fundamental obstacles capitalism imposes to realizing a just society.
Early 20th-century unions rejected the idea that bosses should be the dictators of the workplace. Today, the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, and other major unions have rediscovered the strike’s power to secure workers’ control over their own lives.
Pundits have lauded the Biden administration for replacing the free-market consensus with supply-side liberalism. But it is geopolitical tensions with China and labor’s weakness that have made elites feel comfortable with a milquetoast industrial policy.
Socialists have a noble history fighting for more and better public parks — not just because everyone loves the park, but because public goods like parks are a challenge to the logic of capitalism.
When he became Burlington’s mayor in 1981, Bernie Sanders was a socialist outsider who had to face down a hostile political establishment. His successful mayoralty may contain lessons for Chicago’s new progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson.
The Right uses “Marxism” to describe everything from LGBTQ rights to corporate diversity measures. It’s a deeply confused definition. But it’s not wrong about one thing: Marxists do indeed want to dismantle all forms of oppression.
Socialists aren’t driven by envy of the “more successful.” We are socialists because we want workers to have what’s rightfully theirs — and we know a world with less greed and envy, and where everyone has what they need, is possible.
Billionaires like Howard Schultz like to claim that that we should be grateful for all the jobs they create. But the ultrarich don’t create jobs in any meaningful sense — they just reap the rewards of asset ownership and the labor of their workers.
The Right likes to say it believes in “personal responsibility” while the Left promotes a culture of blaming others for our problems. In reality, socialism is about allowing people to take charge of their own lives — and ending the parasitism of the ultrarich.
Fed up with rail companies putting profits before workers and surrounding communities, the rank-and-file group Railroad Workers United is launching a campaign for railroad nationalization. We spoke with one of their leaders about the proposal.
It sounds farcical, but GOP politicians like Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney are casting themselves as pro-worker. And corporate Democrats are making the fraud more believable by advancing their own weak-tea program.
The exploitation of workers is central to the functioning of capitalism. The socialist argument is simple: we can live in a world without such exploitation.
Today “ethical consumerism” mostly refers to individuals feeling morally righteous about what they buy. But the consumers movement was once motivated by the broader, collective goal of democratic management of the economy.
Analytic philosophy, a branch of the discipline that emphasizes rigorous argumentation, is often dismissed as a set of abstract puzzle games. But analytic philosophers have reinterpreted Marxism to provide a radical critique of capitalist society.