Opal Lee is a writer.
From its late break with the Ottoman Empire to the Cold War rule of Enver Hoxha, Albania has followed an unusual path through modern history. But the country’s experience of communism and postcommunism is full of valuable lessons for the politics of today.
After a nine-month strike to prevent drastic cuts to jobs, wages, and benefits, the San Antonio Symphony has dissolved. As long as they rely on the largesse of the wealthy, orchestras and the musicians who comprise them are in danger.
Uber is in trouble after a leak demonstrating the extent of its pay-to-play activities. But in America, you don’t need a trove of leaked texts or emails to prove the corrosive effects of lobbying. The proof is right out in the open, and Uber is hardly alone.
With its stock cratering and its audience shrinking, Netflix needs a savior. But The Gray Man, a bloated and boring $200 million action movie, is unlikely to be it.
The Supreme Court ruled the government needs a warrant to get your location data. But ICE is getting warrantless access anyway. The marriage of private data gathering and immigration enforcement is looking alarmingly like a surveillance state.
As a socialist and internationalist, I abhor war. But the basic premise of self-determination justifies the resistance of ordinary Ukrainians to Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of our country.
Radical comic artist Sam Wallman’s new book, Our Members Be Unlimited, connects a new generation of trade union activists with the history and future of workers’ struggle.
In 1872, Friedrich Engels wrote The Housing Question, tying the working class’s perpetual housing crisis to the free market in Victorian England. The century and a half of housing crises since have proved Engels correct.
The world is on fire all around us. The free market can’t put that fire out — only massive state intervention in the economy can.
For three decades, Italian liberals have promoted technocratic neoliberal governments with no popular mandate. The effect is to hollow out democracy — and alienate the center left from its former working-class base.
The Biden administration’s climate inaction is so bad that his own agency experts have signed a letter begging him to act to roll back emissions while there’s still time.
Developed as a passion project, Counter-Strike became a video game phenomenon. It also served as a laboratory for the exploitation of video game labor and the commodification trends that dominate the games industry and the broader internet today.
Justin Trudeau’s Infrastructure Bank is facilitating private investment in the water sector. But municipalities’ water systems will not be improved by the good-heartedness of private investors — they will take their pound of flesh by hook or by crook.
Recently elected president Gustavo Petro’s victory was a milestone not only for Colombia but for all of Latin America. With it, a new progressive wave has washed across the region.
The leadership race for Alberta’s United Conservative Party signals a further shift to the right in Canada’s most conservative province. But the province’s conservatism isn’t innate — it is a result of carbon producers’ domination of the economy.
When it comes to internet infrastructure, the for-profit model is presented as inevitable — but political decisions built today’s internet, and political movements could build something different.
In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama diagnoses the political and psychological malaise caused by capitalism. His analysis makes one thing clear: liberalism is incapable of addressing the social, economic, and ecological crises it faces.
In New York’s 11th Congressional District, two veterans are competing for the Democratic nomination. One is a centrist who will strengthen the military-industrial complex; the other is a democratic socialist who built her career fighting it.
We can’t sit on our hands waiting for Joe Biden to protect abortion and the climate. Movements for the New Deal and civil rights showed us how to beat the Supreme Court and other reactionary, undemocratic institutions: mass action.
As climate change disrupts migration patterns, animals and the viruses they carry will come into unusual contact with each other — and inevitably with humans, unleashing new pandemics. The only thing that can stop this unfolding nightmare is a mass movement.