Opal Lee is a writer.
Free-market ideologues claimed that economic “shock therapy” would turn communist states into models of prosperity. Instead it triggered a recession deeper than the Great Depression and fostered the ultranationalist right in countries like Hungary and Poland.
Recent years have seen growing calls for more accountable law enforcement in France — and an intense backlash from police unions. As the country votes in parliamentary elections, police leaders are openly refusing to accept the Left’s legitimacy.
The Abraham Accords have cemented a counterrevolutionary bloc in the Middle East of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. US intervention in the region is assuming a different form, but Washington’s support for authoritarian regimes is as brazen as ever.
In novelist Nell Zink’s new book, Avalon, we might not recognize her characters’ circumstances, but we might recognize ourselves in their near-feral stupidity.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revealed the new reality of great-power conflict, underwritten by nuclear weapons. Our task is to reject aligning with one of the great powers and to instead push for across-the-board nuclear disarmament.
Forty years ago this week, Michael Myerson was one of the organizers for the largest rally in American history against nuclear weapons. The real highlight for him, though, was getting to tell Mayor Ed Koch to go f— himself.
France’s mainstream conservative party is in meltdown, while the far right is stronger than ever. Only a united and resurgent French left can prevent Marine Le Pen from capitalizing on Macron’s authoritarian, neoliberal presidency.
A new survey finds that US gig workers face much greater economic hardship and insecurity than conventional low-wage retail and food-service workers. Lacking most labor law protections, many make less than minimum wage and can’t afford to pay basic bills.
The first round of France’s parliamentary elections saw left-wing coalition NUPES come first nationally. President Emmanuel Macron’s allies reacted by tarring the Left as extremists — but Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s coalition looks closer than ever to power.
In the mid-19th century, Benedictine monks seized Aboriginal land to establish a new mission in Western Australia. In New Norcia, they attempted to recreate a reactionary feudal society that had all but disappeared from Europe — with disastrous results.
The January 6 hearings fail to tackle the most important questions about the incident; they won’t hold anyone accountable; and most Americans have tuned them out. As political theater and a play for the midterms, they’re an opening night bomb.
The women’s suffrage movement is too often remembered as exclusively middle-class and focused solely on votes for women. But socialist and working-class suffragettes played essential roles in the fight for equality.
The first season of The Wire began 20 years ago this month. It remains one of this century’s great television shows — both stylish and smart, with unforgettable characters woven into a striking portrait of the depredations of capitalism in one US city.
International private equity has its eyes on Canadian medical services not covered by the country’s national health care program.
Federal Reserve chair and former private equity exec Jerome Powell has promised to tackle inflation by lowering workers’ wages. At the same time, he has declined to implement a law to reduce the skyrocketing paychecks of his former colleagues on Wall Street.
Conservative Mark Levin has climbed the best-seller list again with his right-wing tract American Marxism. It’s a plodding mess of a book, with page after page of recycled slogans and analysis so thin you have to squint to find any substance.
How can someone take a band as exciting, wild, and innovative as the Sex Pistols and make such a conventional, paint-by-numbers miniseries? With Pistol, Danny Boyle found a way.
Recent revelations prove that Hillary Clinton had a direct role in spreading now-discredited allegations that stoked the Russiagate frenzy — an episode that has made the already challenging task of pursuing a rational policy toward Russia even more difficult.
Afro-pessimism has become a highly influential school of thought. This is unfortunate: Afro-pessimism flattens blackness and insists overcoming racism is impossible. Socialists offer a stronger interpretation of where racism comes from — and how to defeat it.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell plans to address sky-high inflation by hiking interest rates — acknowledging that doing so will suppress wages and worker power. It’s a response that will force workers to bear the brunt of the inflation crisis.