Opal Lee is a writer.
After becoming the first man in space, in July 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin accepted an invitation to visit factory workers in Manchester. Gagarin delighted them by saying he was proud to be a worker — and that the collective endeavor that put him in orbit was also needed on Earth.
Capitalists are sometimes accommodating of electoral democracy. But at no point in history have capitalists ever accepted the outcome of elections that might threaten capitalist property relations.
Boris Johnson wants the UK to spend more on arms and reassert its “global role.” Along with a government clampdown on anti-racist organizing, his strategy is clear — imperial grandstanding and the crushing of dissent.
Over the last decade, streaming services like Spotify have become increasingly dominant, sucking up all the profits at the expense of the musicians who make the work. Now, the newly formed Union for Musicians and Allied Workers is mobilizing to ensure musicians receive the royalties they’re owed.
Sixty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to leave our planet. The space race was inseparable from Cold War rivalry, but it also stands out as an inspiring example of what humanity can achieve through grand collective projects that aren’t geared to private profit.
With support from the Australian government, the Adani corporation is pushing ahead with an environmentally destructive coal mine in Queensland. But the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land, the Wangan and Jagalingou nation, are waging a determined fight to stop them.
HBO’s QAnon documentary has been criticized for its hands-off approach to its subjects, who include some of the most reactionary characters on the internet. But the film is a deft portrayal how a dangerous conspiracy theory could emerge from the internet’s fever swamps and cause real world damage.
The Left has no choice but to engage in organizing and propagandizing online. But we also have to understand that online organizing is not capable of building the kind of solidarity or coordination our politics demand.
When former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi was appointed Italy’s prime minister, he was widely hailed as a pro-European bulwark against the populist right. Yet the first weeks of his government have seen a wave of attacks against migrant rescue NGOs and refugees.
The author, anti-fascist partisan, and Nazi death camp survivor Primo Levi died on this day in 1987. His life and the cautious Enlightenment ideology he advanced in his work, Enzo Traverso writes, told the story of the twentieth century and its battles.
Canada’s public health system is often seen as a model for the US. When it comes to pharmacare, however, Canada imitates its neighbor’s lousy practices, and Justin Trudeau has broken his pledge to establish a public prescription system that would be more just and more efficient.
Former intelligence analyst Daniel Hale is being prosecuted for blowing the whistle on America’s drone program. It’s the latest in the topsy-turvy world of national security whistleblowers, who reveal illegal and immoral conduct by the US military yet face prison time as if they committed the real crimes.
Ahead of the 2022 election, French media are presenting an inevitable duel between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and the “populist” Marine Le Pen. Yet for decades we’ve seen how this liberal framing fuels far-right talking points — echoing Le Pen’s false claim to stand for those “left behind” against the status quo.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin’s opposition to increasing the corporate tax rate benefits the legal services industry that bankrolled his election bids. It’s simple — Democrats need to pick between pro-working-class legislation and the business interests they’re aligned with.
Amazon maims its workers and drives wages down, yet the company still attracts job applicants and claims to provide “good jobs.” Those claims were strong enough to play a role in the defeat of a union effort in Bessemer, Alabama — but that says less about Amazon than it does about the miserable state of the labor market.
The failed Amazon union drive in Alabama is a stark reminder of a basic fact of life under capitalism: it’s always easier for bosses to destroy a fledgling unionization effort than it is for workers to get together and fight for their own interests.
The New York Times’ Amazon union election coverage is a tale as old as time: When workers vote to back a union, employers blame outside agitators. When workers reject a union after a massive anti-union campaign by the boss, it was the workers’ own free choice.
With an aggressive wealth tax and Green New Deal in their platform, the New Democratic Party of Canada has the potential to change the national conversation. But if the NDP can’t outflank the Trudeau Liberals from the left, it might as well pick up and go home.
Amazon won the majority of ballots cast in the union election by the company’s warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama. There’s no way around it: the result is a major setback in the fight to organize one of the most powerful corporations on the planet.
The Nordic social democracies are rightly praised for their robust welfare states and worker protections. But the aspirations of early Social Democrats like Denmark’s Frederik Borgbjerg went far beyond the welfare state: they wanted to liberate humanity from the shackles of capitalist domination.