Why the New National Security Laws in Hong Kong Matter
The new national security laws that Beijing has imposed on Hong Kong criminalize dissent — and they could make it harder for workers in mainland China to organize, too.
19372 Articles by: Opal Lee
Opal Lee is a writer.
It’s Time for Mexico to Tax the Rich
Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with a caste of superrich lording over a mass of urban and rural poor barely surviving. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transfer programs have gone some way toward distributing wealth, but much more needs to be done.
Eugene Debs’s Independence Day Address
On July 4, 1901, socialist luminary and labor agitator Eugene V. Debs proclaimed in a fiery speech: “I like the Fourth of July. It breathes a spirit of revolution.” We reprint the fiercely anticapitalist address here in full.
Tear Confederate Statues Down, Keep Union Statues Up, and Build New Antislavery Monuments
Confederate statues are monuments to white supremacy. Protesters are right to tear them down. But Union statues are the opposite: monuments to the antislavery cause. We should keep them standing — and build new ones commemorating freedom fighters like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown all over the country.
Big Business Still Has Enormous Control of American Politics at Every Level
Big business has long held an outsize role in US politics. In a plague year, and as politicians prematurely push to reopen the economy, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that its place at the center of American life is more grotesque than ever.
Germany Needs to Own Up to the Horrors of Its Colonial Past in Africa
Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust is widely taken as a model of historical accountability — yet it has proven far less willing to confront its colonial past in Africa.
Public Transportation Is a Human Right
For a century our cities have been transformed by the car industry, making way for drivers at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians. A renewed movement for urban public transport is pushing back.
Democrats Are Working With Liz Cheney to Prolong Dick Cheney’s Endless War
Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, is trying to prolong her father’s endless war in Afghanistan. You would think that every Democrat would be united in opposing such a policy, right? Well, you would be wrong.
No, Studying Marx Is Not Elitist
Reading Marxist theory isn’t just for highfalutin academics — just ask the millions of workers whose ideas about the role they could play in changing the world were transformed by both study and practice.
Kylie Jenner’s Clothing Brand Is Stiffing Workers. It’s Time to Organize the Stans.
Kylie Jenner’s clothing line is stiffing garment workers in Bangladesh, who have long lacked the bargaining power to improve their conditions. But the industry is changing — and consumer action linked to workplace militancy could actually win gains for these workers.
When Harlem Renaissance Novelist Claude McKay Decamped for the Port of Marseille
Struggling for cash in the late 1920s, Harlem Renaissance trailblazer Claude McKay found casual work as a docker in Marseille. Finally published this year, his Romance in Marseille illuminates the city with both personal emotion and a vivid class feeling — testament to the tough fight for solidarity among the migrant proletariat.
Larry Summers Is Not Your Friend
Recent reports indicate that Larry Summers is advising Joe Biden’s campaign. This is not good, because Larry Summers is very bad: his entire career has been spent protecting the wealthy few at the expense of the many.
COVID-19 Treatments Belong to the People, Not Price-Gouging Pharma Companies
A medical system that charges users $3,210 for remdesivir, a COVID-19 treatment that cost $10 to produce — and that took $70,000,000 in public money to develop — is a medical system that must be abolished.
Millions of Americans Face the Nightmare of Getting COVID-19 While Underinsured
Adults with underlying health problems are at increased risk of getting seriously ill or dying if they contract the coronavirus. These are also often the very same people who are least likely to have insurance.
Chief Justice John Roberts Is Carrying Out Corporate America’s Long-Term Plan Perfectly
In 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court because the business lobby believed he would turn the court into a corporate weapon — and that’s precisely what he has been doing ever since.
How the UK Labour Party Lost the Working Class
More low-income voters backed the Tories than the Labour Party in the 2019 election for the first time ever. Labour’s decision to side with the establishment rather than the voters over Brexit pushed them into the Tories’ arms.
A Decade of Austerity Has Decimated the UK’s National Health Service
Today, the UK’s National Health Service is celebrated, rhetorically even by the Right. But for a decade, the NHS has been subject to destructive cutbacks, leading to crumbling facilities, outsourcing, privatization, and staff pay freezes. Britons need to demand better.
Turning the Pink Tide Green
Left governments in Latin America have successfully nationalized much of the mining sector, reclaiming foreign profits for social spending. The next step is to get beyond extraction altogether, taking cues from indigenous movements that have long been fighting for a green future.
Biden Says He’ll Pass a Public Option. His For-Profit Health Industry Donors Don’t Want Him To.
Joe Biden says he plans to deal with the US health care crisis by passing a public health insurance option. But his campaign is being funded by the same health companies that killed it when he was vice president. Something has to give — and it probably won’t be the corporate donors.
Manning Marable Was a Pioneering Black Marxist. His Work Speaks Directly to Our Moment
Manning Marable was a leading radical thinker whose brilliant writings showed how the struggle for black liberation is bound up with the struggle against capitalism. Though he didn’t live to see the rise of Black Lives Matter, his work has a tremendous amount to offer the movement today.