Socialists Should Talk About Aspiration
Rebecca Long-Bailey’s “aspirational socialism” is an attempt to overcome a pervasive problem: after a decade of austerity, many working people don’t believe that politics can make their lives better.
21013 Article(s) by: Opal Lee
Opal Lee is a writer.
Trump’s “Deal of the Century” Is a Brazen Land Grab
Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and many leading Democrats are touting the administration’s Middle East peace plan. But the scheme is nothing but a brazen land grab that would deepen Israeli control while depriving millions of Palestinians of basic civil rights.
Bernie Has Opened an Opportunity for Us to Build an Anti-War Movement. We Should Seize It.
We need an anti-war movement more than ever. Through his insistence on the need to build grassroots power from the bottom up and his consistent anti-war record, Bernie Sanders can help give us the tools to build one.
Micah White Is the Ultimate Occupy Grifter
Micah White, the guy who says he “cocreated” Occupy Wall Street, just went to Davos to “achieve great changes” with the 1 percent. Sometimes social movement activism becomes just another scam.
Labor and Love Under Capital
The real path to liberation isn’t the call to “abolish the family.” It’s through radically transforming traditional family life with reforms that challenge capitalism’s corrosive logic.
The “Stop Sanders” Movement Is Worried That Bernie Can Actually Win, Not That He’ll Lose
“Electability” is the public rallying cry of the Stop Bernie campaign. But look a little closer, and the real issue becomes clear: the establishment fears having a democratic socialist in the White House.
Privatization Failed — Even the Tories Are Admitting It
Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has announced it will be renationalizing British train lines. It’s further proof that privatization is being discredited around the world.
The Pressure Cooker in El Salvador
El Salvador president Nayib Bukele has been in office eight months, and his post-ideological pretenses on the campaign trail have quickly veered to the right. In an interview, Salvadoran economist Julia Evelin Martínez assesses Bukele’s first eight months in office, the sad state of the Salvadoran left, and why she’s fervently hoping for a Bernie Sanders presidency.
Yes, Colonialism Was a Monstrosity
The German far-right party AfD recently invited a US academic to parliament to defend the country’s colonial past. But all the whitewashing in the world can’t hide the fact that colonialism was a horrendous, often genocidal affair.
What’s Old for US Labor Is New Again
We’re in the midst of a twenty-first-century Gilded Age. To end it, we can turn to some of the radical policies designed to democratize the world of work, empower a multiracial working class, and reel in the worst excesses of robber barons nearly a century ago.
Jonathan Chait Is Wrong About Everything, Including Bernie’s Electability
Jonathan Chait says “running Bernie Sanders against Trump would be an act of insanity.” But sticking with the Democratic establishment’s orientation to affluent moderates will spell disaster in 2020, just like it did in 2016 when 4.4 million Obama voters stayed home.
Democracy Is in Crisis. Karl Marx Can Help.
Karl Marx is often thought of as a purely economic thinker. But the famed socialist was a committed democrat — and his writings offer potential remedies for democratizing our undemocratic political system.
A New Extreme Center in Croatia
Western liberal outlets acclaimed Social Democrat Zoran Milanović’s election as a victory for a “leftist” presidential candidate. But his campaign was mainly aimed at scooping up conservative votes — as all Croatian politics shift toward the radical right.
2020 Will See an Elite Crack-Up of Epic Proportions
If the establishment got this nervous about Donald Trump in 2016, then imagine how much they’ll meltdown with the rise of democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders in 2020.
Unearthing the Fraught History of Chinese Communism
The editors of a new collection of essays argue that we can’t ignore the Chinese Revolution and its impact on the world.
Bernie Sanders Is Trying to Save Minor League Baseball — and Get Its Players a Raise
Major League Baseball is threatening to sever ties with scores of minor league teams in an apparent attempt to cut costs. But Bernie Sanders is resisting the plan — and insisting that MLB instead grant minor leaguers a living wage and union representation.
Stop Writing Communist Women Out of History
Liberal feminists often paint the fight for women’s liberation in Eastern Europe as a matter of “catching up with the West.” But presenting feminism as new to the region silences the battles waged by communist women after 1945 — and their victories over conservatives in both the Church and their own parties.
Hundreds of Canadian Workers Are Blockading an Oil Refinery Right Now
The Canadian union Unifor is currently blockading an oil refinery in Regina, Saskatchewan. It’s an important example of what democratic, militant, and solidarity-based unionism can look like.
Bernie Sanders Can Exploit Donald Trump’s Weaknesses
Donald Trump has broken promises to leave Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone. This basic dishonesty leaves him vulnerable to attack — but only by Bernie Sanders, because Sanders has the longest and strongest record defending the exact programs Trump wants to cut.
We Need a Media System That Serves People’s Needs, Not Corporations’
Our corporate media system prioritizes making money over producing adversarial journalism and covering working-class issues. We should dare to imagine something different: a public media system that privileges democracy over profits.