The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist

Robert Tressell was a great writer whose class position meant he died without knowing the appreciation of his work.

The Return of the Company Town

The Second Gilded Age is starting to look more and more like the first.

The Problem Isn’t Classism, It’s Class

Under capitalism, prejudice against workers is common. But it only adds insult to a deeper, more profound injury.

Workers Didn’t Bring Us Fascism

From Berlin to the Ruhr, the organized working class resisted Hitler’s reactionary appeals.

White-Collar Media

For most of the news media, the life and struggles of the majority class just aren’t newsworthy.

The Life of a Worker in Shenzhen

We Built the Golden Age

The culture of British trade union militancy in auto plants like Austin Longbridge wasn’t the “natural” result of a Golden Age of capitalism — it came from organizing.

Lifestyle Environmentalism Will Never Win Over Workers

And those are exactly the people we need to save the planet.

Disorganized Democracy

A coalition of industrial workers and small farmers underpinned democratic politics in the twentieth century. Can workers in a precarious service economy fill their shoes today?

What Is a “Proletarian” Anyway?

With the rise of industrial capitalism and the workers’ movement it created, we created new words to explain a confounding new world.

The Many Farewells to the Working Class

For decades, the parties of labor have been slowly replaced by the parties of the educated. A Left that doesn’t acknowledge this as a problem has already been defeated.

Issue 42: Letters + Internet Speaks

We can only print the letters without expletives.

We Need Public Banking

The basic functions of investment are too important to be left in the hands of private banks only interested in accruing profits. We need public banks — something the Public Banking Act, introduced by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, would provide.

Tech Workers at the New York Times Want a Union

This spring, 700 New York Times tech workers announced their new union, the Times Tech Guild. We talked with two tech workers involved in the campaign about why they’re organizing at the Gray Lady and why unions are crucial even for well-compensated workers.

The Making of Ireland’s Carceral State

During the last century, the Irish state imprisoned a greater share of its population than any other country on Earth: not just for crimes against people or property, but for falling foul of a repressive moral code. The victims are still counting the cost.

Conservatism Is Morally Bankrupt

Conservatives claim to defend tradition. The truth is, they actually defend domination and illegitimate power over others.

New York’s “Cancel Rent” Movement Isn’t Over

The call to cancel rent won widespread support and helped advance a vision of housing justice we can build off of for years to come.

Bipartisanship Is Garbage

Centrist pundits and politicians are cheering the new bipartisan infrastructure bill, even though it slashes a range of vital spending programs contained in the original. We don’t need continued fetishization of bipartisanship — we need measures that actually aid the working-class majority.

The Indian Radical Who Helped Found the Mexican Communist Party

Exiled from India, anti-colonial activist M. N. Roy charted a revolutionary course that took him everywhere from New York City to Mexico, where he helped found the Mexican Communist Party. His life was the epitome of socialist internationalism.

The Warsaw Uprising Was a Fight to Define Poland’s Future

Today, Poland’s hard-right government uses the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 for generic nationalist pageantry. But the real insurrectionaries against the Nazis were sharply divided between those who worked to restore the old elite and those who sought real social change.