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Vivek Chibber is a professor of sociology at New York University. He is the editor of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.
The socialist tradition was long associated with materialism, the view that human agents tend to act on their objective interests — a view that has come under fire in recent decades. But materialism is the indispensable foundation for left-wing politics.
In the 1990s, Democrats adopted a neoliberal program to suit the needs of capital, driving many workers out. The party then adopted a political strategy meant to replace working-class voters with professionals — with disastrous consequences.
Fifty years since the triumph of national liberation forces, Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber explores the true story of the Vietnam War — not as a tragedy of American overreach but as a triumph of Vietnamese resistance.
The GOP is now a hegemonic force in US politics. But much of that dominance is predicated on Donald Trump’s personal rule, itself made possible by internal GOP weakness and business elites’ political disorganization.
Donald Trump has championed tariffs as a way to revive American manufacturing. But without a real industrial strategy, Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber argues, they’re little more than a handout to capital.
The Democratic Party at every level spent years embracing identity politics that mostly served the interests of professionals, argues Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber. We need a return to class.
The data is clear: the Democratic Party’s alienation from the working class extends across racial lines.
As liberal thought has evolved to address capitalism’s flaws, some argue it has caught up with Marxism, rendering it irrelevant. Vivek Chibber argues that liberalism may diagnose capitalism’s injustices, but Marxism gives us the tools to overcome them.
More than any other thinker in the postwar era, Noam Chomsky has embodied Karl Marx’s favorite dictum: “nothing human is alien to me.”
How the American political class brought a disaster to the Middle East.
The idea that workers in wealthy countries like the United States are part of a “labor aristocracy” bought off with the fruits of imperialism is nonsense. The best way to build a movement against US imperialism is to build the labor movement domestically.
The task of socialists in 2022 is the same as it’s always been, says sociologist Vivek Chibber: to build working-class organization. That requires clarity about the central political role of the working class.
Critics often say the working class doesn’t fight back against exploitation because it’s confused about its real interests. But this ignores how capitalism itself leads workers to resign themselves to their situation — and how we can overcome that resignation.
Edward Said’s Orientalism instilled an anti-imperial sensibility into an entire generation of Western scholars. But even while it castigated the imperial project, its actual analysis didn’t give us the intellectual resources to overturn it.
The question is no longer whether the working class matters, but how it can fight back.
Conservatives claim to defend tradition. The truth is, they actually defend domination and illegitimate power over others.
We’ve suffered an irreparable loss with the passing of our friend and comrade Leo Panitch.
The global left has suffered an irreparable loss with the passing of Leo Panitch this weekend. He was incredibly warm, inviting, and generous to others. And he remained committed to the end to the cause of socialism and human emancipation.
And our decades to come.