William G. Martin teaches at SUNY-Binghamton and is co-author of After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment (2016) and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier; he covers local justice matters at www.justtalk.blog
At COP26 this week, some of the world’s biggest corporate polluters sent huge delegations to proclaim the need for climate action. They’re presenting themselves as the new climate saviors, but averting disaster won’t come from those who make a profit from killing the planet.
The story of Dungeons & Dragons isn’t just about nerds creating a wildly popular game and then losing control of it. It’s also about how the dictates of the free market inevitably end up stripping even our leisure activities of joy.
Joe Biden ran for president as the “Stop Bernie” candidate who promised that “nothing would fundamentally change” under his watch. Now, with his ambitious policy agenda being whittled down to a fraction of a loaf, he’s returning to his centrist roots.
In the best moments of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the Labour left captured an insurgent, democratizing spirit. Yet two years after the Left’s defeat, the top-down approach that led to the fatal “second referendum” policy continues to hamper its recovery.
As negotiations continue between Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance of Health Care Unions, which represents 50,000 workers at the company, Kaiser’s workforce is preparing to strike. Tens of thousands have authorized a stoppage, should bargaining stall.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which played a key role in creating America’s opioid crisis, has dissolved. But the crisis rages on, lives are still in danger, and the profits are still flowing — now to street dealers who manufacture synthetic drugs.
Underlying progressives’ surrender to Joe Manchin is the assumption that the West Virginia coal baron is happy to walk away with nothing. But Manchin angering West Virginia voters, GOP officials, businesses, and his campaign donors would hurt him badly.
To beat India Walton, the establishment smeared her, changed the rules, and threw piles of cash. In the end, she flipped Byron Brown’s base while he drove up turnout in the city’s wealthiest areas.
A popular new South African book insists racism is primarily to blame for social polarization. But describing South African inequality as “the new apartheid” obscures the central role that class and capitalism play in reproducing hierarchies.
America’s real democracy crisis is this: corporations use a system of legalized bribery to buy public policy, which prevents popular progressive policies from passing and erodes Americans’ faith in their government.
In the wake of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, support for Scottish independence is higher than ever. But the Scottish National Party still has many hurdles to clear before it can break up the United Kingdom.
The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association organizes retail workers across Australia. Under its hard-right social conservative leadership, the association cooperates with employers to enrich its top officials at workers’ expense.
Neoliberalism has gutted higher education. Those conditions won’t change unless contingent faculty figure out how to organize and transform the American university system.
Many disasters followed the 2008 financial crisis. But possibly the worst was the mass popular disillusionment that resulted from Barack Obama’s failure to help the victims and punish the wrongdoers — a failure that led to Donald Trump.
In 2010, far-right Arizona state senator Russell Pearce ignited a firestorm with his anti-immigrant SB 1070 law. Kyrsten Sinema worked to help squash a grassroots effort to recall him from office.
This week marks 65 years since the Suez Crisis, which catapulted the popularity of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser — and became symbolic of his large and complicated legacy of Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, and anti-imperialism.
COP26 looks set to be another case of governments talking big on the climate yet doing nothing to stop the big polluters. As Jeremy Corbyn writes, ordinary people can only save our future by taking power back into our own hands.
India’s neoliberal turn has had a devastating impact on farming communities. But in Kerala, a Communist-led government has sponsored highly successful agricultural cooperatives that promote solidarity over competition.
Economic crises, climate change, and a pandemic have given people much to fear. While the Right promises security for a few at the expense of the many, socialists need a compelling vision of how protection from the market’s depravities can be extended to all.
Antonio Gramsci was twentieth-century Italy’s greatest intellectual. Fifty years ago, the English translation of Selections from the Prison Notebooks allowed his unorthodox Marxism to spread worldwide.