Unrest gives viewers plenty that they won’t find in films elsewhere: a quietly gorgeous portrayal of the labor process, a lead role for the anarchist geographer Pyotr Kropotkin, and an exploration of how bosses wrestle with workers over control of their work.
International Workers’ Day traces its roots to the 1886 Haymarket affair, when labor radicals in Chicago were unjustly executed. Ever since, reactionaries have tried to tarnish their legacy — and leftists have honored them as working-class martyrs.
This May Day, don’t hang your head for the labor movement’s defeat. US unions are weak, it’s true. But there’s more excitement, more of a spirit of militancy and experimentation, and more hope in today’s labor movement than there has been in a long time.
Capitalism is built on the meritocratic idea that everyone gets what they deserve in the marketplace. This May Day, let’s reject that idea — wealth creation is a fundamentally social process, and the rich have no right to hoard all the resources and power.
May Day is not a holiday for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, much as he might pose as a working-class champion. For a more robust vision of freedom, we can look to the Florida Socialists and Tampa cigar workers of Eugene Debs’s day.
Mark Steven has delved into the history of revolutions to develop a vision of class war for our own time. His analysis would be stronger if he recognized how those revolutions produced broad social alliances through the shared experience of struggle.
From Ireland to the US, Jim Larkin helped organize some of the key labor struggles and movements of his day. Larkin also tried to build an Irish communist party, but his independent spirit clashed with a heavy-handed bureaucratic line from Moscow and London.
A new book by historian Matthew Dallek traces the John Birch Society’s enduring influence over American politics and reveals how the deep roots of the reactionary right stretch from Congress to the Supreme Court.
Tension is mounting as Israeli state repression and settler violence are being matched by an upsurge in Palestinian resistance. Palestinian liberation movement leader Khalida Jarrar says the situation is reaching a breaking point.
Former workers at major tech firms are coming forward to say they were paid six figures to do nothing, a strategy to hoard them from rival companies. It’s just one of many ways capitalists manipulate labor markets. The others aren’t so nice.
Forgotten for decades, Marxist novelist William Attaway’s 1941 Blood on the Forge is a brilliantly brutal depiction of the connection between racism and capitalism. Haunting and sublime, it will leave you feeling the scars of working-class life.
Australian politicians blame Aboriginal people for social problems. Alexis Wright’s Grog War shows that when First Nations communities fight to improve society, they are attacked at every turn.