It’s Literally Impossible to Afford Rent on the Minimum Wage
Even modest rental housing is now out of reach for millions of full-time workers — and the pandemic has made an already bleak situation even worse.
Blog
Extinction Rebellion’s Liberal Moralism Can’t Save the Planet
Catapulted to media attention by its stunts, Extinction Rebellion has wasted its platform on a message of individualized guilt and obedience to the powerful. To avert climate disaster, we need economic transformation, not pointless moralism.
Slavoj Žižek: Last Exit to Socialism
Slavoj Žižek writes in Jacobin that today's exploding ecological crises open up a realistic prospect of the final exit of humanity itself. Might socialism be our off-ramp, or is it already too late?
Michael Brooks on Why the War on the Poor Must End
Two years ago, our late friend and comrade Michael Brooks wrote an unpublished piece about his family’s experience with food stamps and Trump’s assault on the SNAP program. We publish it today, the anniversary of Michael’s passing, as a tribute to his memory.
Socialists Should Take the Right Lessons From the Russian Revolution
Socialists have rightly taken inspiration from the Russian Revolution for generations, but many of the lessons drawn from it are wrong for our own time. To make change today, we need to take democratic socialism seriously as a theory and practice.
BC Premier Dave Barrett Showed the Canadian Left How to Make Change Happen
Dave Barrett won a reputation as “Canada’s Allende” by carrying out radical reforms in 1970s British Columbia. Lifelong Canadian labor economist Andrew Jackson, who was part of Barrett’s project, recalls a turbulent and instructive time for the Canadian left.
C. L. R. James and the Black Jacobins of Haiti
C. L. R. James was one of the twentieth century’s intellectual giants. During a life of intense political engagement, he wrote classic books about the struggle against slavery and the social history of sport, never flinching in his socialist commitment.
The US Tax Code Should Not Allow Billionaires to Exist
The recent ProPublica exposé about billionaires’ almost-nonexistent tax bill was just the latest to reveal how little the ultrarich pay in taxes. We need to attack the wealth and power of the rich — and that means massively increasing taxes on them.
The Clock Is Ticking on Preventing an Undemocratic GOP Power Grab in the House
Democrats must quickly pass their landmark voting rights legislation if they want to prevent Republicans from gerrymandering their way to a hold on power for the next decade.
Abolish the Olympics
The Tokyo “2020” Olympic games are just like every other Olympics: a bonanza for corporate profits, and miserable for everyone else. The Olympics can’t be reformed — it’s time to abolish them.
Twenty Years Since the Genoa G8 Protests, Globalization Is Imploding
Even as massive protests confronted the Genoa G8 summit in July 2001, many saw some form of capitalist globalization as inevitable. But today, national capitalisms are regaining strength — and the Left has to adapt its strategy accordingly.
Frito-Lay Workers Are on Strike for Their Lives
Hundreds of workers are on strike at the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas. Many of them are working 12-hour days, seven days a week, and some haven’t had a day off in five months — conditions that are literally killing them.