Democracy Is in Crisis. Karl Marx Can Help.
Karl Marx is often thought of as a purely economic thinker. But the famed socialist was a committed democrat — and his writings offer potential remedies for democratizing our undemocratic political system.
Search Result(s) for: “working class”
Against Fortress Liberalism
For forty years, liberals have accepted defeat and called it "incremental progress." Bernie Sanders offers a different way forward.
Undergraduate Student Workers: We Unionized. You Can, Too.
This spring, undergraduate student workers at Wesleyan University in Connecticut became the US's first known undergrad labor union to win voluntary recognition. With sustained organizing, student workers on campuses across the country can follow suit.
The Tenured Radical on the Telly
The 1980s BBC series The History Man was a venomous takedown of academic pseudo-radicals. How does it stand up today?
Joe Biden’s Trip to Michigan Shows Why You Push Democrats, Not Capitulate to Them
Joe Biden’s historic visit to the picket line yesterday would never have happened if the UAW simply cozied up to Biden. As the union showed, you don’t win by showing deference to Democratic elites — you use the leverage you have to extract concessions.
How Universal Basic Income Became the Pessimist’s Utopia
In Welfare for Markets, Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora show that cash transfers emerged as an alternative to the welfare state favored by a left that had abandoned hope in socialism and a right hostile to democratic management of the economy.
Election Day Blues
What would we have to do to make sure our Election Day choices in 2036 aren’t as miserable as they are in 2016?
For Rudolf Hilferding, Socialism Was About Freedom
Austrian socialist Rudolf Hilferding, author of the magisterial Finance Capitalism, used the tools of Marxism to develop a rigorous understanding of the changing capitalist economy while making the case for a socialism that put freedom and democracy at the center of the project.
The Prophet Perverted
Netflix’s Trotsky miniseries demonizes its namesake with antisemitic themes and rank nationalism.
When the Black Political Class Betrayed Black Workers
Martin Luther King Jr died supporting striking black sanitation workers in the South. Less than a decade later, a black Atlanta mayor and King’s own father were attacking that same group of workers and breaking their strike. Black urban governance is meaningless without a commitment to strengthening the public sector and rejecting the logic of austerity.
Stephen Lewis’s Complicated Legacy for the Canadian Left
Stephen Lewis, leader of the Ontario NDP, son of founding NDP member David, and father of current leader Avi, has died. He leaves a complex legacy: he helped bring the NDP into the mainstream but at the cost of expelling a socialist faction from the party.
“Black Capitalism” From Richard Nixon to Joe Biden
Joe Biden has been touting black capitalism as part of the path to racial equality. The strategy remains as futile today as when Richard Nixon pushed it fifty years ago.
Latin America’s Right-Wing Turn
The far right is on the rise not only in Brazil but across Latin America — driven by the middle class that left-wing governments helped create.
What Mayor Brandon Johnson Can Learn From Mayor Bernie Sanders
When he became Burlington’s mayor in 1981, Bernie Sanders was a socialist outsider who had to face down a hostile political establishment. His successful mayoralty may contain lessons for Chicago’s new progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson.
Ulysses S. Grant: American Giant
Ron Chernow’s new biography rehabilitates the great Civil War general and champion of Reconstruction. But it glosses over the central issues of labor and property that would stifle black equality for a century.
Trump Is Trying to Bludgeon South Korea Into Submission
An ICE raid on workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia has sent shock waves through South Korean politics. It came just as Donald Trump has been trying to strong-arm South Korea’s government into accepting an extortionate trade deal with the US.
Rebuilding the Socialist Horizon
Bhaskar Sunkara reflects on the rise, defeat, and possible renewal of socialism — and on the generations of ordinary people who fought to build a world beyond class domination.
We’re in a Class War. Jane McAlevey Actually Acted Like It.
No one believed in and embodied the labor movement’s transformative power more than organizer, strategist, and writer Jane McAlevey.
Is There a Future for Socialism?
We all wondered, as we watched Back to the Future, how alternative futures could change the whole universe while Marty McFly stayed the same.