The Root of Appalachia’s Problems
The main problem for Appalachia and the white working class is capitalism. It always has been.
Search Result(s) for: “working class”
UAW President Shawn Fain on Why He Supports Tariffs
In an interview, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain argues that the era of “free-trade” deals like NAFTA has been a disaster for the US working class and that smart tariffs can help bring back good auto jobs.
Why Raphael Samuel Matters
Raphael Samuel, one of Britain’s most brilliant historians of the popular classes, was a contemporary of E. P. Thompson and Stuart Hall but never enjoyed their level of fame. He practiced a form of history from below that gave agency to the working class.
How the Myths of “Progressive Neoliberalism” Hollowed Out Australia’s Left
Neoliberalism now dominates Australia's formerly left-wing institutions, marginalizing working-class and socialist politics. Yet the center-left "progressive neoliberal" consensus shambles on, a corpse in search of a decent grave.
For a Left Cultural Politics
Much of our contemporary culture works to deny the existence of class and inequality, at the same time as its structures of nepotism and unpaid internships keep working-class voices marginalized. We need to wrestle back control at the point of cultural production.
Charlie Hebdo and the Gilets Jaunes
The reaction to the Paris terror attacks in 2015 identified Charlie Hebdo with freedom of speech. Yet the magazine's anti-working-class smears are today used to silence the gilets jaunes.
Here’s Why the Teamsters Declined to Endorse Kamala Harris
The Teamsters’ refusal to endorse Kamala Harris underlines the need for the labor movement to develop a coherent political appeal to win its members over, on terms that are relevant to the vast majority of the working class.
What Happened to the Labor Party?
In 1996, thousands of trade unionists and activists decided to build an independent party. Why did the effort fail?
Sri Lanka Has a Proud Tradition of Revolt Against Leaders Who Trample on Its People
Last year, a protest movement in Sri Lanka stormed the presidential palace and forced the president to flee the country. It reminded many of the hartal strike action in 1953, one of the most impressive displays of working-class power in Asia’s modern history.
The Democrats’ “Opportunity” Pitch Is a Dead End
Following a proud centrist tradition, Kamala Harris’s campaign promised to build an “opportunity economy” that would grant success to the deserving. The meritocratic pitch was emblematic of Democrats’ long march away from working-class voters.
The Left Needs Its “Schools of Enlightenment and Revolution”
Throughout the entire history of left-wing and working-class organizing in the United States, the participation in and building of institutions of political education has been key.
Growing Old in a Time of Neoliberalism
In The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, French writer Didier Eribon sees his mother’s passing as symbolic of the disappearance of the mass culture and politics that once gave workers of her generation identity and social standing.
Enough About Harvard. Let’s Talk About CUNY.
The elite media loves to obsess about the Ivy Leagues. But great public colleges like the City University of New York, once dubbed the Harvard of the proletariat, are far more relevant to most people — and infinitely better at serving the working class.
Medicare for All Is a Strategy
Medicare for All is not just about fixing our broken health-care system. It’s about unlocking the power of a mass, working-class movement in the United States.
Leo Panitch Was a Mentor for a New Generation of Socialists
Leo Panitch, who died on Saturday, defended working-class politics even in times when many of his colleagues succumbed to neoliberal triumphalism. His work had a political, not just academic, purpose — and its message will survive among the generation of socialists whose thinking he shaped.
A “Working-Class” GOP Would Not Be Cutting Medicaid
Whatever their “pro-worker” bluster, the Republican Party’s budget of Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy shows the GOP is still the party of sadistic oligarchs, not populists.
The Federal Reserve Can Help Workers in a Time of Crisis
The Federal Reserve has stepped in to deal with the coronavirus pandemic — unsurprisingly, as is so often true of the Fed’s intervention, on the side of the wealthy. We have to demand that the Central Bank act to aid the working class instead.
Elite-Driven Housing Policy Has a Long Record of Failure
Proposals for market-based solutions to the housing crisis have precedents in the elite-driven housing policy of the 20th century. Those policies favored business interests at the expense of poor and working-class people while worsening racial divides.
The Right Is Using the East Palestine Disaster to Stoke Racism, Not Fight Corporate Greed
Rather than linking the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment disaster to a national culture of impunity for corporations and disregard for working-class people, the Right is stoking racial animosity.
Taylor Rehmet Shows Working-Class Politics Can Win Everywhere
A union machinist just won a Texas State Senate seat Trump carried by 17 points. He was outspent four to one. How did he do it? By tossing out the Democrats’ playbook and running a grassroots economic populist campaign with a strong pro-labor message.