
Singing Praises
Every country on earth has a national anthem. Some are clear international standouts.

Every country on earth has a national anthem. Some are clear international standouts.

Many of the traditions we hold dear are less traditional than you might think.

Since the late 1970s, strike action and union membership have been declining steadily in most Western democracies. New research finds that one key reason is the working class’s increasing dependence on credit.

From Brexit to Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s anti-China policies, elites are offering their own challenges to the free-trade consensus — just as they did during the early 20th century’s pushback against “globalism.”

In December 2022, TruckSol, a trade union of South Korean truck drivers, waged a massive 16-day strike that cost employers over $2 billion. The union’s history and organizing strategy have lessons for precariously employed workers around the world.

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine one year ago today hoping to capture it in a few days — then spent the last year turning its southeast into a bloodbath. Even if the current military stalemate is broken, the divides created by the war won’t heal soon.

The Austrian economist and philosopher Otto Neurath devised elaborate ideas for a democratically planned economy. They are a monument to the most optimistic strands of the interwar socialist movement.

Paul Keating’s fiery attacks on the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal last week drew attention to Australia’s uncritical support for the US in its China containment policy. This drive for war has been years in the making.

A new book, Carmageddon, reveals how the automobile has made our lives more dangerous and less democratic. The alternative — reliable and publicly funded transport — must be at the heart of any progressive vision for the future.

Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas helped create a financial disaster as head of Chicago Public Schools, making bond deals worth $666 million — whose exorbitant interest payments to Wall Street are now robbing the city’s school system.

On May Day, South Korean construction union leader Yang Hoe-dong took his own life by setting himself on fire rather than accept the state’s anti-union charges against him. Yang is a brutal casualty of the South Korean president’s war on labor.

Sexual activity among Americans is in decline, prompting moralizing about the end of romance and traditional gender roles. But the real problem is that people lack the economic and personal freedom to pursue their desires.

Janitors for big box stores see big workload increases around the holidays — but most of them get little time off to celebrate with their families. In Minnesota, unionized janitors are looking to change that by winning paid holidays and more vacation time.

Helen Keller forged her political ideas in the golden age of American socialism and was patronizingly dismissed by conservative commentators who had previously celebrated her. Keller’s passionate radicalism should be remembered and reclaimed by the Left today.

Immanuel Wallerstein developed a compelling analysis of capitalism as a world-system that undercut the triumphalism of the neoliberal age. Wallerstein’s work is full of valuable insights into the forces that are destabilizing global capitalism.

Workers at an Apple Store in Kansas City say they were fired in retaliation for trying to form a union. It’s another episode in the wave of labor organizing hitting big corporations in the US — and those corporations responding with illegal union busting.

Some thinkers are arguing that capitalism as Marx defined it is over, and we’re entering something like digital neo-feudalism instead. Not true, argues Evgeny Morozov. To understand how capitalism operates today, Marxists have to drop the factory bias.

I have ten vital projects ready to go. I need your help to bring them to the world.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fed calls for the West to radically step up its own military spending. An arms race only increases the risk of a conflict between China and the US — a global disaster that we must do everything in our power to prevent.

Republican donors hoped Ron DeSantis could replace Donald Trump as a right-wing populist without the chaos and ineptitude. Instead, DeSantis is looking more and more like Jeb Bush.