At its high point, the Communist Party of Australia united thousands of working-class militants in a struggle to transform the world around them. These everyday communists were brave, flawed, and sometimes heroic.
Under capitalism, housing is never secure for the working class.
Few films capture the difficulties of interracial working-class organizing as well as the 1984 movie The Killing Floor, a drama about black slaughterhouse workers attempting to build a union with white ethnic coworkers in Chicago’s World War I–era stockyards.
The rank-and-file strategy isn't enough. We should examine the broad range of working-class organizing strategies and experiences that are today's socialists' collective heritage.
In the twentieth century, socialists and communists used municipal power in Paris to build some of Europe's most ambitious social housing projects — housing that was not only beautiful but made for and by the city's working class.
On March 6, 1984, Britain’s coal miners began a strike against mass pit closures. Their yearlong struggle with Margaret Thatcher’s government was a defining moment in working-class history — and the miners’ eventual defeat left lasting scars.
Chuck Berry perfected simple but sophisticated working-class art.
In 2013, a movement of working-class New Jerseyans halted Cory Booker’s plans to privatize Newark public schools. A new book shows how a group of neoliberals co-opted this victory, securing consent for school charterization under the banner of anti-racism.
Socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has accomplished much in just a few months. But one major thing is missing from his tenure thus far: activating mass participation of working-class New Yorkers in the fight for his ambitious agenda.
Egypt’s authoritarian president has recreated Cairo in his image, bulldozing ancient tombs, working-class neighborhoods, and the city’s already scarce green space.
Emmanuel Macron’s government gave tax breaks for France’s wealthiest while counting on purchase taxes paid by ordinary consumers. Now saying it has a budget hole to fill, his administration is again expecting working-class people to pick up the bill.
Three years ago, Kamala Harris bypassed a chance to raise the federal minimum wage out of respect for Senate procedure. Now she’s campaigning on a relatively progressive economic agenda — but is she willing to break Capitol Hill’s rules to fight for it?
Mark E. Smith of the Fall was one of the late 20th century’s great working-class musicians, but his music suffered from his overwhelming resentment of his middle-class audience.
Already mired in scandal, New York City mayor Eric Adams is now pitting workers against each other by stoking resentment toward migrants and pushing new budget cuts. The city’s corporate class is laughing all the way to the bank.
When algorithms are introduced into public assistance programs, the effects are rarely good for poor and working-class beneficiaries.
Jalen McKee-Rodriguez was elected to the San Antonio City Council last year. Since then, he’s worked for greater public investment in his working-class, historically black district. We spoke to him about his work as a socialist elected official in Texas.
The UAW announced yesterday that 10,000 autoworkers have signed union cards since it launched its drive to organize the nonunion auto workforce two months ago. It’s a high-risk campaign — and precisely the type of gambit the working class needs right now.
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.
Democrats are endorsing striking teachers. That doesn’t mean the party’s abandoning its education agenda, but it does mean that the working class is making itself harder to ignore.
Karen Nussbaum was a cofounder of the pioneering labor-feminist organization 9to5. In an interview with Jacobin, she discusses why working women in the 1970s needed to organize as workers, 9to5’s hilarious tactics, and why “individually self-reliant but collectively powerless” women workers today still need to organize on the job.