The Left in Power
Evo Morales’s presidency made real gains for working people. But could it have charted a more radical course?
Search Result(s) for: “working class”
How Big Law Became Big
As US capitalism boomed, attorneys from a handful of New York law firms became powerful viziers of America’s elite.
Unions Need to Mount a Militant Response to Trump’s Assault
Too many unions have responded to Donald Trump’s historic attacks on federal workers with little more than words. To beat back his anti-union assault, organized labor needs to break with decades of timidity.
How Work Got So Bad
Under capitalism, technological “progress” like AI systematically deskills workers, deepens managerial control, and turns the labor process into a site of conflict rather than liberation. This is by design.
A More Graceful American Decline
The US trade war is a result of domestic elites’ refusal to accept America’s relative decline. The recent experience of Japan shows how economic decline can be managed.
Modi’s Hindutva Theme Parks
India has launched major schemes of urban transformation in cities like Ayodhya. Behind the rhetoric of modernity lurks a crude religious chauvinism.
The System That Survived Apartheid
South Africa’s townships were built to enforce white supremacy. Three decades into democracy, they remain the foundation of a racialized capitalism that governs through scarcity and patronage.
Alex Salmond, a Nationalist in the Age of Globalization
Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, who died last week, made Scottish nationalism mainstream. His independence promise was caught in a key contradiction, seeking to make Scotland a model social democracy within globalized capitalism.
Which Party Wants to Preserve the Status Quo?
When it comes to the economy, Democrats are now the party of the status quo, while Donald Trump’s GOP is making a misleading but radical-sounding pitch to upend the existing order in workers’ favor. It’s a fundamental role reversal in US politics.
Liverpool’s Municipal Socialists Took the Fight to Thatcher
Liverpool’s left-wing council led one of the most important struggles against Margaret Thatcher’s government during the 1980s. If other Labour-run councils had followed its lead, they could have inflicted a major blow to Thatcher’s agenda.
Kim Gordon’s Capitalist Realism
Kim Gordon’s songwriting with Sonic Youth sought to create a space of subversion between art and politics. Her solo LPs move away from such a project: not out of resignation, but because of the difficulty in creating such a space in today’s hyperpolitics.
We Don’t Live in Weimar Germany
Liberals say that socialists who don’t support Joe Biden are “like the German Communists who refused to fight Hitler.” The analogy doesn’t hold up — and it’s also historically illiterate.
Trump Is Threatening to Cut Transit Left and Right
Donald Trump’s new transportation proposal will hurt transit funding in every single American state, undermining affordability across the board. From red states to blue states, and from drivers to nondrivers, everyone will feel the impact.
You Aren’t Allowed in These Billionaire Towns
Welcome to the fully privatized city, where the ultrarich can do as they please — no whining from the rabble permitted.
What Liberals Don’t Get About the Liberal Order’s Crisis
Liberals often explain today’s disorder as the work of authoritarians or populist agitators. What they miss is that the postwar consensus depended on conservatives, whose defection has left it in crisis.
Borders Books
Some recommendations from the Republic of Letters.
When Jewish Messianism Was Socialist
Today the Chabad-Lubavitch movement champions far-right religious zealotry under a messianic banner. But a century ago, left-wing Jewish thinkers like Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka understood messianic prophecy as foretelling universal liberation.
The UAW Has a Vision for Green Industrial Policy in California
A recent report from UAW Region 6 outlines a bold vision for how to expand clean energy industries in California using union labor. It’s an example of how unions can get serious about industrial policy and assert themselves in the “abundance” debate.
Fantastic Four: First Steps Is Light, Bright, and Kinda Boring
Will we ever get past the dominance of superhero movies in mainstream American cinema? Will they ever become any good?
Trump’s War on Wind Power Is Killing Thousands of Union Jobs
A stop-work order from the Trump administration last month paused construction of a wind turbine farm off the coast of Rhode Island, laying off 1,000 unionized workers. The administration is threatening to halt yet more offshore wind projects.