Today, on International Women’s Day, we’re publishing leftist organizer Louise Thompson Patterson’s landmark 1936 essay on the plight of black domestic workers. Her prescription for fighting oppression in all its forms: an interracial working-class movement.
Deindustrialized areas that were once bastions of working-class politics are now playgrounds of the revanchist right.
US reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar just introduced the End Child Poverty Act, which would set up a universal child benefit. It’s a major improvement on previous proposals to help poor and working-class families — and would instantly slash child poverty.
A wage hike is desperately needed for the American working class, but higher wages can’t pay the bills if you want full-time hours and can’t get them. Legislation mandating a right to full-time work could fix this.
Derided as the world’s worst car, the communist Yugoslavia–made Yugo admittedly had some serious problems. But it also had spirit and a vision to aspire to: a fuel-efficient vehicle that ordinary working-class people could afford.
Across the United States, housing developers are receiving huge amounts of public money to spur displacement of longtime working-class residents. A proposed Louisville, Kentucky, ordinance would stop that.
The Colombian right has done everything in its power to undermine Gustavo Petro. That hasn’t stopped the nation’s first leftist president from achieving ambitious reforms for Colombia’s poor and working class.
The inflation rate is cooling, providing a respite for workers. Yet there’s a reason why many are still unhappy with the economy: from health care to housing to childcare, life in the US is more unaffordable than ever.
Socialist filmmaker Ken Loach has released his final movie, about Syrian refugees finding their feet in an English working-class community. It makes it all the more grotesque that Loach’s political foes are trying to present him as a dangerous bigot.
In 1923, with Germany gripped by hyperinflation and far-right insurgents, Social Democrats and Communists formed a joint government in Saxony. It was a pioneering experiment in working-class democracy — before the military overthrew it.
Look past the theatrics of a feisty, bellowing president and reactionary hecklers. Joe Biden’s State of the Union address didn’t offer working-class people a clear economic alternative or signal real opposition to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.
Germany’s left-wing party is in trouble, with divides over Gaza adding to the split by former spokeswoman Sahra Wagenknecht. At last weekend’s party congress, a new leadership set out plans to reconnect with working-class voters in order to avoid collapse.
For centuries, working-class musicians have raged against the machine.
The affluent often blame poverty on bad budgeting skills, claiming the poor just need to be taught financial literacy. But working-class people require living wages and a functioning safety net, not condescending lectures about money management.
Universal programs and economic redistribution, far more than rhetorical moderation and identity-based pandering, are the best bet for winning over workers of all races.
Over the past 40 years, working-class parties have slid rightward toward neoliberalism and workers have increasingly dropped out of the political process.
After more than a century of German and South African rule, Namibia finally gained its independence on this day in 1990. Working-class struggles and organizations played a vital role in the country’s long march to freedom.
Industrial policy is back in vogue in recent years — but without the working-class power to discipline capital, it’s just public money flowing to private profit.
Some working-class anthems are sung to the tunes of Christian hymns.
Throughout the mid-20th century, immigrant associations and labor unions bought and built thousands of co-ops to house working-class New Yorkers. A left-led co-op revival might provide a way out of our present-day urban housing crisis.