The Scottish writer Tom Nairn, who died last month, was the most perceptive critic of the pathologies of the British state. His writings on nationalism and the Labour Party are essential for anyone attempting to understand British society.
The comedian, actor, and political activist Russell Brand on political polarization and how establishment voices attempt to silence dissent.
Social theorists identify automation as both the main cause of unemployment and the future launchpad for a high-tech post-scarcity world. But, Aaron Benanav argues, the problem is the stagnation of global capitalism and its inability to generate enough jobs.
Medical schools in the United States used to acquire corpses for research from literal grave robbers. They don’t anymore — but in most US states, your corpse may still end up on a medical slab without your consent if no one will pick up the tab to bury you.
Megapopular right-wing YouTube channel PragerU’s “moral case for capitalism” fails to address capitalism’s massive defects — its injustice, exploitation, and instability. Instead, it offers a glib pep talk about why modern society is better than feudalism.
Spiritual needs are more likely to be satiated if the basics — food, clothing, shelter, and employment — are met first.
For the first century of its existence, the organized left mobilized around the “labor question”: who determines the what and how of production. For years, though, the Left has abandoned this question for a concern with inequality — at its own peril.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to seriously harm workers — not because of something inherent to the technology, but because bosses are in control of it.
Brad DeLong’s sweeping history in Slouching Towards Utopia chronicles a century of unprecedented economic progress driven by markets and innovation. But his faith in capitalism’s innovations undermines his attempts to make sense of this tumultuous era.
The ghostly emptiness of capitalist realism obscures the potential for collective joy and abundance. Mark Fisher’s writing offers a glimpse of the possibilities that lie beyond the seeming inevitability of the present.
Born in the seventeenth century, our faith in progress is now at death’s door. Sociologist Göran Therborn traces the idea’s history — and argues that it must be revived.
As Russell Vought and the Office of Management and Budget more explicitly become the engine of Donald Trump’s second term, a handful of little-known appointees at the agency may point the way to its future.
The global birth rate collapse threatens more than economic dynamism and the viability of the welfare state. It poses a threat to the future of radical politics.
Multilevel marketing companies promise that everyone can become a boss and get rich if they hustle hard enough. But they’re actually fraudulent pyramid schemes that, like capitalism writ large, require mass exploitation to enrich the few at the top.
For America’s VC-dominated tech industry, AI hype isn’t just a crazy by-product — it’s a structural part of the US economy in which capital tries to write our destinies. We shouldn’t let it.
Love requires attention, affection, and reciprocal flow — a natural cycle of giving and receiving. Capitalism can easily commodify the first two, but the third resists the market. That’s precisely why our economic system is so determined to destroy it.
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s dizzying history of energy consumption argues that no energy transition has ever occurred: each generation consumes more of past fuels. Not only are his claims ahistorical but they justify an unwarranted pessimism about the future.
As Donald Trump launches a dangerous war on Iran, understanding what really drives US imperial aggression is more urgent than ever. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, which many critics wrongly claim was about oil, offers an illuminating case study.
The teenager we know today came of age in the postwar era — but she owes her existence to the New Deal.