South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters positions itself as a radical party opposed to the ruling government. But its race-centric program overlooks the main source of oppression in postapartheid South Africa: capitalism.
Recent decades have seen a historic shift in Danish politics, with mass-membership parties replaced by a professionalized media-political sphere. To drive real social change, the socialist left needs to go beyond creating a progressive niche — and rebuild the mass organizations that once made the working class a mighty political force.
Bernie Sanders has called for a “political revolution.” But the New Politics movement shows the challenges of accomplishing that within the Democratic Party.
How can we take on the American military machine? By starving it of recruits and building up the civilian welfare state.
The Chicago Teachers Union is choosing its leadership this week. A reelection of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators would mean a commitment to more of the militant teacher unionism that has reshaped Chicago and inspired educators around the country.
Pressed by influential corporate advisors, Kamala Harris ran away from a winning economic populist message and ended up losing a campaign. We have the proof.
Last year Dan Osborn, a former union president and strike leader, almost won a Senate seat in deep-red Nebraska as a populist independent. Osborn has now started a PAC to recruit, train, and support more blue-collar candidates for public office.
Democrats are losing working-class votes. A new study from Jacobin, ASU’s Center for Work and Democracy, and the Center for Working-Class Politics shows how few Democratic Party candidates use populist rhetoric, propose progressive economic policies, or come from working-class backgrounds.
As organized labor lost strength, the Democratic Party turned to professional-class voters to shore up its base.
Socialists believe not only that capitalism is an oppressive, undemocratic system, but that there's a viable, humane alternative.
Though often overlooked, working-class movements played a substantial role shaping the Cuban Revolution.
Whatever their “pro-worker” bluster, the Republican Party’s budget of Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy shows the GOP is still the party of sadistic oligarchs, not populists.
Class dynamics continue to dictate who has access to an unstigmatized gay identity — and to exclude many working-class people from participating in mainstream gay life.
Political preferences are often discussed through a one-size-fits-all middle-class lens. But empirical data shows that class significantly influences voting patterns, with growing class consciousness driving dissatisfaction with established parties.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’s social media videos are putting class struggle front and center.
Contrary to popular belief, the 1970s was a period in which the European left was at its strongest. Unions were powerful, and socialists felt confident that the changing economy could benefit them. So why was the Left defeated a decade later?
We can't win socialism without workers fighting back. The rank-and-file strategy gives us the tools to do that.
In 1996, thousands of trade unionists and activists decided to build an independent party. Why did the effort fail?
The question is no longer whether the working class matters, but how it can fight back.
In The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, French writer Didier Eribon sees his mother’s passing as symbolic of the disappearance of the mass culture and politics that once gave workers of her generation identity and social standing.