A century ago, a socialist magazine published a manifesto calling for workers to pick up the pen, heralding the dawn of America’s proletarian literary movement. Our society’s need for working-class writers remains as strong as ever.

Charity Is No Substitute for Economic Rights

The United States is a global anomaly in our collective delusion about the power of charity to address human suffering. A far better approach would be to guarantee inalienable economic rights and structure society around their fulfillment.

Cem Kaya and the Politics of Migration

Today deportations and restricted asylum rights are changing the terms of political belonging around the world. With surreal and darkly humorous archival works, German filmmaker Cem Kaya is exploring how anti-migrant racism is mediated through capitalism.

Thomas Mann and the Temptations of Fascism

The resurgence of right-wing populism has set the table for the far right’s renewed fortunes. Published in 1947, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus offers a guide to the mythmaking and rejection of reason that continues to animate authoritarian politics today.

In Search of Russia’s Lost Opposition

The Russian state has forced many antiwar leftists into exile, cutting them off from ordinary Russians. But activists are well aware that change in Russia must come from within, mobilizing ordinary people around their own interests.