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.
Celebrities Can’t Save Opera. Public Funding Can.
Timothée Chalamet’s offhand jab at “dying” high culture sparked celebrity outrage. But without robust public investment and democratic ownership, opera and ballet will keep shrinking into elite pastimes instead of surviving as vibrant public art forms.
The Minecraft Marxists
The proletarian revolution is playing out on a desktop near you.
Europe Is Sanctioning Critics of Israel and Militarism
Sanctions were once sold as a gentler foreign policy tool for exerting pressure on dictatorships and terrorist organizations. Yet measures like banning individuals from having bank accounts or traveling are increasingly used to chill free speech in Europe.
The US Is Spending Billions to Bomb Iran
The Trump administration has spent around $24 billion in public funds on its war against Iran so far. Here’s what that money might have been used for instead.
If Zohran Mamdani is serious about delivering on his promises, he needs more than policies — he needs institutions that empower working people. Popular assemblies offer a way to build a new, bottom-up political culture in New York City.
Christian Zionists Helped Stoke Trump’s Iran War
The Christian Zionist movement has long pushed for regime change in Iran. With allies in Donald Trump’s inner circle and its ideas seeping into the US military, it has played a key role in building support for the current war.
Julie Menin Is Protecting New York’s Ultrawealthy
Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to tax the superrich to fund universal childcare and other urgent working-class needs. The oligarchic city council Speaker Julie Menin is trying to block his agenda.
Capitalism Has a Lot of Room to Redistribute Wealth Right Now
Some on the Left believe that the capitalist system will not tolerate any greater interventions in its operation or redistribution of its spoils. There is no good evidence that this is true.
Politics After Literacy
Postliteracy won’t replace reason with madness, but it might give us madness of a new and different type.
Neoliberalism didn’t win an intellectual argument — it won power. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and ’80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms.
Brazil’s Left After Lula
As Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seeks his final term as Brazil’s president, the Left’s electoral strategy — who runs, which factions align, and how the coalition balances pragmatism with principle — is already shaping the post-Lula era of Brazilian politics.
Jürgen Habermas’s European Illusion
The late Jürgen Habermas saw Europe as a vehicle for a social democratic, postnational politics. But as the real European Union increasingly diverged from this ideal, Habermas’s thinking failed to reckon with the project’s fundamental limits.
The Many Invasions Survived by Lebanon
Israel is again invading Lebanon and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. With Israel determined to crush all forms of resistance, Lebanon has been dragged into a war it did nothing to start.
Israel Has Nuclear Weapons. It May Use Them.
There is little sign that Israel is achieving its war aims against Iran. But Israel is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons — and it may use them if it feels like it has run out of options.