• Sunny Taylor discusses disability, the right not to work and the desire to, and the complicated relationship between disabled activists and the left.
• Philip Mirowski’s review of a new crop of books assessing neoliberalism’s rise makes for a good primer on the topic — though it turns out even people who write books about neoliberalism aren’t entirely sure what it is.
• Josh Eidelson provides an update on the prospects for democratic union elections at gadget-manufacturing giant Foxconn. (Spoiler: they’re not great.)
• Marina Vishmidt talks women’s work, divisions of labor, and the debt crisis with the inimitable Silvia Federici over at Mute magazine.
• Yup, it’s totally capitalism’s fault you’re always so tired — probably especially if you count yourself among the “night people,” “slow-timers,” or other temporal subcultures outside the bounds of the 9-to-5.
• Sarah Jaffe explains the illustrious history of beloved union mascot Scabby the Rat, complete with illustrations by Molly Crabapple.
• Just can’t read enough about academic research on inequality? Lisa Margonelli explains how the Gini coefficient, the measure of inequality you’re always hearing about, is calculated, and Emmanuel Saez and David Grusky chat about Saez’s pioneering work on income inequality.
• “For more than two centuries, foreigners have demonstrated that the less one knows about Haiti, the easier it is to project one’s ideas, fantasies, and fears onto it.” Pooja Bhatia reviews Laurent Dubois’ Haiti: The Aftershocks of History in n+1.
• In case you somehow missed it, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez dies, and the requisite flood of legacy assessments ensues: check out Greg Grandin at the Nation, Owen Jones at the Independent, Tariq Ali in the Guardian, and of course, Bhaskar Sunkara in VICE.
• Thank a socialist feminist for International Women’s Day. And while you’re at it, check out the MIA for what Alexandra Kollantai, who persuaded Lenin to make Women’s Day — a.k.a. the Day of International Solidarity among the Female Proletariat — a national holiday in Russia wrote about it in Pravda.
• More from the MIA: José Carlos Mariátegui on anti-imperialism and revolution in Latin America.
• And a 2010 BBC interview with Hugo Chávez, in which he proclaims, “Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system.”