Our next issue will be mailed to subscribers January 2 and released online January 13. It’s anchored by the work of our newest editor, Alyssa Battistoni, but everything in there is sharp and well-worth reading. Special thanks, particularly, to Max Ajl for editing a great section on the Gulf States.

Below is a preview of the table of contents, but what you can’t see is how beautiful the guts of the magazine are. We once again commissioned a host of talented artists, from our creative director Remeike Forbes to Leslie Wood and Edward Carvalho-Monaghan, who did the cover art. It’s really something worth getting in the physical form.

Readers have the weekend to subscribe or renew lapsed subscriptions to receive the issue straight from the printer. Please make sure that your mailing address is updated in your subscription settings too.

Editorial

Toward Cyborg Socialism

by Alyssa Battistoni

What we need is a cyborg socialism that points not to the primacy of ecology, but to the integration of natural and social, organic and industrial, ecological and technological; that recognizes human transformations of the natural world without simply asserting domination over it.

Essays

The Office of the Future

by Jay Monaco

A view inside C&S Wholesale Grocers, America’s secret corporate empire.

In the Name of Love

by Miya Tokumitsu

“Do what you love” is the mantra for today’s worker. Why should we assert our class interests if, according to dwyl elites like Steve Jobs, there’s no such thing as work?

There’s a Gene for That

by Pankaj Mehta

History is littered with horrifying examples of the misuse of evolutionary theory to justify power and inequality. Welcome to a new age of biological determinism.

Alive in the Sunshine

by Alyssa Battistoni

There’s no way toward a sustainable future without tackling environmentalism’s old stumbling blocks: consumption and jobs. And the way to do that is through a universal basic income.

A Petrodollar and a Dream

by Adam Hanieh

Any reversal of neoliberalism in the Middle East would require challenging powerful Gulf States.

Bahrain’s Fate

by Omar AlShehabi

On Ibrahim Sharif and the misleadingly dubbed “Arab Spring.”

The Bad Kind of Unionism

by Shawn Gude

When police unions have widened their gaze beyond issues like compensation and working conditions, it’s been almost exclusively to conservative ends.

Managing Bolivian Capitalism

by Jeffery R. Webber

Evo Morales’s administration has scored some successes, but it has failed to deliver on its more radical promises.

Culture

Regrounding Hollywood

by Eileen Jones

Gravity points us back to the sensation cinema practices of the silent era, and it’s dimly possible that the American film industry might save itself by learning, or re-learning, from them.

In Praise of White Elephants

by Owen Hatherley

Though easy targets for fiscal hawks, public architecture that’s luxurious and dramatic — even excessive — should be ours as a right.

My Brooklyn, Not Yours

by Laura Tanenbaum

Hip culture in the United States has long had a deep romantic and nostalgic streak, and the hipster’s most recent incarnation, central to the current branding of Brooklyn, has been no exception.

Books

The Schizophrenic State

by Nicole Aschoff

The American government’s response to the 2007–8 financial crisis reveals an increasing tension between its domestic and global responsibilities.