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Alex Gourevitch is an associate professor of political science at Brown University and the author of From Slavery To the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century.
Some leftists imagine a postcapitalist society will free everyone from the need to work. But the only realistic and fair way to manage production under socialism is to democratically distribute and share in the burdens of labor.
The police were first created to suppress labor militancy and the Left, before becoming a tool to bludgeon the most marginalized in society, particularly poor black people. We must dismantle this brutal instrument of social control.
As the coronavirus sweeps the entire globe, democracy is becoming just another casualty.
For decades, political parties have been hollowed out by the forces of neoliberalism and social atomization. Now, in the era of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, they’re in crisis — and they have only themselves to blame.
When Bernie Sanders compared wage labor to slavery in the 1970s, he wasn’t equating the two. He was drawing on an emancipatory tradition, encompassing everyone from Frederick Douglass to Eugene Debs, that sees wage labor as shot through with subjugation — and insists on the need to democratize the workplace.
The European Union is one of the chief enemies of democracy in the world today. Britain should leave it, with or without a Brexit deal.
Martin Luther King Jr is remembered as a person of conscience who only carefully broke unjust laws. But his militant challenges to state authority place him in a much different tradition: radical labor activism.
If Democrats don’t perform well today, they’ll only have themselves to blame.
Why do workers have a right to strike? Because it’s one of the best means they have to resist their oppression.
Forget the first 100 days — Jacobin contributors weigh in on Trump’s first 103.
The bombing of Syria lays bare the impulsive violence of Trump’s foreign policy and the rot of American democracy.
Our movement will exhaust itself if it’s only fueled by outrage. We need to win people to a positive vision of a better world.
A general strike could transform American politics. But we’re nowhere near being able to call one.
The George W. Bush years were pretty bleak. The political possibilities for pushing back are much more promising today.
From resisting new management attacks to organizing wireless employees, Verizon workers still have a lot to mobilize for.
After the Civil War, workers struggled to make wage labor go the way of chattel slavery.
The horrendous proposed agreement between Greece and its creditors lays bare the euro’s anti-democratic core.
The point of a strike is to stop production to show the work you do is essential. The NYPD slowdown has proven the opposite.
Our notions of freedom emerge from and depend on slavery.