How to Build a Fighting Labor Movement

New Deal–Era Leftists Tried to Win Beautiful Social Housing for the Masses

The US housing system is organized around subsidized private homeownership and underfunded public housing. But during the New Deal, leftists had a different vision: beautiful social housing for all but the rich.

The United States Has Used Latin America as Its Imperial Laboratory

Over the past two centuries, US imperial interventions have had a devastating impact on the peoples of Latin America. Those interventions have also played a crucial role in US domestic politics, enabling new power blocs to cohere and develop their strategies.

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You Can Thank George W. Bush’s War on Terror for Donald Trump

The Bush administration’s war on terror meted out unthinkable violence in the Middle East while imposing an atmosphere of repression and nativism at home. It was the perfectly malignant petri dish for helping produce Donald Trump.

For Workers, Hospitals Have Become the New Steel Mills — Minus the Strong Unions

Health care workplaces have replaced steel mills and auto plants as the nation’s big employers. But while industrial workers once had mighty unions, hospital workers have struggled by comparison to win representation and good contracts.

Michael Denning on Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony

The great labor historian Michael Denning reflects on what Antonio Gramsci’s work has to tell us today.

Inflation Is About Class Struggle

Inflation is far from being a boring economic concept — it’s a question of who gets what in society, and how much power workers have versus bosses and shareholders.

The History of American Public Housing Shows It Didn’t Have to Decline

In order to put social housing back on the agenda in American politics, we first have to understand how public housing was destroyed — especially by Bill Clinton’s Hope VI program.

Today’s Conservative Movement Has Roots in the Capitalist Backlash Against the New Deal

During the New Deal, right-wing businesspeople were furious that their authority was being challenged in the workplace and in society. So they started organizing. And that’s the origin story of the modern conservative movement.

The Impossible Escape From the European Union

Neoliberalism is embedded in the European Union’s DNA. But for the continent’s left, there are few good alternatives.

How Capitalism Worms Its Way Into Every Aspect of Our Lives

Marxists have a powerful critique of exploitation in the capitalist workplace, but our analysis can’t stop there. A comprehensive analysis of capitalism, Nancy Fraser argues, must also account for the social relations that make the official economy possible.

Neoliberalism Was a Counterrevolution Against Democracy

A group of 20th-century intellectuals saw the democratic nation-state as a threat to private property. Their solution: shifting power to unaccountable international bodies like the WTO, helping pave the way to what we now call “neoliberalism.”

The ACLU’s Drift From Radical to Neutral Tells the Story of Modern American Liberalism

Once an arm of the radical labor movement, the ACLU now defends free speech as a neutral principle — including the anti-union speech of bosses and the political speech of corporations. The story of the ACLU’s evolution is the story of liberalism itself.

Mike Davis Revisits His 1986 Labor History Classic, Prisoners of the American Dream

The late socialist writer Mike Davis’s first book was Prisoners of the American Dream, a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened. Nearly four decades later, Davis revisited the book in an interview with Jacobin.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò: “Oppression Is Not a Prep School”

In activist and academic circles, privileged people are expected to automatically defer to marginalized people on issues of oppression. Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argues that this norm kills solidarity and replaces effective politics with endless navel-gazing.

The Prison-Industrial Complex Goes Beyond Cops and Jails. It’s All Around Us.

Police and mass incarceration are only the most visible and obvious manifestations of the prison-industrial complex. Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues that the prison-industrial complex is a holistic social organizing principle that pervades life under capitalism.

Corporate Interests Are Inflaming US-China Tensions

In a global economy defined by overproduction and underconsumption, American and Chinese corporations are struggling to extract profits from developing nations. Without massive wealth redistribution, consumption won’t return to stable levels.

What Chinese Capitalists Owe to Mao Zedong

China did not develop capitalism during the 18th century, despite having a market economy as strong as Britain’s. The raw material for China’s 20th-century capitalist takeoff came from an unlikely figure: Mao Zedong.

The Democrats Didn’t Just Fail to Defend Social Programs. They Actively Undermined Them.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the Democrats took a jackhammer to education, housing, and social welfare. This isn’t the story of a weak party unable to defend its earlier gains, but a transformed party demolishing them in service of a new neoliberal ideology.