Kendra Strauss is director of the Labour Studies Program and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.
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.
After the Soviet Union’s fall, the West backed Boris Yeltsin as a paragon of democracy, even as his administration rigged elections and empowered a new capitalist class. Now, under Vladimir Putin, the crisis of Russia’s democracy is only intensifying.
A new book argues that the American right emerged out of a backlash to multiracial democracy following the Civil War. This is only partly true: reactionaries did not just fear democracy, they feared the economic redistribution former slaves associated with it.
As we learned in the recent rail union contract negotiations, ruthless profit-seeking has made conditions for railworkers unbearable. It’s also made railroads less efficient. America badly needs a national rail service owned and operated for the public good.
The Child Tax Credit expansion last year lifted several million children out of poverty, before Democrats failed to extend it. Now Congress is debating the policy again — and this time they have the chance to ensure even more children receive the benefit.
Rodrigo Arenas was just a baby when his mother was forced to flee Augusto Pinochet’s Chile. Now he’s an MP for left party La France Insoumise — and, as he tells Jacobin, struggles in his homeland continue to inspire the French left.
German theorist Fritz Sternberg, who wrote on the rise of the Nazis, the Cold War, and decolonization, remains an underappreciated figure in Western Marxism. His work offers crucial insights about the centrality of internationalism to socialist politics.
The fascist writer Julius Evola is loved by monologuing YouTubers, Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party, and Steve Bannon. The hallmark of his work is a rejection of modernity, and his popularity is owed to the persistence of antidemocratic ideas on the Right.
America’s prisons are grossly dehumanizing and unjust. The eminent political philosopher Tommie Shelby debates prison abolition and what kind of radical change justice demands.
After forcing a contract on exhausted railworkers last week, President Joe Biden vowed to keep fighting for them to have paid sick leave. If he’s serious, here is how he and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg could fulfill that promise.
Congress was able to break the rail strike last week because of a century-old law designed to weaken the disruptive power of unions. It’s time to cast aside this law and every other government-mandated strike prohibition that ties the hands of workers.
Donald Trump’s call to “terminate” the Constitution is every bit as outlandish as we’ve come to expect. But it’s also a political dud, reflecting the low-energy mood that pervades his newly announced presidential campaign.
It’s easy to think of French public life as more highbrow than its US counterpart. But France’s top-rated talk show is fusing politics and entertainment — and it’s a key part of a billionaire-funded effort to normalize far-right talking points.
Midterm ballot initiative votes in Colorado and Massachusetts suggest that taxing the rich and increasing public spending is more popular with voters when it’s clear exactly how these measures will improve people’s lives.
For the fifth time, the National Labor Relations Board has filed charges against Starbucks for illegal firings of union supporters, claiming the company has repeatedly violated labor law in its attempts to destroy the fledgling union.
Taiwan’s working class has been able to make significant gains in recent decades despite the pressures of economic liberalization. That’s because its unions have received crucial support from a wider network of social movements and advocacy groups throughout the country.
Today’s union-busters owe much to the bosses of the Progressive Era, who refused to recognize unions and fired labor organizers. Employers have never been “enlightened,” instead fighting tooth and nail to maintain their dictatorial powers.
Whatever their professed values, when it comes to the ballot box, rich people are out for themselves.
Knowing that inequality and powerlessness helped produce European fascism, C. Wright Mills exposed postwar American power and warned of an authoritarian turn in The Power Elite. The book speaks to our own moment of inequality and right-wing anger.