Walter Benjamin was one of the most influential cultural theorists of the last century. There have been many attempts to defang and deradicalize Benjamin’s work, but his Marxist commitments run right through his dazzling intellectual legacy.
Italy’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is hardly a feminist. But battles over gender are key to her rise, in a far-right agenda that fuses motherhood, nationalism, and the demonization of Muslims.
Since Indonesia annexed West Papua, its people have faced brutal military repression while the US helps whitewash the occupation. But the country’s freedom movement is pressing ahead with a unique liberation project based on ecological principles.
Russian disenchantment with Western liberalism has produced a worldview hostile to end-of-history triumphalism. The rise of this ideology may be another sign of liberalism’s decline, but its tenets set it at odds with liberalism’s socialist critics.
In November, education workers in Ontario staged a massive walkout and threatened a general strike, forcing premier Doug Ford to back down on repressive anti-labor legislation. Here’s how they did it.
Too often, the US labor movement has favored narrow nationalism over cross-border solidarity. But in the late 19th century, the US-based Knights of Labor preached a working-class internationalism that sought to organize workers throughout the globe.
In the late nineteenth century, French Marxist Paul Lafargue put forward a demand that still resonates nearly a century and a half later: workers have a right to be lazy.
A morally tarnished World Cup in Qatar was the latest phase in the degeneration of modern football. Europe’s top clubs have become playthings of the superwealthy, taking the game ever further from its popular roots.
The mine workers’ union’s conservative, corrupt leadership leadership was ousted by reformers 50 years ago this month. Today’s union reformers can learn from both their successes and their failures.
Brazil’s president-elect, Lula da Silva, appears eager to challenge Western dominance. But instead of siding with China against the US in a new cold war, he’s likely to pursue a sovereign third path in the vein of the 20th century’s Non-Aligned Movement.
New York’s public libraries are essential institutions providing a wide range of services and cultural programming on top of books and media. If Eric Adams’s proposed library cuts go through, huge numbers of New Yorkers will suffer immensely.
A coordinated protest wave across China, the country’s largest since the Tiananmen Square movement in 1989, has been instrumental in prompting the government’s policy shift on COVID-19. It’s a culmination of tensions that have been building for years.