Enmeshed in a colonial relationship with the US and abandoned by their own establishment politicians, Puerto Ricans are being forced to forge their own recovery after Hurricane Fiona. But they’re also dreaming of a different, more just future. A person cooks in the dark in a home in the Condado community of Santurce in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 19,

Black sharecroppers organizing a union were slaughtered en masse 103 years ago this week in the Elaine Massacre. It was one of the US’s worst episodes of racist violence — and a reminder that Jim Crow was about keeping the masses divided and labor brutalized. Troops are seen marching sharecroppers toward temporary holding facilities where hundreds would be

Ian McEwan is one of Britain’s most prominent novelists. His latest offering, Lessons, is an attempt to track the life story of its fictional protagonist through the turbulence of postwar British and European history. The result is a labored exercise in boomer agitprop. Instead of delivering a literary manifesto in defense of liberal democracy, McEwan […]

The Hill has fired Katie Halper from its morning show, Rising, for describing Israel's policies as tantamount to apartheid. It's a blatant act of censorship to silence a pro-Palestinian journalist. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) For all the strides the Palestinian cause has made

Despite fears that a military coup could follow Sunday’s elections in Brazil, the country’s military brass is unlikely to feel threatened enough to attempt one. Whoever wins, the military’s growing institutional hold on power looks likely to continue. Current Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, during an audience with his former Minister of Defence and

The new Conservative prime minister Liz Truss has experienced a spectacular humiliation during her first weeks in office. Her self-defeating agenda reflects the mindset of a Thatcherite ideologue managing an economy already ravaged by decades of Thatcherism. British prime minister Liz Truss visits the British Gas Academy in Dartford, UK, September 30,

The new Conservative prime minister Liz Truss has experienced a spectacular humiliation during her first weeks in office. Her self-defeating agenda reflects the mindset of a Thatcherite ideologue managing an economy already ravaged by decades of Thatcherism. British prime minister Liz Truss visits the British Gas Academy in Dartford, UK, September 30,

The Industrial Workers of the World pioneered a radical unionism that built a small but incredibly dedicated group of unionists and union supporters — which is why American capitalists and politicians quickly decided they needed to stop the union. International Workers of the World labor organizer Frank Tannenbaum, speaking to a gathering at Union Square

The Fed has dropped all pretense of aiming for a “soft landing” as it ratchets up interest rates to fight inflation. It now openly admits it’s trying to create a recession in which millions of people will lose their jobs. Unemployed men sitting on the sunny side of the San Francisco Public Library in San Francisco, California. (Dorothea Lange / Heritage Art / Heritage

New studies suggest that private equity–owned hospitals and nursing homes deliver worse outcomes and higher costs for patients — weeks after Congress gave private equity firms a new tax break. Private equity activity in the health and eldercare spaces has ballooned over the last decade, at the expense of patients’ financial and physical well-being. (Bromberger

Published in 1985, Don DeLillo’s White Noise depicted an America blinded by consumerism. Ahead of Netflix’s adaptation of the novel, it’s worth revisiting DeLillo’s masterpiece, which remains one of our most perceptive visions of contemporary America. Don DeLillo’s White Noise remains one of our most perceptive visions of contemporary America and the

Six Republican states are suing to stop Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness plan — even though a new study shows that borrowers in most of those states would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the program. A new Federal Reserve analysis finds that nearly three-quarters of Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness will go to those living in areas where the median

Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel, Andrew Dominik’s film Blonde ignores the assertive and hardworking real-life Marilyn Monroe and instead gives us a lurid tale of perpetual victimization. Ana de Armas plays Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. (Netflix) By now the Netflix film Blonde is notorious for its length, it’s NC-17 rating, and its cruelly narrow view of film

Despite Democrats controlling the White House and Congress since 2020, it has largely been the Right that has taken the political initiative and set the terms of the political conversation. Expect that to get worse after November. President Joe Biden delivers remarks about lowering health care costs in the Rose Garden at the White House on September 27, 2022,

Unlike most world leaders, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has boldly called for peace commission in Ukraine, foregrounding the need for open negotiations to end the war. At home, however, he has increased the power of the military. Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (C), Mexico's secretary of defense, Cresencio Sandoval (L),

The new Oprah Winfrey–produced Sidney Poitier documentary, Sidney, is a gushing tribute film, not a fully rounded portrait of a human being who had weaknesses to go along with his many strengths. Sidney Poitier in the film To Sir, With Love, 1967. (Columbia Pictures / Getty Images) Sidney is an entirely conventional but handsome Apple TV+ documentary about

Our resource-starved public education system is not equipped to handle the increasingly extreme heat, condemning students and teachers to sweltering classrooms. New school infrastructure is an urgent priority if we want to have a functional education system. Overheated classrooms make it virtually impossible for students to engage in meaningful scholarship.

You’ve heard about tax havens like the Cayman Islands. But billionaires aren’t just dodging their taxes with international loopholes — US states have turned their tax codes into plutocratic rackets where billionaires can stash their cash tax-free. "Trust haven" states are one of the major weak links in the global system of financial transparency. (Ivan

The Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña’s work binds together Marxism and indigenous Latin American culture. Her paintings and sculptures present an alternative to the dreariness of contemporary capitalism: a socialism founded on anti-imperialism and human pleasure. Karl Marx (1972) by Cecilia Vicuña. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York,

In June, three months before Hurricane Ian battered Florida, Republican state legislators tried to halt a climate risk disclosure mandate for businesses. They also voted against investing in climate-related weatherization and flood mitigation. Boats are pushed up on a causeway after Hurricane Ian passed through the area on September 29, 2022 in Fort Myers,

The rise of trillion-dollar investment firms like BlackRock has resulted in a massive, unprecedented concentration of economic power. BlackRock’s Larry Fink may use green rhetoric, but his company won’t take real action to address the climate crisis. A pedestrian passes in front of a statue of a bull in the Wall Street area in New York City where rains from

In 2018, Dylan Wegela was on the picket line in Arizona, fighting against austerity in public schools. Now he’s preparing to take up the same fight in Michigan’s State House after winning his primary this summer. Dylan Wegela is running for state representative in Michigan. (Dylan Wegela campaign website) Four years ago, Dylan Wegela was organizing his coworkers

Historians have underestimated the role of pandemics in changing the course of history. Long before the Black Death hit Europe, an outbreak of bubonic plague triggered a profound social crisis in sixth-century Byzantium, shaking the foundations of the empire. A mosaic of Byzantine emperor Justinian and his suite in Basilica San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy.

Jon Melrod was part of a wave of student radicals who took jobs in factories in the 1970s. He spoke to Jacobin about life in working-class Wisconsin, becoming a workplace leader, and how to merge shop-floor fights with a broader left politics. General Motors workers wave picket signs outside a Detroit plant on September 14, 1970, after the United Auto Workers

While there are many memorable passages to be found in the recently published Christopher Hitchens collection A Hitch in Time, one of the most striking appears early in a piece originally published in the leadup to the first Gulf War. Lamenting the sorry state of the debate underway in Congress, Hitchens takes aim at partisans […]

In parts of Queens, socialists hold office at the local, state, and federal levels. Those victories are no accident: they’re the fruit of years of local organizing in a borough known for being anything but flashy. Public defender Tiffany Cabán celebrates her victory with supporters after the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney on June 25, 2019.

A referendum to end discrimination against gay couples in marriage and adoption just won big in Cuba. That’s a victory for the core values underlying the socialist project. Cuba has just approved a new Family Code that ends discrimination against gay couples in marriage and adoption. (Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images) Two-thirds of Cuban voters approved the

The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly ruled that Starbucks and Amazon’s union busting is against the law. Yet both companies seem intent on continuing to flagrantly break labor law in the hopes of breaking their fledgling unions. Pro-union protesters gather for a rally near the home of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Fifth Avenue on September 5, 2022,

Recent discussions about the supposed death of neoliberalism present a mirror image of past discussions about neoliberalism’s birth. For quite some time, scholars, intellectuals, and popularizers of many sorts were inclined to present neoliberalism as a mainly Anglo-American phenomenon that got its start in the late 1970s. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald

Pierre Poilievre, the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, presents himself as a friend of the working class. Some New Democrats claim they’ll fight Poilievre’s rhetoric with class war, but is the party up for it? Pierre Poilievre, newly elected leader of Canada's Conservative Party, speaks to a crowd in Ontario, Canada on September 10, 2022. (James

How comfortable are sitting members of Congress with broadcasting brazen corruption to the world? Well, during a televised hearing, Indiana representative Trey Hollingsworth gushed thanks to Bank of America’s CEO for hiring his top aide. Indiana representative Trey Hollingsworth thanked Bank of America's CEO for hiring his top aide during a televised

Rise of the Bolsonaros, a new documentary chronicling Jair Bolsonaro’s ascent, makes for compelling viewing. But it ignores the fact that Brazil’s crises are rooted in its flawed developmental model, not just the rise of a family of reactionary zealots. President Jair Bolsonaro appears on television during a presidential debate in São Paulo, September

Puerto Rico is still reeling in the wake of Hurricane Fiona, with hundreds of thousands without electricity. Energy privatization has made the problem worse — and the solution, historically, has been to fight it in the streets. People march along Las Americas Highway as they hold Puerto Rican flags to demand the expulsion of power company Luma amid a continued

A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows what the Left has always argued: that our best tool in the fight against poverty is redistributive social spending. Pandemic-era programs like the Child Tax Credit protected tens of millions from falling into poverty. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Of the various right-wing arguments deployed against

Italian far-right leader Giorgia Meloni’s biggest ally is the Lega party. Like Fratelli d’Italia, it’s an anti-immigrant party — but it has built its base promising to defend Italian business from globalization. Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega party greets the Piazza del Popolo before his speech during a political meeting organized by the right-wing

Democratic socialist congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is under fire from the Democratic establishment for saying that support for Israel’s apartheid government is incompatible with progressive values. They’re livid that Tlaib is telling the truth. Representative Rashida Tlaib (R-MI) speaks at a press conference calling for the expansion of the Supreme

Director Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes celebrity scandal, helping to keep an otherwise forgettable film in the public’s consciousness. Part of the reason the scandals surrounding the making and release of Don’t Worry Darling have so much life is that the film has so little. (Warner Bros. Pictures) Don’t Worry

The latest union hot spot is a Trader Joe’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As at union drives at companies like Starbucks and Amazon, workers say Trader Joe’s has fired a key organizer for union activism. We talked to the fired worker about the campaign. Jaz W., a worker and union organizer at the Williamsburg location of Trader Joe's in New York, was fired on Friday.

Rich in resources that it exports to the West, Nigeria today is blighted by shocking rates of inequality. With an elite working in the service of foreign capital, Nigerian workers and raw materials are a key site of exploitation for global capitalists. A petrol tanker in Lagos, Nigeria. (Fakoyede Seun / Wikimedia Commons) In February of next year, Nigerians

A “clean power” group with ties to the fossil fuel industry is touting a new bill, backed by senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, that will accelerate oil and gas pipeline construction — and claiming it as a climate victory. A team of contractors work on the Williams Transco gas liquids pipeline October 6, 2017, in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. (Robert Nickelsberg

Yesterday’s Italian election brought victory for Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia — and record-low turnout. The opposition between technocrats and the far right is the symptom of a deeper decline. Giorgia Meloni is seen during a press conference on her party’s victory in the Italian elections, held on September 25, 2022, at Parco Principi Hotel

Dozens of people were arrested in Britain for taking part in peaceful protests against the new king. Two of them spoke to Jacobin about why they oppose the monarchy — and how the British state trampled on their dissent. An anti-royal demonstrator protests outside the Palace of Westminster in central London on September 12, 2022, following the death of Queen

The Left’s agenda has to include three basic commitments: democratize production, decommodify life’s essentials, and defend the public goods we all hold in common. To do that, we have to transform the very idea of ownership. Freedom is incompatible with the private regimes of power that capitalist property relations generate. (Gonz DDL / Unsplash) Throughout

Uganda’s most popular recording artist of the past decade, Bobi Wine, has endured censorship and the suppression of his music after running an opposition campaign against Uganda’s current president. Ugandan musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi, commonly known as Bobi Wine, sings on a stage in Busabala, suburb of Kampala, Uganda, on November

Lula currently appears the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential election, a fact that should be celebrated by the Left. But even if Lula wins, the damage Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing rule has inflicted on the country will be difficult to undo. Former president of Brazil and current presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party speaks

Hans-Christian Ströbele, who passed away on August 29 following a long illness, was an accomplished lawyer and one of Germany’s best-known Green politicians, serving in parliament for over two decades. His seriousness, alertness, and willingness to express dissent irrespective of what was trendy — or even what others might have expected from him — was […]

Greece’s right-wing government has been caught tapping the phones of journalists and opposition politicians. The scandal has raised doubts over Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s future — and highlighted his New Democracy party’s worrying authoritarian turn. Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has found himself embroiled in a scandal being

The once mighty Italian left failed to enter parliament in any of the last three general elections. As the far right makes yet another breakthrough, it’s high time the Left organized around working-class Italians’ deep economic malaise. Luigi De Magistris speaks during an electoral rally of the Unione Popolare in Naples, Italy, September 22, 2022. (Ivan

Taiwan’s indigenous people have long been subject to mistreatment by companies seeking to extract resources from their land and integrate Taiwan into the world capitalist system. Now their resistance takes a new form: an organized political assembly. Activists from the Paiwan people of Taiwan have organized a national assembly. (Riddu Riddu / Flickr)

What objects of beauty retain their hold on you? What texts refuse to give up their hold on your imagination? What images become so unforgettable that they become the lampposts that light the way through an unforgiving world? What art, to quote an aphorism of Jean-Luc Godard, “reveals our most secret self”? These are the […]

The Senate might vote on the fiscal year 2023 military budget this month. Or it might not; nobody’s sure. What’s for certain is that the bill the Senate considers will have at least as much as $850 billion for the Pentagon. In other words, we’re staring down a $72-billion year-to-year increase in military spending with this legislation: the FY 2022 version 

In the 1930s, six right-wing oligarchs used the US’s and UK’s largest newspapers to spout sensationalist xenophobia, and at times even boost fascist propaganda. Today, Fox News and other right-wing mass media outlets are using the very same blueprint. Adolf Hitler receives Lord Harold Harmsworth, proprietor of the Daily Mail newspaper, at his mountain

At his United Nations General Assembly address this week, newly elected leftist Colombian president Gustavo Petro denounced the war on drugs and destruction of the planet waged by the United States. We reprint his remarks here in full. Colombian president Gustavo Petro speaks during the Seventy-seventh Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)

Five years after their electoral breakthroughs, the projects led by Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have gone in opposite directions. The British left would be in a stronger position today if it had displayed some of Mélenchon’s confrontational grit. Rebecca Long-Bailey and Jeremy Corbyn on the fourth day of the Labour Party conference on September

Martin Scorsese loves Ti West’s “demented Disney film,” Pearl — and you will too. Mia Goth stars as the title character in Ti West’s Pearl. (A24) You might’ve heard about Pearl, a startling fever dream of a horror film that’s currently playing in theaters and getting a lot of well-deserved attention. It’s the second film in director Ti West’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre–inspired

The carbon removal industry is coming, whether we like it or not. The Left should seize it as an opportunity to articulate and realize a progressive vision for the future — one completely rid of fossil fuels. A pod, operated by Carbfix, containing technology for storing carbon dioxide underground, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, on Tuesday, September 7, 2021. (Bloomberg

Boosters of the capitalist system love pointing to statistics suggesting stunning progress in eradicating global poverty. But those metrics set the bar pathetically low — and don’t account for the obscene explosion in global inequality. To eradicate global poverty we need a far more robust system of global redistribution. (Richard Baker / Getty Images)

By any measure, economic inequality has shot up over the last half-century. Since 1970, the share of national income claimed by the bottom half of earners has fallen from 21.3 percent to just 13.6 percent, while the share pocketed by the top 1 percent has nearly doubled — from 11.6 percent to 19.1 percent. Although […]

Many liberal responses to Trumpism lament “polarization” on all sides. But the call to return to a sensible centrism ignores the real crises we face — falsely equating those who want to solve them with a far right who would make them worse. People gather to hear former president Donald Trump speak as he endorses local candidates at the Mohegan Sun Arena on September

After harassing and defaming grieving Sandy Hook parents, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones may finally get what’s coming to him. But as long as the nation’s most powerful institutions fail to earn the public’s trust, hucksters like Jones will always find an audience. Alex Jones at Creative Media Center at Austin Studios on March 12, 2020 in Austin, Texas. (Gary

A just-released deal crafted by senators Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer is being touted as a way to fast-track clean energy development. A closer look at the details reveals the main outcome will be speeding up natural gas pipeline projects. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Sept 20, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Alabama is rife with corporate abuse: six deaths at an Amazon facility, a grueling coal strike, child labor in auto plants. State attorney general Steve Marshall seems uninterested in weighing in on any of these fights, seeking kudos from Fox News instead. Steve Marshall, attorney general of Alabama, testifies during a hearing in Washington, DC, on March

Writing about violence in popular culture tends to be structured around a paradox. Most consumers of the latest blockbuster film or TV show are, on the whole, further away from life-threatening danger than at almost any other point in human history. But, these consumers have, because of the ubiquity of images, more opportunities to witnesses […]

Behind the growth of “cult-like” multilevel marketing lies the fact that our economy leaves growing numbers of people isolated, insecure, and vulnerable to promises of a quick way out. Sellers have described being pressured by their "uplines" to go "live" daily on social media to promote the multilevel marketing lifestyle. (Westend61 / Getty Images) As

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s kidnapping of dozens of migrants as a political stunt is disturbing. More troubling is the help he seems to have gotten from the Department of Homeland Security, a pro-MAGA federal agency that’s been quietly amassing vast powers. Venezuelan migrants gather at a ferry terminal in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. (Carlin

Today, Senate Democrats vote on the DISCLOSE Act, legislation that would force nonprofits spending on elections and judicial nominations to publicly name their donors. Lawmakers should pass this bill — but without ending the filibuster, they probably can't. President Joe Biden speaks to the media after attending a Senate Democrats’ luncheon in Russell

For all the talk of social justice on her new podcast, Archetypes, Meghan Markle seems only to vaguely endorse trickle-down celebrity feminism — and to promote herself as a symbol of the enlightened liberal ruling class. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, during Trooping the Colour in London, England, 2018.(Chris Jackson / Getty

Starbucks and Amazon’s current anti-union strategy is an effective one: infinite delay. Employers can’t always stop workers from winning a union election, but labor law currently allows them to buy time to kill union support. While their lawyers file endless delaying motions and appeals, union-busting companies use other means to crush support for unions

Florida governor Ron DeSantis recently decried the efforts of “woke capital” to reduce carbon emissions. Two things are true at once: his attacks are disingenuous, and supposedly environmentally conscious corporations are not going to stop climate change. Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaking during a press conference in Miami, Florida, 2021. (Joe

The pandemic, which continues to kill hundreds of Americans a day, is an argument for transforming US health care. But now Joe Biden is claiming the pandemic is over — signaling not just that he’s in denial but that he’s dropped any New Deal–size aspirations. Last month, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator announced the federal government would

Ten years ago, Amazon operated zero facilities in California. It now operates close to 40 facilities in the Inland Empire alone, making it the region’s largest employer. Workers essentially live in a company town — which may be why many want to unionize. A robot sorts and stacks bins at an Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, California. (Watchara Phomicinda

Jean-Luc Godard was the last radical working in cinema during an era where the medium of movies still genuinely had the power to shock. Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Belmondo on the set of Pierrot Le Fou in Hyères, France in June 1965. (Reporters Associes / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images) The cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, the great French filmmaker who passed away

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America is one of the greatest modern studies of revolution and counterrevolution. It’s also an extraordinary example of a materialist and class analysis of race under capitalism. In Black Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. Du Bois claims that enslaved people freed themselves during the Civil War through an extensive

Perhaps no figure in British political history has been put on a pedestal as high as that assigned to Winston Churchill. Across most of the political spectrum, Britain’s wartime Conservative prime minister and former Liberal continues to enjoy the reputation of man of unimpeachable conviction, responsible, almost single-handedly, for the greatest achievement

Thanks to gerrymandered and malapportioned party elections, the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party is dominated by factional power brokers and bureaucrats. Until that changes, Labor will remain on the ropes. Since 2011, NSW Labor has struggled to regain its dominance at a state level. (NSW Labor / Facebook) Once seen as the Australian Labor

Mayor Eric Adams has suggested that New York’s response to Governor Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants into the city include rethinking its “right to shelter” law. But the solution to the homelessness crisis is in strengthening housing laws, not eroding them. Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a news conference in New York on August 3, 2022.(Michael Nagle / Bloomberg

Last year, Israel designated several Palestinian humanitarian organizations as terrorist groups. In an open letter, 60 Canadian law professors urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make good on his professed commitment to human rights. He has yet to respond. Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh holds a press conference after Israeli forces

Since 2016, the national security establishment has tried to reframe mass disaffection with mainstream politics as the outcome of foreign meddling. But disinformation isn’t the cause of our political malaise, and fighting it won’t get us out of it. The dominant story of post-2016 populist tumult has centered on disinformation on social media platforms.

New polling suggests that a majority of Canadians want a vote on maintaining their country’s link to the British Crown. Imagine that: a long-overdue, democratic debate on cutting ties with a wildly undemocratic institution. Charles III waves goodbye before departing Yellowknife, Canada, after a Platinum Jubilee Royal Tour of Canada on May 19, 2022. (Chris

Breitbart’s movie about Hunter Biden, My Son Hunter, is neither entertaining, informative, competently made, nor politically persuasive. How do you screw this one up? It’d be hard to make Hunter Biden’s life boring. But somehow, the makers of Breitbart’s My Son Hunter have managed to do just that. (Breitbart) Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s second son,

For two decades, the Communist Party has been part of Vladimir Putin’s power system, while also integrating many protest movements from within Russian society. But since the invasion of Ukraine, the party’s balancing act has become ever more precarious. Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) addresses the crowd

The Taiwan Policy Act has advanced through a Senate committee by a bipartisan vote. It’s the latest instance of the US chipping away at the “One China” policy. The result could be the very war the bill is meant to deter. Two Taiwanese military corvettes sail during a Navy Drill for Preparedness Enhancement ahead of the Chinese New Year, amid escalating Chinese

Cash bail creates a two-tier justice system where freedom belongs to those who can afford it. For poor people, Illinois’s new bail reform bill is a step toward justice. For melodramatic conservatives drowning in propaganda, it’s right out of a horror film. Illinois will end cash bail beginning January 1. (Sophie Elbaz /Sygma via Getty Images) In February of

The persistent shortage of homes is a key driver of the housing crisis. The solution is social housing, but to halt the churn of displacement in the short term, we simply need to build more homes. Vancouver hasn’t had a healthy vacancy rate in a very long time, and it shows. (formulanone / Flickr) The housing crisis in British Columbia is a multiheaded beast, requiring

The Inflation Reduction Act has been widely touted as a big step on climate. But to pass it, Democrats struck a deal with Joe Manchin to accelerate oil and gas pipeline construction — and no one is discussing how much it might increase emissions. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks with Bret Baier during Special Report With Bret Baier at Fox News DC Bureau on September

It’s good that Donald Trump and his cronies are facing increasing legal pressure. But the threat of Trump’s politics won’t go away until we change the conditions that gave rise to them. Former president Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio, September 17, 2022. (Jeff Swensen / Getty Images) Donald Trump and his cronies have

The big winner in last weekend’s Swedish elections was the far-right Sweden Democrats, who came in second place nationally. To stop their advance, the Left needs to rebuild its roots in all sections of the working class. Leader of the Left Party, Nooshi Dadgostar, at a press briefing at the Swedish Parliament, Riksdagen, on November 22, 2021 in Stockholm, Sweden.

At the height of his fame, Mark Twain schmoozed with robber barons like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. But he remained sharply critical of the unequal system they presided over. Author Mark Twain photographed in 1907. (Library of Congress) In the early twentieth century, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was required reading

A rail system shutdown was averted by an eleventh-hour tentative agreement between rail companies and union negotiators. But union members may reject the deal — the details of which are still forthcoming — making future strikes a distinct possibility. President Joe Biden shakes hands with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh as they announce a tentative labor agreement

Mainstream Canadian pundits claim the country is in the midst of a “labor crisis” in which workers just don’t want to work. This is absurd: workers need unions and decent wages, and right now many don’t have either. Canada's "labor crisis" is actually a wage crisis. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) Businesses can’t find workers. It’s not a unique complaint, but

When Billy Wilder informed him of the death of director Ernst Lubitsch with the pithy line “No more Lubitsch,” William Wyler quipped in reply, “Worse than that, no more Lubitsch films.” It’s a sentiment that has since often been echoed by cinephiles when hearing of the loss of a cherished filmmaker, and it no doubt […]

The poverty line is arbitrary, and many who clear the threshold are still suffering in ways no decent society should allow. The true goal of public policy shouldn’t be nudging people over the poverty line but enabling people to lead good lives. Taking children above an arbitrary poverty line is a weak goal. The true goal of public policy should be to support widespread

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address this week marked a small step away from austerity dogmas. But the EU isn’t facing up to the vast fallout of the mounting energy crisis. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen delivers a State of the Union address on September 14 in Strasbourg, France. (Philipp von Ditfurth

New revelations show that the CIA secretly took control of the security company hired by Ecuador’s government to guard Julian Assange during his exile in London. The agency’s spying on Assange and his visitors constitutes a major breach of civil liberties. Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at court in London, April 11,

Seattle teachers are back in the classroom this week after walking off the job on September 7. The union won some gains — but some members aren’t happy about how the strike ended. Seattle Education Association members and supporters gather at Roosevelt High School during the teachers' strike. (Seattle Education Association) Six thousand Seattle educators

For the first time in living memory, the Supreme Court is facing a crisis of popular legitimacy. Let’s make the most of it. A general view of the US Supreme Court on June 30, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Stefani Reynolds / Getty Images) In examining this month’s Pew Research Center data on Americans’ views of the Supreme Court, a somewhat puzzling question presents

Stop calling it a “political stunt.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s use of vulnerable immigrants as props is disgusting and criminal. Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaks to supporters at a campaign rally in Geneva, Florida, August 24, 2022. (Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images) In recent months, Republican governors in Texas, Arizona,

Hundred of thousands of Ukrainian workers have mobilized to defend their country against the Russian invasion. Yet economic elites are using this moment to push through an unpopular liberalization agenda. (L-R) President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis, Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal, and European Commission president Ursula von

Sycophantic journalists and politicians make it seem as if deference to the British monarchy is the natural order of things. But the country over which Charles III now reigns rose up against his 17th-century namesake to challenge hereditary privilege. King Charles I awaits his execution in an illustration in an 1864 issue of Once a Week magazine. Charles I

Today marks 150 years since the first French edition of Capital. This wasn’t just a translation but a “completely revised” work — showing how Karl Marx’s research continually renewed his critical perspective on capitalist development. Karl Marx's proofing of the French translation of Capital, Volume I, turned into a thorough revision of certain sections.