Britney Spears once famously said, “You gotta work bitch,” and as often is the case, Comrade Spears was exactly right. Few qualities are as lauded under capitalism as hard work. Conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza tell us that socialism, even if it works, will create a...
Jacobin
The Grinding War in Ukraine Could Have Ended a Long Time Ago
An early peace deal could have ended the bloody war in Ukraine. But NATO opposition and revelations about the Russian massacre of civilians at Bucha, along with US media that all but ignored potential routes to peace, dashed those hopes. A Ukrainian tank moves on a...
Liz Truss’s Press Tour Is an Exercise in Reality Denial
Britain’s short-lived Tory prime minister Liz Truss has finally emerged from hiding to tell the story of her less than two months at 10 Downing Street, and she’s already rewriting history. Liz Truss’s forty-nine day stint as UK prime minister will probably be...
The Housing Crisis Will Persist Even If Housing Prices Fall
In the UK, housing prices are thankfully forecast to drop this year. But without a serious investment in social housing from the government, the housing crisis isn’t going to end. Tower blocks in St. Johns Wood, London. (mattbuck / Wikimedia Commons) While 2023 is...
The Battle to Control Microchip Supplies Will Define the Twenty-First Century
If energy resources are the heart of global capitalism, pumping fuel around its body to keep it accumulating, its brain is made up of trillions of semiconductors. Cars, bombs, phones, refrigerators, even energy systems — today, they all rely on the computer processing...
In South Africa and Elsewhere, Democracy Has to Deliver the Goods
In South Africa, popular disillusionment with the inequality of the postapartheid order runs so deep that support for authoritarianism is on the rise. It’s a striking reminder that democracy must deliver material gains for the masses to remain a vibrant force....
Eugene V. Debs: We Should Scorn the Rich and Powerful, Even in Death
Every time a member of the ruling class passes away, we’re expected to bow our heads in reverence and sing their praises. Writing in 1901, Eugene Debs offered a different approach: tell the unvarnished truth about the tyranny of the rich and powerful. Illustration of...
Tom Nairn Held a Mirror Up to a Britain in Decline
The United Kingdom, commentators are fond of remarking, is not properly speaking the name of a country but of a political settlement. Neither is Great Britain — an imperial moniker that denotes a territory whose borders have been drawn on the Welsh and the Jamaican...
The US Is Doing Far Worse Than Floating Balloons in Other Countries’ Airspace
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the recently shot-down Chinese balloon was indeed spying. The US doesn’t like other countries snooping on them — something the US is constantly doing all over the planet. A Chinese balloon flies above Charlotte, North Carolina,...
Russell Brand: Elites Are Using Liberal Ideas to Justify Inequality
The comedian, actor, and political activist Russell Brand on political polarization and how establishment voices attempt to silence dissent. Russell Brand speaks onstage during MusiCares Person of the Year honoring Aerosmith at West Hall at Los Angeles Convention...
Inland Empire Amazon Workers Say They’ve Forced Concessions From Bosses by Organizing
Despite recent breakthroughs in Amazon organizing nationally, it’s still a tough slog for workers to get the company to change. But workers at an Inland Empire, California, Amazon facility recently showed that it’s possible. Amazon workers in Inland Empire,...
Every State-Level Parental Leave Program in the US Is Horrendous
Thanks to exclusionary work history requirements, the 12 state parental leave programs in the US make one in three women ineligible for benefits on average. It doesn’t have to be this way. All twelve state parental leave programs in the US have work history...