In Germany, at least 8,000 people go to jail each year for failing to pay public transit tickets. The relevant part of the criminal code was introduced under the Nazis — yet is still routinely used to imprison mostly poor non-payers. An employee of the Hochbahn guard...
Abundance is the precondition of socialism, but socialism is also the precondition of abundance. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11939 Review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Simon & Schuster, 2025) “Socialism means plenty for all. We...
Electing Zohran Mamdani is just the beginning. To actually win his agenda against billionaire opposition, we need to build popular power — permanent grassroots organizations that can mobilize tens of thousands to have his back when the fight gets real. Zohran Mamdani...
Italy’s small textile firms have long been considered nearly impossible to organize. But a recent wave of successful simultaneous strikes is expanding possibilities for Italy’s hyperexploited immigrant workforce. A new model of simultaneous, coordinated strikes across...
For decades, liberal humanitarianism argued that the international community should take military action against states engaged in extreme human rights abuses. Well, there’s no way to argue that Israel isn’t exactly such a state. Israeli tanks near the border fence...
The new party announced by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana shows that Gaza has become a key fault line in British politics. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party can no longer rely on silencing the Left. Jeremy Corbyn speaking during a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in...
With Europe in ruins in 1945, Bertolt Brecht wrote that war “has been discredited for some time to come.” That period seems to be meeting its end, as European states push a new era of rearmament. Portrait of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. (Fred Stein Archive /...
Children in the US are 80 percent more likely to die than children in peer nations. Causes range from lax gun laws to privatized health care. What connects them all is a corrosive culture of individualism that makes child safety parents’ business alone. A mother...
In Berlin, TikTok wants to replace 160 employees with AI. If the company is successful, many others will follow suit — but workers are fighting back with a strike. Laid off TikTok employees protest in Berlin, Germany, on July 17, 2025. (Halil Sagirkaya / Anadolu via...
Democratic deliberation asks us to meet as moral equals, exchange reasons for our beliefs, consider evidence, and remain open to changing our minds. Evidence from real-world examples shows that it can reduce polarization and deepen public judgment. Joe Biden and...
Will we ever get past the dominance of superhero movies in mainstream American cinema? Will they ever become any good? The new light, bright, poppy Fantastic Four movie directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision) is a big hit just two weeks after James Gunn’s light,...
Historian Nelson Lichtenstein on the life, influences, and “sophisticated yet lucid brand of Marxism” of the late, great writer Mike Davis. Mike Davis, photographed on January 2, 2017. (Archinect.com / Wikimedia Commons) In 2022, when Mike Davis died at age...