Vol 8 No 3
Fall 2024The Flight From Materialism
One of the consequences of the Left’s intellectual decline has been a turn away from materialism. This article addresses some of the most common criticisms of materialist understandings of politics and shows that they are unfounded. It then makes a case for why the approach is not only legitimate but necessary.
Connective Labor After Braverman
In The Last Human Job, Allison Pugh tracks the rise and degradation of connective labor in the contestation over the automation frontier. As forms of work shift amid de-skilling and commodification, the book narrates the growth of a quintessentially humanistic labor, the loss of which would be a detriment to society as a whole. Harry Braverman’s classic text Labor and Monopoly Capital offers insight into modern-day struggles over the labor process, highlighting the need for connective workers to build power at the point of production.
From Chávez to Maduro
For over a decade, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution offered leftists hope that another world was possible. This hope was based on real successes but rested on unsustainable foundations. As Nicolás Maduro tries to shore up his embattled government, it is time to take stock of Chavismo’s impressive achievements and its profound shortcomings.
DEI as Elite Class Strategy
This paper critiques diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for its focus on access to elite institutions. This focus serves the class interests of the diverse professional-managerial class while neglecting the material needs of most blacks. In doing so, DEI reinforces an integrationist vision of the civil rights movement, hypocritically presenting itself as aligned with the movement’s radical social democratic vision.
What Are Parties For?
If “democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties,” then democracy is in a bad way. In their important new book, The Hollow Parties, Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld trace the transformation of the world’s first mass parties into rival “blobs” with no ongoing presence in people’s daily lives.
How Can Workers Organize Against Capital Today?
John Womack’s labor strategy is about workers finding the capacity to "wound capital to make it yield anything.” But the massive challenge in today’s deindustrialized economy is locating where that leverage actually lies.
New Labour Totally Subordinated Labour to Capital
Why was New Labour “intensely relaxed” about “people getting filthy rich”? The answer lies in a comprehensive analysis and critique of Labourism itself, which the new book Futures of Socialism fails to deliver.
Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy to Boost Capital
Austerity policies have their roots in efforts by economic elites to crush working-class power after WWI and redistribute income upward. To reverse austerity, democratic control over economic policymaking is essential.
How Did the Paris Commune Shape British Culture?
British literary responses to the Paris Commune of 1871 expressed shock and fear about the collapse of the bourgeois social order. But they also registered sympathy with the Communards and their revolutionary aspirations.
Culture Can’t Explain the Arab Revolts
Violence and Representation in the Arab Uprising shows how the Arab revolts empowered democratic citizenship. But a focus on vibrant cultural creativity is no substitute for concrete analysis of political agency and economic structure.
“Settler Colonialism” Can’t Fully Explain Our World
Settler colonialism is often described as a singular, transnational mode of domination. But it’s impossible to understand colonialism without political economy and material interests.