Vol 8 No 3

Fall 2024
  • Vivek Chibber

The 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.

  • Nicole Aschoff

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.

  • Gabriel Hetland

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.

  • Quentin Wheeler-Bell

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.

  • Chris Maisano

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.

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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.