Left-wing politics for generations was focused on the “labor question” in opposing capitalism. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, the Left became increasingly preoccupied with inequality. The labor question faded in significance, as did the opposition to capitalism. This essay examines why that happened and its consequences.
- Matt T. Huber
- Fred Stafford
Market and climate chaos reveal electricity as a key site of struggle in the twenty-first century. The capitalist class and the Left are both split between capitalist utilities and unions on one side and big tech, renewable capital, and green NGOs on the other. The socialist path is with labor.
Martin Indyk’s new book on Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East is more critical than one might expect from a friend of the controversial secretary of state. Kissinger’s role in negotiating disengagement agreements between Israel, Egypt, and Syria after the October 1973 war is, for some, a great achievement in contrast to his role in the US defeat in Vietnam and the secret war in Cambodia. The archival record suggests otherwise.
The Black Panthers were a source of revolutionary inspiration during the 1960s and beyond, but building a powerful left majority requires keen analysis of society as it exists and the challenges we now face. Jim Vernon misses how seismic changes in black life have rendered New Left faith in the black vanguard obsolete.
Peter J. Kalliney’s The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature offers a radical alternative to the dominant theoretical frameworks on world literature. It highlights the defining influence of the Cold War and its aesthetic debates in the formation of the literatures from the postcolonial world.