Vol 7 No 2

Summer 2023
  • Matías Vernengo

Lulismo’s Past and Present

Lula’s return to the Brazilian presidency opens up the possibility of deepening democracy and expanding the scope of egalitarian advance. I argue that he can in fact pursue expansionary fiscal and redistributive policies that would improve the conditions of his political base.

  • Benjamin Y. Fong

The Jobs and Freedom Strategy

Even though it is scarcely remembered today, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph laid out a path forward for the civil rights movement — the Jobs and Freedom Strategy — that bears striking relevance to the present.

  • Colin Gordon

Federalism and Class Struggle

American federalism is often touted as a source of local democratic engagement, political innovation, and responsive public policy. But in practice, the American states have served not as “laboratories of democracy” but as laboratories of autocracy and inequality that effectively stymie social reform, fragment social protection, and undermine social citizenship.

  • Zine Magubane

The Class Politics of Race

Review of Not So Black and White: A History of Race From White Supremacy to Identity Politics by Kenan Malik (Hurst, 2023)

  • Robin Archer

War and Democratic Struggle

Can wars foster democracy? Many scholars have argued that repression radicalizes labor. But while Britain’s reformist labor movement saw further incremental democratization, its more revolutionary Italian counterpart saw democracy crushed. In a recent book, Elizabeth Kier argues that radicalism ignited a backlash leading to Fascism, but the result had more to do with the persistent power of an elite minority.

Review

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America Broke Up Iraq Into Sectarian Pieces

A Stranger in Your Own City is a powerful account of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and its catastrophic effects on the Iraqi people. Does the Tishreen uprising mark the beginning of the end of Iraq’s sectarian political structure?