Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 presidential election has had at least one interesting consequence: an acknowledgment that voters responded forcefully to an anxiety about their economic well-being. A version of November’s lessons might be applied to the socialist left as well — we overlook people’s material interests at our own peril.

In this issue’s lead article, I examine radical theorists’ abandonment of materialism over the past quarter century and offer both an elaboration and a defense of materialist analysis. Building on that approach, Quentin Wheeler-Bell wades into the debate on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and argues that while proponents defend it as a key component of racial justice, it is in fact something far narrower. Wheeler-Bell suggests that DEI is better understood not as a moral crusade against racism but as a strategy to advance the material interests of minority professional classes.

One of the promises of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution was that it would be built around the needs and material aspirations of Venezuela’s poor and working classes.