by Matt T. Huber

648 days ago

by Matias Vernengo
As inflation rises throughout the world, governments and economists are arguing about its cause. Many see excess demand as a root cause, with ports and distribution hubs backed up for days. Others cry wolf on government spending, others blame the increasing profits of billionaires and large firms. Vernengo hopes to pick apart these theories under a socialist lens.
1019 days ago

by Daniel Zamora

1079 days ago

by Paul Heideman
Heideman challenges the view that the Republican Party is becoming the party of the working class. He takes both a statistical and ideological approach.
1217 days ago

by Noam Chomsky
Chomsky reviews the growing international backlash to Israeli aggression against Palestine. He argues that in light of this, Israel has shifted further to the right, entering agreements like the Abraham Accords to firm "up its relations with the Gulf and North African dictatorships."
1218 days ago

by Catherine Liu
Liu looks at a deeply politicized event from 2018: a student of Smith College accused a janitor, other members of the staff, and the College president of racist bias when the police was called on her. While the president, social media, students, and much of the progressive sphere were immediate in their condemnation of the janitor and his actions, others saw the unwavering support of the student as representative of her privilege and a domination of "social justice" rhetoric even in light of counterfactual evidence.
1277 days ago

by Benjamin Y. Fong and Melissa Naschek
Fong and Naschek look at the rise of Non-governmental Organizations during the neoliberal period. They argue the following: "first, that NGOs function to amplify the influence of the private sector over social welfare institutions; and second, that their institutional logic generates a particular political culture that, while replete with radical rhetoric, does not and cannot challenge the basic structures of capitalism."
1282 days ago

by Roberto Veneziani
Veneziani summarizes and critiques John E. Roemer's contributions to socialist theory. He writes that "Socialism, Roemer has taught us, does not require central planning, bureaucratic price setting, or state ownership of the means of production, and there exists a fundamental difference between markets and capitalism. Markets may be a powerful coordinating mechanism and are likely indispensable to allocate resources in any advanced economy."
1287 days ago

by Bashir Abu Manneh
Abu-Manneh hopes to bring Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" back into "our own contemporary moment" by being "acutely aware of the challenges of radical political agency in the era of neoliberal capitalism." Abu-Manneh categorizes Fanon as a socialist, attempts to frame Fanon's view of violence as "part of a broader political strategy" for Algerian independence from colonial rule, and contextualize his arguments in today's discourse of identity politics.
1289 days ago

by Deepankar Basu
Basu looks to offer a "picture of the limitations of India's economic growth" by investigating three questions: "What is the role of capital accumulation in sustaining growth? What are the key determinants of capital accumulation?" and finally, "How has growth translated into improvements in the material conditions of the vast majority of the working people of India?"
1335 days ago

by Jason Brownlee
Brownlee details how American wars have changed in the last two decades. The electorate is largely against ground intervention, where troops undergo high-risk combat that resemble the “typical” wars of the past. Under the Obama administration, continued by Trump, and likely continued further under Biden, the US military apparatus has shifted to “shadow wars” using drones, bombings, and “targeted killings.” By doing this, they have largely avoided having to deal with the electorate or Congress, and pursue a never-ending cycle that balloons the defense budget.
1353 days ago

by Suzy Lee
Lee takes the following stance: "the fight for immigrants’ rights is justified not only by a humanitarian logic but by a strategic logic that understands an expansion of rights for immigrant workers can strengthen the working class as a whole." She reviews the effects that both the Trump administration and the pandemic have had on immigration, both from a policy perspective and public discourse, as well as the first steps the Biden administration has taken to bring back the "status quo" and push for better rights for immigrants.
1358 days ago

by Chris Maisano
Maisano reviews the current strengths and weaknesses of American organized labor in 2021. The early actions of the Biden Administration have shown the will to support labor unions, whose public approval "is at its highest level in fifty years." Although union density, otherwise known as union membership rate, has dropped in recent years, the change of administration and enormous government action that will be needed to pull us out of the coronavirus crisis could reinvigorate the labor movement across the United States.
1359 days ago

by David Kotz
Kotz argues that the current conditions of capitalism in the United States, including the growing inequality of recent years and the onset of the global pandemic, open the door for progressive policies. He cites the theory that capitalism is divided into social structures of accumulation (SSA) relative to the "form" of capitalism during that period. The neoliberal SSA is coming to an end: smaller and smaller economic growth simultaneously leads to increased inequality, which leads to more radical forms of politics to overhaul the broken system. Kotz believes the Biden administration has the ability to push for progressive change and open up a new era.
1360 days ago

by René Rojas
In October of 2020, following over a year of protests across Chile and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, 78% of voters decided to rewrite Chile's constitution. This overwhelming number came from record turnout in working-class and impoverished neighborhoods, signaling that the status quo of free market neoliberalism needed to meet its end. Rojas argues that the plebiscite, or referendum, was the culmination of both the 2019 popular rebellion and a slower organizational development of Chile's workers.
1404 days ago

by Gilbert Achcar interviews by Jeff Goodwin
In this interview with Achcar, Goodwin tries to uncover what has changed and remained the same, or even worsened, since the Arab Spring in 2011. Achcar argues that change did not come, even in Tunisia where the regime was toppled and democracy replaced it. He says that there is hope in smaller, local revolutionary committees that are looking to changing the economic structure of the region from the ground up, but that the process is going to take a long time and we shouldn't fall into Orientalism or nihilism.
1404 days ago

by Vivek Chibber
Edward Said's famous book "Orientalism" posited that there were two critical relationships between Western imperialism and its justifying discourse. The first is that the discourse was a "rationalization" for colonial rule, meaning that once rule was established, its cultural acceptance throughout society was rationalized to maintain power. The second argument is that the "cultural conditions" of the West were a direct cause of colonialism. In this article, Chibber looks to refute the second argument, claiming that the theory of political economy, not that of culturalism, is the correct one to explain Western colonialism.
1438 days ago

by Amber A'Lee Frost
In this review of the 2020 book "#HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice", Frost tears into the books premise: that social media has become an important place for activists. She argues that in reality, social media has largely failed at sustaining movements to achieve political goals. Hashtags appear and disappear, containing a discourse that can run through the population, but that doesn't actually bring real change.
1445 days ago

by René Rojas
The end of the 20th century saw the turn away from authoritarian regimes throughout much of South America. While some countries experienced the Pink Tide, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico underwent what Rojas refers to as progressive Neoliberalism. This center-left form of governing would ultimately reduce working-class power, sow distrust in government, and harm much of the economy for the vast majority of citizens.
1446 days ago

by Anand Gopal
In this piece, Gopal gives an extremely detailed account of the development of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and why the "Arab Spring" of 2011 ultimately failed. He argues that the movements did not have the "structural leverage" to force real change.
1448 days ago

by Ramaa Vasudevan
Vasudevan contrasts the terrible healthcare, social, and political response that the U.S. has had to the COVID-19 pandemic with the almost seamless response of the Federal Reserve in conjunction with the central bank and private companies to prevent another global financial crisis. This action, he argues, further enables U.S. hegemony by making emerging countries rely heavily in the dollar for economic relief, something they won't be able to turn back from easily.
1579 days ago

by John Roemer
Roemer argues that modern Socialism is best pursued through a decentralized manner that takes into account the efficiency of markets. By changing our society's ethos, he believes that we can achieve a more equal distribution of resources that is better for everybody.
1611 days ago