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Class & Inequality, Politics

Portrait of the United States as a Developing Country

A sweeping new history of U.S. capitalism finds that economic gains have always been driven by the state.

Justin H. Vassallo

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Class & Inequality

Class & Inequality, Politics

Our Insurance Dystopia

Private insurance companies have long dominated the provision of social security in the United States, but resistance is growing.

Caley Horan

Class & Inequality, Politics

In the Common Interest

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South in the run-up to the Civil War.

Chris Hong, Robert Manduca, Nic Johnson

Class & Inequality, Law & Justice

Housing Is a Social Good

The American Jobs Plan mirrors past efforts at affordable housing that contributed to our problems and failed Black Americans. We need to take housing out of the private market.

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, H. Jacob Carlson

Class & Inequality, Politics

How Biden Could Save Welfare

Direct payments to families should replace backdoor tax breaks, which obscure the failures of capitalism to sustain social reproduction.

Ben Zdencanovic

Class & Inequality, Politics

The Ever Given and the Monstrosity of Maritime Capitalism

Two timely new books unmask the colossal shipping industry behind global trade, whose monstrous pursuit of profit has long wreaked havoc on laborers and the seas they sail through.

Charmaine Chua

Class & Inequality, Race

“Progress for People of Color Doesn’t Come at White Folks’ Expense”

A conversation with Heather C. McGhee about the zero-sum thinking that has long dominated American attitudes to race and wealth—and how to organize to secure public goods for everyone.

Heather C. McGhee, Archon Fung

Class & Inequality

Employers, Not Immigrants, Hurt American Workers

Non-college-educated U.S.-born workers have every reason to be enraged by declining wages and living standards, but more restrictive immigration policies won’t solve these problems.

Ruth Milkman

Class & Inequality

Amazon after Bessemer

Unions are just one element of a broader push to transform the company. Coalitions forged during the pandemic point the way forward—with a radical vision of worker and community control.

Nantina Vgontzas

Class & Inequality, Politics

The New Politics of Higher Education

Why the left’s turn from higher education has coincided with a newfound conservative appreciation for it.

Marshall Steinbaum

Class & Inequality, Politics

“Marx’s Old Mole is Right Beneath the Surface”

Noam Chomsky on his new book, the Capitol coup attempt, 2020 unrest, and the prospects for progress under Biden.

Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

Class & Inequality, Law & Justice

The Other Nuremberg Trials, Seventy-Five Years On

Failures in prosecuting the businessmen who profited from the Nazi war machine show just how far postwar Europe and America were willing to go in the Cold War quest to protect capitalism. 

Erica X Eisen

Class & Inequality, Law & Justice

Time Is the Universal Measure of Freedom

Labor activists once understood time to be a checking mechanism on market activity. In our own era of uncontrolled working hours, this is a vision of freedom worth recapturing.

Mike Konczal

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