A century ago, millions of working people were dying so that the richest capitalist countries could carve up the globe among them. In Russia, the people were suffering wartime deaths and starvation on top of suffocating repression by an all-powerful monarchy. On International Women’s Day 1917 (in February by the old Russian calendar), women textile… Read more »
Not a day goes by that U.S. politicians, media pundits and career spies don’t warn of chilling dangers from Russia. Why did Russia again become so despised? Political obfuscation and distraction at home are motivators. So are geopolitical jockeying for power and the economic need to keep the military-industrial complex fully charged up. Democrats, a… Read more »
With his passionate commitment to civil and labor rights and his outsized organizing talents, Bayard Rustin helped to shape the Civil Rights Movement.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Volume I of Marx’s Capital, a book with the most profound impact on human society of any political work in history.
Nov. 5 of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Everett Massacre in Washington state, where members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or “Wobblies”) were shot by vigilantes. Though a tragic day in local labor history, it was one of many milestones in the growth of labor militancy in response to… Read more »
Clinton actually beat Trump by about a million votes. Yet, absurdly, he is the next prez. Twice in the last five presidential elections the popular vote winner lost. Why? Because the Electoral College was written into the U.S. Constitution to undermine democracy and uphold slave-owners power. When the Constitution was drafted most states granted voting… Read more »
The steep price that U.S. workers pay for having no independent political voice is hitting home with Donald Trump’s upset victory. Many voters, squeezed between shrinking paychecks and inflation, saw this election as a referendum on the beltway insiders they associate with neoliberalism. With no working class option to choose, many white working class voters… Read more »
The Feb. 15 vote by workers at Boeing’s South Carolina Dreamliner plant against being represented by the Machinists union was portrayed in the press as another case of workers saying, “Union, No!” That’s not the whole story. Before the vote, Boeing saturated the airwaves with hype designed to scare their employees into rejecting unionization. Workers… Read more »
Read Rachel Holmes’ sensitive and absorbing biography of Eleanor Marx and you’ll fall in love with a radical heroine. In Eleanor Marx: A Life (Bloomsbury Press, 2015), the Karl Marx family and the 19th century socialist movement are vividly portrayed. Eleanor Marx is revealed as an important political leader, whom Holmes credits with being the… Read more »
“I guess if I’d had any sense I’d a been a little scared, but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do to me was kill me, and it seemed like they’ve been trying to do that ever since I could remember.” That was the ringing voice of Fannie Lou… Read more »
