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The language of capitalism isn’t just annoying, it’s dangerous
A new book argues that words like “innovation” are doing more than telling you who to avoid at parties.
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Contemporary capitalism and the world of work
The most significant feature of contemporary capitalism which is of relevance to the world of work is its inability to provide work to a substantial proportion of persons looking for it.
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We need to strengthen the public in the U.S. public sector
Many people have given up on the idea of government as an instrument of progressive social change, especially the federal government.
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Amazon, Google & Big Tech’s productivity paradox
Whatever you may think of the multi-billionaire founders of Amazon and Alphabet-Google,(1) there would seem to be one undeniable fact about their companies: they have massively improved productivity. Amazon has an e-commerce system that delivers very efficiently; Google has revolutionised Internet search.
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Prisoner prophet: revisiting George Jackson’s analysis of systemic fascism
The rise of Donald Trump has brought talk of fascism to the forefront. While comparing U.S. Presidents to Hitler is certainly nothing new–both Obama and W. Bush were regularly characterized as such by their haters–Trump’s emergence on the national political scene comes at a very peculiar moment in U.S. history.
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When media say ‘working class,’ they don’t necessarily mean workers—but they do mean White
Since the 2016 elections, corporate media narratives about U.S. politics have fixated on the “white working class” as a pivotal demographic, presented as a hardscrabble assortment of disaffected outsiders.
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The law versus worker rights
Organizing a union is no easy task in the United States. Although organizing a union is supposed to be a protected right, businesses regularly fire union supporters knowing that they face minimal punishment even if found guilty for their actions. In fact, the rights of all workers, regardless of their interest in unionization, are being whittled down. Simply put, U.S. law doesn’t work for workers.
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Realities and challenges of recuperated workplaces in Argentina
In this interview we talk to Andrés Ruggeri, anthropologist and researcher who directs the Facultad Abierta programme, dedicated to researching and supporting companies and factories recuperated by their workers. Ruggeri tells us about the history of this movement, the challenges it faces, the relations with recent governments in Argentina, and much more.
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Never have corporate profits outgrown employee compensation so clearly and for so long
Those aren’t my words. The quotation that forms the title of this post is from a recent Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis blog post.
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Women workers bring Glasgow to a standstill
Council staff make history with biggest strike over equal pay.
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Courts, Kavanaugh, and constitutional hardball
On November 22, 1895 Eugene V. Debs stepped outside of the Woodstock Jail in Chicago, where he had been imprisoned for six months. Debs, the President of the American Railway Union, had been one of the leaders of the Pullman Strike of 1894, considered by many to be the first major national strike in American labor history.
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“A lot remains to be done”: interview with Aleida Guevara
“There are two things I will never accept, colonialism and racism. What many people do not realize is that Europe’s wealth is built on five centuries of exploitation of third world peoples, and that there is something like a historical obligation of reparation, of solidarity at least.”
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In and against the state
Labour needs to develop a socialist strategy that goes beyond a single election manifesto. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin look at the challenge of state transformation.
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Washington walkouts win teachers big raises
Fifteen districts started the school year on strike in Washington state—the latest to ride the West Virginia wave.
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The history of the workers’ unemployment insurance bill
At a time when the American population is radicalizing, when popular movements are coalescing around “radical” demands—Medicare for All, the abolition of ICE, tuition-free college, etc.—it can be useful to draw collective inspiration from the Workers’ Bill proposed by the U.S. communist party in 1930.
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Popular economy workers and social Argentinian leaders, imprisoned
A group of union leaders, popular economy advocates, Senegalese street vendors, and militants from the Excluded Workers Movement and CTEP (MTE-CTEP) were taken into jail by Argentine police, in a situation marked by a high dose of violence and violation of their human rights Buenos Aires City.
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Socialism is about workers, not wealth funds
The Social Wealth Fund plan is insidious in the sense that it has the capacity to redirect vast amounts of energy and resources toward a goal presented as “socialist” when in reality it is fundamentally incompatible with socialism. We must bring the discussion out into the open to prevent such seductive ideas from compromising the basic vision and integrity of socialism.
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Labor and human social metabolism (part 1)
Our global ecological crisis has created an increasing interest in Marx’s theory of metabolic rift as a crucial aspect of capitalism (Foster 2013). To appreciate fully how capitalism creates this rift, it is important to examine the human metabolic relation with nature in general and theoretical terms.
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Why clubbing employment and work in India is misleading
This lack of distinction explains the decline in women’s workforce participation rates. The decline reflects a shift from paid to unpaid work.
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Gender, Labor, & Law with Emma Caterine
In this episode, we speak with Emma Caterine (@emmacaterineDSA), a law graduate and writer with more than a decade of experience working within economic justice, feminist, LGBTQ, and racial justice movements. We talk Democratic Socialists of America, MMT, the advantages of a federal jobs guarantee over a universal basic income, the place for sex work in a jobs guarantee program.