By Stefan Sykes, NBC News The number of Americans living in poverty grew by 8 million since May, according to a Columbia University study, which found an increase in poverty rates after early coronavirus relief ended without more to follow. Although the federal Cares Act, which gave Americans […]
Imagine that. It really is a shame that these lame ass progressives and social democrats, not too mention anti-“big government” conservatives, do not recognize that the warfare state, welfare state, therapeutic state, police state, and corporate state are interconnected with and mutually supportive of each other.
By Christina Gish Hill, In These Times Historians know that turkey and corn were part of the first Thanksgiving, when Wampanoag peoples shared a harvest meal with the pilgrims of Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts. And traditional Native American farming practices tell us that squash and beans likely were part […]
The SJWish terminology and rhetoric in this aside, this is actually a very good discussion of the class disparities associated with the impact of the pandemic. The impact of the responses to the pandemic has largely been to allow the upper-middle and upper classes to go on a […]
In the late 1980s, I used to hang out with a lot of Marxist-types who would talk about how the then-nascent era of globalization would be a return to the 19th century model of class relations. At the time, I figured they were exaggerating, but now I tend […]
Eric Weinstein’s discussion of the impact of digital capitalism sounds almost like Marx talking about the impact of industrial capitalism. I’d argue today’s capitalism is more like Capitalism 4.0 following mercantilism and the age of exploration, the industrial revolution, and the managerial revolution.
To ask the question is to answer it. He was the plutocrats’ handpicked frontman to purge the Orange Man. Hedges is way too much of a conventional liberal ideologue for my tastes, and this interview contains a fair amount of obvious hyperbole, but he’s interesting is that he […]
One of the worst things about mainstream “conservatives” is that they give criticism of “big government” or “statism” a bad name. The US energy sector functions on the standard state-capitalist crony-capitalist corporate-welfarist model. Proponents of the “Green New Deal” merely want to shift its focus away from fossil […]
Krystal and Saager totally lose me with their affirmation of Richard Wolff’s praise for China’s response to COVID-19. China is a test market for the kinds of state repression global and US national elites want to bring to the West. Unfortunately, if you scratch a right-wing populist like […]
A genuine “multi-order world order” would probably look a lot like the world between 1500 and 1800 before the full consolidation of modern imperialism. Not any kind of anarchistic golden age to be sure, but one where there were distinctive civilizations and cultures with their own spheres of […]
So much for the Democrats’ “socialism.” Founder of The Daily Poster, David Sirota, weighs in on Joe Biden’s potential pick to run the Office of Budget and Management.
Only a Republican could somehow manage to make Alexandria look like a genius in comparison. Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti weigh in on the Twitter spat between AOC and Nikki Haley over paying Americans to stay home. They also discuss spending trends that reveal people are spending more […]
Only on ATS will you find a “let’s destroy business” article right next to a “let’s bring back the gold standard” article. By Benjamin Franks ‘Anarcho’-capitalism has for decades occupied a small but significant position within ‘business ethics’, while the anarchism associated with the larger traditions of workers […]
By Stefan Gleason, Money Metals Exchange It was only after he entered politics that President Donald Trump began to fully grasp the bias, dishonesty, and fakeness that runs throughout the so-called mainstream media. But gold bugs and sound money advocates have long known to distrust the reporting of […]
I always thought Kim is too intelligent and independently minded to be a party-line leftist.
Hopefully, a grim winter will lead to some nice springtime insurrections. Professor of Economics, Richard Wolff, discusses how the lack of a stimulus will impact the American people.
Some good economic commentary in this. The bad news is that the Third Worldization of the US class system will be complete once this pandemic thing passes. The good news is that more lumpenproletarian insurrections are on the way. Saagar Enjeti explains how the government’s response to Covid-19 […]
By Jonathan Kay, Quillette “While art has long maintained a symbiotic relationship with bourgeois state power, there’s still something deeply unsettling about our supposedly ‘radical’ artists manufacturing consent on behalf of one of our two entrenched capitalist parties,” wrote artist and self-described “culturally agnostic Marxist” Adam Lehrer in […]
The gist of this article is that Trumpism actually has nothing to do with fascism but could possibly, kinda sorta, be a stepping stone to fascism, maybe. Sometimes I think these “anti-fascist” people actually want fascism to happen so they can have something to feel heroic and/or self-righteous […]
Jacobin contributing editor, Matt Karp, discusses what shifts in the Democratic coalition mean for the future of the party.
The socioeconomic data in this is interesting. Saagar Enjeti explains why a media landscape without Donald Trump is “boring,” he also predicts the future political landscape.
Actually, “driving partisanship” was the best thing Koch ever did. Thanks, Charlie. Team Rising discusses Charles Koch’s new book and his statements about partisanship.
This article nails it down pretty down. The main thing I would add is the left’s embrace of scientism (“science” is not merely a process capable of generating error like anything else but the modern version of a papal bull) and therapeutism (“health” is the highest value and […]
I’ve generally noticed that the people with the best foreign policy analysis tend to be hardcore libertarians/an-caps or hardcore Marxist-Leninists/Maoists. The same is true of class analysis. Both will point out that a middle-class American is within the global 1% of income level. Jason also explains how most […]
The most immediately obvious problem with this article is that it merely makes the left-opposition into an appendage of the Democratic Party (to the degree they are not already) held captive by rightwingophobia. Although a valid point the article makes is that the neocons will indeed attempt to […]
This is a somewhat interesting analysis from a left-communist/an-com/Bordigist perspective. Listen here.
Caleb Maupin on the rising ruling class that is becoming dominant among the US power elite.
By James K. Galbreath, The Nation The New Industrial State was my father’s great work of theory. First published in 1967, nearly a decade after the triumph of The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State went beyond criticism of orthodox economics, beyond Marx and beyond Keynes—toward a full […]
The richest ruling class in history presiding over a Third World class system. Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss The Labor Department’s report that jobless claims hit 709,000 for the week ending Nov. 7, down from 757,000 the week before.
A pretty good discussion of automation is included in this. Founder of Humanity Forward, Andrew Yang, reacts to the results of the 2020 election. He also discusses his hope for the future of UBI.
I suspect the neocons are planning to find someone they can use to harness the energy of Trumpism toward their own ends, but without the loose cannon of Trump himself. In fact, I’m certain of it. They were successful at embedding themselves in the administration to a large […]
6 Outstanding Students Earn Thousands in Tuition Assistance Eagle, Idaho (November 10, 2020) – Six outstanding students beat out more than 100 of their high-school and college peers in making the best case for sound money through an international, gold-backed scholarship competition… …and the winners walked away with a […]
By Marcel Vieta This article maps out a possible genealogy of autogestión – workers’ self-management – through ‘the stream of self-determination’ that historically grounds and flows through it. While its practices among working people long predate the modern capitalist era, theoretical and political considerations of autogestión as the […]
By Benjamin Franks This paper distinguishes some of the main currents in British anarchism at the time of the miners’ strike. It explores the influence of these libertarian movements on the conflict in the coalfield and assesses how the strike influenced the development of British anarchisms. Introduction If […]
The main problem I see with this article is that no matter how silly professional “anti-racists”(many of whom are white people looking for a pat on the back) can often be, conservatives typically either believe that class does not exist, or if it does that class domination is […]
If anything, Trump has moved things leftward. His voters this time were the most diverse of any Republican voters ever. He has made protectionist and isolationist rhetoric nominally acceptable among conservatives, and he has pushed the left further left in their reaction against him. Krystal Ball explains why […]
The main thing I get from this analysis is that “left-libertarian” ideas (broadly defined) are actually rather popular even if they have no political representation.
This is an absolute must-read. By Randi Nord The United States is in for some dark times and I find it hard to be optimistic right now. Over the past four years, neoconservative and neoliberal factions of the ruling class previously at odds (at least publicly) have put […]
Gradually, the Chinese “social credit” system will be imported into the Western countries. By Gavin Haynes, Unherd Let’s call her Laura. In September, Laura was out in Leeds City Centre, buying some bits, when her card was declined. Funny, she thought. She definitely wasn’t in the red. But […]
The US continues to drift leftward in virtually every social and cultural category. The amount of “diversity firsts” in the election was significant and even Trump voters were more “diverse” this time around than they were in 2016. The only major group with which Trump lost voters were […]
He got co-opted by neocons on foreign policy and by neoliberals on economics. Imagine that. Saagar Enjeti lays out who is to blame for Donald Trump’s election loss.
The further left the Democratic candidates, the better they seemed to do. The distinction between the economic left and the cultural left is important as well. Krystal Ball explains the “caveats” that come along with Joe Biden’s victory in the Presidential Election.
To ask the question is to answer it. All the neocons will have to do is start using some Christian Democrat-like economic rhetoric and they can continue to co-opt the economic nationalist wing of the working class the way they’ve co-opted social conservatives and pro-lifers. Exec. Director of […]
By Andrew Sullivan The “wisdom of the American people” is a horrifying cliché, routinely hauled out every four years as pious pabulum by those whose candidate just won. But the complicated and close election results of 2020, in so far as we can understand them at this point […]
Their five years of pretend Trumpism aside, it’s obvious FOX can’t wait to be rid of Trump. The last thing the right-wing of the ruling class wants is a head of state that even mildly fakes isolationist/non-interventionist or anti-neoliberal views on foreign policy and economics, thereby popularizing and […]
By Jeff Shantz As capitalist societies in the twenty-first century move from crisis to crisis, oppositional movements in the global North (which have been somewhat stymied (despite ephemeral manifestations like Occupy) are confronted with the pressing need to develop organizational infrastructures that might prepare the ground for a […]
The bulk of the world system explained very nicely in a single Wikipedia entry. Is it merely a coincidence that the “cultural Marxist” revolution happened at the same time as the ascendence of the transnational capitalist class? Far too many Western radicals do not understand the degree to […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
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