As the French economist Thomas Piketty most recently exposed, capitalism, across time and space, has always tended to produce ever-greater economic inequality.
Capitalism, Mass Anger, and 2024 Elections
In the wake of his huge defeat on June 30, 2024, when 80 percent of voters rejected French “centrist” President Emmanuel Macron, he said he understood the French people’s anger. In the UK, Conservative loser Rishi Sunak said the same about the British people’s anger, as Labor leader Starmer now says as the anger explodes.
The Undemocratic Reality of Capitalism
Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably.
How Conservatives Are Plotting to Gut Americans’ Labor Rights
Kumho Tire herded workers into anti-union brainwashing sessions, fired union supporters, including a mother of seven who was eight months pregnant, and plastered the plant with anti-labor literature during the workers’ drive to join the United Steelworkers (USW).
How Workers Are Winning as the Nation Adds Jobs, Manufacturing
John Ralston went into bargaining with Transco last fall intending to negotiate one of the strongest union contracts in his three decades with the company.
A Professor on “Authorities” Who Order Police to Crush Student Protests
The Washington Post’s journalists recently exposed what many already suspected or knew. Donors from society’s richest 1 percent pressured university administrators and political leaders to use police and other means to crush peaceful student protests.
How Workers Are Defying Republican Officials in the South
By David McCall Tanya Gaines and her co-workers launched a union drive in 2014 because it was the only way to win livable wages, fair treatment, and safe working conditions at the Golden Dragon copper tube manufacturing plant in Pine Hill, Alabama, one of the state’s poorest areas. Workers anticipated management’s opposition, but they felt blindsided when […]
Why Workers and Employers Both Need Paid Family Leave
Mike Morales’s doctor advised him to take four weeks off for an important procedure, and the longtime crane operator readily agreed, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t lose a dime in pay or face other repercussions at work.
Why Capitalism Cannot Finally Repress Socialism, by Richard D. Wolff
Socialism is capitalism’s critical shadow. When lights shift, a shadow may seem to disappear, but sooner or later, with further shifts of light, it comes back. Capitalism’s ideologues have long fantasized that capitalism would finally outwit, outperform, and thereby overcome socialism: make the shadow vanish permanently. Like children, they bemoan their failure when, in the […]
How California’s Fast-Food Workers Won $20 an Hour
More than half a million fast-food workers in California are about to get a raise—not because of the voluntary generosity of their bosses, but as a result of a hard-won labor victory. Governor Gavin Newsom on September 28 signed AB 1228 into law; its title says it all: “Fast Food Council: health, safety, employment, and minimum wage.”