A moment in which tens of thousands of workers are on strike — at John Deere, at Kellogg’s, at Warrior Met Coal—might seem like a strange time to talk about a “right” to strike. But a legal right to strike must include the right to return to the job when the strike is over — win, lose or draw — and U.S. workers haven’t had that right since corporations and Ronald Reagan’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conspired to weaponize a long-dormant Supreme Court decision to legalize union-busting…Strikes are contagious. | more…
The short answer is that when the U.S. was involved in Afghanistan, we cut deals with many warlords, shorthand for gangsters, that’s number one. Number two: Afghanistan is quite rich with mineral wealth, which ironically enough, may end up going to the People’s Republic of China, which is quite close to the Pakistanis, which was the major creator and backer of the Taliban, who are now in power. The third point, however, is that the Taliban is going to have a hard way to go…” | more…
‘Radical Seattle’ identifies the IWW as a catalyst for the germination of a class consciousness that encouraged individual laborers to recognize a kinship in their struggle and respond collectively. | more…
It is a promising thing when a book titled Can the Working Class Change the World? feels current amid national and global upheaval, despite having been published two years ago…. | more…
I read this gorgeous, furious book while teaching the first half of the U. S. history survey: 1607–1877….In this book as well as its recent antecedent, ‘The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean,’ Horne turns to examine the earlier foundations of empire and racial capitalism. Unlike much of his other work, these books are primarily secondary-source–driven. But Horne is that historian, as skilled in the pyrotechnics of historiographical revision as he is at archival spelunking. | more…
In a discussion of the new book, “Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts Against Venezuel,” Justin Podur clarifies: What they’re doing in Colombia is what they say is happening in Venezuela…” | more…
Russell provides sound advice for those negotiating about the terms of these defined benefit plans, which still number 50,000 and have 60 million participants among active or retired workers. As he notes, in the current bargaining environment, “participants and their union representatives are more likely to be thinking defensively”… | more…
This thesis was provocative for several reasons, but perhaps most of all because it implied that once the material roots of slavery had been ripped up, the modern world would finally witness the progressive erosion of anti-Black politics and culture… | more…
Value Chains thoroughly and powerfully critiques modern-day forms of capitalism by bringing back to the table the much-needed analytical lens of imperialism to show the continuities of unevenness, an unequal world economic system, and the dominance of powerful corporations and nations over other regions, places, economies, labour and resources. | more…
It isn’t all black and white, of course. “Mastery over nature” doesn’t by definition preclude environmental conservation, nor does indigeneity bar overexploitation. But neither is the resulting system a mush of gray. For capitalists themselves cast the operative distinctions here as a matter of celebrated principle. | more…
“Dr. Horne, you’re from Saint Louis, and your younger brother is a Jazz musician and…I was wondering if you could paint the picture of when jazz first entered your world and psyche.” | more…
Marx’s reflections assume the existence of a money commodity, in this case gold. If a commodity functions as money, then the value of the money commodity is no more imaginary than the value of other commodities…. | more…
Born in a Jim Crow hospital. Attended racially segregated “apartheid schools.” Grew up in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis, an area similar to Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and home to several prominent Black businesses that were erased forever by racially motivated construction projects… | more…
