Category: Critique
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On Contesting Populism
Cultural similarities such as nationality, dress, composure, vocabulary, and music override income, employment, health, education, and physical safety as the basis for coming together. Populist movements are therefore always cross-class endeavors. On the radical left, our small-scale populism has us hemmed in with little to no presence beyond university campuses and subcultural radical scenes (punk,…
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The Performing Arts Proletariat vs. The Band Directors
As long as music has existed musicians and performing artists have always been considered laborers of their craft which is their music-making and performances on stage or the road. Even in larger ensembles like the orchestras and choirs of Bach and Handel, there were still amateur musicians who performed alongside the greats. When doing so…
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Yes, this is who we are: America’s 250-year history of political violence
By Maurizio Valsania from Università di Torino, originally published on September 12th, 2025 at theconversation.com under CC BY-ND 4.0 The day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University, commentators repeated a familiar refrain: “This isn’t who we are as Americans.” Others similarly weighed in. Whoopi Goldberg on…
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To Build our Power, We Must First Understand our Employer’s Power
While many unions do corporate research to design organizing or contract campaigns, it’s usually just a staff project. The members, and even local leaders, are expected to take marching orders from the staff team. This approach is backwards, write the authors. Their model involves members in the research right from the start, all the way…
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Objectivity is a myth – cultural values and beliefs always influence science, just like other professions
Over time, scientists realized that sperm are too weak to penetrate the egg and that the union is more mutual, with the two cells working together. It’s no coincidence that these findings were made in the same era when new cultural ideas of more egalitarian gender roles were taking hold.
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How and Why the US Authoritarian Left Betrayed Tigray
At breakneck speed, the cities and towns of Tigray, historical center of the Aksumite empire, were heavily shelled, toppling ancient relics alongside young bodies. In the span of one month, hundreds of civilians each died in massacres at Humera, Adigrat, and Aksum. The invaders mass-detained civilians in makeshift internment camps, where they allowed the sick and starved…
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“God Wants You to be an Aspiring Capitalist”
Pentecostal pastors in particular enjoy dedicated adherents, political and international patronage. David Oyedepo (Africa’s richest pastor), Enoch Adeboye, Jerry Eze, Biodun Fatoyinbo, Paul and Betsy Eneche, and many others have even become capitalists themselves. They all have churches that are aligned with the so-called prosperity gospel message, preaching that health and wealth are the exclusive…
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A Civilian-Led Solution to Addressing Cartels
While both countries continue to rely on military efforts to counterattack drug cartels, families are demanding technical and financial assistance to accelerate the search of the missing and the identification of the more than 70,000 bodies that remain in the forensic backlog. As a first step, they seek to initiate a national dialogue, with the…
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Anarchism, the Welfare State, and Social Assistance
The inevitability of unemployment under capitalism is not borne of the personal shortcomings of an individual worker, or particular policies of the “economy” or “government,” it is a bred in the bone condition of capitalism and the State. Anarchism would put an end to unemployment, by sharing the necessary work between all those able, rather…
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AI (so-called) is made possible by a hyper-exploited human workforce
These workers are the lifeblood of the burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Without them, products such as ChatGPT simply would not exist. That’s because the data they label helps AI systems “learn”. Self-driving cars, for example, rely on labelled video footage to distinguish pedestrians from road signs. Large language models such as ChatGPT rely on…
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