Let’s Not Change the World After All
On the broad American left, internationalism used to be as common—and as essential—as breathing. What happened?
Spring 2025
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James Connolly: The Irish Rebel Abroad
An excerpt from A Full Life: James Connolly the Irish Rebel, illustrated by Tom Keough, edited by Paul Buhle, and published by PM Press/Hungarian Literature Fund. Reprinted with permission. Renewed recognition of James Connolly’s life and work, his triumphs and his tragedies, …
Belabored Podcast #100: How Uprisings Happen, with Mark Engler
For the 100th episode of Belabored, a special live-recorded discussion with Mark Engler, about his new book This Is an Uprising, and what the labor movement can draw from popular protest.
Free Enterprise vs. Socialism: A Brief History
Business conservatives have demonized every piece of progressive legislation as “creeping socialism” since the 1930s. Now that a democratic socialist has called their bluff, they’re at a loss.
The Two Lefts of Jorge Castañeda
Can the Latin American left really be divided into a moderate, social democratic “right left” and an authoritarian, populist “wrong” one?
Sanders and the S Word
Why does the white-haired firebrand from Vermont insist on identifying himself with socialism, a political faith that has never been popular in the United States?
Who Pays Writers?
At its height, the American welfare state provided direct financial support to scores of writers. They used it to challenge the political status quo, revolutionizing literary form in the process.
Worlds in Waiting: The Promise of Little Magazines
By remaining outside the mainstream, little magazines can articulate those demands and alternatives that are just left of the possible. Our hope is that these ideas will trickle up.
In Praise of Amateur Politics
Leftists will never entirely be released from the obligation to engage with the Democratic Party, but the left’s strength, and its power, will always lie outside formal politics.
With a counter-argument from Michael Kazin.
Between Israel and Social Democracy: Tony Judt’s Jewishness
Beyond Zionism and its discontents, Tony Judt’s Jewishness was a vibrant companion of the historian’s aspiring cosmopolitanism.
Growing Pains of Spanish Socialism, Part 1: Left Turn, Right Turn, or Where? 
In Spain, the democratic transformation continues to have a churning effect on many aspects of life. The vicissitudes of change are having their greatest impact in the political sector, as the various parties now strive to align ideologies with the …
Marx and the Jews
Histories of socialism usually begin with the Old Testament prophets, mighty preachers against usury and “those that buy the poor for silver,” visionaries of a golden age and messengers of perpetual peace. Their god was a god of Justice above …
How Now “The New Class”?
The notion that there is a New Class in our society—”class” for large groups like owners or workers; “new” because Marx did not include it in his grand schema—is an idea that has arrived. After nearly a century of episodic …
Growing Pains of Spanish Socialism Part II: May Days of a Lively Movement
On the first of May in Palma, Mallorca (Majorca), I asked my non-Spanish friends whether there would be a May Day parade in town. Nobody knew; some had never heard of May Day. A taxi driver finally located the parade …
A Cautious Case for Socialism
The discussion of any important social question must involve an inextricable mixture of fact and value. The fundamental impulse to change and especially to great change is a perception of present wrong and a vision of potential right. The initial …
