Class War

  • Freddie de Boer on Class-First Politics (Updated)

    I myself am a class-first leftist, and indeed the penultimate chapter of my new book is titled “Why is Class First?” And the answer is that class comes first because class approaches to politics are the best approach to combating injustice, including racial injustice. Being class-first is an instrumental position, not a moral one; it’s

    read more

  • Douthat on Democracy

    To be clear, the present Democratic Party is absolutely in favor of letting as many people vote as possible. There are no doubts about the mass franchise among liberals, no fears of voter fraud and fewer anxieties than on the right about the pernicious influence of low-information voters. But when it comes to the work

    read more

  • Stephanie Kelton, Big Gummint, Central Banks, and the American Future

    An MMT view of the monetary system changes the way we think about what it means for currency-issuing nations to “live within their means.” It asks us to think in terms of real resource constraints—inflation—rather than perceived financial constraints. It teaches us to ask not “How will you pay for it?” but “How will you

    read more

  • State of the Race 3

    It's looking more and more like it's going to be Bernie, and it's looking more and more like the establishment types are in full freak out. I think it's fine to go after him with all guns firing between now and Super Tuesday, but I hope that the establishment types are savvy enough to get

    read more

  • Realigning the Colors

    What these figures suggest is that the 2016 election will represent a complete inversion of the New Deal order among white voters. From the 1930s into the 1980s and early 1990s, majorities of downscale whites voted Democratic and upscale whites voted Republican. Now, looking at combined male and female vote totals, the opposite is true.

    read more

  • Quote of the Day: David Graeber

    What the 1% are is, effectively, a ruling class, they represent the point where concentrated wealth can be turned into political power. National politics in the US has been reduced to battles between different factions of that 1%. This is not just a traditional Marxist bourgeoisie though—and this is where I think it dovetails with

    read more

  • Quote of the Day: Louis Menand

    Americans have an egalitarian approach to inequality: they want everyone to have an equal chance to become better-off than everyone else. (Source)

    read more

  • Henry A. Giroux: Neoliberalism Defined

    Neoliberalism is a philosophy which construes profit making as the essence of democracy and consuming as the only operable form of citizenship. It also provides a rationale for a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social, economic, and political life in order to maximize their personal profit. Neoliberalism is marked

    read more

  • Traditional White America

    I don't know if the real Bill O'Reilly is more of a sendup on himself than his mocking imitator: The Colbert ReportGet More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive  

    read more

  • Does Money Matter?

    Of course it does. It's not that it favors Dems or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives; it's about how narrow moneyed interest are allowed to step all over the broader good of the Republic. In part it's about the outside game–how money shapes elections and who gets to run in them (both locally and nationally), but more

    read more