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Postcard of Wilshire Boulevard

Radical Movements in 1960s L.A.

A review of "Set The Night on Fire", an inspiring book that points to a new generation of activists who remain unbowed by conservative historiographies.
Thorstein Veblen in 1880, the year he graduated from Carleton College

The Prophet of Maximum Productivity

Thorstein Veblen’s maverick economic ideas made him the foremost iconoclast of the Age of Iconoclasts.
Statue of Shakespeare, Central Park, New York City.

Shakespeare’s Contentious Conversation With America

James Shapiro’s recent book looks at why Shakespeare has been a mainstay of the cultural and political conflicts of the country since its founding.
Black man drinking from a segregated water fountain.

Caste Does Not Explain Race

The celebration of Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste’ reflects the continued priority of elite preferences over the needs and struggles of ordinary people.
Thorstein Veblen

The Gadfly of American Plutocracy

Far from a marginal outsider, a new biography contends, Thorstein Veblen was the most important economic thinker of the Gilded Age.
A photograph of Ben Fletcher

Ben Fletcher's One Big Union

The hugely influential but largely forgotten labor leader Ben Fletcher couldn’t be more relevant to the most urgent political projects of today.
A car being made in a car factory

Talking About Auto Work Means Talking About Constant, Brutal Violence

It's remembered as one of the best industrial jobs a worker could get in postwar America. Less remembered is how brutal life on the factory floor was – and still is.
A political cartoon featuring Uncle Sam holding a magnet.

America's Unending Struggle Between Oligarchy and Democracy

A new book charts the long contest between elites and the forces of democracy seeking to dismantle their power.
Artistic photo with american flags

Richard Hofstadter’s Discontents

Why did the historian come to fear the very movements he once would have celebrated?
Two adults holding hands with a child in front of a Christmas tree

The Oracle of Our Unease

The enchanted terms in which F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed modern America still blind us to how scathingly he judged it.
Painting of men moving the liberty bell.

Our Chief Danger

The story of the democratic movements that the framers of the U.S. Constitution feared and sought to suppress.
American Revolution-era political cartoon showing elites signing trade document at behest of working-class.

Fight For Economic Equality Is As Old as America Itself

Fears of great wealth and the need for economic equality go back to the country’s origins.
Lithograph of crowd gathering around a train.
partner

The Great Upheaval of 1877 Sheds Light on Today’s Protests

Spontaneous strikes led by the working class in 1877 resulted in violent clashes with police.
Heavily armed police patrolling Los Angeles in the 1960s.

“No Matter How Different the Movements Were, the LAPD Targeted Every One of Them”

From the Black Panthers to the Communist Party, radical Los Angeles in the ’60s was a seething cauldron of unrest, united by the brutal repression of the LAPD.
New York workers, angered by the Mayor's apparent anti-Vietnam-War sympathies, wave American flags as they march in a demonstration near City Hall in New York City on May 15, 1970.

The 'Hard Hat Riot' of 1970 Pitted Construction Workers Against Anti-War Protesters

The Kent State shootings further widened the chasm among a citizenry divided over the Vietnam War.
Black and white photo of The National Negro Business League with founder Booker T. Washington.

Identity Politics and Elite Capture

The Combahee River Collective and E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie agree that the wealthy and powerful will hijack activist energies for their own ends.

When the Seattle General Strike and the 1918 Flu Collided

The first major general strike in the United States coincided with the last major pandemic. Here’s the full story.

A Motley Crew for our Times?

A conversation with historian Marcus Rediker about multiracial mobs, history from below and the memory of struggle.

Bad Romance

The afterlife of Vivian Gornick's "The Romance of American Communism" shows that we bear the weight of dead generations—and sometimes living ones, too.
Photograph of Michael Lind wearing a blazer and tie.

Michael Lind on Reviving Democracy

To fix things, we must acknowledge the nature of the problem.

Is Anti-Monopolism Enough?

A new book argues that US history has been a struggle between monopoly and democracy, but fails to address class and labor when decoding inequality.

Life Under the Algorithm

How a relentless speedup is reshaping the working class.
UAW members during a sit-down strike in 1937

Remembering the First Clash Between UAW and GM

The GM strike recalls the Flint sit-down strikes of 1936-7: a profit-hungry corporation, a fed-up workforce, and workers' willingness to take militant action.

Writing the History of Capitalism with Class

The "new history of capitalism" cuts class politics at the expense of history.
John Dalrymple

The Radical Roots of Free Speech

Conservatives like to claim that leftists are opponents of free speech. But that’s nonsense.

The Class Politics of the Civil War

By naming a common enemy the Union Army was able to build and then steer a coalition of Americans toward the systematic destruction of slavery.

The Socialist Origins of Public Defense

The right to public defense wasn’t granted by elites. It was won by socialist-led mass movements.
Book cover of Upton Sinclair's book, featuring text and his profile

Mankind, Unite!

How Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult.

Eric Hobsbawm, the Communist Who Explained History

Hobsbawm saw his political hopes crumble. He used that defeat to tell the story of our age.
Bernie Sanders

The Transformation of Bernie Sanders

How the Vermont senator went from a third-party independent to a 2020 frontrunner.

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