Eleven Theses on American Democracy
FEMINISMS OF THE LEFT: Politics and Strategy
There is a long and confusing collection of names for those who are both leftists and feminists: Marxist feminist, socialist feminist, materialist feminist, black feminist, feminist socialist, anarcho-feminist... and so on. And straddling the line between socialist and liberal feminists, would be social welfare feminists. In the 1960s and 1970s ...
Neither Angels Nor Demons And The Importance Of Coalescing To Defeat Donald Trump
In a recent televised AP interview, Bernie Sanders was asked if he thought the Democratic Party convention this summer would be contentious. He replied, “I think if they make the right choice and open the doors to working-class people and young people and create the kind of dynamism that the ...
Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities
According to the 2014 United Nations World Urbanization Prospects report, some two-thirds of the world's population is expected to reside in cities by 2050, more than double the percentage of urban dwellers that existed across the globe in 1950. To manage this growth, policymakers have embraced the notion that cities need ...
The End of Europe
The process of European unification is undergoing a deep crisis, certainly the deepest since it started at the beginning of the 1950s. In less than a year, the EU faced two major tests—first the Greek quarrel, then the refugee crisis -- that revealed its true face: a mixture of impotence, ...
The Republicans’ Trump Problem
The Republican Party has a problem. At the time I am writing (March 24, 2016), Donald Trump enjoys a clear lead in the race for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. With nearly 60% (739) of the 1,237 delegates required for the nomination, more than both of his remaining opponents, Ted ...
Zuckerberg & Chan Are Us
Philanthrocapitalism and the public good
Almost forty-eight years to the day before Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan announced the creation of their limited liability company and pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares within their lifetimes, a lawyer lectured a roomful of stockbrokers on “How to Obtain Maximum Tax Advantages by Using Securities ...
...Going Backward in Argentina
A country is not a corporation
The election of Mauricio Macri on November 22, 2015, to the presidency in Argentina by a slim 51% to 49% over Governor Daniel Scioli marks a sharp break with 12 years of progressive government and the reconstruction of the state after the neoliberal period of the 1990s. It is a ...
...Neoliberal B Team Win Canadian Election
Assessing the conservative defeat
The decisive defeat of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was the big news of the 2015 Canadian election. Harper resigned as party leader, and the dirty laundry of his heavily controlled campaign is now being aired publicly. The Harper reelection campaign drew deeply on racist and Islamaphobic politics, attacking ...
On the Other Side of the Berlin Wall
East Germany and the fall
It was a colleague, Jonathan Bach, who discovered that Trebor Scholz and I, both currently associate professors at the New School, happened to be serving in the German military 25 years ago -- but on opposite sides of the wall! As such, he brought us together for the ...
Russia’s Game in Syria
Security, geopolitics, and a balance of powers
On Wednesday September 30, the Russian Federation started a bombing campaign in Syria with one objective in mind: the stabilization of the country and the survival of Assad’s regime. This action is very relevant for many reasons, but among them is the fact that it is historical. This presents Russia’s ...