Liberalism Did Not Fail, Conservatism Did

Capitalism, Democracy, and Du Bois’s <em>Two</em> Proletariats

[epq-quote align="align-right"]"What can be more radical or liberating than freedom and justice for all?"[/epq-quote] As an ideal, liberal democracy has great appeal. What can be more radical or liberating than...

The Inner Life of Liberalism - Aaron Ross Powell’s Blog

The practices that make your life better are the same ones that sustain a free society. It's time liberalism took that seriously.

Contra Pritchard On Liberal Happiness

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Radical Liberalism, Pragmatism, and Me - Aricie's thoughts

Liberals Are Preaching Moral Values. What Took Them So Long?

Until recently, the language of morality belonged to social conservatives. But the history of liberalism suggests that values have been at its core all along.

It Was Fascism All Along

When we emphasize a distinction between conservatism and fascism, we obscure the structural logic that ties the right-wing project together.

Political Fairytale

Why is centrism failing so badly? Because at its heart is a mistaken idea of how politics works.

Crossing the divide: reaching Reform voters in a fractured Britain

Winning back Reform voters starts with introspection - progressives must face their own role in Britain’s divide

Not a new Weimar, or new 1930s: “We live in a period without a real precedent”. Interview with Anton Jäger

Upon the release of his new book Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences, September sat down with historian of political thought Anton Jäger to discuss the rise of the new right, the dynamics of politicization in contemporary Western societies, and what the current historical moment demands from the left.

The far right is acting as one party. When will we? | Euractiv

Liberal institutions treat each surge of populism as a domestic challenge to be managed within national elections or courts. Meanwhile the far right amplifies each other’s victories, recycles each other’s talking points, and shares disinformation

The Triumph of Broken Promises — Harvard University Press

A powerful case that the economic shocks of the 1970s hastened both the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberalism by forcing governments to impose austerity on their own people.Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaking study, Fritz Bartel argues that the answer to these questions is one and the same. The Cold War began as a competition between capitalist and communist governments to expand their social contracts as they raced to deliver their people a better life. But the economic shocks of the 1970s made promises of better living untenable on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Energy and financial markets placed immense pressure on governments to discipline their social contracts. Rather than make promises, political leaders were forced to break them.In a sweeping narrative, The Triumph of Broken Promises tells the story of how the pressure to break promises spurred the end of the Cold War. In the West, neoliberalism provided Western leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher with the political and ideological tools to shut down industries, impose austerity, and favor the interests of capital over labor. But in Eastern Europe, revolutionaries like Lech Walesa in Poland resisted any attempt at imposing market discipline. Mikhail Gorbachev tried in vain to reform the Soviet system, but the necessary changes ultimately presented too great a challenge.Faced with imposing economic discipline antithetical to communist ideals, Soviet-style governments found their legitimacy irreparably damaged. But in the West, politicians could promote austerity as an antidote to the excesses of ideological opponents, setting the stage for the rise of the neoliberal global economy.

Left & Right: The Psychological Significance of a Political Distinction

This book brings together for the first time an updated, revised collection of influential essays and articles that capture some of the most exciting scientific and scholarly contributions to the topic ...

Pluralistic: Post-political (09 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

There's plenty of reasons to be skeptical of centrists who bemoan "political polarization" and call for a politics that abandons the "tribalism of left and right."

Radical expectations: how the New Left changed economics

In the 1970s radical economists campaigned to reform their discipline and their universities. They became journalists and activists, moving beyond academia, to forge new models of public engagement and collaborative knowledge in economic life. Radical Expectations tells the story of how these economists set out to make economics more democratic. It traces their campaign to bring protest movements to the campuses, triggering the emergence of an alternative understanding of expertise directed at validating and empowering the perspectives and voices of women, Black Americans, labor activists, and the urban poor. It shows how a radical identity formed and how radicals helped reform disciplinary institutions. Furthermore, it argues that the radical economics' legacy was the development of a language and models of expert-lay collaboration that empowers direct action in economic affairs. The book is about the community of radical economists who championed the promise of change and what came of it