An Endless "Debate"
The Strongest Criticism of Socialism
The most serious argument against socialism isn't about human nature, it's about economic possibilities. Let's dive into what Mises and Hayek have to say.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain
The Socialist Party wants to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism.
Democratic voters want the party to be more moderate — and more socialist?
The trouble with polling about ideological labels
American Socialist: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V. Debs
Before Bernie Sanders, before Zohran Mamdani, America’s favorite socialist was Eugene Debs.In 1912, some 1,200 Socialists held elected office across the United States. Wisconsin had a Socialist congressman in Washington, and ministers in Oklahoma preached the gospel of “Christian socialism” at revival-style gatherings come summertime. The leader of this vibrant movement? One Eugene V. Debs—part working-class agitator, part radical prophet, a man who made it feel like being an American and a socialist was the most natural thing in the world. Even opponents would describe Debs as Christlike. Born in Indiana in 1855, he’d dropped out of school at fourteen to work on the railroad. Elected to the state legislature in his twenties, he’d seemed a rising star in the Democratic Party: an optimistic moderate who urged respectability and compromise. But this was the Gilded Age: an era of corporate tycoons and outrageous sums of money in politics, of grueling hours and few rights for workers (if any). And when, in 1894, the president sent in thousands of troops to break a nationwide railroad strike Debs helped organize, Debs was radicalized. He emerged from a six-month prison sentence as a crusader, a stirring orator who would soon see all forms of unaccountable power—rich over poor, men over women, white over Black, colonizer over colonized—as poisonous to human freedom. Cofounding the Socialist Party of America, Debs would run for president five times and spend the rest of his life convincing ordinary workers that, together, they could create a political movement strong enough to transform the world. It wouldn’t be easy. He would suffer from chronic illness, lose friends and enrage allies, risk his marriage to a woman he loved, and receive a decade-long prison sentence for opposing World War I. And yet, countless Americans—not just in his lifetime, but in ours—would heed Debs’s righteous call for human solidarity. When Debs ran for president in 1920 from behind bars, he received almost a million votes. A rousing, poignant, intimately human tale of struggle against the odds, American Socialist is a stunning portrait of one man’s radicalization—and of the country he radicalized in turn. It’s a story that speaks powerfully to our own Gilded Age, when the very wealthy again rule America’s political and economic life and millions are looking for an alternative.
The Alternative to Capitalism Nobody Talks About | Eleanor Finley & Camila Vergara
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
The Socialist Charcuterie Board - The Ideas Letter
Taking issue with Benanav’s institutional vision of a democratic political economy of technology, Morozov argues that generative AI exposes a deeper problem that socialism has yet to solve: how to…
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Dep…
Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized an…
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.
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, film (Children Of Men, Jason Bourne, Supernanny), fiction (Le Guin and Kafka), work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colors all areas of contemporary experience, is anything but realistic and asks how capitalism and its inconsistencies can be challenged. It is a sharp analysis of the post-ideological malaise that suggests that the economics and politics of free market neo-liberalism are givens rather than constructions. New Edition includes:Forward by Zoe Fisher, Mark’s wife, talking about Mark as a personIntroduction by Alex Niven, his friend and colleague, talking about the political significance of the book thirteen years after it was writtenAfterword by Tariq Goddard, the original editor and publisher, describing the writing and editing of the book, its original reception, and Mark’s own view of it"A quick and entertaining read." Socialist Standard "A provocative and necessary read...for anyone wanting to talk seriously about the politics of education today. " Times Higher Educational Supplement
The Communist Manifesto
Without question one of the most significant books in modern history, The Communist Manifesto is a brief, populist pamphlet that distils the core ideas of Communism into accessible prose. Published just months before violent uprisings threatened to destabilise much of the European establishment, it outlines a view of history as a constant battle between the classes that will inevitably result in revolution. An ang...
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Re: Re: Bluesky and Decentralization -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
A few weeks ago I wrote How decentralized is Bluesky really?, a blogpost which received far more attention than I expected on the fediverse and Bluesky both. Thankfully, the blogpost was received well generally, including by Bluesky's team. Bryan Newbold, core Bluesky engineer, wrote a thoughtful response article: Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization, which I consider worth reading.
Pluralistic: A fascist paradigm (12 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Yesterday, I attended a workshop on systems thinking and political change, which included a presentation on the work of Donella Meadows, whose Thinking in Systems is a canonical work on the subject:
