Archive Image

[VIDEO] Anti-Corruption Movements in India and China  

On Thursday, February 27, Dissent and the India-China Institute co-hosted a panel on anti-corruption movements in China and India at the New School in New York. Speaking on the panel were Jiayang Fan (a contributor at the New Yorker), Mehboob …



Archive Image

How (Not) to Kill a Philosopher  

In a recent review of Louis Althusser’s On the Reproduction of Capitalism, Anne Boyer misrepresents key aspects of his thought. At the center of her argument is the claim that “Althusserianism has been a Marxism for those who prefer their …



Archive Image

Belabored Podcast #44: The Work of Sex Work, with Melissa Gira Grant  

This week, Belabored talks to Melissa Gira Grant, whose new book Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work dismantles the myths surrounding sex work and challenges us to think about sex work in the same framework in which we put other kinds of labor. At the heart is the question: should workers have to love their work in order to be able to demand rights and protections on the job?



The United States of Inequality  

The work of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez on the evolution of top income shares has yielded a lasting and iconic image of American inequality: a long historical curve that starts high in the early years of the twentieth century …



Archive Image

Kicking the Foreign-Intervention Habit  

Barack Obama is willing to withdraw almost every American soldier from Afghanistan and wants to reduce the Army to a size that would make another prolonged engagement abroad nearly impossible. Under his plan, the force of 450,000 would be the …





Archive Image

Olympic Blindness  

There is a temptation on the part of all presidents of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to declare whatever games they have presided over a success. Thomas Bach, the IOC’s new president and himself a gold medal winner for Germany …









Archive Image

Belabored Podcast #42: (Almost) Striking in Portland  

In news: United Auto Workers’ defeat in Chattanooga, Tennessee, port truckers and wage theft, minor league ballplayers suing over wage violations, the U.S. government’s reliance on sweatshops, the strike by University of Illinois faculty, and why the Congressional Budget Office is wrong about the minimum wage. And Portland teacher Elizabeth Thiel on militant teacher unionism in Oregon.







Archive Image

On Stuart Hall (1932–2014)  

As Stuart Hall told the story, the New Left began in 1956. In the course of a few early November days, British, French, and Israeli forces responded to Nasser’s closing of the Suez Canal by bombing Cairo and invading Egypt …



Archive Image

Belabored Podcast #41: Can Postal Banking Deliver Us from Wall Street? With Dave Dayen  

Could banking at the post office be a boon to low-income communities and a major challenge to Wall Street? Sarah and Michelle discuss with Dave Dayen. Plus the latest news on teachers and nurses organizing for workplace rights, how Wal-Mart’s anti-labor actions may be undermining its bottom line, a legal victory for immigrant guestworkers, and the crowdsourced sweatshop.