Portside

A History of the Tyranny of the Supremes

Will today’s unions invest big-time in the young workers now beginning to rebuild American labor? Or will they remain AWOL and ensure the movement’s continued decline?

Even among Marx-friendly economists, the labor theory of value has fallen out of favor. But its technical validity is less important than the core message: workers are exploited because the value they create is undemocratically taken by capitalists.

Despite growing profits, casino operators used predictions of “grave danger” to convince the state to slash their tax burden, denying millions to the city, its school district and the county.

For years, Thomas Piketty has articulated a cogent critique of 21st-century capitalism. He now appears to be moving beyond just critique to call for a 21st-century socialism.

If a half-century of progress toward a more equal society, painstakingly achieved across many fronts by many actors, can be so easily jettisoned with the wave of a few judicial hands, the problem to worry about isn’t the court’s. It’s democracy’s. It’s ours.

The poor are what Dr. King once called “a new and unsettling force” capable of transforming “our complacent national life.”

The goal isn’t merely eliminating barriers to ascending the strata, but rather flattening the hierarchy altogether. If “equity” is to be a worthwhile word, it will have to mean de-stratifying the systems that impose sexist and racist hierarchies.