These exploitative dynamics are rooted in slavery and are particularly extreme in the South, which incarcerates people—primarily Black men—at the highest rates in the world.
As states crack down on prison-phone price gouging and resulting government kickbacks, telecom companies and their private equity backers have new ways to game the system.
The Native American boarding school system — a decades-long effort to assimilate Indigenous people before they ever reached adulthood — robbed children of their culture, family bonds and sometimes their lives.
It seems unimaginable that we are backsliding into the era of exploiting child labor. But that’s precisely what the GOP appears to be doing.
An archaeologist traces the current protests in Peru to exploitive labor policies enacted in silver mines during Spanish colonial rule from 1532 to 1800.
The WWE wrestlers who put their bodies through the ringer on a near-nightly basis lack basic control over their work and lives. Many know they need a union — but the barriers to forming one are steep.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been pillaged by foreign governments and corporations for more than 500 years, and this sordid pattern continues to this day. Given this history, is it any wonder that the country suffers from massive corruption, perpetual conflict, and state capture?
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.
How employers get away with denying workers income they used to earn.
In 1791, enslaved Haitians did the seemingly impossible. They ousted their French masters and founded a nation. But France made generations of Haitians pay for their freedom — in cash. How much has remained a mystery, until now.
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