Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/global_capitalism/page/10/)
America needs a Left that approaches social change without “economistic” blinders, countering capitalism not by appealing to it, but by opening space for people to no longer be dominated by its logics. Making efforts to relieve the debts of those in need—while striving to reimagine our debt-financed society—is a logical starting place.
Suicide has become a public health emergency for middle-aged men in the United States, exposing a deeper economic and existential crisis.
We hope Democrats will succeed in raising the minimum wage to $10.10, but we realize that more is needed to end poverty. Fight for a living wage!
Pope Francis has legitimated a powerful critique of global capitalism, drawing attention to its anti-spiritual, anti-God, anti-ethical essence.
I have to admit: I enjoyed {title}Atlas Shrugged{/title}. Something about it resonated, even for me, on the far opposite end of the political and religious spectrum.
Thad Williamson reviews Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda.
When gender-based violence occurs in the Global South, how should feminists in the Global North respond?
Obama won by appealing to a broad swath of voters—the young, ethnically diverse, and non-affluent—who typically aren’t a part of the traditional political calculus. But he failed to garner much support among older, whiter Americans. If our political fights pit one group, one generation, or one race against all the multicultural “others,” then we all will surely lose.
The online exclusives below are freely accessible articles that are part of an ongoing special series associated with Tikkun’s Fall 2013 print issue, Identity Politics, Class Politics, and Spiritual Politics: How Do We Build World-Transforming Coalitions? Many of our most provocative articles on this topic appeared in that print issue, which is only accessible to subscribers. Subscribe now to read the subscriber-only print articles on the web (explore the table of contents to see what you’re missing!). If you appreciate the free web-only articles below, please do enable us to keep up this important work by becoming a print subscriber or offering a donation. We will continue to update this page as new web articles in this series come out.
There is value for leaders in being deeply rooted in their own primary identity group while at the same time learning how to be a fierce ally for all groups.
As the oceans rise to earth-destroying levels, the agricultural heartlands turn to desert, and the rate of skin cancer grows to match the rate of the common cold… now is the time to talk honestly with the American public about dramatically reducing consumption, combating the immense power of the 1 percent, and preparing ourselves to counter the mainstream media’s obfuscations of the urgency of the coming crisis.
We need to commit revolutionary suicide. By this I mean not the killing of our bodies but the destruction of our attachments to security, status, wealth, and power. These attachments prevent us from becoming spiritually and politically alive. They prevent us from changing the violent structure of the society in which we live. When Huey Percy Newton, the cofounder of the Black Panther Party, called us to “revolutionary suicide,” it appears that he was making the same appeal as Jesus of Nazareth, who admonished, “Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for the sake of [the planet] will save them.” Essentially, both movement founders are saying the same thing. Salvation is not an individual matter.
Neoliberalism, the broad set of ideas positing the market and market-centered values as the ultimate “civilizing” agent at home and abroad, has now structured our society for forty years. Ever since it began its gradual ascendance in 1973, we have experienced a marked increase in income inequality, witnessed the slow death of the labor union movement, and keenly felt a growing sense of anxiety. The task of the American Left has never been simpler and clearer—it’s to reconstitute the very idea of the public, in the hope that this reconstitution will generate a large-scale movement against neoliberalism.
Class exploitation and racial discrimination has diminished in popularity as an explanation for our society’s continuing social inequalities. In its stead, a “post-oppression” ideology and rhetoric has developed, which leaves “distortions” (such as race-based disparities) to the market alone to resolve.