Spain's government has greenlit plans to allow women to take unlimited paid "menstrual leave" from work, in a European first. The proposal endorsed by ministers on Tuesday is part of a broader package on reproductive rights that includes allowing teenagers to seek an abortion from the age of 16without the need to get their parent or guardian's consent.

Private investment firms that manage the fortunes of wealthy individuals and their kin were approved for millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded relief loans designed to help small businesses weather the coronavirus lockdown, according to a review of recently released government data.

The girlboss didn’t change the system; she thrived within it. Now that system is cracking, and so is this icon of millennial hustle [...] Woke capitalism lets the elites maintain the status quo while paying lip service to the demands of activists, and, as ethical consumers, millennials get to feel like they’re making a difference every time they go shopping.

When clinging to America’s individualistic ideals in a pandemic means letting poor people die in service of the economy, society cannot hold. Human societies fall somewhere on a spectrum, with individualism on one end and collectivism on the other. The collectivist end could be summarized as, “We’re all in this together” — think propertyless Indigenous tribes that share everything — and the individualist end by Margaret Thatcher’s famous declaration that, “There’s no such thing as society; there are individual men and women, and there are families.” It could also be summarized as, “You’re on your own.”

Condemnation of Democratic congresswomen is xenophobic, dangerous and flat-out false. Many of the most prolific anti-communists were also committed segregationists who violently fought black-led labor and civil rights organizing in the south

With climate change, we’re all in this together. Or is that just what a socialist would say?

"Socialism," snarled Donald Trump at a recent pep rally of far-right Republicans. And the obedient crowd of faithful Trumpistas snarled back in unison: "So-shull-izz-ummm!" And there you have the entire intellectual content of the GOP's 2020 re-election strategy under Generalissimo Trump—slap Democrats silly with a scurrilous campaign branding them as Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin reincarnate.

The term “socialism” has been enjoying something of a vogue lately, typically used to describe policies that were part of American mainstream politics as recently as the 1980s. For example, listen to Donald Trump, in his State of the Union address on Feb. 5: “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country…. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) in an interview late Monday said she gives "zero" f---s about criticism she’s received from members of her own party. “Now, congresswoman, for you and other freshmen members of Congress, you're getting a fair amount of pushback from even members of your own party saying ‘wait your turn, go slow, don't ask for so much so fast right now, you're new, wait your turn for everything and don't make waves,'" late-night host Stephen Colbert said to the rising progressive star on CBS's "The Late Show."

Since when did socialism become en vogue? It seems like only a few years ago being called a socialist in American politics was an insult. Today, however, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders—a self-avowed socialist—is quickly rising in the polls, and millennials are largely driving his support.

We’ve heard for decades that socialism has a body count. But how does it compare to capitalism? Mike Davis discusses Stalin, Mao, and the staggering holocausts of capitalism’s nineteenth-century heyday.

The Venezuelan government is intentionally using lethal force against the most vulnerable in society, according to Amnesty International. Over 8,000 extrajudicial executions took place between 2015 ...

Gary Saul Morson on the rise and fall of the first Russian populists.

Norway is the most socialist country in the world. It's also a much better place to live than the United States.

Cuba's national assembly is set on Saturday to begin the long-awaited reform of its constitution to give legal backing to the Communist-run island's economic and social opening while upholding the "irrevocable nature of socialism".

The long history of American socialism has been built in left-wing strongholds. A century ago, Oklahoma and Wisconsin were Socialist Party bastions, while North Dakota and Montana were hotbeds of radical politics. And there was always Pennsylvania. From the 1910s through the 1940s, Socialist Party members served as state legislators, mayors, city councilors and school board members.

A crash course in social democracy.

One of China’s top leaders has chastised Communist party cadres for putting “ghosts and gods” before Marx and Lenin. Writing in the party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, Chen Xi accused some officials of becoming politically and morally “degraded” and of looking to religion, superstition and – perhaps even worse – western-style multi-party democracy as their faith in socialism faded.

A white lawyer in South Carolina summed up the situation nicely: “We have gone through one of the most remarkable changes in our relations to each other, that has been known, perhaps in the history of the world.” By Andrew Hartman.