Between Reform and Revolution
Amid the radical upheavals of the early 1900s, the Austro-Marxists tried to marry revolutionary aims with reform-minded practice.
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Julius Deutsch, an Anti-Fascist Who Organized Workers on the Sports Field
Austrian socialist Julius Deutsch was a key figure in Red Vienna’s workers’ sports clubs. Founder of the Schutzbund workers’ militia, Deutsch and his comrades used the class pride built on the sports field to mobilize against rising fascism.
Otto Bauer and the Austro-Marxists Wanted a Socialist Revolution in Democracy
Austrian socialist Otto Bauer, like others in the too often forgotten “Austro-Marxist” school, sought to build a mass workers’ movement that could win parliamentary democracy — and then go beyond it by establishing a socialist republic.
Social Housing Is Becoming a Mainstream Policy Goal in the US
Slowly but surely, the idea of social housing — a public housing model most commonly associated with the socialist government of “Red Vienna” — is moving from being a leftist dream to a concrete policy agenda item in a number of US states.
Public Housing Is Social Housing
The housing crisis is a calamity that can no longer be ignored. AOC and Bernie Sanders’s newly reintroduced Green New Deal for Public Housing highlights the importance of deeply affordable and generously funded public housing as key to solving this crisis.
Red London in Tory Britain
Few major cities have welcomed the world’s oligarchs and kleptocrats like London has. Yet nestled within the neoliberal dystopia, London’s neighborhoods reflect the long and ongoing struggle to transform Britain’s capital into a self-managed, social-democratic municipality for its residents.
We Need Public Housing, Not Affordable Housing
Homeownership is out of reach for millions in Canada and the US. One well-meaning response to this crisis has been to call for more affordable housing. But we should be demanding more social housing instead.
New Deal–Era Leftists Tried to Win Beautiful Social Housing for the Masses
The US housing system is organized around subsidized private homeownership and underfunded public housing. But during the New Deal, leftists had a different vision: beautiful social housing for all but the rich.
Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation and the Countermovement to Capitalism
Media pundits hail the economist Karl Polanyi as a brilliant theorist of capitalism and a thinker for our time. In order to understand Polanyi’s ideas, however, we need to see him in the context of his own time: Europe’s "age of catastrophe" in the early twentieth century.
In the “Renter From Hell” Narrative, Landlords Are the Real Victims
The COVID-19 era eviction moratorium has given rise to a new journalistic genre: the “renter from hell” narrative, portraying landlords as the real victims of the crisis.
We Need a World Without Landlords
Recent battles over eviction moratoriums and homeless encampments have shown the depressing limits of our political horizons. We need to envision a radically different system that guarantees everyone the right to decent, stable housing.
Socialist Architect Josef Frank’s Modernism Was All About Freedom
The Austrian socialist architect Josef Frank resisted modernists who wanted to make homes look like workplaces — an idea with new resonance in an age when so many of us are working from home and feel like we can't escape from our work.
The Karl Marx of Music
Composer Hanns Eisler was a lifelong communist and self-described Jacobin. His music provided the soundtrack for both the tragedies and triumphs of German antifascism.
Painting Budapest Red
In March 1919, Hungary saw the creation of a short-lived revolutionary state. We look at the significance of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and its attempted transformation of art and culture.
Don’t Worry, We’re Listening
The focus group was invented by a socialist, nurtured by corporate America — and revolutionized the relationship between elites and the masses.
Imagining the Socialist City
We will not go into the socialist city blindly, but with lessons from a century of experiments.
The Red-Green Alliance Won Copenhagen’s Election by Fighting for Affordable Housing
The left-wing Red-Green Alliance won November’s elections in Copenhagen with a tightly focused campaign on making housing affordable again, handing the city's Social Democrats their first defeat in over a century.
Meet Andreas Babler, the Socialist Now Leading Austria’s Social Democrats
Against centrist elites, hard-right insurgents, and a rigged party bureaucracy, Andreas Babler’s leadership campaign has won against the odds to secure a socialist direction for Austria’s Social Democrats.
The Technocratic Socialism of Otto Neurath
The Austrian economist and philosopher Otto Neurath devised elaborate ideas for a democratically planned economy. They are a monument to the most optimistic strands of the interwar socialist movement.
The Canton Speech
Today in 1918, Eugene V. Debs delivered the speech that landed him in jail. We reprint it here in full.