Massive amounts of money are needed to address the multiple social and ecological crises besetting societies around the globe. According to Thomas Marois, the lion’s share of that financing will need to come from public banks. But many public banking institutions, he argues, must be democratized and definancialized.
Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2025: Openings and Closures: Socialist Strategy at a Crossroads Monthly Review Press, 2025
The Public Banking Project at McMaster University
Thomas Marois, Public Banks: Decarbonisation, Definancialisation, and Democratisation Cambridge University Press, 2021
(Image on main page by Christian A. Schröder.)
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0:59
Gupta on Left Organizing
The authoritarianism of the Trump regime calls out for mass radical organizing, but with some exceptions, much of the left has not mounted a coherent response. Journalist Arun Gupta reflects on lessons from the last quarter century – from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street, from the George Floyd protests to the Palestine Solidarity Movement, from the primary victory of Zohran Mamdani to immigrant communities’ militant resistance to ICE deportations.
Arun Gupta, “The Contemporary History of the US Palestine Solidarity Movement” Socialist Register 2025
Photo credit: Samantha Hare
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5:14
Reparations Reconsidered
Why are some victims of terror and injustice deemed deserving of care and repair, and others aren’t? David L. Eng looks to the Transpacific, and particularly the atomic bombings of Japan and their aftermath, for answers; he also argues that literature and psychoanalysis can enrich understandings of reparations and human rights.
David Eng, Reparations and the Human Duke University Press, 2025
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0:13
How Medicine Became a Commodity
Until the mid-17th century, for the vast majority of Europeans, medical care was administered by women for free in the household and neighborhood, using herbs and other formulas passed down between and among generations. Karen Bloom Gevirtz illustrates how and why only a century later, they were supplanted by men who established the basis of our for-profit medical system. (Full-length presentation.)
Karen Bloom Gevirtz, The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How It Became a Commodity UC Press, 2025
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17:15
Hyping AI
Will artificial intelligence usher in a world of increasing convenience and productivity, as its boosters claim? Or will AI take away our jobs and risk a robot apocalypse? Scholars Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender say: neither. They warn us against falling for either version of AI hype and discuss the impact of purported artificial intelligence—chiefly large language models and text-to-image generation–on surveillance and work, education and science.
Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want Harper, 2025
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
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Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
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