KPFA - Against the Grain

Sugar may seem like a natural, almost eternal substance, cultivated over thousands of years. But it was remade by capitalism and turned into a homogenized commodity. Enslaved labor was central to sugar production on vast plantations, which would then be discarded as sugar laid waste to both the lands and human bodies. And, as historian of science David Singerman illustrates, scientific techniques were utilized to standardize sugar, while attempting to replace the knowledge of the workers who labored in its refineries.
David Singerman, Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar University of Chicago Press, 2025
Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash
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Fiction that imagines alternate futures is often associated with the left — with writers like Octavia Butler and Ursula LeGuin. But the tropes of science fiction are well-suited to the right and, as Jordan Carroll illustrates, far right authors and aficionados have populated the ranks of speculative fiction since its inception, like ardent science fiction fan and neo-Nazi party founder James Madole. Carroll discusses the right’s ongoing fight to claim the future.
Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right University of Minnesota Press, 2024
Photo by Robynne O on Unsplash
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The power the police wield on the streets of this country is plain to see. Less visible, but no less formidable, is the immense political power and influence that the police exercise. Historian Stuart Schrader describes how police unions amassed enormous power over the last fifty years.
Stuart Schrader, Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves Basic Books, 2026
The post The Political Power of the Police appeared first on KPFA.

The left has a long history of predicting the decline of US capitalism and empire. Some argue that Trump is a symptom of that decline — a strongman chosen by capital to set things right — and that the ill health of U.S. capitalism is paralleled by the decline of the dollar. Political economist Stephen Maher counters that U.S. capitalism is robust — to the detriment of most of us.
Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2026: Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins Monthly Review Press, 2025
The post The Decline of U.S. Capitalism? appeared first on KPFA.

Jews and the left have been closely associated with each other for well over a century, both in Europe where the Nazis genocidally linked one with the other, and in the United States. Scholar Benjamin Balthaser considers the history of American Jews and the left, including in opposition to Jewish nationalism, arguing that the recent florescence of Jewish anti-Zionism is a return to a much longer tradition. (Encore presentation.)
Benjamin Balthaser, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left Verso, 2025
Photo credit: Bruce Emmerling
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