KPFA - Against the Grain

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
The post American Jews and the Left appeared first on KPFA.

We often are told there is no other way to organize society — that by our very nature, we’re destined to try to dominate each other. But are such assumptions merited? Primatologist Agustín Fuentes pulls apart the supposedly evolutionary case that humans are hardwired for war. And the late anthropologist David Graeber discusses the active cultivation of pessimism about our ability to organize society in a more egalitarian way.
To celebrate KPFA Radio’s 77th birthday, please donate to Against the Grain and KPFA! 
Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash
The post Fuentes on Aggression; Graeber on Egalitarianism appeared first on KPFA.

It’s widely recognized that vast amounts of wealth are now concentrated in the hands of the very few. But less well understood, scholar Ray Madoff argues, is how the U.S. tax code played a key role in that process. She delineates how progressive taxation and the estate tax — designed to tax the inherited wealth of the rich — have been eviscerated. And she also argues that philanthropy, perversely, has increased the wealth of the 1%.
Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy University of Chicago Press, 2025
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
The post (Not) Taxing the Rich appeared first on KPFA.