JULY 31, 2026

Democratic Socialists Further Advance: A series of victories in Democratic primary elections by DSA members and other candidates endorsed by DSA is setting off alarm bells across the rightist and centrist political spectra in the US  

Over time, electoral participation has tended to decline, especially in the traditional constituencies for a social democratic politics. With the capture of the Republican Party by MAGA, and the ongoing failure of the Democratic Party to present a coherent alternative at the national level, space has opened up for advocates of a forthright embrace of consistently pro working class based, democratic socialist and/or populist political demands. DSA Is becoming recognized as a leading element of that politics in the USA.. By our longtime Boston comrade Paul Garver, writing in Chartist

DC author, gathering voices, explores new modes of communal living
“We’re seeing these modes of living together become more prevalent as the impacts of a precarious job market, rising housing prices, rampant loneliness, and the onset of caregiving duties have caused people across the country to reenvision what home can look like. As [author Samantha Paige] Rosen navigated living with her parents in her 30s, she determined that more people needed a better understanding of communal living. Friends kept asking when she’d write a book about it but a narrative about living in community demanded it be told by a community. Rosen decided to invite other voices into the conversation to provide a more holistic understanding of such an expansive topic. Together, Rosen and her 21 contributors tackle this in the anthology Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection.” City Paper

The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon: Artificial intelligence may not deliver on its promise of vast economic opportunity at a price that humanity is willing to pay.

As one recent study noted: “despite strong substitution at the task level, overall employment effects are modest, as reduced demand in exposed occupations is offset by productivity-driven increases in labor demand at AI-adopting firms… Spending on datacenters is going through the roof, for sure, but productivity has not been experiencing the galloping gains that the technorati’s epochal prognostications lead one to expect….This has opened the public conversation to a less cataclysmic narrative of the evolution of the technology. The emerging new story not only puts more emphasis on the complexity of the relationship between automation and human work across history. It is also raising doubts about the very feasibility of the threatened AI transformation of the universe. ” The Guardian

How AI may drive union-resistant tech workers to the bargaining table: Tech workers are increasingly unionizing, trading Silicon Valley’s myth of exceptionalism for collective bargaining to contest the corporate deployment of artificial intelligence

If Eduardo Porter (above) is wrong about job loss to AI – or even if workers (at all levels) are unduly spooked about it – organizing advantages may emerge. “For decades, the technology industry was a fortress that labor unions couldn’t breach. Tech workers already had cushy compensation packages, dream benefits like unlimited vacation and free lunch, and a flat corporate hierarchy that made engineers feel as powerful as their bosses, all of whom dressed down in sneakers and hoodies. So why unionize? Now, that fortress is cracking from the inside. Unions have become increasingly popular for tech employees. After months of mass layoffs tied to artificial intelligence and mounting anxieties about how it’s being deployed, some tech workers say they’ve been saddled with higher workloads while facing the threat of job loss caused by the very products they’re building. …Those same workers are now attempting to unionize.” The Guardian via Portside

Is There a New ‘Blob’ of ‘Them’ Rising from the ‘Black Red Lagoon? We’ve seen this B movie before…
Our longtime comrade Carl Davidson takes a bemused look at MAGA’s arm-waving (and calculated) panic about “communist” left successes: “If I were a twenty-first-century Rip Van Winkle, just roused from decades of slumber, perhaps I would blink and rub my eyes, then joyfully gasp at the news and imagine that the old dreams had finally come true in 2026! Seize the Congress and White House! All power to the workers’ councils! …But I have not been asleep. I have been here the whole time. If there were a communist takeover underway this year, I would be the first to know. And if it were true, I would be the first to celebrate. But it is not true. It is not even close.” Carl’s Substack