Professor Wolff’s latest book “Understanding Capitalism” is available now for purchase: Here

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spoke with Professor Richard Wolff to discuss the economic fallout from the war on Iran, which recently reached the six-month mark.

They also discussed the U.S. national debt, which recently topped $40 trillion, as well as the impact of a global selloff of U.S. government bonds and how rising borrowing costs could affect everyday consumers.

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Professor Richard Wolff joins Clearing the FOG to discuss why the debt is rising so quickly, how it impacts our daily lives and more signs of a US empire in decline. Wolff explains that the election of Donald Trump and progressive Democrats are “votes of alienation” rather than being based on a political ideology. Wolff expresses optimism in the face of a rising interest in socialism and whether the US can transform away from capitalism or rescue it, as was done under FDR.

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In this episode of Dialectic at Work, the dialectic explores the ideological underpinnings of economic theories, critiques the utopian narratives of neoclassical economics, and highlights the ethical dimensions embedded in different economic models. Professor Wolff discusses how interpretations shape our understanding of profit, risk, and market dynamics, urging listeners to critically examine the assumptions behind mainstream economics.

The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated to exploring Marxian theory. It utilizes the dialectical mode of reasoning, that is the method developed over the millennia by Plato and Aristotle, and continues to explore new dimensions of theory and praxis via a dialogue. The Marxist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic that not only seeks to understand the world but rather to change it. In our discussions, the dialectic goes to work intending to solve the urgent life crises that we face as a global community.

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In the 1960s, Louis Althusser imported the concept of 'overdetermination' from Sigmund Freud into the domain of Marxian analysis. In the 1980s, Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick developed this idea into a Marxian Critique of Political Economy in their seminal book Knowledge and Class. Yet, many of the premises of the concept and its applications remain fuzzy to people, even students of Marxian theory.

This week, the dialectic goes to work with Professor Richard Wolff to explore this important idea. What is overdetermination? How does it liberate analyses from determinism and essentialism? How can we use this idea in the 21st century to make sense of the world?

The Dialectic at Work is a podcast hosted by Professor Shahram Azhar & Professor Richard Wolff. The show is dedicated to exploring Marxian theory. It utilizes the dialectical mode of reasoning, that is the method developed over the millennia by Plato and Aristotle, and continues to explore new dimensions of theory and praxis via a dialogue. The Marxist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic that not only seeks to understand the world but rather to change it. In our discussions, the dialectic goes to work intending to solve the urgent life crises that we face as a global community.

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Professor Richard Wolff joins Cyrus Janseen on Real Time with Cyrus Janseen to discuss the decline of the American empire —and why China and Asia are shaping the future of the global economy. We discuss the history of U.S. colonialism, the failures of American capitalism, China’s hybrid economic model, the economic consequences of the Iran war, and the growing appeal of socialism in the United States. Professor Wolff also examines whether America and China can peacefully coexist, how the upcoming midterm elections could reshape American politics, and why both Republicans and Democrats may be unprepared for the dramatic changes ahead.

Cyrus Janssen is a geopolitical analyst, investor, speaker, and social media influencer with over 2 million fans across all social media platforms. Born in the United States, Cyrus lived abroad for 15 years in China and Canada and enjoys sharing cultural and geopolitical insights from his travels to over 60+ countries.

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After a 39-day strike, JTRAN workers in Jackson, Mississippi, secured higher wages, improved benefits and protections for the public transit services their riders depend on.

On August 20, workers at Jackson, Mississippi’s public transit system, JTRAN, ratified a new contract with MV Transportation, the private contractor that manages the city’s transit operations. The agreement brought an end to a 39-day strike that began on July 13.

The JTRAN workers are represented by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1208, which has represented transit workers in Jackson since 1939. That long history of organized labor is particularly notable in Mississippi, a state with one of the lowest unionization rates in the United States.

The dispute began after months of unsuccessful contract negotiations. The workers’ previous agreement expired on December 31, 2025, and the union and MV Transportation remained divided over wages, working conditions and proposed changes to Jackson’s bus service.

According to the union, workers ultimately walked off the job after what it characterized as bad-faith bargaining, unfair labor practices and disrespect from the company.

But the dispute became about more than the workers’ paychecks.

The union was also fighting proposed service changes that threatened the transit system relied upon by thousands of Jackson residents.

Workers Win Higher Wages

The new agreement runs through December 31, 2027 and delivers immediate economic gains for JTRAN workers.

Workers will receive an immediate 5% wage increase, followed by an additional 3% increase over the next two years.

Under the previous contract, starting wages were $17.18 per hour, while senior workers earned $23 per hour. The agreement also adds Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday and addresses other concerns raised by workers during negotiations.

Yet the significance of the settlement goes beyond wages and benefits.

The workers also successfully challenged proposed service reductions that had become an important issue during the negotiations. For transit workers, protecting their jobs became inseparable from protecting the transportation system their passengers depend upon.

“Willing to Lay It All on the Line for Justice”

Throughout the strike, JTRAN workers maintained picket lines despite the summer heat and MV Transportation bringing replacement operators into Jackson to continue portions of the bus service.

ATU Local 1208 President and Business Agent Charles Tornes Jr. credited the workers’ solidarity — as well as support from riders and the wider Jackson community — for the outcome.

“This strike shows that our members are willing to lay it all on the line for justice. I want to thank our riders, and all our allies for coming out and standing with us.”

The workers also received an extraordinary show of support from local government.

Days before the settlement, members of the Jackson City Council voted to provide financial assistance to the striking JTRAN workers for as long as three months if the strike continued.

That support demonstrated how a labor dispute between workers and a private transit contractor had evolved into a larger community fight over the future of public transportation in Jackson.

Public Transportation Is an Economic Issue

Jackson Mayor John Horhn welcomed the agreement and emphasized the essential role transit workers play in the city.

“This agreement is good news for our JTRAN drivers, for the residents who depend on public transportation every day, for MV Transit, and for the City of Jackson.”

Horhn continued:

“Our drivers play an essential role in getting people to work, school, medical appointments, grocery stores, and other important destinations. They deserve to be treated with respect and to have a safe workplace.”

Those words are particularly significant in Jackson because public transportation is not simply a convenience. For many residents, it is part of the economic infrastructure that makes employment, healthcare, education and daily life possible.

Jackson is a city facing substantial economic hardship.

According to 2024 American Community Survey data compiled by Census Reporter, Jackson’s median household income is $44,516, compared with $59,127 statewide and $81,604 nationally. Per-capita income is approximately $27,523.

The latest Census Bureau QuickFacts estimates also put Jackson’s poverty rate at 27.9%.

In a city where more than one-quarter of residents live below the poverty line, eliminating bus routes or reducing service can have consequences far beyond transportation. A canceled route can mean losing access to a job, missing a medical appointment or making it considerably more difficult to buy groceries or attend school.

A Labor Victory — and a Victory for Riders

The JTRAN strike illustrates something often overlooked in discussions about public-sector and public-service labor disputes: workers and the communities they serve do not necessarily have opposing interests.

In Jackson, transit workers demanded higher wages and better treatment while simultaneously opposing reductions in the services their passengers rely upon.

Their victory therefore represents more than a successful contract negotiation.

Workers increased their wages. They improved their benefits. They defended their union. And they helped protect public transportation in one of America’s economically challenged cities.

For a union local that has represented Jackson transit workers since 1939, the settlement also demonstrates the continuing power of organized labor in a state where union membership remains exceptionally low.

As Tornes put it after the settlement:

“Companies come and go. But at the end of the day, we’ve been chartered since 1939 at JTRAN ATU. We’re gonna be there.”

Sources & Further Reading

Amalgamated Transit Union:
Local 1208 JTRAN Workers Ratify Contract with MV Transportation Ending 39-Day Strike

Mississippi Free Press:
JTRAN Bus Drivers, MV Transportation Agree on New Contract to End Weeks-Long Strike

Mississippi Today:
JTRAN Workers Will Return Monday Under New Contract That Hikes Pay and Benefits

Labor Notes:
Mississippi Transit Workers Strike for Better Protections and Service

U.S. Census Bureau:
QuickFacts — Jackson, Mississippi

Census Reporter:
Jackson, Mississippi — ACS Profile

WalletHub:
Cities With the Highest and Lowest Population in Need

NPR:
Jackson, Miss., Lives in a World of High Poverty and Higher Expectations

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Professor Wolff’s latest book “Understanding Capitalism” is available now for purchase: Here

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Speaking on behalf of Donald Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States would embark on a new campaign to destroy Iran’s economy with sanctions. He gave the operation a name: ‘Operation Economic Outcast.’ Professor Richard Wolff and Brian Becker discuss.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.

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The latest conversation between Professor Richard D. Wolff speaks with Micheal Hudson and Nima R. Alkhorshid on the United States’ ongoing war on Iran.

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Professor Wolff’s latest book “Understanding Capitalism” is available now for purchase: Here

Professor Richard Wolff appears on The Econoclasts hosted by Yanis Varoufakis the two economists discuss and analyze the decline of US imperial hegemony, tracing how eroding global power, systemic economic instability, and the rollback of social democratic reforms have fueled widespread political alienation, while offering a critical critique of mainstream economic theory and exploring the potential for a renewed socialist movement in America.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent billions of U.S. dollars to buy and prop up the Japanese currency, the yen. Professor Richard Wolff and Brian Becker unpack the economic and geopolitical calculations of the Trump White House, and what it means for the US economy.

Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at ⁠rdwolff.com⁠.

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Professor Wolff’s latest book “Understanding Capitalism” is available now for purchase: Here

This is Richard’s twelfth appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends. He researches domestic and international finance, the history of economics, and the role of debt in shaping class stratification, among many other topics. This is Michael’s eighth appearance on the show. In this episode, Robinson, Richard, and Michael discuss colonialism and the death of modern nations. More particularly, they discuss the evolution of capitalism toward socialism, whether colonialism has officially ended, Russia, China, Israel, Iran, Trump, Putin, and the United States. Richard’s latest book is Understanding Capitalism (Democracy at Work, 2024). Michael’s most recent book is Temples of Enterprise (ISLET, 2024).

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Professor Wolff’s latest book “Understanding Capitalism” is available now for purchase: Here

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Professor Richard Wolff joins Glenn Diesen to discuss why Europe's leaders provoke war with Russia.

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When most folks think about lawyers, they picture expensive corporate attorneys, courtroom dramas, or politicians arguing over legislation. Rarely do we think of the law as a tool ordinary people can use to build a better world. But that’s exactly what the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) has been proving for years.

Here at Redneck Gone Green, we talk a lot about the importance of resisting what’s wrong and also building what’s right. That’s because we know that we have to do both. We have to fight corporate greed, White Supremacy, economic inequality, and environmental destruction. But we also have to build democratic institutions that give people real power over their own lives. That’s what we call Build & Fight. SELC is a fantastic example of what that looks like in practice.

Instead of asking how capitalism can be made a little less cruel, SELC asks three much deeper questions:

1. Who owns the things we need and use?

2. Who makes the decisions about what is done with them?

3. Who benefits from these decisions?

SELC helps folks answer those questions in practical and inspiring ways.

They help workers create cooperatives where employees own the business instead of outside investors. They help communities establish land trusts that keep housing permanently affordable instead of allowing speculators to drive prices through the roof. They help local organizers navigate legal challenges so they can spend more time building community wealth and less time worrying about paperwork.

This isn’t about finding loopholes in the law. It’s about using the law to strengthen democracy.

The French socialist André Gorz gave us a powerful idea that has shaped organizers for decades: Non-Reformist Reforms. Some reforms leave the basic rules of the game unchanged. They may provide temporary relief, but they don’t shift power.

Non-reformist reforms are different. They solve real problems today while expanding people’s capacity to govern themselves tomorrow. They move us beyond simply managing capitalism toward building the institutions of a democratic, solidarity economy.

That’s exactly why worker cooperatives and community land trusts are so important. They’re not just good programs. They’re democratic institutions. Every cooperative teaches people how to govern a workplace together. Every community land trust takes land out of the speculative market and puts it under community stewardship. Every successful solidarity economy project gives people more confidence that another way of organizing society is not only possible—it’s already happening.

This is also why local politics matter so much. We don’t have to wait for Congress to act before we start building a different economy. Cities can support worker cooperatives. Counties can help establish community land trusts. States can create public financing tools. Community organizations can build mutual aid networks, cooperative businesses, and neighborhood institutions right now. Every one of those victories creates new possibilities for the next one.

The People’s Network for Land & Liberation, the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, and countless local organizations around the country are already doing this work. SELC provides something every movement needs: legal tools that help turn bold ideas into durable institutions.

We live in a time when many people feel powerless. Billionaires seem to have more influence than entire communities. Housing grows less affordable. Wealth becomes more concentrated. Democracy itself feels increasingly fragile.

But despair is not a strategy.

Building democratic institutions is a strategy.

Creating community ownership is a strategy.

Using the law to expand democracy instead of protecting concentrated wealth is a strategy.

That’s why I’m excited to be talking with Hasmik from the Sustainable Economies Law Center on Redneck Gone Green. We’ll talk about how communities can use the law not simply to defend themselves, but to build a future rooted in cooperation, shared ownership, and economic democracy.

I hope you’ll watch the interview, share it widely, and most importantly, ask yourself one simple question:



What’s one institution my community could build today that would give ordinary people more power tomorrow?



Because every cooperative, every community land trust, every neighborhood assembly, and every solidarity economy project is another brick in the foundation of the world we’re fighting to build.

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Hsin-Yuan Huang, a Caltech theorist, gave a talk last week at UC Berkeley’s Simons Institute titled How to Respond to the Automation of Research. I went in expecting the video to be about how AI is giving researchers the power to advance their fields, the way it already did with protein folding and drug discovery. Instead what unfolded in front of me was a room slowly realizing they were being cut out of research entirely, and a speaker who had admitted to having a panic attack while preparing the presentation the night before. Two years ago, I had begun to feel it myself: being automated out of purpose and out of a career was the inevitable goal. A chasm was opening below me with no social safety net to catch me, and the gains that should have lifted everyone were being sucked up by large corporations. Now I was watching it come over them.

The talk’s abstract had begun with Huang’s own sentence: “Research used to hold a sacred place in human society.” He had named what made it sacred: it was scarce, a thousand years ago the richest man in the world could not buy a theorem; it was selfless, a lifetime devoted to discoveries that would benefit everyone; it was timeless, much of what we learn today was discovered thousands of years ago. He would spend the next hour explaining why the first half of that sentence was already past tense.

He asked that the talk be a discussion more than a lecture. He did not have the answers, he said, and the community would have to think the questions through together. He apologized for what he was about to say and hesitated over how much detail to share. He had anonymized the story he was about to tell. At another conference, a researcher had presented a new question. Someone in that audience heard the question, put it into an AI with two thousand dollars of compute, and thirty minutes later, before the talk had ended, the machine had found the result. It had also found a new question, a sharper version of hers with broader implications. She had spent months formulating the question. The answer, and a better one, arrived while she was still at the podium.

Who owns that discovery? The person who spent months formulating the question? The person who paid for the compute? Or the AI? He let them hang.

Two days before, Robin Kothari, a theoretical computer scientist at Google Quantum AI, posted the same crisis from the other side. “Frontier LLMs can now solve many quantum computing and theoretical computer science problems that I’ve personally spent weeks or months working on. How is everyone else dealing with the existential crisis that accompanies this reality?” He works for the company building some of those models.

Among the replies, hopeful looks for their future, were the standard objections. Huang had heard all of them before, and he went through them one by one. The first thing you hear is that real research requires accumulated knowledge. He pointed to a paper from three years ago, MemGPT, that gave LLMs long-term memory; since then, thousands of papers have refined the technique. Frontier models, he said, “can also all design and improve their memory system on their own, because they already have read tons of papers.” The cycle feeds itself.

The second thing you hear is that humans will still be needed to verify results. True, Huang said: machines make mistakes, hallucinate, and build on errors. But “you can set up a verifier that sits right next to it and do adversarial attack on the output generated by the generator,” turning “a weaker LLM that have a certain physical error rate into an LLM that have lower logical error rate.” Machines already verify machines.

The third thing you hear is that progress will plateau once the internet is fully trained on. “That’s also not quite true.” Weaker models generate synthetic data to train better ones, and the process keeps going from there. Progress stops, he said, only when a single model is “a perfect reasoning machine.” At which point full automation has already arrived.

He was methodical. Watching it, I recognized something. I have made these arguments myself. These are the same reactions I and others have had when presented with AI, or any previous technological advancement. Then there are those whose hubris is believing they will be spared: the machines will take every other field, but not theirs. It is the same feeling Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, felt when Deep Blue beat him: sure he would win, he refused to accept it. I have reached for each of these arguments at different points over the past few years, whenever the models got better and the dread got closer. Huang had done the work of testing them. They did not hold.

Full automation of research was probably inevitable, he said. The timeline was not clear: a few years, or twenty, or longer. Yet the machinery was already running.

He is the CTO of Oratomic, a quantum computing company; in an hour of talking, he never mentioned it. The talk opened with a disclaimer: he was speaking on his own behalf, as a theorist and researcher, and the ideas were not representative of any institution. If anyone in that room should have been excited about what was coming, it was him: the future he described would be good for his business. He was part of the existential crisis the entire room was having; the panic attacks were how it showed up in him. Whatever his reasons, the boat is the same: he and his company now face the threat of full commoditization.

Huang was talking to his peers, people whose careers are organized around the assumption that producing new knowledge is hard, scarce, and human. The silence that followed was the kind you get when a room full of people is doing the same arithmetic and arriving at the same sum.

Umesh Vazirani, the host, suggested that research after AI might be like chess after Deep Blue. Humans are no longer competitive, but the community of people who play is larger than ever. To me, it felt like a consolation prize: people would keep playing chess for the love of it, while computers made all the real advancements. One researcher brought up that even if people kept playing for love, the real question was economics: fewer jobs, less funding, fewer spots in graduate programs.

A self-described idealist offered the gentlest version: if the machines generate the ideas and the results, there is still a lot for humans to do, because it matters that someone consume them and make meaning. It collapsed in the same breath. With recent developments, he found it hard for one person to keep up with the results, let alone know what was being done in the fields. The audience was drowning too.

Dorit, a researcher in the audience, rejected the analogy entirely. “Research is more like movement than chess. There are robots who move faster than us, cars move faster than us. Movement is important for us to our very core, and we don’t delegate movement to others. We move.”

She drew on the why of her choice to be in the field, the pull of inner passion and motivation that drives us all. You can let a machine play chess for you and still be a person who plays chess. You cannot let a machine do your thinking for you and still be a person who thinks.

The host offered an answer: whatever AI does will become commoditized, and credit shifts to whoever asks the question. Once machines can ask questions too, the askers are superfluous.

I have watched hard-won craft get absorbed, automated, and replaced before. But those questions Huang posed are personal. This was the act the people in that room had been told was immune: producing new knowledge, the thing you do after the machines have taken everything else. And his story had demonstrated, with two thousand dollars of compute, that it was not immune at all.

Nancy stood up. She had already pushed the point once, minutes earlier, in its bluntest form: “We can’t afford to lose learning because then we’ll become banal animals. We need to legislate learning as an inevitable and inalienable human activity.” Now she went further. The future Huang had described would not arrive under any system that valued human beings. “Rich institutions will realize research is only economically valuable to the extent that it produces tangible output for society, and then there won’t be that encouragement for researchers to get into research for the love of it.” She was a researcher. She was naming capitalism, unprompted, at a quantum computing workshop, because the math had led her there.

I understood why she was the first to stand. I would feel differently about this technology if I trusted the institutions that govern it. If I believed elected officials were working to ensure everyone’s wellbeing. If the economic system valued human flourishing the way it values quarterly returns. The fear is real. The technology is real. And the fear is about what the system will do with it.

Dorit was right. But she was describing the best-case scenario, where the economics allow us to keep doing the work for its own sake. Economics will not allow it. That analogy fails for a second reason she did not name: the chess engine makers never got to decide whether humans keep playing. Research engine makers will get to decide whether humans keep doing science, because they will own the journals, the compute, the funding, and the output. We can keep playing. The question is whether we will be allowed to.

“Can I just say that I’m finding this discussion a little bit pointless?” OpenAI and Anthropic are losing a ton of money, he said; they need many billions just to survive; they are the two companies driving cloud demand from Microsoft and the whole circle of investment. “If they were to shut down, would we all still be able to use LLMs?”

Huang picked up where he had left off: what’s left for us? The old answers were falling apart. Money now buys theorems. A rich person can pay for a discovery without devotion. Lost theorems simply regenerate. What is my economic value in this, he asked himself. What remained, he said, were three things: ownership of what the machines produce, choice over what they do, and the dream of a future worth building. He pointed to the professions that already run mostly on those three values: angel investors, venture capitalists. There could be a world where research is like that.

He ended the talk by confessing he did not know what to do about any of it. The last word went to a participant who had once nearly chosen philosophy over computer science: “I’ve been kind of resisting the urge to just start a philosophy discussion.” The conversation, he said, “just boils down to what is the meaning of life and living.”

It was happening, with slight variations, across the field, and not just in quantum computing. I went looking for how far it had spread. It did not take long. What Huang described would not arrive as a single event. It would arrive as waves, and each wave was already moving, each one a force at the same coalescing inflection point, each one pushing which way the path goes. The automation: machines solving what had resisted people for decades. The environment: billions plowed into AI and data centers, some of it financing the market itself is starting to doubt. The cheapening: a Chinese lab shipping a near-frontier model for pocket change. And the refusal: a bill to give the public half of the largest AI companies, organizers in every field, socialist candidates winning. Every player was in motion. No path was fixed yet.

The first wave was the automation itself. In February, Google DeepMind’s Aletheia was deployed against seven hundred open problems from Paul Erdős’s collection of conjectures. It produced sixty-three technically correct solutions and resolved four open questions autonomously. Its results were of publishable quality. In May, OpenAI announced that an internal reasoning model had disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture, a problem in discrete geometry that had stood since 1946. The proof was real, destabilizing enough that OpenAI declined to release it.

In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both Google DeepMind employees, for AlphaFold, which predicted the structures of all 200 million known proteins. More than three million researchers across 190 countries now use it. The award was the highest institutional validation that AI-produced science is science, and it went to the company that built the model. Thousands of structural biologists whose work made the training data possible were not on the stage.

The second wave was the environment it was arriving into. Huang had the vision; the environment was not in it. That system shapes what we build: at best we do not realize the consequences; at worst we know them and do it anyway. Several researchers in the room had described using it, finding it genuinely useful. United States private AI investment reached two hundred eighty-five billion dollars last year. The National Science Foundation’s NAIRR, the federal government’s public AI compute, runs on thirty-five million dollars a year. That is roughly what one large lab spends training a single frontier model for a few days.

This ratio is a policy choice. The means of producing scientific knowledge are concentrating in the same institutions that already control search, social media, cloud infrastructure, and the models themselves. When researchers publish, they train the models that will replace them. Every paper uploaded to arXiv, every dataset shared for reproducibility, every lecture posted online becomes raw material for systems owned by Google, Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI. The collective output of the global scientific community, centuries of publicly funded labor, is absorbed into proprietary infrastructure and sold back as a service.

Fragility is already visible. On The Tech Report a week after the talk, Ed Zitron called the AI bubble “a series of different ghost stories used to ignore financials.” Nvidia had just offered to backstop $250 billion of OpenAI’s financing, a deal he called “the final boss of circular financing.” That fragility does not return the commons to the public. Infrastructure, data, and trained models remain behind the fence.

The third wave was the cheapening. On July 31, DeepSeek re-post-trained V4-Flash, its budget 284-billion-parameter model, and it beat the company’s own flagship V4-Pro on all nine agent benchmarks at fourteen cents per million input tokens, reported by the TechTimes. A near-frontier model for less than the cost of a text message. That frontier is no longer something only five American companies can own. Models are getting cheap enough to escape. The question is whether the means of running them ever will.

The fourth wave was the refusal: refusing to live in a world where human advancement is only a hope. The enclosure is literal. That May, Elsevier joined a class-action lawsuit against Meta, alleging the company illicitly used copyrighted books and journal articles to train its Llama models. It spent decades extracting profit from publicly funded research by charging universities to access their own work and is now fighting the AI company that scraped the same material without paying. They are suing each other over who gets to keep the fence.

The mathematicians had been watching from a different angle. arXiv was their infrastructure too. On June 2, sixteen mathematicians from fifteen universities released the Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. It demands disclosure of AI use in proofs, human responsibility for verification, and resistance to corporate influence over research direction. More than twenty-six hundred researchers have signed, including Terence Tao. It is a fight to keep that commons alive: arXiv, free and researcher-run for three decades, the infrastructure the entire field depends on. The declaration came two weeks after OpenAI’s Erdős proof, a major mathematical result from a proprietary model no one could inspect, a scientific milestone arriving with terms of service attached.

The workshop where Huang spoke had been asking the same question from the other direction: whether the community would still exist to set the terms. It did not stop at declarations. In March, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez introduced a national moratorium on AI data center construction. In June, Sanders followed with a bill to give the public fifty percent ownership of the largest AI companies through a sovereign wealth fund, public ownership of the machines that produce knowledge, in bill form. In July, New York became the first state to pause large AI data center construction. Public ownership, worker control, universal guarantees: ideas unutterable a decade ago now win primaries and pass ballot measures. The DSA is now the largest socialist organization in the US in generations.

These are small things measured against the scale of what is arriving. A declaration. A lawsuit. A workshop full of physicists asking each other what it means to be human. But they are more honest than most of what passes for the AI conversation, which treats the technology as an external force. Ownership, access, and control are choices being made right now, by specific institutions, with specific interests.

The researchers in that room were physicists who followed the math to its conclusion. Richard Wolff talks about overdetermination: no single cause pushes history. Waves converge. They had spent their careers studying wave functions: every possible future held at once, weighted by everything acting on the system, until a measurement collapses it into one reality. The superposition is still open. The amplitudes are still being set. In physics, the collapse happens to the system from outside. In history, there is no outside; we are terms in the equation, and organizing changes the amplitudes. We can dream of a future worth building, as Huang did, as the whole room did. But if we do not own what the machines produce, we do not have the choice.

The path is not fixed yet, and that is what an inflection point is for. That environment the technology is arriving into was not built for it. It can be rebuilt. We get to choose the future. We get to fight for a future worth dreaming of. From the floor, the researcher had named the system. Capitalism.

CommonBytes

This column explores a central question: What should technology’s role be in a world beyond capitalism? Today’s technological landscape is largely shaped by profit, commodification, and control—often undermining community, creativity, and personal autonomy. CommonBytes critiques these trends while imagining alternative futures where technology serves collective flourishing. Here, we envision technology as a communal asset—one that prioritizes democratic participation, cooperative ownership, and sustainable innovation. Our goal? To foster human dignity, authentic connections, and equitable systems that empower communities to build a more fulfilling future.

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Fascism is rising in the United States. This isn’t hyperbole. Let me break it down without dumbing it down.

First, look at how they’re clearing the deck of anyone who might stand in the way of a fair count for the 2026 mid-term elections.

Trump just “cleaned house” in the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, firing every single member. The White House had spent months looking for ways to bypass this agency and use emergency powers to force changes to voting machines. This is the very agency that certifies voting systems, distributes federal grants, and helps state election officials run secure elections. Why would you gut the referee unless you’re planning to fix the game?

Trump’s own former lawyer Ty Cobb (no relation) sees it. He told MSNBC that “you can’t look at the termination of the Election Assistance Commission as anything other than another effort by one side to try to take over part of the referee role for the elections.” He went on to warn that Trump is “stacking every card in the deck that he can get his hands on” because “those forces are already on the field.”

That’s a man who knows how the sausage is made, and he’s sounding the alarm.

But they ain’t stopping at the referee.

They’re going after the actual ballots themselves.

Back in January, the FBI—with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard present on the ground—raided the Fulton County, Georgia election hub and seized about 660 boxes of records from the 2020 election. This was the same election that had been recounted multiple times and certified as accurate, even by Trump’s own Attorney General William Barr. A federal judge, appointed by Trump himself, ruled the feds could keep those records. This wasn’t an investigation; it was a show of force to intimidate election workers and lay the groundwork for claims that the 2024 election was “stolen” too.

And it ain’t just the machinery of elections they’re after. They’re going after anyone who might fund the opposition or speak out.

CBS News reports that the Justice Department is investigating Neville Roy Singham, the husband of Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, over potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and tax laws. This is a criminal probe by a grand jury in New York, looking into whether money was unlawfully funneled through nonprofits. It’s a classic political hit job—intimidate a major progressive donor to scare off anyone else from funding the fight. They’re attempting to make it a crime to support left-wing causes, plain and simple.

They’re also trying to silence the press. The Justice Department issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists—Michael Grynbaum and others—forcing them to testify before a grand jury about their reporting on security concerns with Trump’s new Air Force One jet. Federal agents even showed up at the reporters’ homes. The Times’s top lawyer called it “a brazen act” to “prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.” And it’s not just the Times. The message to any journalist who might dig too deep is clear: fall in line or face the consequences.

Now, look at the red-baiting. Since a string of democratic socialist candidates won primaries in late June, Trump has invoked the word “communism” a whopping 94 times and counting, invoking the phrase “hardcore, godless communists.”

And Fox News is running scared, running segments on the “communist movement” gaining ground. They put up graphics with the DSA’s platform—things like Medicare for All and taxing the wealthy—as if helping working people is some kind of crime. It’s a smear campaign straight out of the Cold War, but it’s aimed at making anyone left of center seem like a foreign threat so they can justify crushing dissent.

And if you still think this is just political theater, look at what they’re doing to young protestors. In Texas, nine people were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in federal prison for their involvement in a protest at an ICE detention facility. One of them, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, got 30 years just for moving a box of zines—politically expressive pamphlets protected by the First Amendment—after his wife called him from the protest. Thirty years for moving pamphlets. That’s not justice; that’s state terror designed to chill dissent and criminalize any opposition to this regime. The Freedom of the Press Foundation called it “the latest example of the Trump administration grasping at any legal straws it can to criminalize disfavored ideologies and writings.”

Then there’s the Southern Poverty Law Center. The DOJ indicted the SPLC, accusing it of defrauding donors by using paid informants to track white supremacist hate groups. Evidence suggests this investigation was prompted by a letter from right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA, complaining about being labeled hate groups. A coalition of 15 state attorneys general warned that the administration is “weaponizing government power against nonprofit organizations.” They’re going after the very organizations that track the racists and fascists—that should tell you everything about whose side they’re on.

And finally, they’re sending a message to any politician who steps out of line. Look at what happened to Congressman Ro Khanna. While visiting the West Bank, Israeli settlers, brandishing American-made M4s, surrounded his van and detained him and his group for 90 minutes. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers and continued the detention. Khanna, a vocal critic of the Israeli government, was publicly humiliated, and the Trump administration said nothing. It’s a clear signal: if you oppose their allies, you’re on your own.

Let me stop you right here if you’re thinking the answer is just to “vote harder.” That ain’t gonna cut it, and you know it. They’re taking over the referee role, silencing the press, intimidating donors, red-baiting their enemies, sending a message to any politician who dares to stand up, and locking up young people for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Ty Cobb is right: “those forces are already on the field.” You think a ballot box is gonna stop a government that’s already weaponized the DOJ, the FBI, and the courts against its political opponents?

You think showing up on Election Day is gonna undo the gutting of the EAC or the intimidation of election workers?

Hell no. That’s like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight.

We need to be ready for massive, creative non-compliance. I’m talking about the kind of civil disobedience that made the civil rights movement work. I’m talking about general strikes, workplace walkouts, rent strikes, and mass protests that shut down the machinery of power.

Look at what the French did when their government tried to raise the retirement age—they brought the whole damn country to a standstill. Look at what the Polish Solidarity movement did in the 1980s. They didn’t just vote. They organized, they resisted, and they refused to comply with an illegitimate regime.

Remember the 2020 George Floyd uprisings? In the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, millions of people took to the streets in over 2,000 cities across this country. They shut down highways, they occupied city centers, they set up autonomous zones, and they forced police reform conversations into every city council meeting from Minneapolis to New York. That wasn’t voting; that was direct action. That was people saying “enough is enough” and making the powers that be listen.

Or think back to the 2011 Wisconsin Capitol protests, when over 100,000 working people—teachers, fire fighters, nurses—occupied the state capitol building for weeks to fight Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting bill. They shut down the legislature, they sang “Solidarity Forever” from the rotunda, and they showed that when working people stick together, we can stop the machine cold. And don’t forget the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, when truck drivers shut down the entire city for over two months, fought off the police and the National Guard, and won union recognition for thousands of workers. That’s the kind of backbone we need now.

I know this stuff firsthand. I was there in the global justice movement of the 1990s, marching side by side with tens of thousands of us who said “another world is possible.” We shut down the WTO in Seattle in 1999—50,000 of us blockaded the streets, locked arms, and stopped the global trade talks cold. We fought the FTAA in Miami in 2003—over 20,000 of us filled the streets, with labor, environmental, and indigenous leaders all standing together against corporate globalization. We marched on the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C., in 2000, shutting down traffic and forcing the institutions to fence themselves in like scared animals. And we took it to New York City, too—when the World Economic Forum held its meetings there, we filled the streets with a carnival of resistance, making it clear that Wall Street and Davos don’t get to run our lives. We didn’t vote for change; we made change happen through our bodies, our courage, and our refusal to back down.

That’s what we need here—not begging the system to work, but building our own power outside of it. We need to be talking about mutual aid networks, community defense committees, and parallel structures that can keep our communities fed, housed, and protected when the state turns on us. We need to be ready to flood the streets, block the courthouses, and make it impossible for them to steal another election without a fight. We need to be ready to protect our neighbors, our organizers, and our journalists from political prosecution. And we need to start building those networks now, not on the morning after they steal the election.

This is class war from the top down.

The only way to stop them is to organize, build our own power, and fight like hell to defend ourselves. The fight for the midterms is already here, and we better be ready—not merely with ballots, but with our bodies, our communities, and our unwavering refusal to accept an illegitimate government.

David Cobb is the host of the popular podcast Redneck Gone Green, dubbed a “people’s lawyer”, David has spent his career litigating corporate polluters and civil rights violators. He was the Green Party Presidential nominee In 2004, In 2010 he co-founded Move To Amend, In 2016 he served as the Campaign Manager for Jill Stein’s presidential campaign. Currently he serves as the Co-Coordinator of the US Solidarity Economy Network and the People’s Network for Land Liberation, a consortium which seeks to de-commodify the land to reestablish a right relationship with the earth and all of our relatives and relations.

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