New Left Review 153, out now

In the Latest Issue

Zhang Yongle presents a view from China of the battle for America’s ideological soul, pitting Trump, home-grown nemesis of Western liberal democracy, against Francis Fukuyama, subtlest philosopher of its world-historical triumph. Are these two figures contrasting manifestations of the same hegemonic principle?

Alyssa Battistoni asks how the left might reimagine freedom on a resource-constrained planet, drawing on de Beauvoir’s philosophy of ambiguity.

In the first instalment of a landmark contribution to conceptualizing a post-capitalist order, Aaron Benanav lays the theoretical groundwork for a ‘multi-criterial’ economy, based on an expanded idea of investment that incorporates a range of social goals beyond maximizing efficiency. 

Roberto Schwarz reflects on the political concerns and formal choices that shaped his epic play Queen Lira, which transposes the structure of King Lear to modern-day Brazil. 

In a text left unfinished when he died, the sociologist Michael Burawoy (1947–2025) examines the differences between Afrikaner and Zionist settler colonialisms; and Michael Levien remembers his late teacher, honouring a globe-spanning career of ethnographic analysis and radical theory.