Enver Motala is an associate of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training at the Nelson Mandela University.
The November Revolution of 1918 replaced Germany’s monarchist regime with a parliamentary system. But its Social Democratic leaders made a pact with the old ruling class to repress the left-wing radicals who wanted to go further, crippling the new Weimar Republic from the start.
This weekend’s Christian-Democrat conference elected Armin Laschet as new party leader, narrowly defeating his Trump-like rival. With Chancellor Angela Merkel set to step down this fall, the party is seeking a new centrist bloc with the Greens — but still faces a hard-right upsurge within its own ranks.
In the late 2000s the Dutch Socialist Party was a success story, having risen from a small Maoist group into a 50,000-member party. But a split with its youth wing and talk of a coalition with right-wingers have demoralized activists — and shown the dangers of a parliamentary party becoming unmoored from labor and social movements.
In Mexico, the midterm election campaign has just kicked off and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s right-wing opponents have formed a coalition against his ruling party, MORENA. Their aim is to seize a majority in the lower house and stop AMLO’s progressive agenda in its tracks.
Companies like Uber had a massive victory in November, when their $200 million propaganda blitz convinced voters in California to pass Proposition 22, excluding platform workers from labor protections. Their plan to entrench contractor status for workers nationwide is clear, but stopping them is still an option — and a necessity.
Today, Jeremy Corbyn addressed the launch conference of his new Peace and Justice Project. Describing how the post-crash period has exposed the bankruptcy of unaccountable elites, he argued that movements from below have the power to transform the political agenda.
If there are any gains to be made for reproductive rights in the coming years, they will begin with the workers in clinics all across the United States — not with the politicians on Capitol Hill.
Far-right intellectuals like Steve Bannon claim to speak for a working class put upon by out-of-touch liberal elites. But their anti-modernist, hierarchical vision of the world doesn’t offer workers what they really need: more money in their pockets, and more power at the workplace.
The 1964 film Seven Up! asked 14 British seven-year-olds about their hopes of being the “shop steward and the executive of the year 2000.” Revisiting them every seven years for more than half a century, director Michael Apted made his interviewees into familiar faces — and shone a light on changing notions of class in Britain.
Like every other industry under capitalism, the music industry is currently organized to make a small handful of people very rich while the vast majority of working musicians benefit little from their recordings and performances. The only way to change that is through collective action.
Corporate Democrats are backing off a chance to push for a new round of $2,000 survival checks. And some of them are even floating tax breaks for the wealthy instead. We should rally against this backsliding.
Israel has been praised for launching an aggressive coronavirus vaccination drive. There’s just one problem: they’re excluding Palestinians in occupied territories.
In industries across the economy — from airlines to tech — the past two weeks have seen workers and their unions take the lead in combating Donald Trump’s far-right base.
Go ahead, put on some of Belle and Sebastian’s “sad-bastard” music. It won’t cure all that ails you, but you might feel a little less alone — and a little more solidarity with everyone out there who’s suffering alongside you.
A massive law enforcement failure led to last week’s disastrous Capitol riot. Now, many, including liberals, are pushing to give those agencies even more power as part of a “domestic terrorism” crackdown. This is the wrong way to combat the threat of far-right violence — we should start instead with an investigation of white supremacist infiltration of local police forces.
Bernie Sanders’s proposal to create a national emergency health insurance plan could have a transformative effect on the national health care debate, long after the COVID pandemic is over. But that plan, along with any other progressive policies, will be rendered moot if Joe Biden sticks to his insistence on seeking Republican support in Congress.
People behind bars have suffered enormously during the pandemic, with COVID-19 ripping through prisons. There’s no justification for not giving prisoners the vaccine immediately — both for their sake and for the broader society.
New York legislators are requesting a review of pension investments flowing to Wall Street firms whose executives funded groups that boosted the Republicans who tried to overturn the election.
Our child benefit system is bizarre and overcomplicated, Matt Bruenig argues. The US government should eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Additional Child Tax Credit — and replace those programs with a $374 check sent out to every family every month for every child they are taking care of.
According to recent reporting, Joe Biden wants to strike a deal with Republicans on a new round of COVID-19 relief, rather than ramming through a package without their support. After everything that has happened in recent weeks and years with the GOP, how is Biden still naive enough to think he can strike a deal with them?