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.
In an interview with Jacobin, former Labour Party shadow chancellor John McDonnell discusses Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID crisis, recalls the radical atmosphere of the 1980s Labour Party, and draws the lessons from Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as party leader.
Democratic socialism is a living political tradition that emphasizes the need to weaken the grip of capital, empower the working class, oppose authoritarianism, expand democracy, and shift our economy and society away from private profit and toward the fulfillment of social needs. It’s a vision worth debating — and defending.
Qualified immunity is the legal doctrine with deep roots in white supremacy and the Jim Crow era that allows police to get away with wanton brutality over and over again. It’s time to abolish qualified immunity.
As the social safety net is shredded, new data show that billionaires and corporations are refusing to pay hundreds of billions of dollars of owed taxes every single year. It really puts all the hand-wringing about “looting” into perspective.
American leftists look to Canada’s more robust social-welfare state with envy. But all is not well north of the border: Canada’s richest families own 120 times more wealth than the rest of the country combined. There’s never been a better time to introduce a wealth tax.
The great black freedom struggles of the past have been joined by many white people — not just out of a sense of moral obligation or sympathy for the oppressed, but out of a sense of shared interest and a desire for collective liberation. That spirit of solidarity should be central to anti-racist struggle today.
Donald Trump’s labor secretary Eugene Scalia has been busy lately: 1. helping money managers shift workers’ retirement savings into high-risk private equity schemes to enrich Wall Street, 2. relaxing rules dictating that money managers work in clients’ best interests, and 3. stopping the moving of workers’ savings into low-risk, environmentally sustainable investments.
The people of West Papua have suffered decades of oppression and discrimination at the hands of the Indonesian state. Now they’ve drawn inspiration from the Black Lives Matter protests to mount popular resistance to yet another authoritarian clampdown.
Disgraced opioid tycoon Jonathan Sackler died last week, two decades into a nationwide addiction epidemic that he helped create — and from which he pocketed billions. His life of spreading addiction was a monument to the brutal pathologies of capitalism.
As the world’s premier Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm’s intellectual range was unrivaled. Never one to pander to conventional politics, he was often a brave voice of dissent. Today more than ever, Hobsbawm’s work deserves serious examination.
Many of the repressive police tactics and technologies used in the US have been developed in the Middle East to suppress dissent. Ending police violence at home must involve ending America’s wars abroad.
A new study finds that unions don’t just increase wages and benefits for workers on the job — union membership is also linked to diminished racist attitudes among white workers. If we want to defeat racism, building strong, democratic unions is essential.
Nine public housing towers in Melbourne have been put under a police-enforced “hard lockdown” without warning, with isolation effectively policed at gunpoint. It’s a measure reserved for inner-city public housing residents, despite the rising wave of infections throughout the city.
Historian Mike Davis wrote a book fifteen years ago warning of the coming global pandemic. The “monster at our door” has finally stepped through that door in COVID-19, and unfortunately, Davis was proven correct.
James Averhart led a push to track down and punish soldiers who deserted the Vietnam War in an attempt to stop similar desertions in Iraq and oversaw Chelsea Manning’s brutal imprisonment at a Quantico jail. He’s now vying for an Alabama House of Representatives seat — as a Democrat.
In the Jim Crow South, the planter class’s greatest fear was that black sharecroppers and white tenant farmers would rise up against their oppressors. In the 1930s, Socialist and Communist organizers tried to make that a reality.
Jackie Fielder, a Democratic Socialists of America–backed candidate for California’s State Senate, is refusing to take money from police unions, real-estate interests, and the fossil fuel industry. For her, the connection between capital and police violence is clear: “Our communities face intense repression from the state because it is profitable.”
Harry Britt succeeded Harvey Milk on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and fought to build a queer politics that stood doggedly for workers’ and tenants’ rights. When he died last month, we lost a gay socialist icon.
There is overwhelming evidence a surge of mostly older, Trump-fearing voters decided the Democratic primary — and that Bernie Sanders failed to counter an establishment messaging campaign that Trump would beat him in a general election.
Most of the fighters who joined the partisan struggle in World War II Yugoslavia had never even held a camera, let alone considered themselves photographers. Yet organized efforts to create a “partisan photography” helped carry the image of their struggle to the masses — and showed that artistic production wasn’t just for professionals.