Letters + Celebrities Speak

Life is better if you own a yacht.

The Market Is Leaving Us Unprepared for a Pandemic

As we face down what the World Health Organization calls “a new normal” of high-impact epidemics, researchers and public health officials find themselves at war with for-profit pharmaceutical companies.

“We’re Not Heroes, We’re Health Workers”

While most politicians quarantine in safety, La France Insoumise’s Caroline Fiat is risking her life on the front lines as a health worker.

If Neoliberalism Were to End, How Would We Know?

What will decide the fate of neoliberalism today is not the extent of the economic damage the virus wreaks — it is the extent to which the virus transforms popular expectations.

Is This the End of Neoliberal Globalization?

The coronavirus has scattered the pieces on the geopolitical chessboard, revealing the fragility of just-in-time global production. Getting back to normal is the last thing we need.

It Takes a Herd

Simply put, vaccination saves lives.

Virulence and Contagiousness

Deadly pathogens may kill their host before the host has a chance to pass on the pathogen. That’s why there tends to be a trade-off between virulence and contagiousness.

Krona Virus

A magic money tree does exist — and not just in Scandinavia. The question is who gets to shake it first.

We Set Amazon on Fire

Millions of people stuck at home means more orders for Amazon. But squeezed Amazon employees in France and Italy didn’t want to be “essential workers” — and they launched a wave of strikes to demand a shutdown.

An Urgent Appeal for Your Support

We’ve avoided making an appeal up to this point, but if you’re able, we’d appreciate your support.

Corona C.R.E.A.M.

With the appalling Senate scandal over coronavirus insider trading, it is no longer possible to deny it: we are governed by a caste of the unimaginably rich, far removed from our realities.

We Need Better Drugs

We’re in a race with bacteria to develop new classes of antibiotics. The free market isn’t helping.

The New Thatcherites

Jacobin’s Quarantine Movie List

A new canon for those stuck indoors.

A Pandemic Foretold

Thirty years ago, an urgent report about microbial threats to public health was ignored by policymakers.

When the “Unskilled” Become “Essential”

World War II made the economically impossible suddenly possible. As our capitalist states mobilize for the pandemic, the Left has another golden opportunity for worker empowerment.

The Coronavirus Wouldn’t Be Decimating Meatpacking Plants If Company Bosses Hadn’t Busted the Unions

COVID-19 is ravaging the country’s meatpacking plants, turning packinghouse workers into sacrificial lambs. But none of this was inevitable — it’s the result of companies’ decades-long assault on meatpacking unions, which destroyed workers’ ability to have a say over their working conditions.

“Black Capitalism” From Richard Nixon to Joe Biden

Joe Biden has been touting black capitalism as part of the path to racial equality. The strategy remains as futile today as when Richard Nixon pushed it fifty years ago.

Health Insurance Companies Are Pissing on You and Saying It’s Raining

Even during a pandemic, health insurance companies are both raking in huge profits and cooking up new ways to justify denying their customers’ claims. Do we really want to keep using public resources to prop up a barbaric system like this instead of establishing Medicare for All?

How the “Stranger Danger” Panic of the 1980s Helped Give Rise to Mass Incarceration

The 1980s saw the spread of a nationwide panic about “stranger danger,” a supposed epidemic of child kidnappings and murders. Under the guise of protecting children, the media-driven hysteria helped spur mass incarceration.