How Trump Got His Right-Wing New Deal Victory
Trump just scored a victory for workers at the Tennessee Valley Authority — but on the Right’s reactionary, anti-immigrant terms. All while the socialist left was AWOL.
19639 Articles by: Jonathan Sas
Jonathan Sas has worked in senior policy and political roles in government, think tanks, and the labor movement. He is an honorary witness to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. His writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, National Post, the Tyee, and Maisonneuve.
Maine’s Striking Shipbuilders Appear to Be On Their Way to a Big Victory
For the past three months, shipbuilders at Bath Iron Works in Maine have been waging the US’s biggest private sector strike of the year. With a tentative agreement now in place, it’s looking like they’re in for a big win.
The Democrats’ DNC Plans Show They Aren’t Even Pretending Anymore
The DNC is the four-yearly apotheosis of the Democratic Party’s love of progressive symbolism and empty rhetoric in place of real political vision. This year, it’s not even committing to that.
Where Do Sex Panics Come From?
Sex panics keep happening because they tap into Americans’ deepest fears about the need to protect innocents from the threat of evil — fears that are endemic among the Left as well as the Right. Meanwhile, lives are destroyed in the process.
Democrats Seem All Too Willing to Surrender on Health Care Reform
For-profit health companies are launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan — something many elected Democrats are very happy to be convinced of.
Medicare for All Is Better Than Union Health Care
A new report shows that union health plans, while better than employer-sponsored health care, pale in comparison to Medicare for All. The labor movement should take notice: union members would be better off with M4A than the health plans they have to fight so hard to protect.
In Belarus, the Left Is Fighting to Put Social Demands at the Heart of the Protests
The protests in Belarus have widely been painted as a pro-Western “color revolution” or “Minsk Maidan,” ignoring the deeper reasons for popular discontent with president Alexander Lukashenko. Jacobin spoke to left-wingers in Belarus about the forces behind the protests and the prospects of organized labor asserting its own agenda.
I Have a Vaccine Injury — And I’m Ready for Another
To develop the desperately needed vaccine for COVID-19, we need to test that vaccine on human subjects. Socialists have to fight to make sure for-profit medical companies don’t abuse those subjects.
Kamala Harris Is Joe Biden’s VP Pick, Despite Everything
Joe Biden’s choice of running mate Kamala Harris reveals a bleak truth: nothing the Left has done, from two Bernie Sanders campaigns to the biggest uprising in US history against police brutality, influenced his thinking at all. Big-money donors, on the other hand, did.
We Need to Throw More Criminal Businesspeople in Jail
White-collar crime is barely prosecuted in the United States. It’s time for that to change.
Coronavirus Has Exposed the United Kingdom’s Childcare Crisis
Almost half of the women workers in the United Kingdom who have lost their jobs under the coronavirus pandemic cite lack of childcare as a factor. It’s time to recognize childcare as a public good, a right for everyone, and make it available to everyone.
“This Is a Systematic Problem With Policing in This Country”
Labour MP Dawn Butler talks about being stopped by the police, the far-right campaign of abuse which followed, and why she will keep fighting the racism that plagues policing in Britain.
Capitalism Made Gay Identity Possible. Now We Must Destroy Capitalism.
Gay identity became possible thanks to capitalism’s emancipatory side: its liberation of the individual from material dependence on the family. But that sexual freedom wasn’t automatic — it required decades of militant struggle. Today, we need more such struggles to combat the oppressive aspects of capitalism, which keep gay and straight people alike from living fully free lives.
Rudolf Hilferding and the Austrian School of Anti-Capitalism
The Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding (1877–1941) produced an important and influential analysis of capitalism, and he played an active role in Austrian and German politics before falling victim to Nazism. He still has a lot to teach us about the way modern capitalism works.
To Talk About Racial Disparity and COVID-19, We Need to Talk About Class
It’s now widely understood that black Americans have been disproportionately hit by the coronavirus. But though mainstream commentators are willing to recognize this basic disparity, and the role of racism, they perpetually obscure the question of class.
Socialists Fought For and Won Our Basic Democratic Rights
The myth of our democratic rights is that they were handed down to us from on high by liberals. But the ruling class resisted extending the franchise at every turn — and socialists were the ones who fought them for the right to vote.
Trump’s Postal Service Chairman Has Led Senate GOP’s $100 Million Super PAC
Trump just installed a former Republican National Committee chair to lead the board that oversees the USPS. Now the agency faces allegations that it is being used to rig the 2020 election.
The Senate Just Abandoned the Working Class Without a COVID-19 Relief Package
Federal unemployment has dried up, rent is past due, evictions are proceeding, the cupboards are bare, and the Senate has adjourned without passing a new coronavirus relief package. Their abandonment of the working class is shameless, but hardly shocking.
Silicon Valley’s Big-Money Donors Are Very Excited About VP Kamala Harris
With her deep and long-standing ties to the Silicon Valley elite, Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate has corporate leaders breathing a deep sigh of relief. In picking the California senator, Biden couldn’t be clearer that his will be an administration dedicated to shoring up a crumbling status quo.
Belarus Is Cracking Down on Worker-Led Pro-Democracy Protest
In Belarus, a populist government that long claimed the support of its people finds itself repressing a historic protest movement — and its demands for a more democratic politics.