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.
The defeats for Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn point to the Left’s difficulties in overcoming old party machines. Bottom-up labor organizing may sound like an attractive alternative — but it shouldn’t ignore the power of left populism in uniting people outside the workplace.
Many pundits have likened the massive government interventions in response to COVID-19 to states’ resource mobilization during the World Wars. But this “war socialism” has never been the same thing as serving human need — and today it’s being used as a means of propping up private capital.
The British government has extended its program to subsidize employment during the lockdown, but pressure is mounting on workers to risk their lives for the sake of profit. We can’t let this happen.
We can’t take COVID–19 prevention seriously if we fail to address the millions of workers who are forced to work without proper protection from exposure. To do that, we need both worker organizing and pro-worker legislative reforms right now.
Across the Global South, the coronavirus crisis has highlighted how IMF “structural adjustment” policies have undermined public health care. But the devastation wrought by the economic shutdown also owes to a longer-term ill: an exploitative global trade regime where the poorest countries finance the rich.
The COVID-19 crisis, like the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago, has sparked major public interventions to stabilize the financial markets. But the Fed isn’t stepping in to bail out the real estate sector — and the big losers are set to be ordinary households.
Versions of today’s global pandemic nightmare have been imagined by Hollywood since the 1990s. But films like Contagion and Outbreak have all overlooked the way a health crisis is unevenly distributed across classes, both in the United States and around the world.
Many observers expected that the 2008 financial crisis would mark the end of neoliberalism. Instead, we saw a wave of privatization and sharp cuts in public services. Today, the forces best placed to exploit the coronavirus pandemic are still those who already have power: the neoliberals who’ve been shaping the economic policy agenda for decades.
Russiagate looks less like a righteous crusade for truth and justice and more like the typical shenanigans for which the FBI and US security state have long been known: prosecutorial overreach, entrapment, and the criminalization of foreign policy dissent.
Some of Eric Hobsbawm’s academic admirers would rather forget about his socialist political commitments. But those commitments formed an essential part of the great historian’s life and work.
In response to the pandemic, some governors are starting to reorganize their health systems to limit destructive competition and coordinate care between private and public hospitals. But we need to think bigger: a fully public, universal hospital system modeled on the UK’s National Health Service.
As the war in Afghanistan slowly grinds to an end, many in the foreign policy establishment want to tell you it was a “good war gone bad.” That’s false. The war in Afghanistan never should have been waged in the first place.
Spain’s comprehensive schools are often considered a social leveler, offering free education and hot meals to kids from all backgrounds. But amid the coronavirus shutdown, the classroom has moved into the family home — and working-class parents have the least time and resources to devote to their children’s education.
In New York City, the Democratic Socialists of America are running a six-candidate socialist slate aiming for state and national office. It will serve as a test run for socialist organizing in the age of coronavirus.
With the death this week of Jack Mundey, Australia has lost a giant of trade unionism. His green-socialist vision put labor militancy and democratic control at the heart of society and pushed back against the rapaciousness of urban development.
While educators across the country struggle to support and teach their students during distance learning, state and federal legislators are preparing to slash public education budgets. Defending public education during the coronavirus will require solidarity across the public sector.
We desperately need a Medicare expansion to provide health care to millions. But instead, Nancy Pelosi’s office is backing a health policy reform that is actually more expensive and will cover less people — all to placate centrist Democrats and insurance executives.
When faced with political setbacks like Bernie Sanders’s loss, it’s easy for socialists to blame our own comrades for our defeats. But those losses are more rooted in the powerful structures we’re up against than our own failures — and while vibrant debate is critical to the Left, intraleft attacks and recriminations just exhaust and dispirit us.
Denis Goldberg was a hero of the fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime, jailed for 22 years for his activism alongside Nelson Mandela. Following Goldberg’s tragic death last month, Jeremy Corbyn, writing in Tribune, pays tribute to a comrade and friend.
The New York Times attack yesterday on socialists who won’t endorse Joe Biden isn’t actually about convincing socialists to vote for him — it’s about performatively denouncing leftists as irresponsible, for the edification of the liberals who are watching.