A Pandemic Foretold
Thirty years ago, an urgent report about microbial threats to public health was ignored by policymakers.
20413 Article(s) by: Karl Leffme
Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
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.
It’s Time for Democrats to Abandon the Earned Income Tax Credit
The Earned Income Tax Credit was supposed to substantially reduce poverty and efficiently increase employment. It’s failed. It’s time for Democrats to abandon the EITC and turn toward much more effective universal social welfare programs instead.
The Many Assassins of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme
It’s been over three decades since Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated outside a Stockholm cinema, and Swedish police have still never found the killer. The vast array of theories explaining the killing are a reflection of Swedes’ ongoing fascination for Palme — but also highlights how many enemies he made as prime minister with his bold internationalism.
Stop the $2 Billion Arms Sale to the Philippines
Amid the worsening COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines, the US government is brokering a $2 billion arms sale to Rodrigo Duterte’s repressive regime. The sale would only pour further fuel on an already dire human rights catastrophe.
The Left in Lockdown
We’re living through a bewildering moment for socialists. We talk to radical organizers Adolph Reed, Barbara Smith, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Jodi Dean, and Jane McAlevey about how they’re staying politically engaged under quarantine.
The Left Must Address a Historic Crisis of Representation
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.
No, We Don’t Want a “War Economy” to Deal With the Pandemic
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.
We Can’t Let Boris Johnson’s Government Sacrifice Workers for Corporate Profits
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.
To Fight COVID–19, We Need to Build Worker Power and Worker Safety
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.
How Capitalism and Other Viruses Are Ravaging the Global South
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.
Another Real Estate Crash Is Coming
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.
The Rich and Poor Don’t All Suffer Under the Pandemic Equally
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.
Why the Neoliberals Won’t Let This Crisis Go to Waste
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.
Collusion Is in the Eye of the Beholder
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.
Eric Hobsbawm’s Marxism Was Central to His Work as a Historian
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.