Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The idea that AI will wipe out all our jobs is generating lots of apocalyptic headlines these days. It’s no surprise why: in a society without an egalitarian welfare state and pro-worker policies, labor reallocation can be a disaster.
Born on this day a century ago, Ernest Mandel was one of the major political thinkers of his age. From his teenage activism in the anti-Nazi resistance to his final days, Mandel was an uncompromising defender of socialist ideals and working-class interests.
Over 60 Peruvians have now been killed at protests following the impeachment of Pedro Castillo. President Dina Boluarte and PM Alberto “the Butcher” Otárola must be brought to justice.
Canadian news media is in a panic about alleged Chinese influence in Canadian politics. Their coverage is promoting anti-Chinese sentiment and creating farcical levels of paranoia about foreign interference.
The far right won big in Finland’s parliamentary elections over the weekend. They’re now likely to join a ruling coalition led by the country’s main party of big business.
Joe Lieberman wants a “commonsense, moderate, independent” politics in America, to be advanced by his group No Labels. It’s a bankrupt “post-partisan” vision that has no solutions to any of the multiple dire threats facing Americans.
Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 55 years ago today while in Memphis standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. His life and radical words stand as a beacon of hope, urging us to keep fighting for economic and racial justice.
Martin Luther King Jr had a rich relationship with socialist politics: he sympathized with but ultimately rejected Marxism, and he settled on a Christian socialism that viewed the struggle against racism and class oppression as fundamentally intertwined.
For two years, the GKN auto parts plant in Florence, Italy, has been occupied by laid-off workers. It’s the longest factory occupation in Italian history — and its retooling for green production shows how workers can reorganize the economy while saving jobs.
The US housing system is organized around subsidized private homeownership and underfunded public housing. But during the New Deal, leftists had a different vision: beautiful social housing for all but the rich.
Last September, California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have imposed rules and transparency on the state’s largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry. The move came after the crypto industry spent more than $400,000 on lobbying Newsom.
After stripping out mismeasured housing prices, core inflation had its biggest 12-month drop since the massive disinflation of the early 1980s. Larry Summers continues to be wrong about inflation.
Because the Biden administration refuses to make a public case for keeping alive the pandemic emergency declaration that led to a huge expansion of desperately needed programs like Medicaid, millions are about to lose their health insurance.
After a spell in a Marxist youth movement, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s constantly inventive music came to soundtrack the consumerist mania of the 1980s Japanese boom. But in his most recent work, the late composer turned back to experimentation and activism.
Run-ins with regulators, financial troubles, and a highly publicized penchant for dangerous risk was what Silicon Valley Bank was best known for in the decades before its collapse this year. So why was it allowed to grow so big, and so unregulated?
The Irish critic Seamus Deane grew up in Derry as a second-class citizen of a sectarian state. Taking inspiration from writers like Edward Said, Deane’s critical work exposed the legacies of colonialism and the failings of capitalist modernity in Ireland.
In 1970, Angela Davis was arrested on suspicion of murder. She was already the victim of red-baiting witch hunts led by conservatives, but the trial — and her eventual victory — proved to everyone that the justice system was corrupt.
Decades of rule by establishment politicians opened the door for right-wing populists like Donald Trump to cynically claim to represent the marginalized. They rose on the back of crises that are here with us to stay.
A viral tweet decrying the idea of work became a TikTok meme celebrating individualist influencer culture and the lives of the idle rich. But real freedom from the drudgery of labor requires collective action — and building a world beyond capitalism.
It’s fashionable to say that black veterans got no real benefits from the GI Bill. In truth, for many, the GI Bill was a rare positive experience with government that contrasted sharply with the indignities of Jim Crow.