Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The defeat of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn and the ascension of Joe Biden and Keir Starmer hasn’t just meant the defeat of domestic working-class politics — it’s meant the defeat of an egalitarian internationalism that opposes war and imperialism.
It’s not just Jay Carney, the former Obama spokesman who now leads capital’s side of the class war at Amazon. A whole cohort of Obamanauts — those bright, young idealists who wanted to change the world — have positioned themselves in roles in the private sector where they can most effectively be part of the problem.
Media pundits hail the economist Karl Polanyi as a brilliant theorist of capitalism and a thinker for our time. In order to understand Polanyi’s ideas, however, we need to see him in the context of his own time: Europe’s “age of catastrophe” in the early twentieth century.
American police departments are armed to the teeth with military-grade weaponry like Humvees and assault rifles. Nothing is stopping President Biden from shutting down this military-to-police pipeline right away.
On Thursday night, the Murcia regional HQ of Spain’s Podemos party was set ablaze with a petrol bomb. The incident was the latest in a string of terrorist attacks against the Left — showing how the growth of the parliamentary far right is combining with the rise of a violent neofascist street movement.
The full story of how Glenn Greenwald revealed the antidemocratic corruption behind Brazil’s supposed anti-corruption investigation Lava Jato — which jailed former president Lula da Silva and gave rise to Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency — is one of bravery against a violent, reactionary right.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is threatening to block President Joe Biden’s higher corporate tax rate as part of Biden’s infrastructure bill — a move that could shield private equity firms whose executives boosted Manchin’s campaign and bet big on Trump’s tax bill.
After a stint in the army and a spell as a heroin addict, Nico Walker became a bank robber — a move that landed him in prison for almost a decade. That’s when he wrote Cherry, his first novel and now a motion picture starring Tom Holland. Jacobin spoke with Walker about the Iraq War, socialism in Bolivia, and why robbing a bank is easier than it looks.
A 1995 Illinois state law massively restricted the Chicago Teachers Union’s ability to bargain over anything but pay and benefits. The union has finally succeeded in rolling the law back — opening the door to bargaining over key issues like reversing privatization and the outsourcing of school services, capping class sizes, and more.
Three democratic socialists are on the ballot tomorrow in Milwaukee, a city with a long history of socialist municipal government. We interviewed them about what their socialist vision for the city looks like.
Restaurant chains have told their investors that a minimum wage hike wouldn’t be a big deal — even as their corporate lobbying groups in Washington fight plans for a $15 minimum wage.
Former vice president of Bolivia Álvaro García Linera sat down with Jacobin to discuss socialist strategy, how the Left can mobilize against antidemocratic forces like the right-wingers who recently executed a coup in Bolivia, and why democratic socialism means an “overflowing of democracy.”
After years of dashed attempts, Spain’s left-wing government has legalized euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Its victory shows how socialists in the United States can win the right for a dignified death for all.
In order to challenge the ALP leadership’s right-wing policy agenda, we first need to democratize the party’s rotten internal structures. The party’s Left faction should be leading this fight; instead, they’re helping perpetuate a system that keeps left-wing politics locked out.
Coal mining is coming to an end in Nova Scotia. But the industry’s long history of lethal accidents, labor unrest, and prolonged decline offers a lesson for the future. A green energy transition will need public investment and control, not piecemeal subsidies for private capital.
United Teachers of Los Angeles won a strong health and safety agreement ahead of returning to classrooms later this month. They won it the old-fashioned way: organizing rank-and-file teachers to demand an agreement that benefits teachers, parents, and students.
Despite unionization rates more than twice that of the United States, many Israeli workers continue to be committed to apartheid and the racist ideology enabling it. The Zionist project is preventing Israeli workers from organizing alongside Palestinians.
Throughout his adult life, Martin Luther King Jr believed in striking down not only racial apartheid but class exploitation. That twin commitment was embodied in his final effort: the often-forgotten Poor People’s Campaign.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has been an incompetent opposition to Boris Johnson. But he has fulfilled his immediate objective during his first year in charge: waging war on the Labour left, attacking Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy, and pushing his party to the right.
Agricultural bosses and their allies are accusing Australians of being work-shy as they face a post-pandemic labor shortage. But it’s low wages and abusive working conditions that make it hard for them to find workers. The solution is obvious: decent pay for decent work.