Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The recent meltdown of Texas’s energy grid during a spell of extreme weather made it extremely clear for everyone to see: a for-profit, free-market-oriented energy system is bound to fail massive numbers of people.
After promising to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen,” Joe Biden is staying silent as Amazon workers try to unionize in Alabama. It could be because he’s just being Joe Biden — or it could be because of the massive leverage and influence the company exerts through its size.
A sexist outburst from Japan’s Olympics chief derailed preparations for the rescheduled Tokyo Games and provoked an international furor. Mori Yoshiro’s antiquated attitudes are rooted in a conservative, authoritarian worldview that’s deeply entrenched on the Japanese right.
The 320,000 members of the International Association of Fire Fighters have begun voting for a new president. In Mahlon Mitchell, they have a chance to elect a 2016 DNC delegate for Bernie Sanders from Wisconsin who fought back against former governor Scott Walker’s vicious union-busting.
Amazon workers in Alabama are voting on whether to unionize, but the company is able to bombard them with anti-union propaganda. In Canada, by contrast, union votes are held quickly, making it harder for companies to stack the deck — a model that can work in the United States.
Democrats want to pay billions to put Americans on expensive corporate health insurance plans rather than expand Medicare or create a public option. It’s a gift to a criminal private insurance industry that needs to be completely abolished.
As Polish state socialism entered its death spiral, journalist Teresa Torańska interviewed the figures who had first created the regime after 1945. The resulting book gave retired Stalinist statesmen a platform to defend their actions — but also showed why their antidemocratic model of socialism could never have achieved popular support.
The COVID-19 era eviction moratorium has given rise to a new journalistic genre: the “renter from hell” narrative, portraying landlords as the real victims of the crisis.
Jamie Gorelick, a high-powered lawyer who defended the city of Chicago after the police murder of Laquan McDonald and sits on the board of Amazon, is a case study of the influence big corporate law firms wield behind the scenes in Washington — and she has friends like Merrick Garland in high places in the Biden administration.
Average Americans want to cut the military budget, but a constant stream of defense contractor cash to Congress makes such cuts unlikely. Perhaps the best way to argue against the continued expansion of the gargantuan budget for war: insist that we need that money for measures like $2,000 survival checks.
Bosses like management at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, where workers are trying to unionize, love to bring up union dues as part of their union-busting. But union organizers shouldn’t shy away from talking about why dues are important: they allow workers to pool the resources needed to fight the boss and win.
In the years after its violent formation, Israel tried to position itself as a member of the rising anti-colonial world. And today, despite its obvious role as an occupier, Israel is trying the same thing: establishing ties to African countries to shield Israel from criticisms that it’s an apartheid state.
A bill pushed by Britain’s Tory government will pave the way for security and law enforcement agents to commit crimes with no risk of being prosecuted. The move follows revelations of appalling police abuses against environmental, anti-racist, and trade union activists — yet Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has abstained rather than opposed the bill.
A new study reveals some grim consequences of Wall Street’s move into senior care: between 2004 and 2016, more than 20,000 Americans died as a consequence of living in nursing homes run by private equity firms.
Oscar Wilde is known today for his satirical wit and literary accomplishments. But he was also a socialist committed to the fight against oppression and exploitation.
Our press corps is wielded as a partisan and corporate weapon, making journalists averse to covering corruption and avarice if leaders from both parties are implicated in shilling for corporate power. Which is why the press is unable to handle a scandal like Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s alleged mismanagement of nursing home policy during the pandemic.
It’s six months since the fraudulent election in Belarus sparked mass protests against Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime. The collapse of his statist model of capitalism has fed mass discontent with his rule — but the liberal opposition’s own promises of change also drew skepticism among working-class Belarusians.
German novelist Thomas Mann spent most of World War II rallying the American people against Nazism and exhorting them to stand up for democratic values. Yet he also understood that no democracy can survive by culture alone — it also needs social justice to thrive.
Pete Buttigieg, a shape-shifting knockoff of the Obama original, has written a book about the importance of Trust — a surprising topic for a politician who elicits suspicion every time he opens his mouth. Can we just let bootleg Obama wander off into obscurity?
Austin, Texas, has been an important front in the battle for housing justice, where efforts to decriminalize homelessness have previously been successful. The city’s voters will soon need to defend those gains from a right wing trying to claw them back.