Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
A recently released audit of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus reveals an absolute disaster from top to bottom. The Iowa caucus was a textbook case of the morass of professional political hacks and vendors looking to make a buck that is central to the Democratic Party as it exists today.
Across the world, universities have seen rising tuition costs, bloated administrations, and worsening conditions for students in recent decades. By organizing a rent strike at the University of Manchester and a tuition strike at Columbia, undergraduates at the two schools are drawing a line in the sand against higher-ed austerity.
Hari Kunzru’s latest novel, Red Pill, follows the mental unraveling of a liberal Brooklyn-dwelling “creative” as he finds himself being drawn into the world of the alt-right. In an interview with Jacobin, Kunzru reflects on the nature of the alt-right’s appeal and the dilemmas it poses for the Left.
Democrats have bought the right-wing lie that they must zealously guard against deficits by reining in public spending. The result: mass economic pain and poor performance at the polls. It’s time for Democrats to finally reject austerity.
Alan Gibbons, secretary of Liverpool Walton Constituency Labour Party, was suspended from the party this week as part of its mass suspensions throughout the UK. He has a simple message: socialists will not be driven out of Labour. “We’re here to stay.”
250 years after his birth, Beethoven’s music still has an exhilarating, subversive power. His revolution of artistic form was intimately linked to his sympathy for the political revolutions of his time.
Documents from the Bill Clinton Library tell the story of the disastrous 1994 crime bill. They reveal the cynicism and callousness of Clinton administration officials — including Rahm Emanuel and Ron Klain, who Biden is considering for his own administration — who shepherded the bill through Congress for naked political gain.
We should be concerned about the power big tech firms have in our lives. But antitrust lawsuits against tech monopolies are just a Band-Aid for the real problem: the need to free the social networks we use from private profit and the drive to sell our data.
Although Canadian unions are in a better position than their US counterparts, the Wagner model of industrial relations still can’t be relied on to protect vulnerable workers in either country. American and Canadian labor law need a complete overhaul.
Three thousand students at Columbia University have pledged to begin a tuition strike next semester if administrators do not concede to their demands. The strike is part of the nationwide student movement to end university austerity, resist rising student debt, and democratize the university.
Lorraine Hansberry is best known for her classic play A Raisin in the Sun. But she was also a committed radical who insisted that black workers must be at the heart of the struggle for liberation.
South Korean labor activist Kim Jin-suk inspired her country back in 2011 by occupying the top of a 115-foot shipyard crane to protest worker layoffs and defend workers’ rights. Now, as she fights for her life against breast cancer, she’s demanding her job back.
Denmark’s new budget promises more state investment and welfare spending, but also a commission on helping workers take control of their workplaces. Marking a break with decades of pro-privatization dogma, the bill is a small step toward an economy that serves social need, not just profits for shareholders.
The lack of long-term economic aid for unemployed workers has meant that incredible amounts of suffering are everywhere in America right now. We talked to unemployed workers to hear their stories in their own words.
John le Carré died Saturday at age eighty-nine. His novels rejected the glamor and ritz of Cold War–era spy fiction. Instead, he portrayed espionage as a dreary, disturbing machine that ground up innocents for a goal that didn’t justify the human cost.
Tens of millions of Americans are struggling to feed themselves, as cases of shoplifting to obtain basic food staples surge worldwide. The pandemic is wreaking economic havoc while Congress dithers.
The first film in Steve McQueen’s new Amazon Prime anthology chronicles the struggle for racial justice in Britain with the 1970s Mangrove Nine trial. It’s a wonderful achievement and valuable popular education on the British struggles against racist policing.
In a major sop to business interests, a Senate proposal would allow corporations to avoid COVID-related lawsuits from workers and patients. Corporate immunity is the last thing we need.
The stimulus bill currently under consideration in Congress does not include direct payments to the millions of workers struggling to survive. That’s an outrage — and, as a further slap in the face, the legislation subsidizes defense contractors.
The renowned physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson died early this year and would have turned ninety-seven today. His eternal and unshakable sense of optimism about the world despite its myriad miseries is desperately needed right now.