Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The Suez Canal blockage inspired a thousand memes, but its consequences for the world economy were deadly serious. The canal has always performed a vital function for capitalist trade, and there’s no reason to think its economic and geopolitical importance is going to decline.
Winning a Green New Deal will require assembling a broad coalition rooted in the working class. To build that coalition and massively roll back energy usage, we can’t overlook a universal energy efficiency and conservation program for buildings, especially our homes.
Many people think of privatization as a policy of conservative parties. In Australia, however, it was Paul Keating’s Labor that initiated a gigantic fire sale of public assets, setting in motion a process that made billions for private companies at the expense of everyone else.
Water is a basic human right — yet a growing number of New Yorkers are suffering immensely under water debt and face the bleak prospect of an end of the state’s water shutoff moratorium at the end of this month.
Joe Biden harshly criticized Donald Trump for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal during the presidential campaign. But two months into his administration, Biden has done absolutely nothing to revive the landmark deal — and his inaction might have already killed it.
In France’s former African colonies, imperialist monetary policies from Paris continue to cripple domestic economies and undermine democracy. Colonialism in Africa won’t have meaningfully come to an end until true economic sovereignty is allowed to flourish.
Jessica Walter thankfully found fame through roles like Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth late in her life. But she should’ve been a major star when she was a young woman. Hollywood’s misogyny in the 1960s and ’70s made that impossible.
After denying COVID existed in his country, Tanzanian president John Magufuli died earlier this month, likely from the coronavirus. It was a sorry end to a presidency that began with hopes that Magufuli would improve public services and clamp down on corruption among the political elite.
Mark Rudd was Columbia’s Students for a Democratic Society chapter president in 1968, when the university erupted in protest against the Vietnam War and racism. He then cofounded the Weather Underground. In an interview with Jacobin, he reflects on what radicals like him got right and got wrong, and what today’s socialists should learn from his experiences.
Our current model of pharmaceutical research is based on patent monopolies designed to enrich drug company executives and shareholders. But there’s a better way to develop new drugs and vaccines, based on public funding and open-source research.
In the 1920s and ’30s, a summer school for industrial working women built an economics curriculum around the perspective of labor rather than capital. It offers a visionary example of worker education that emphasizes class struggle and worker empowerment.
The case against former Brazilian president Lula da Silva is over and fully discredited. Now the path is clear for Lula to take on Jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing government and save Brazilian democracy.
Joe Biden’s inadequate stimulus is the best workers can expect if they aren’t organized and fighting. But if we’re to see more policies that benefit and empower the working class, we’ll need more workplace organizing, more strikes, and more class struggle.
In a 1902 article, Eugene V. Debs described his journey from young labor organizer to militant socialist. We reprint it here in full.
In the 1920s and ’30s, German publisher Willi Münzenberg built a network of magazines, newspapers, and film studios that terrified big business interests. It became the largest left-wing media operation in history.
Bentonville, Arkansas, is home to Walmart’s headquarters. It’s also a town in which the Walton Family Foundation works like a parallel state, creating a kind of twenty-first-century company town.
The United States has been locked in a mental health crisis over the past year, one exacerbated by the miserable material conditions faced by millions. Democratic leaders should promise easement from that sense of dread through redistributive policies, connecting our mental well-being to our material well-being.
Inspire Brands — which owns Jimmy John’s, Arby’s, Sonic, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Dunkin’ — bragged in internal documents about its role preventing workers from getting a living wage. $15 an hour and a union is the least we should be demanding from predatory corporations.
When it comes to foreign policy, Joe Biden represents a continuation of the imperialist status quo. We need a leftist alternative that weakens US empire and prizes democracy, rather than one that assumes the US is right to dominate the world.
Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic love Britain’s monarchy because “royals” are emotionally potent mascots of extreme inequality and deference. There’s no reason this heinously undemocratic institution should exist.