Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
This past week, the committee in charge of setting the Democratic Party’s platform decisively rejected Medicare for All — even as millions of Americans are poised to lose their health insurance. It’s just another sign pointing to the moral bankruptcy of the political order.
One hundred years ago, five socialists elected to the New York State Assembly were expelled for their views. Today, a slate of five Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates are following in their footsteps by fighting for working people and terrifying the political establishment.
Led by A. Philip Randolph, black Pullman porters struggled against the exploitation of the company and the racism of the mainstream labor movement to win a fighting union. They secured dignity on the job — and laid the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement.
AMLO’s center-left presidency in Mexico has promised to stamp out corruption and tackle inequality. But instead of paying for his badly needed direct cash transfer program through taxing the rich, he’s making cuts to the country’s cultural programs.
Solidarity from India with anti-racist protesters in the United States is hollow if the same critical scrutiny isn’t applied to oppression and police brutality in India itself.
While raking in cash from health care industry donors, Beltway Republicans copied language from an Andrew Cuomo law meant to shield negligent nursing home execs into their new COVID-19 relief package, word for word.
Bolivia’s coup government has announced that elections slated for September will be pushed back yet again. It’s another reminder that the right-wing coup-makers care nothing about democracy — they only want to institute neoliberal policies and repress Evo Morales’s leftist party, who they know would win a free and fair election.
The Australian Labor Party is one of the most conservative social democratic or labor parties in the world — but this has not always been the case. Understanding the origin and evolution of the ALP’s modern faction system is crucial to grasping both its right-wing trajectory and possibilities for change.
In Portland, federal agents have been snatching up protesters while hyper-militarized police crack down on demonstrators. It’s a frightening display of state repression — one with roots in the attacks on the anti-corporate globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialists of America–backed candidate for New York’s state assembly, has officially won his race. His campaign shows us what a serious socialist electoral bid looks like: class-conscious politics, an uncompromising program, and deep face-to-face organizing. There should be many more like it.
New York state legislators just passed a bill limiting Governor Andrew Cuomo’s attempt to shield his big donors from COVID-related lawsuits. But nursing home CEOs are still protected for negligence or wrongdoing that took place earlier this year.
Rashida Tlaib, one of Congress’s most unapologetically left-wing members, is under threat from a challenger backed by super PAC money. The Left must defend her.
After his death, the followers of economist John Maynard Keynes embraced the myth of a “natural” market economy that required “intervention” from the government to keep it stable. But there is nothing natural about the market — and the Keynesians’ mistake led to a withering of the radical potential of Keynes’s ideas.
Business interests are eager to reopen schools so they can get the economy running again and turn a profit. But teachers across the country are insisting that schools should only be reopened when it can be done safely — and they might just go on strike to fight back against the billionaires.
Michael Brooks’s ability to understand and analyze the similarities among authoritarians across the globe meant that he had little time for narratives that sought to portray non-Western culture as the source of barbarism and authoritarian rule.
The socialist magazine Mot Dag trained some of Norway’s key public figures, including three Labor Party prime ministers and the cofounder of the World Health Organization. Their experience shows how left-wing media can build a socialist common sense in wider society — and help socialists in parliament resist establishment kickback.
In St. Louis, the demand to defund the police has dovetailed with long-lasting struggles against cash bail and the abuse of prisoners. The Board of Aldermen’s passing of a bill that promises to start closing the city’s most notorious jail reflects the movement’s strength — but also the need for pressure to ensure that abolitionist demands are not watered down into merely cosmetic reforms.
José Garza, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is set to become Austin, Texas’s next district attorney after a movement-based campaign promising to end the drug war and radically downsize the carceral state. He says the Left is finally making its mark in Texas politics.
After we put out a call for remembrances of Michael Brooks, we received deeply emotional emails from his viewers and listeners all around the world about how he changed their politics — and often their lives.
Billionaires like Jeff Bezos aren’t obscenely wealthy because they work harder than everyone else or they’re more innovative. They’re obscenely wealthy because their corporate empires drain society’s resources — and we’d all be better off without them.