Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
In 2020, faced with a raging pandemic on one hand and the hopeless politics of a Democratic Party that kneecapped Bernie Sanders and propped up Joe Biden on the other, voters will probably, like they did in 2016, choose to stay at home.
By standing against the forces that debase and devalue human life in modern America, Bernie Sanders has given millions something priceless, something that is certain to endure: hope.
Once you’ve realized society doesn’t have to be this way, that the exploitation you’ve experienced or witnessed isn’t inevitable, you can’t go back to thinking otherwise — the genie is out of the bottle. After Bernie Sanders’s campaigns, millions of Americans won’t go back.
The big story of the Bernie Sanders campaign is not that he lost the race, but that he came so close to winning — and that we fundamentally transformed US politics in the process.
The Bernie Sanders campaign fell short. But it assembled a coalition that, if expanded only slightly, can reshape American politics for generations to come.
Bernie Sanders took socialism out of the margins and into the American mainstream for the first time in generations. His contributions to the struggle for a better world cannot be overstated.
In a speech announcing the end of his candidacy, Bernie Sanders was defiant, saying that “together, we have transformed American consciousness as to what kind of country we can become.” We reprint the address here in full.
Just in the last week, the Hungarian government has banned gender reassignment, legislated jail terms for fake news, and put government stooges in control of theaters. Viktor Orbán’s administration has done all this in the name of the response to coronavirus — exploiting its emergency powers to silence dissent and demonize minorities.
The lack of EU help for the states hardest hit by COVID-19 is the latest sign of the hollowness of “European solidarity.” As Yanis Varoufakis tells Jacobin, the European Union’s institutions are hardwired to ignore the needs of the social majority — preferring to allow mass suffering than to change their own rules.
The first African American to join the Communist Party was born in Texas, and died as a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. This is the forgotten story of Lovett Fort-Whiteman.
Amazon workers are in an unprecedented fight with the retail giant over the company’s unsafe working conditions. Here’s how you can support the struggle — even if you can’t leave your house.
Joseph Schumpeter saw firsthand the transformative power of democracy in Red Vienna Austria and New Deal America. But as a conservative, he recoiled at workers’ challenges to traditional hierarchies — reminding us that the Right has always loathed democracy.
In discussions about the last global pandemic, the “Spanish flu,” we never hear about the strike wave that kicked off at the exact same time. But in 1919, one-fifth of American workers walked off the job. We shouldn’t be surprised that labor militancy is spreading during today’s coronavirus pandemic.
From discussing what a socialist economy could look like in the 21st century to why we should be wary of “woke neoliberalism” to Matt Bruenig on the Nordic model and more – we’re doing a ton of live videos this week. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and tune in!
Europe’s radical left has been bitterly divided over the question of European integration. But wishful thinking aside, the structures of the European Union can’t be used to achieve socialist goals. Sooner or later, any left government will have to confront and defy its economic straitjacket.
Narendra Modi’s government has failed to take preemptive action against a pandemic that may overwhelm its underfunded health services. Arundhati Roy and other leading intellectuals have signed an appeal for the release of India’s political prisoners, who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 in the country’s overcrowded jails.
Despite the blatant public health danger it poses and the widespread voter disenfranchisement that will occur, Wisconsin will hold its primary tomorrow. People will die as a result — and the results should be seen as illegitimate.
Anwar Shaikh is one of the world’s leading radical economists, whose work has challenged the way we think about capitalism. In an interview with Jacobin, Shaikh gives a concise overview of the ideas set out in his landmark book Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises.
Ezra Klein’s new book Why We’re Polarized identifies much of what’s wrong in the gridlocked US political system. But he dismisses the role of class in cohering the movements that can finally democratize it.
In the last two weeks, nearly ten million American workers lost their jobs. This is a crisis unfolding at a speed and magnitude unprecedented in the US and what’s left of our welfare state is uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the fallout.