Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The Spanish flu of 1918 infected a quarter of the world population and was decisive to the rise of public health-care systems. Today’s COVID-19 crisis is again showing that collective problems demand collective solutions — and a state that provides for all our essential needs.
Jair Bolsonaro is still refusing to implement basic isolation measures to protect Brazilians against the onslaught of COVID-19, hurtling the country toward disaster. Now his negligence is feeding widespread dissent, and even his former allies are calling for the far-right leader’s removal.
After a decade-long, worldwide corporate debt binge, the bill has come due: huge swaths of the corporate world are now at risk of default, with only governments able to save them. This time, any bailouts must place corporate investment under public control.
US sanctions are devastating in ordinary times. But with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, they’re killing more people than ever.
From failing to develop a vaccine, to evicting the jobless and cutting off their health care, to needlessly subjecting workers and the public to infection: capitalism will be responsible for millions of coronavirus-related deaths.
Britney Spears called for a general strike and wealth redistribution in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore we are legally obliged to publish something about it.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all nonessential workers to stay home. But construction workers are still being forced to build luxury condos — more evidence that for capital, high-priced real estate is more important than workers’ lives.
Crises like the one we’re in upend the social order, reveal long-festering conflicts, and throw open the doors to futures both bleak and transformative. We can emerge from this crisis a more just society.
For decades, America’s hospitals have been underfunded and understaffed in the name of efficiency. An examination of conditions at one public hospital in Oakland show us how unprepared this austerity-starved health care system is for what’s to come.
A single-payer system in the United States would have meant a more coordinated public health response to coronavirus crises and free and universal health care to all those who need it, like Canadians have received. Instead, our response has been patchwork, uncoordinated, and insufficient — putting millions of lives unnecessarily at risk.
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed a simple fact: it’s low-wage workers like cleaners, cashiers, and care workers who make our society run — not bankers, landlords, or CEOs.
For years, Emmanuel Macron has worked to get rid of the 35-hour workweek and worker protections from unfair dismissal. Today, his government is using the coronavirus lockdown as a pretext to push ahead with this agenda — and allow bosses to unilaterally undermine labor conditions.
The airline industry will not survive the coronavirus. Now is the time to nationalize it — and use this moment to chart a course to a low-carbon future.
Australian workers need an economic bailout to save them from a coronavirus-induced depression. Instead, Scott Morrison’s right-wing government is using the state to attack unions and shovel money to corporations.
Our new political education series, Stay at Home, launches this Thursday at 6 PM EST on our YouTube channel, with special guest Mike Davis.
Even before the coronavirus, the United States’ sanctions against Iran were unconscionable. But now, with one person dying of coronavirus every ten minutes in Iran, the sanctions are killing untold numbers of people. They must end now.
Bernie Sanders can’t continue campaigning as usual, and he certainly can’t drop out of the race. We desperately need Bernie to retool his entire operation to demand a robust government response to the coronavirus — a response the Democratic Party will never spearhead themselves.
Before we hand over billions and possibly trillions of dollars to corporations that have proven time and again that they value profits above all else, we should take a pause. There is time to put people first.
Boris Johnson has always fantasized about being his generation’s Winston Churchill. With his destructive bungling of the response to the coronavirus crisis, he is shaping up to be the British George W. Bush.
Jails and prisons will inevitably prolong the COVID–19 outbreak and increase the rate of infection. Any rational response to the crisis must include a coordinated national effort to get as many people out of jail as possible — fast.