Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history — destroying untold millions of lives and families in just a few decades. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created in the first place, and how we can finally dismantle it.
Despite the strange circumstances and urgency of the coronavirus pandemic, last night’s debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders highlighted two visions of our political crises that largely haven’t changed: Biden arguing for a return to normalcy, Sanders insisting that something is deeply wrong in our society.
Joe Biden’s relentless lying in last night’s debate, and the media’s astonishingly servile reaction, have made it clear that the “post-truth era” will not be over when the Trump administration ends.
We all deserve a functioning state that can provide for everyone, and a society that values solidarity above all. That’s the only thing that can get us through the coronavirus pandemic.
The media and the Democratic Party establishment’s singular focus on paid sick leave leaves out millions of contract and informal workers. We need to think much bigger — now.
In last night’s debate, Joe Biden claimed that Italy shows public health care doesn’t help the response to coronavirus. But the Italian health service is providing a vital defense against mass infection — ensuring that any ill person can get proper treatment, regardless of their ability to pay.
Spain has announced it will take over private hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to fight coronavirus. Yet in the PSOE-Podemos coalition, some ministers are still defending fiscal austerity. Their neoliberal dogma could get people killed.
Joe Biden is now pledging to “spend whatever it takes” to overcome this pandemic. But he’s spent his career putting public health programs on the chopping block as part of a decades-long crusade against government spending.
Douglas Stuart’s debut novel, Shuggie Bain, richly conveys the harshness of life in Thatcher-era Scotland. Yet with its focus on the resilience of working-class women, this love letter to Glasgow is anything but misery-lit.
From prisoners making hand sanitizer to people forgoing testing because of cost, the coronavirus has exposed the social rot in American society. But we don’t have to live this way — we can transform society for the better.
Cleaners at London’s Lewisham Hospital went on strike on Thursday after their outsourced employer ISS repeatedly failed to pay them. The dogma of cuts and privatization has subjected them to poverty conditions — even as they work on the front line of stopping the coronavirus infection.
Elected with a mandate to transform Vermont’s biggest city, Bernie Sanders had big plans to shake up local government. A united city establishment stood in his way.
It’s now or never: in his debate with Joe Biden tonight, Bernie Sanders must make clear that Biden’s track record and policy proposals are nowhere near sufficient to meet the challenge of coronavirus, our multiple crises of health care and inequality, or defeat Donald Trump. Bernie can’t hold back any longer.
Boris Johnson’s government has responded feebly to coronavirus, refusing to learn the lessons of other countries. Labour ought to be hammering the Tories for their inaction — and explaining why years of austerity are hobbling the NHS’s response.
As coronavirus spreads rapidly around the world, outpacing our capacity for testing, let alone treatment, the long-anticipated monster is finally at the door. And with global capitalism so impotent in the face of this biological crisis, our demands must be for properly international public-health infrastructure.
After his narrow election as mayor, the fight for Bernie Sanders to carry out a progressive agenda in Burlington, Vermont was just beginning. Sanders and his allies had to fight through a recount, grapple with a looming fiscal crisis, and overcome incessantly hostile opponents in the city who refused to give Bernie an inch.
The coronavirus has the global economy teetering on the edge. It’s a perfect time to pour massive amounts of money into green public investment, both to shore up the economy and to put us on a path toward a low-carbon future.
Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism has always centered on improving the lives of working-class people and exposing how exploitation by the rich robs them of the opportunity to live dignified lives. Corporate Democrats who continue to ignore or undermine this agenda are putting themselves, the country, and the world in great peril.
The Olympics are coming to Paris in 2024, with Airbnb as an official sponsor. Communist deputy mayor Ian Brossat told us why development projects for the Games mustn’t be used to drive out working-class residents — and how city hall is fighting to defend social housing.
After the 2008 crisis, European authorities saved the banks but forced welfare states to slash spending. Faced with the coronavirus, austerity-hit hospital services are under siege — yet the European Central Bank is again helping out the financial markets, not public health care systems.