Our Welfare Isn’t Business’s Business
Finland’s millionaire prime minister sought to reorganize the welfare state along the lines of a private business. But his hard-line policies and failed assault on health care have revitalized the Finnish left.
19764 Articles by: Ryan Switzer
Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
Votes For All
By calling for the enfranchisement of the incarcerated, Bernie Sanders is carrying on a long and venerable socialist tradition of fighting for the universal right to vote.
Why I’m Boycotting Today’s Israeli Elections
As an Arab Palestinian citizen of Israel, I won’t serve as a fig leaf for a democracy in name only. I refuse to vote in today’s elections.
Israel’s Insider Radical
Haneen Zoabi has survived insults, death threats, and the vagaries of the Israeli justice system. But the first Palestinian woman to represent an Arab party in Israel’s Knesset wants something more — to be heard.
Britain’s Austerity Has Gone From Cradle To Grave
A decade of austerity in Britain has stunted, immiserated, and impoverished millions of lives. Now, the inevitable has happened: it’s started to shorten them.
Taking a Stan
An interview with the anonymous owner of @LegitTayUpdates. She’s a nineteen-year-old Taylor Swift fan in Israel — and she just finished a two-month prison sentence for refusing to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.
Chess in the Cloud
The battle between the US and China over global hegemony has moved to the technological arena. But what we really need is a democratic digital commons.
Italy’s War on the Roma
Today is International Roma Day. Long oppressed, the beleaguered minority group is facing intensifying racist attacks in Salvini’s Italy.
Gung Ho For Privatization
How a troubled army recruit from a privileged background became an angry advocate for veterans health care privatization.
Workers Can Do What the Wonks Can’t
When the IRS discovered widespread tax fraud by the rich, the agency assembled a special team to crack down. They failed, but through politics we can take on elites and win.
Assessing 40 Years of Labor Notes
Labor Notes is one of the most successful socialist projects in the labor movement in US history. It has trained and connected tens of thousands of union militants throughout the world.
From the Union Hall to the Church
Jair Bolsonaro’s election in Brazil marked the decline of trade unions as the primary site of working-class organization; and the rise of Evangelical churches in their place.
How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy
Neoliberalism replaces the citizen with the consumer — pushing people out of political life and into the marketplace.
Housing for the People
A public vote on expropriating the big landlords offers Berliners a chance to push down soaring rents.
“When Will We End the Human War?”
Allen Ginsberg died on this day in 1997. While known for his Beat poetry, he was also indelibly shaped by leftist politics.
Medicare for All Critics Are Telling Lies
One of the most common myths about the US health system is that if you like your insurance, you can keep it. But millions of people are thrown off their employer-based coverage every year — so the only solution is Medicare for All.
Target: Corbyn
Amid the political chaos of Brexit, video has emerged of British army soldiers using a photo of Jeremy Corbyn for target practice. It’s just the latest sign that the UK is facing a mounting threat from the far right.
The Blood of Tulips
A dispatch from another year of agonizing bloodshed in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
A Half-Millennium of Indigenous Resistance Continues
The indigenous uprising at Standing Rock was far from an isolated incident on that native land, as historian Nick Estes shows in a new book. It is the site of hundreds of years of anticolonial struggle.
A Green New Deal for Agriculture
Agriculture policy in the original New Deal sprang from a heady mix of class struggle and uneasy alliances. The Green New Deal will have to stitch together a different coalition that can challenge the dominant mode of agriculture and create a more just food system.