Tanner Howard is a freelance journalist and In These Times editorial intern. They’re also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In 1872, Friedrich Engels wrote The Housing Question, tying the working class’s perpetual housing crisis to the free market in Victorian England. The century and a half of housing crises since have proved Engels correct.
The world is on fire all around us. The free market can’t put that fire out — only massive state intervention in the economy can.
For three decades, Italian liberals have promoted technocratic neoliberal governments with no popular mandate. The effect is to hollow out democracy — and alienate the center left from its former working-class base.
The Biden administration’s climate inaction is so bad that his own agency experts have signed a letter begging him to act to roll back emissions while there’s still time.
Developed as a passion project, Counter-Strike became a video game phenomenon. It also served as a laboratory for the exploitation of video game labor and the commodification trends that dominate the games industry and the broader internet today.
Justin Trudeau’s Infrastructure Bank is facilitating private investment in the water sector. But municipalities’ water systems will not be improved by the good-heartedness of private investors — they will take their pound of flesh by hook or by crook.
Recently elected president Gustavo Petro’s victory was a milestone not only for Colombia but for all of Latin America. With it, a new progressive wave has washed across the region.
The leadership race for Alberta’s United Conservative Party signals a further shift to the right in Canada’s most conservative province. But the province’s conservatism isn’t innate — it is a result of carbon producers’ domination of the economy.
When it comes to internet infrastructure, the for-profit model is presented as inevitable — but political decisions built today’s internet, and political movements could build something different.
In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama diagnoses the political and psychological malaise caused by capitalism. His analysis makes one thing clear: liberalism is incapable of addressing the social, economic, and ecological crises it faces.
In New York’s 11th Congressional District, two veterans are competing for the Democratic nomination. One is a centrist who will strengthen the military-industrial complex; the other is a democratic socialist who built her career fighting it.
We can’t sit on our hands waiting for Joe Biden to protect abortion and the climate. Movements for the New Deal and civil rights showed us how to beat the Supreme Court and other reactionary, undemocratic institutions: mass action.
As climate change disrupts migration patterns, animals and the viruses they carry will come into unusual contact with each other — and inevitably with humans, unleashing new pandemics. The only thing that can stop this unfolding nightmare is a mass movement.
For public-sector workers in Massachusetts, as in many states throughout the country, strikes are illegal. That didn’t stop these suburban teachers from striking and winning anyway.
As the US loses its grip on the Middle East, it is fostering new alliances between Israel and the Arab states to shore up its hegemony. Those alliances, looking to form a “Middle Eastern NATO,” could provoke Iran and spark new conflict in the region.
In 1877, one million workers went on strike and fought police and federal troops in cities across America. The monikers “Great Upheaval” and “Great Railroad Strike” undersell what verged on a second Civil War — this time pitting labor against capital.
The surprise union victories at Starbucks in recent months were an inspiration to millions around the United States. But Starbucks is now pulling out all the stops to engage in one of the most flagrant union-busting campaigns in recent memory.
We were told that the generosity of the rich would make up for cuts to government services. But those at the top are increasingly using dubious “charitable” ventures as vehicles for profit and influence.
Honduras’s new leftist president, Xiomara Castro, was inaugurated in January. In her first few months in office, she’s prioritized dismantling the decade-long right-wing dictatorship’s anti-labor, pro-capital agenda.
Former central banker Mario Draghi has resigned as Italian prime minister, pushing the country into snap elections. Best-placed to benefit is the only major force that opposed his government: Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia.