William G. Martin teaches at SUNY-Binghamton and is co-author of After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment (2016) and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier; he covers local justice matters at www.justtalk.blog
Donald Trump richly deserves to be condemned for his response to COVID-19. But the catastrophic failures of public policy didn’t start with Trump: this bipartisan disaster has been decades in the making.
People are losing everything — their jobs, their homes, their health care, their savings. Democratic socialists must articulate the pain and uncertainty ordinary people are experiencing during this crisis or the Right will fill the void.
After the bank bailouts in 2008, the next stage in the government’s response was to cut spending on public services and lump even greater responsibilities onto private households. The end result was a huge rise in informal and unpaid labor carried out by women — and faced with the current shutdown, the losers from the last crisis are being punished even further.
The dysfunctions of modern capitalism have left us perilously exposed to a public health catastrophe. We must build on the solidarity engendered by this crisis to fight for a different world.
Legendary singer-songwriter John Prine loved people and hated cruelty. It is a simple but beautiful motivation for music, and the world is poorer for his no longer being in it.
Amazon is one of the most important companies in the American and global economies. If enough out-of-work socialists and other fed-up workers got jobs at the company and organized, they could build real working-class power in the 21st century economy.
The crisis of capitalism is currently opening wide. But it didn’t come out of nowhere.
With its economic resources and geopolitical strength, India should be in a better position to face COVID-19 than most countries in the Global South. But its people are paying the price for incompetent policymaking and years of neglect under Narendra Modi.
The crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for us to think again about Marx’s idea of human freedom. As David Harvey writes in Jacobin, emergency steps to get through the crisis also show us how we could build a different society that’s not beholden to capital.
Jordan Peterson is one of the most famous public intellectuals in the world. But his pronouncements in favor of capitalism and hierarchy collapse at the slightest bit of scrutiny.
In a capitalist society, state managers rely on business confidence to generate the economic growth on which they depend, so capitalists don’t have to mobilize politically to block radical reform. It requires exceptional circumstances to loosen these constraints.
Since last year, the UK has seen sustained and powerful industrial action across its higher-education sector, with the latest strike wave only interrupted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the crisis sure to be exploited by the Tory government, universities and colleges are more under threat than ever, and union strength has never been more vital.
British socialists may be reeling from December’s election defeat, but the injustices that fueled their movement are still as glaring as ever. Sooner or later, the forces inspired by Jeremy Corbyn will regroup and resume the struggle, under the leadership of a new generation.
In May 1970, 4 million students went on strike across the country, shutting down classes at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools and demanding an end to the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, their rebellion remains an inspiration, as radical student politics is back on the agenda.
The anti-lockdown protests may currently represent a Trumpian minority — but that could easily change if the choice becomes going hungry or going back to work. We need a real alternative that refuses to accept the false trade-off between economic security and public health.
Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story was published a decade ago, and it offers a portrait of a near-future, dystopian United States that might suddenly be upon us. It’s perfect reading for the pandemic lockdown.
Progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz means well, but the dream of a “progressive capitalism” will remain just a dream, its horizons always strictly limited by capitalist private ownership.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a change of priorities, as states buy up masks and ventilators regardless of the cost. Basing economic decisions on human need, not our ability to pay, imposes a principle of equality — allowing us collectively to decide what kinds of production we really need.
The G20 has announced it will allow 76 poor countries additional time to pay back their loans. But it’s not an act of benevolence — it’s a desperate maneuver to maintain the global debt peonage that undergirds neoliberal capitalism.
The COVID-19 pandemic will transform our world. Massive state intervention is essential to head off an unprecedented slump. We must come out of this crisis with a better society.