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
Elon Musk drew attention recently for announcing the name of his and Grimes’s new baby, X Æ A-12. But what’s more disturbing about Musk is the anti-democratic, quasi-eugenicist views that he and other tech elites espouse.
Platforms like Airbnb claim to be building online “communities” — even as their business undermines the real communities in cities. But the history of cooperatives shows that it really is possible to democratize the services we use — so long as it’s connected to a wider redistribution of power in society.
The oil industry, long characterized by boom and bust cycles, has crashed, with prices hitting below zero. The White House will reach for a corporate bailout, but now’s the opportunity to move away from oil extraction and build a rational system of clean energy.
A chorus from politicians and mainstream media is rising to demand we “look forward, not backward” on the criminally negligent US response to coronavirus. The aim of these arguments is simple: to block efforts to hold Donald Trump and his cronies accountable for their incompetence and malice.
The anti-colonial struggle of the twentieth century wasn’t just about winning political independence — it was about shattering the global hierarchies that subjugated the Global South and winning an egalitarian world for all.
Across France, workers are insisting that they be allowed to make masks and ventilators rather than continue with business as usual. Their initiatives show that when workers, not stock prices, decide what’s being made, production can serve the needs of society as a whole.
It’s not easy to imagine a Marxist love story. But in Normal People, Sally Rooney shows how our personal relationships — and the troubles we encounter — are inextricably bound to the society around us.
The Federal Reserve has stepped in to deal with the coronavirus pandemic — unsurprisingly, as is so often true of the Fed’s intervention, on the side of the wealthy. We have to demand that the Central Bank act to aid the working class instead.
The extraordinary generosity of ordinary people and the immense courage of essential workers have been on full display throughout the pandemic. We need to build an economy that harnesses this basic goodness in humanity — and guarantees every worker the dignity, safety, and material well-being they deserve.
Jacobin wrote last week that “Our Revolution failed to live up to its potential.” But the Our Revolution that I know is already a mass organization of working people fighting for real change.
For decades, oligarchs like Real Madrid chairman Florentino Pérez have made Spain’s old-age care sector a favored cash cow. Today, the coronavirus deaths caused by their penny-pinching are a grim monument to the failures of privatization.
The national press has fawned over Mayor London Breed’s coronavirus response. But after being unanimously instructed by San Francisco’s city council to move the homeless into the city’s empty hotel rooms, she has inexcusably dragged her feet — putting the homeless and all San Franciscans at serious risk.
Speculation is growing that the scandal-plagued Joe Biden might drop out of the presidential race. That’s extremely unlikely. But if he does, there’s only one alternative: Bernie Sanders.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is one of the New Deal’s greatest achievements: a publicly owned utility with a large, unionized workforce right in the heart of America. But now it’s under threat.
In 1988, Jesse Jackson ran for president on a platform of uniting workers and pushing universalist policies like single-payer. His success terrified neoliberals in the Democratic Party.
Margaret Thatcher rose to power in Britain during an age of economic crisis and political polarization, much like the country today. By defeating its opponents at home and abroad, her government helped kickstart the neoliberal era. We’re still living with the consequences.
In cities like Chicago and its surrounding Cook County, the coronavirus pandemic is turning longtime health inequalities among prisoners and poor neighborhoods into a nightmare.
German and Dutch leaders’ harsh rejection of economic aid for Italy has shown the hollowness of EU solidarity. Even proposed Eurobonds would merely kick the crisis down the road — failing to challenge structural imbalances that systematically hurt the Eurozone’s Southern periphery.
How might we imagine a transition to a socialist economy? There are clues in unlikely places: the management practices of some private corporations, which have been developing planned economies in miniature.
Many states are racing to reopen their economies, even though the daily number of new confirmed coronavirus cases is holding steady nationwide. Without a comprehensive nationwide plan, if workers go back to their jobs now, we will likely see more cases — and more deaths.