Wouter van de Klippe is a freelance journalist and writer based in Europe. He is particularly interested in organized labor, social and environmental justice, and social welfare states.
In his book Political Parties, Robert Michels argued that mass movements have a natural tendency to develop undemocratic structures. Michels had some sharp insights into the nature of bureaucracy, but his “iron law of oligarchy” was seriously flawed.
The Indian farmers’ movement has posed the biggest challenge to Narendra Modi’s government since it came to power. With elections approaching, farmers are mobilizing once again to challenge rural impoverishment under a destructive neoliberal model.
Democratic Party elites have accepted the loss of vital working-class jobs and written off white workers as bigots. But a new book by Les Leopold shows how we can build a broad working-class movement to fight for the right to a good job.
Nearly 50,000 voters in Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary just cast ballots for nobody. In state after state, the voters Joe Biden needs are registering their fury about US support for Israel’s war on Gaza by voting “uncommitted.”
The Left’s long history of defeats has produced an equally long history of difficult emotions. Yet left-wing thinkers have often ignored the emotional experience of political defeat in service of an unrealistic ideal of the selfless revolutionary.
Filmmaker Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World follows a production assistant on a long day’s drive to screen injured Romanian workers for a workplace safety video — painting a bleak, darkly funny portrait of a hollowed-out world.
Ahead of June’s European elections, the French left is divided over Gaza. Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian jurist and activist standing for France Insoumise, tells Jacobin why it’s shameful for left-wingers to fail to defend Palestinians’ rights.
The French writer Raymond Aron is often praised by liberals for his nuanced, nonideological thinking. In reality, he lived in the pocket of the CIA and gave an intellectual veneer to NATO’s imperialistic foreign policy.
A new PAC formed to unseat pro-Palestinian New York socialists is led by the same corporate interests opposed to progressive policies more generally. The battle over US policy toward Israel is also about economic policy at home.
After a brutal two-week siege of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Israeli forces withdrew from the medical compound on Monday. Eyewitnesses report that Israeli troops carried out a horrific massacre of civilians in the hospital and the surrounding area.
The Supreme Court will soon decide on a case that could invalidate a host of state laws that protect consumers from abusive banking practices — which were originally put in place to prevent the kind of predatory lending that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
As public disapproval of Israel’s war on Gaza grows, it has become increasingly common for elected Democrats to criticize Israel. Nevertheless, the vast majority of them just voted for a bill that cements support for the onslaught as official US policy.
Giorgia Meloni’s government has imposed such blatant domination over Italian public broadcaster RAI that its programming has been nicknamed “Tele-Meloni.” The changes have drawn considerable backlash — and are driving ever more Italians to change channels.
Last month, Niger’s government kicked US troops out of the country, a new blow to Washington’s counterterrorism efforts in the increasingly conflict-ridden region. It’s just the latest failure in the US’s long and destructive “war on terror” in West Africa.
Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza has created a disastrous famine in the enclave. But it’s not the first time Israel has tried to starve Palestinians in Gaza — Israeli government documents suggest it was explicit policy from 2007 to 2010.
Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear a case brought by plaintiffs in Oregon who are contesting a law that criminalizes camping. They argue that the Constitution applies to everyone, regardless of whether they have access to housing.
Big Oil and shipping interests have lobbied for years to keep a law on the books that caps their liability following deadly disasters. The company linked to the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse aims to use it to avoid paying damages and compensation.
In March, an environmentalist arson attack near a German Tesla factory halted production — and prompted many workers to defend Tesla. It was further proof that actions bypassing organized labor are unlikely to appeal to those whose livelihoods are at stake.
We talked to Palestinian workers whose underpaid labor provides part of Israel’s low-cost workforce. Their stories of organizing amid ethnic cleansing shed light on how this work is a crucial lifeline for Palestinians — now severed by the devastation of war.
Every March 24, Argentinians gather to remember its 30,000 victims of state terrorism. New far-right president President Javier Milei has worked to deny that memory of crimes against humanity — and defend the crimes’ perpetrators.