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 No Politics but Class Politics, Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed show how an identity politics that obscures class politics and ignores economic inequality only makes the many miseries around us worse.
Five centuries ago, Germany experienced a massive popular revolt that spread through the countryside and towns. The German lords drowned the revolt in blood, but the popular demands for freedom and equality have resonated right up to the present day.
Though inflation-adjusted wage growth resumed earlier this year, real wages are still down overall since Joe Biden took office. It’s not crazy to suppose that this could be affecting people’s attitudes toward the economy.
Bandcamp was meant to be an alternative to the corporate behemoths of music’s streaming age, giving a better deal to independent artists. But the company’s new owner, Songtradr, has suddenly laid off half its workers, putting Bandcamp’s future in jeopardy.
Through years of austerity, Europe’s radical-left parties spoke of a common challenge to EU neoliberalism. But without any real shared strategy, parties focused on domestic politics are rarely able to build collaboration across borders.
The US is threatening military action in the waters off Yemen to protect international shipping routes. The people of Yemen have already borne the brunt of a US-sponsored war that has caused devastation similar to the horrific scenes in Gaza.
On this day in 1973, Basque separatists ETA assassinated far-right prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco. The action played an important role in ending Franco’s dictatorship — an inconvenient truth for the democratic Spain against which ETA then turned its fire.
From the rate and scale of civilian slaughter to the killing of protected groups and the type of munitions, Israel’s war on Gaza is an exceptionally brutal campaign unlike almost anything we’ve seen.
In Russia, the wives of men mobilized to the Ukrainian front are increasingly demanding that they be returned home. While the movement is not mainly directed at opposing Vladimir Putin, it offers hope of breaking the war machine from within.
In early 2020, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink announced that the firm was turning toward climate-friendly investments. The record, though, shows that Fink’s green branding turned out to be entirely bogus.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations unionized American workers with an energy never seen before. But its peak years were short-lived, and the labor movement has struggled to reach such heights again.
Seeking to distance himself from rank elitism, Tucker Carlson called conservative luminary William F. Buckley one of the “great villains of the 20th century.” He’s right — but Carlson himself hasn’t broken with Buckley’s contempt for the working class.
In Wonka, Timothée Chalamet dons the eccentric chocolatier’s purple jacket in yet another film adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This one is playful and harmless, but it can’t touch the 1971 original movie.
Recent progress toward shorter hours among certain sectors of UK workers has set a starting point for a winnable demand for workers everywhere: a four-day workweek.
The US has long offered unconditional military assistance to Azerbaijan even as it carries out ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. It’s consistent with Washington’s support for brutal human rights violators from Saudia Arabia to Israel.
Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is expected to spend $369 billion on green building investments. One insulation manufacturer — notorious for its role in the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire — is greenwashing itself to receive lucrative US tax benefits.
Across the country, pro-Israel groups and billionaires are trying to stop the antiwar movement pushing for a cease-fire in Gaza by bringing down its elected leaders, including Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. These are fights the Left can win with popular support.
In 2023, Canadian unions experienced a banner year marked by successful strikes and legislative victories. These wins should be celebrated alongside ongoing efforts to build an even stronger labor movement.
Karl Marx wrote that “revolutions are the locomotives of history.” For Italian historian Enzo Traverso, regaining the idea of revolution is essential if we refuse to accept capitalism as an eternal state of affairs.
In 2023, half a million workers, including machinists, teachers, baristas, nurses, hotel housekeepers, actors, screenwriters, and autoworkers, went on strike and won. Their historic gains underscore the momentum of a rising reform movement in US unions.