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.
Justin Trudeau has built a bank dedicated to using public-private partnerships to fix Canada’s crumbling infrastructure — partnerships that burden taxpayers with extortionate interest rates that benefit wealthy members of the rentier class.
Despite Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strong showing in the recent presidential campaign, France’s left was defeated again by the neoliberal center and far right. The roots of that weakness lie in the Mitterrand government’s capitulation to neoliberalism in the 1980s.
Joe Biden is considering a highly limited, means-tested student debt forgiveness program. But means-testing is a terrible idea that centrist Democrats are still obsessed with — and will pay a heavy political price for.
Last fall, 59 percent of Berliners voted to nationalize the big landlords’ housing stock — only for city hall to throw up barriers to implementation. The impasse shows how real estate lobbyists and weak-tea progressives combine to thwart the popular will.
We now have a one-year fellowship open for a full-stack developer.
Under finance capitalism, we can exert power by collectively leveraging not just our labor but also our debts. This May Day, let’s think about worker organizing and debtor organizing as part of the same struggle.
The historic union victories at Amazon and Starbucks have shattered any illusions that corporate giants are invincible to labor organizing. Let’s make Amazon and Starbucks the start of a massive wave of unionization.
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a partnership between socialists and the United Electrical Workers union, is trying to be at the heart of a new mass labor resurgence. Their success could help millions of workers.
This May Day, we’re celebrating the life of George Woodbey, a former slave who became a leading socialist. Though he’s often forgotten today, Woodbey’s life speaks to the crucial connection between labor struggles and fights against racial oppression.
In 1923, Eugene V. Debs wrote a powerful May Day address for the black socialist magazine the Messenger that called for “the emancipation of all races from the oppressive and degrading yoke of wage slavery.” We republish it here in full, for the first time since it appeared 100 years ago.
In 1886, workers came together on the original May Day to demand an eight-hour day. Today, from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses, that struggle continues.
The climate and biodiversity crises unleashed by capitalist development are already happening. Predicting a sudden apocalypse may draw attention to impending climate catastrophe, but it ultimately diverts us from the work needed to preserve a livable planet.
A $42 billion bailout for the restaurant industry is advancing in Congress. It contains zero substantive relief measures for restaurant workers.
Many fear that Twitter under Elon Musk will fall to bigots and harassers. Maybe. But instead of arguing over who should be kicked off Twitter, we should ask what it’s designed to do to those who stay on it.
In Sweden, far-right militants burned Qurans in the street, sparking days of rioting. Mainstream politicians’ focus on denouncing the counterprotesters showed how far the country has to go in admitting the reality of Islamophobia.
A combination of conservatism and careerism has characterized Keir Starmer’s approach to politics. In the context of his ideological trajectory, his most recent round of purges of the Left comes as no surprise.
We really, really need unions. But not all unionism is created equal. We need unions that are willing to fight the bosses rather than cozy up to them. We need class-struggle unionism.
Prison journalism provides a window into the concealed world of mass incarceration, gives a voice to the incarcerated, and sheds light on the politics of the carceral state. Free and uncensored prison journalism is essential to criminal justice reform.
Ontario recently signed on to Justin Trudeau’s national childcare program. However, the foot-dragging and chicanery of the province’s premier, Doug Ford, has led to a second-rate deal. Kids and childcare workers deserve better.
We have a rare opportunity to rebuild a fighting labor movement in the United States. To take advantage of it, workers must be armed with battle-tested strategies and tactics — and that means being willing to go on strike.