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.
The media cheered Moderna’s pledge not to enforce the patents on its COVID-19 vaccine. But vaccines like theirs are still protected by intellectual property laws designed to keep medical knowledge out of the public’s hands.
Former British prime minister David Cameron has been exposed using his contacts in government to help out his new bosses at finance firm Greensill Capital. The scandal points to the cronyism among Britain’s elites — and how a wider culture of privatization and outsourcing provides a breeding ground for corruption.
For decades, academic workers have been subjected to both rising austerity and legal blockages to their organizing efforts. The PRO Act would allow them to fight back.
No matter how much they flaunt their environmental virtue or how much eco-friendly consumption they engage in, the global 1 percent are almost inherently destructive of the climate. There’s only one way to fix the situation: expropriate them.
Minari is a gentle, universal story about a resilient South Korean family trying to make it in 1980s America. You should watch it.
Forty years of neoliberal hollowing out of state capacity is what’s responsible for Europe and Canada’s great failure to quickly vaccinate people.
Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were at a closed-door event with restaurant lobbyists yesterday bragging about defeating the $15 minimum wage. Manchin even mocked Bernie Sanders for his efforts. It’s a disgrace.
The European Super League fiasco has sparked a heated debate about money in football, with many pointing to Germany’s fan-owned clubs as an alternative. Fan ownership is an important step — but it’ll only work if fans are organized and thinking politically.
Spain’s far-right Vox party began its Madrid election campaign with a rally in the multiracial working-class suburb of Vallecas, prompting clashes with locals. Media responded with a condemnation of the “twin extremisms” — showing how those who defend the poor and marginalized are falsely equated with those who abuse them.
In Australia today, public housing is seen as an option of last resort for poor families only. But the South Australian Housing Authority spent decades building affordable, quality homes for all. We can do the same now.
Modern-day elite philanthropy serves the same purpose as it did in the days of the robber barons: reinforcing the power of the rich.
As the George Floyd murder trial’s deliberations continue, Jacobin spoke with Omar Fateh, the Democratic Socialists of America member who represents the district where Floyd was killed. He decries the appalling militarized response to protests — and says police must be placed under civilian control rather than being allowed to kill with impunity.
The use of customer reviews to evaluate workers is rising across the service sector. Once you get past the shiny rhetoric of consumer empowerment, it’s a new variation on an old story: enlisting customers on the side of management to help discipline and exploit workers.
Against the opposition of AOC and other progressives, key Democrats are demanding a tax break for their wealthy donors more regressive than even Trump’s notorious tax cuts.
Fredrick Brennan founded the 8chan image board that became home to QAnon conspiracists. Now he’s horrified by the site — and wants it offline. Brennan talks to Bhaskar Sunkara about free speech in the digital age, how 8chan became such a reactionary cesspool, and what we need to do to build a better internet.
When Jeremy Corbyn warned of the need to rein in billionaire team owners, the media dismissed his plans to hand more power to fans as “communist.” But that’s exactly what we need to fight the European Super League.
Amazon’s very business model is based on ruthless exploitation of workers and methodical plunder of public goods — fueling massive inequality between the places it enriches and those it leaves behind.
With his HBO documentary series Q: Into the Storm, filmmaker Cullen Hoback manages to demystify QAnon, exposing the mechanisms that underpin the right-wing conspiracy theory — above all, how it gives its followers a way of making sense of the spectacular failure of so many powerful institutions.
WeWork, the coworking start-up once valuated at $47 billion, was a cult masquerading as a company pretending to be a movement. Focusing on its “charismatic” CEO, Adam Neumann, a new Hulu documentary misses a chance to expose the irrationality and waste of an economic system that lets such charlatanism thrive.
In an interview, the lead organizer for the Amazon union campaign in Bessemer says that the drive has built momentum to unionize Amazon despite the defeat — and that “Bezos had better not get too cocky, because them folks are pretty fired up.”