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 German socialist philosopher Erich Fromm sought to explain the social psychology of right-wing authoritarianism after the Nazis drove him into exile. His work is full of valuable insights that can inform struggles for political and economic freedom today.
When human rights lawyer Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the oil giant Chevron, the company retaliated by setting out to destroy Donziger’s life. Now in his twentieth month of house arrest on the orders of a Chevron-linked judge, his Kafkaesque story is a window into the corrupt and corporate-captured US legal system.
Was the New Deal bad for black people? Rep. Jim Clyburn says it was. He’s wrong — and it’s time we set the record straight about both the New Deal’s real flaws and its overall hugely egalitarian impact on workers of all races, including black workers.
When Trump hyped bogus claims of election fraud as a pretext to overturn an election he lost, the media portrayed it as the gravest threat to democracy in the history of the Republic. When exactly the same thing happened in Bolivia, they said it was actually good.
The surprise victory of a candidate representing a “Marxist and Leninist” party shows that rural Peru is not to be ignored. But much more organizing is needed if the Peruvian left is to build lasting political power.
The Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of major corporations, was lauded by mainstream media in 2019 for pledging to prioritize the common good over shareholders. Well, now they’re demanding to protect tax cuts that disproportionately enrich CEOs.
On Thursday, a rent cap introduced by Berlin’s city government was struck down by the German Constitutional Court. But public opposition to the private landlords has been building for years — and now, a referendum on forced renationalization looks like the only way of breaking their power.
Tony Blair’s New Labour government left the fundamental architecture of Thatcher’s economy in place — and failed to break the cycle of deepening inequality. It’s not just the criminal Iraq War, Blairism failed at every level.
Scott Morrison responded to the sexual abuse crisis in Australia’s parliament by making Amanda Stoker, a hard-right Christian and defender of misogyny, assistant minister for women. Stoker’s elevation is part of a right-wing campaign against women under the cloak of Christianity.
A coalition of ultra-wealthy oligarchs and Republican leaders is conspiring to kill HR 1, the landmark voting rights bill that will be up for a vote this year. In a newly uncovered secret recording, the conspirators bemoan the unpopularity of their effort — even with rank-and-file conservatives — and underscore how conscious they are that their antidemocratic agenda depends on curtailing democracy.
The reason Amazon workers lost in Alabama is simple: Employers in the US are allowed to engage in brazen anti-union tactics throughout union elections. The PRO Act would change all of that, finally freeing workers from employer intimidation.
Unions desperately need labor law reform through the PRO Act. But even if that bill remains off the table in the near future, Joe Biden can take immediate action through executive orders to roll back corporate union-busting like Amazon carried out in Bessemer, Alabama.
The slander against the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy says a lot about fishing industry influence in marine science. We have somehow allowed the fisheries industry’s own scientists to define sustainable fishing goals — it’s a disgrace leading to an ecological nightmare.
Last week’s cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear facility, reportedly by Israeli intelligence, is the latest gambit from the coalition of Israeli leaders, Christian fundamentalists, and hawkish Washington neocons who want to block a US return to the Iran nuclear agreement. If they’re successful, millions of ordinary Iranians suffering under draconian sanctions will pay the price.
For more than a century, one of the most persistent ideas in US politics has been that education is the best solution to inequality. But it’s not persistent because it’s true — it’s persistent because it’s a useful myth for political and economic elites jealously guarding their money and power.
Imran Khan’s government came to power in 2018 promising to reorient Pakistan’s economy toward the needs of the population. But faced with a debt crisis it soon dropped its reformist agenda — and now, the International Monetary Fund is pressuring it to place its State Bank permanently beyond democratic control.
The cameras and news trucks may be leaving town. But at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, where the company won a closely watched unionization vote last week, the fight isn’t over. And at Amazon’s other warehouses, it’s just getting started.
Movies about class and inequality are back in the mainstream. Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger is a powerful interrogation of the injustices of class and caste society.
To build worker power at a mass scale that can challenge Jeff Bezos’s behemoth, worker militancy at Amazon has to be as global and as extensive as the supply chain itself.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s recent comments to a pro-Israel group were defensive and confusing. But her progressive record on foreign policy and Palestine is an indication that she could play a much stronger role in standing up for Palestinian rights.