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.
David Fincher’s ode to Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz revives an eighty-year-old debate over whether or not Orson Welles deserves a co-writing credit — and it’s exactly as entertaining as that sounds.
In his literary works, Charles Dickens told the story of a society blighted by inequality — and the cruelty of a ruling class which kept so many living in grinding poverty.
Allowing wealth to accumulate from one generation to another is a recipe for unacceptable inequalities. We should abolish inherited wealth.
Italian prosecutors have called for four Egyptian security agents to be tried for the 2016 kidnapping and murder of labor researcher Giulio Regeni in Cairo. Their appeal follows years in which Egyptian authorities have frustrated efforts to find the killers — and the Italian government has turned a blind eye, for the sake of good relations with Al-Sisi’s military regime.
Slavoj Žižek writes in Jacobin today that we’ve been given a choice between a return to the old exploitative normality and a post-COVID corporate “Great Reset” that promises to be even worse. We need a real alternative, a socialist reset that can win justice for all and save the planet from climate apocalypse.
Democrats and Beltway pundits helped Mitch McConnell undermine Bernie Sanders’s push for direct aid to millions of Americans facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy through $2,000 checks. Even for a party that is constantly disappointing, Democrats’ complete capitulation to McConnell and austerity ideology was shockingly pathetic.
Italian designer Enzo Mari insisted that design wasn’t a game or a hobby, but a battle over the production process itself. His “design-it-yourself” encouraged workers to reclaim their ability to think for themselves — and not just execute other people’s plans.
Economist Larry Summers helped Bill Clinton deregulate finance in the ’90s and pushed Barack Obama to scale back economic stimulus after 2008. Now he’s unhappy with Bernie Sanders’s championing of a $2,000 stimulus check. It’s a useful reminder of how destructive Democratic Party neoliberalism can be.
The fight for Medicare for All is one of the most important in the United States today. And despite the many horrors of 2020, the movement demanding an end to our privatized health system actually made some headway this year.
As Noam Chomsky puts it in a recent interview, “unless working people take part in the class struggle, they’re going to get it in the neck.”
Jeff Bezos’s personal wealth increased more every second of 2020 ($2,800) than Congress is considering giving Americans who are facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy ($2,000).
The lies that have destroyed trust in US institutions didn’t begin with Donald Trump’s presidency, and they will not end with them. From the tobacco industry to fossil fuel companies and the military-industrial complex, the American people have been peddled bullshit for generations.
In the wealthiest country in the world, there’s no reason anyone should be poor. Period.
The demand to cancel student debt is vital, but it would be politically dangerous to let it get detached from a broader left vision for higher education. We should unite it with another key working class demand: tuition-free public college and trade school.
Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue could actually force a Senate vote on $2,000 checks for almost two thirds of Georgia households. After all, their state is in the middle of a calamity. Instead, they are issuing belated, meek platitudes.
Bernie Sanders is prepared to fight to win $2,000 survival checks for all. While Senate Democrats were prepared to do nothing to challenge Mitch McConnell, Sanders is pledging to filibuster a Pentagon veto override to provide real help for millions of Americans struggling to survive.
After years of militant struggle from feminists, Argentina is now poised to legalize abortion rights. With the upper house expected to pass the abortion bill today, nineteen-year-old legislator and activist Ofelia Fernández spoke to Jacobin about the dynamism of Argentina’s Green Tide activism and what comes next.
In 2017’s French election, radical left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon surged to 20 percent support, only narrowly failing to make the runoff. Last month he announced his candidacy for the 2022 race — and he’s trying to show that his France Insoumise movement can govern as well as protest.
After its lower house of Congress voted yes earlier this month, Argentina’s upper house will vote tomorrow on legalizing abortion. The campaign could not have arrived at this point without years of mass feminist organizing in the streets.
House Republicans and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell represent voters who are disproportionately struggling — yet they’re blocking $2,000 survival checks. It’s American politics in a nutshell.