Jeff Bezos: Your Legacy Is Exploitation
Jeff Bezos is stepping aside as Amazon's CEO having made a fortune of almost $200 billion. It's an attempt at reputation rehabilitation — but he can't escape the legacy of exploitation he leaves behind.
Blog
Italy’s New Technocratic Government Is an Insult to Democracy
The Italian president has appointed former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to form a "nonpolitical" government. In fact, this is the latest in a string of technocratic administrations designed to impose unpopular austerity measures — a deeply ideological program that Italians have never voted for.
Stop Blaming the Pandemic on “Selfish Rule-Breakers”
A British government ad campaign targets lockdown rule-breakers, blamed for undermining measures to tackle the pandemic. But the real problem is the government's failure to set effective rules to start with — scapegoating individual behavior even as it has allowed the virus to let rip in crowded schools and workplaces.
The Gamestop Affair Is Just the Latest Incarnation of the “People’s Capitalism” Delusion
The Robinhood trading app is an attempt to commercialize a powerful but thoroughly fictional myth: that finance can be democratized while ownership and control remain in the hands of powerful capitalists.
Alberta’s United Conservative Party Has Seized Control of Its Public-Sector Pension Funds
As part of its anti-union agenda, Alberta’s right-wing government has wrested control of workers’ retirement funds from a joint board that gave them a guaranteed say. Workers in the province are preparing to mount a legal challenge to the power grab.
Silicon Valley Wants to Entrench the Gig Economy and Neutralize the Labor Movement
Gig economy companies and organized labor are at war over the future of work and the definition of “employee.” The companies’ strategy has split the labor movement by enticing some unions into a partnership-based company unionism instead of independent workers’ organizing.
Canada’s NDP Should Stop Making Excuses and Find Ways To Win
There’s wide support for the kind of social-democratic policies Canada's New Democratic Party should be offering, but the party is afraid to put forward a bold left-wing program that can inspire supporters. The NDP’s history shows how it’s possible for a left party to succeed against the tide.
COVID-19 Vaccine Developers Want to Keep Getting Billions in Public Money With No Strings Attached
Drug companies have received over $10 billion from the US government for COVID-19 vaccine production. Yet those companies weren’t required to offer their vaccines at fair prices or share intellectual property rights — and they want to keep it that way.
The Queen’s Gambit Is a Merciless Takedown of Hollywood Anti-Communism
Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit shows a Cold War world far from the usual Hollywood tropes of freedom-loving Americans confronting evil Russian totalitarians. The villains in this piece aren’t our heroine’s Soviet chess rivals, but the middle-class tyrants of US suburbia.
The Era of Neoliberal Svengalis Like Larry Summers Might Be Coming to an End
From GameStop to COVID-19 relief, the past year has given us an abundance of reasons to ignore the advice of neoliberal economists like Larry Summers. There are tentative signs that the Biden administration might do just that.
Lori Lightfoot Is Insisting on Forcing Chicago Teachers Into Unsafe Schools
Despite Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s own admission that reopening other parts of the city like restaurants would be unsafe given COVID-19 infection rates, she is insisting Chicago teachers and students return to in-person learning. The Chicago Teachers Union has voted to defy the mayor, refusing to return to schools under current conditions.
The Community Housing Activist Voted Onto Oakland’s City Council
Community organizer Carroll Fife is preparing to enter city hall in Oakland. She joins part of a wave of left-wing insurgents unseating neoliberal officials across the country, and she’ll be working to build municipal power from the bottom up.