Which Side Is Your Pension On?
The failure of unions to gain control over their pension funds gives insight into corporate-controlled finance and the obstacles to democratizing it.
The failure of unions to gain control over their pension funds gives insight into corporate-controlled finance and the obstacles to democratizing it.

The Morrison government has proposed sweeping changes to Australian labor laws intended to cut wages, entrench precarious work, and cripple unions. The proposed changes would sweep away the remnants of collective bargaining and hand dictatorial power to bosses.

Argentina’s Mauricio Macri officially steps down as president today, having overseen four years of neoliberal mismanagement, inflation, and a new IMF bailout program. The election of the Peronist Alberto Fernández is good news for the Left, but it faces an uphill battle in stabilizing a deeply indebted economy.

Commonwealth College was a radical experiment in socialist education nestled deep in the Arkansas mountains. It taught and trained over 1,500 worker-activists before becoming an early casualty of American anti-communism.

Donald Trump’s presidency was a catastrophe, and its imminent demise is well worth celebrating. Our task now is to build a politics that ensures Trumpism is dead and buried.

Universal cash assistance programs have provided an indispensable financial lifeline for households and the economy as a whole during the pandemic. But contrary to many advocates of a universal basic income, the past year's experience offers no model for a left policy agenda in normal times.

Fifty years after the publication of The Power Broker, the legacy of urban planner Robert Moses is ripe for revisiting.

The New York City primaries have been a mess, with delayed results, botched results, and everything in between. But we do know one thing for sure: the question isn’t whether socialists will win any seats, but how many.

The era of class compromise is never coming back. Any serious democratic socialist politics must pursue a politics of rupture with capitalism.

Israel’s naked attempt to enforce an unflagging pro-Israel consensus, as it did in stoking backlash against Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s sensible recent comments that the country is a “racist state,” may work in the short-term. But the future belongs to Palestine.

New York governor Kathy Hochul’s “State of the State” address Tuesday failed to address the challenges facing millions of New Yorkers. Instead, she offered more of the free-market centrism that has been disastrous for Democrats around the country.

Privatization in education has been slow but steady. It’s already crippling many public schools.
A view inside C&S Wholesale Grocers, America’s secret corporate empire.

Workers’ retirement savings aren’t usually thought of as a stimulating topic. But we should pay closer attention, because public pensions are a key way for Wall Street to steal wealth from workers and hoard it for themselves.

Elections on Sunday could finally remove Viktor Orbán from power. Opposition forces have rallied behind rival candidate Péter Magyar, less out of belief in his program than from desperation at the country’s authoritarian turn.

The late 20th century saw the creation of special economic zones that free capitalists from the normal constraints of popular sovereignty. This went hand in hand with the rise of radical libertarian ideologies proposing to do away with democracy entirely.

A small but important segment of the New Left “turned to industry,” getting jobs in steel, auto, and elsewhere to build a militant current in the US labor movement. The Rank-and-File Project is aiming to build a similar current of democratic, militant unionism today.

Corporate news outlets like Semafor are running sponsored posts from Pfizer bragging about how the pharma manufacturer is altruistically working to expand access to its products overseas — the same month Pfizer raised prices on 99 of its drugs in the US.

Donald Trump is often blamed for the US’s hostility toward the EU, but the roots of the rift run deeper. Europe’s manufacturing-heavy economy and tough regulation of US tech have put it on a collision course with Washington.

In Germany, podcaster Ole Nymoen has become public enemy number one for supporters of the government’s rearmament campaign. He spoke to Jacobin about his new book against militarization and on the need for a renewed peace movement.