One likely bright spot in today’s French elections is Grenoble, where incumbent mayor Éric Piolle is set to romp to a second term. Head of a list backed by Greens, La France Insoumise, and the Communists, he told us how he is uniting the Left — and why he thinks city halls can provide a different way of doing politics.
In an interview with Jacobin, former Labour Party shadow chancellor John McDonnell discusses Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID crisis, recalls the radical atmosphere of the 1980s Labour Party, and draws the lessons from Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as party leader.
When Steven Pinker insists that the world is getting better and better, much of his case is based on claims about declining global poverty. But a new report from the UN’s top poverty expert dismantles that argument, showing that global poverty has gone nearly unchanged over the last forty years.
We don’t have to leave ourselves at the mercy of the most profitable sector on Earth to get the drugs we need. We must nationalize the pharmaceutical industry and turn the medicines millions rely on into public goods.
The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged influential figures like Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to press for new structures of global governance. But the system they have in mind won’t be democratic. We need a radically democratic world government.
Over its 25-year rule in Madrid, the right-wing Partido Popular has given rise to vast webs of corruption, widespread privatizations, and a disastrous mishandling of COVID-19. But its Thatcherite revolution has also forged a new voter base loyal to the ruling party — meaning predictions of imminent collapse are likely premature.
The Right couches their arguments about not wearing face masks or reopening their local Baskin Robbins in the language of “freedom.” We have to take that language of freedom back, making the case that real freedom means the ability to democratically decide, together, how to protect everyone from hunger, homelessness, and sickness.
At Epic Systems, a Wisconsin-based software company, workers had complaints that will be familiar to many workers across the United States: an oppressive culture of surveillance and control, executives pushing to end their pandemic-induced working from home. Now, Epic's workers are organizing.
Federal unemployment has dried up, rent is past due, evictions are proceeding, the cupboards are bare, and the Senate has adjourned without passing a new coronavirus relief package. Their abandonment of the working class is shameless, but hardly shocking.
For-profit health companies are launching a new national ad campaign to persuade Democrats to abandon their plans to create a public health insurance plan — something many elected Democrats are very happy to be convinced of.
When the Italian government introduced a temporary ban on layoffs for the period of the coronavirus crisis, the employers’ federation reacted furiously. Firms have already received billions of euros in subsidies to help pay their workers’ wages — but what they can’t tolerate is any limit on their power to hire and fire at will.
The coronavirus pandemic has preyed on weaknesses created by decades of austerity, confirming what socialists have consistently argued: privatization was a disaster.
Among all the people living in Sicily, migrants are the single population best tested for coronavirus. Yet now the regional president is scapegoating them as the source of contagion — insisting that Africans must be expelled in order to “stop Sicilians becoming racist.”
Australia’s employers and federal government have failed to halt COVID-19, while the country’s public health system and union movement have stepped up. The Australian labor movement now has an historic opportunity to push for an alternative to neoliberalism.
Workers throughout the United States have had to organize to demand basic workplace health and safety protections during the pandemic. That’s also true of workers in higher education — including Kenyon College, where undergraduate workers are organizing a union.
New data shows that COVID-19–related deaths followed after workers requested help from federal safety officials. Instead of helping, Donald Trump reduced enforcement of workplace safety laws.
The response of university systems in states like North Carolina have been wildly inadequate to the coronavirus pandemic’s gravity. Students are now dying as a result.
This summer, in a COVID-19–driven economic crisis, Chile’s opposition forced the right-wing government to allow desperate citizens to draw on their privatized pension funds. But in a constitutional referendum tomorrow, Chileans may go a step further and vote to scrap these widely hated pension funds altogether.
In normal times, college football players are seen by administrators as cash cows for universities. Under coronavirus, more than ever, other students are, too. And whether it’s student-athletes suffering severe injury or fans risking illness, both are considered expendable in the pursuit of profit.
Looking beyond Joe Biden’s unexpectedly modest victory, the 2020 election was a historic failure for the Democratic Party. On the other hand, despite some painful hitches coming out of this campaign season, the Left has reason to be hopeful.