In 1926, 14.5 million Germans voted in a referendum to expropriate the toppled royal dynasties’ estates. The campaign brought rare unity on the German left — but also met with a reactionary backlash highlighting the dangers to Weimar democracy.
The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a series of emergency measures to reorient our economies toward the public health care response. The crisis offers a glimpse of how production could be made to serve social needs — but only if we defeat those who want a return to capitalist normality.
Even before the pandemic, Bulgaria’s public health system had been wrecked by privatization. Now suffering among the world’s highest COVID mortality rates, Bulgaria provides a case study in how “market reforms” hobble public infrastructure and suck skilled workers from the European Union’s poorest countries to its richest.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen speaks of the EU’s ambitions to project itself as a superpower on the global stage. But recent crises show that the last thing we need is the European Union expanding its mandate.
Käthe Kollwitz was a radical printmaker with deep political commitments. From the last days of the German Empire until the end of the Third Reich, she gave visual expression to workers’ rebellion and loss, never losing hope in the socialist world to come.
Removing border checks between many European states, the Schengen Area is often hailed as an internationalist triumph. Yet its creation went hand in hand with the tightening of Europe’s external borders — a contradiction that is hardening today.
Small and medium-sized European countries like the Netherlands play an outsized role protecting international capital and empire.
The magnitude of the refugee crisis in Europe only strengthens the case against immigration controls.
If German public debate is infamous for its pro-Israel dogmas, the situation is as bad in Austria. While the far-right Freedom Party is now normalized, pro-Palestinians are silenced in the name of “anti-fascist” solidarity with Israel.
Left-wing forces in Spain, France, Germany and Greece all recently suffered damaging splits. They each stumbled over a common problem: how to influence institutions while focusing on priorities ignored by the dominant media-political class.
It’s eighty years today since the notorious Vichy regime took power in France under Nazi domination. Vichy-style fascism wasn’t simply a German plant on French soil — it drew on powerful reactionary currents in French politics and society.
Will Sommer, author of the new book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America, explains where QAnon came from, why it isn’t going away anytime soon, and how material deprivation helps drive conspiracy theories.
The European Union’s pivot away from Russian fossil fuels is being sold as part of the green energy transition. Yet the plan’s reliance on imports from Morocco and occupied Western Sahara shows how it is driving a new kind of green colonialism.
As voters elect a new European Parliament, the Left is split between multiple “unity projects.” And none of them have a clear idea how to transform the EU.
Since 1945 Bavarians have consistently elected the pro-business, socially conservative CSU. Tomorrow's state election could change all of that.
In the years after Karl Marx's death, Friedrich Engels wrote that a rising socialist movement could now advance by means other than violent insurrection. This didn't mean an embrace of existing institutions — rather, it meant recovering the mass democracy experimented with during the French Revolution.
Can European democracy survive the reign of unelected central bankers?
From Otto von Bismarck to Joe Biden, capitalist politicians have tried to cure the system’s ills without transforming society. But it takes socialists to really change the world for the better.
Last Friday, authorities gave the go-ahead for Tesla’s Gigafactory near Berlin. The fast-tracked approval for the electric auto plant makes a mockery of environmental and labor standards — but suits the agenda of superficially “greening” German industry.
How the West Berlin squatter scene produced Germany’s greatest rock band.