What Die Linke Should Do
The German right made stunning gains in this month's regional elections. The Left must rise to the challenge.
The German right made stunning gains in this month's regional elections. The Left must rise to the challenge.

Bargaining between California State University and faculty has broken down after management offered an insultingly low salary increase. It’s time for the university to live up to its mission and support quality public education — instead of massive payouts to administrators.

Sam Bankman-Fried, apostle of “effective altruism,” has done one good thing for humanity: he’s revealed that finance, and particularly crypto, is a wasteful cesspool that must be reined in.

A rail system shutdown was averted by an eleventh-hour tentative agreement between rail companies and union negotiators. But union members may reject the deal — the details of which are still forthcoming — making future strikes a distinct possibility.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revealed the new reality of great-power conflict, underwritten by nuclear weapons. Our task is to reject aligning with one of the great powers and to instead push for across-the-board nuclear disarmament.

Oil giant Shell wrought devastation across Nigeria for years. In 1995, nine organizers from the Ogoni region were hanged after a campaign against the company.

While opposing guest-worker programs like H-1B, socialists must clearly reject the Right’s blanket opposition to immigration.

Australia’s mean and punitive benefits system is a key tool for disciplining workers while amassing profits for private firms. The labor movement needs to join with the unemployed to overhaul it entirely.

This week, workers in Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools voted to unionize, forming a wall-to-wall union of 27,500 teachers, custodians, teaching assistants, bus drivers, and more. The vote has created one of the largest K-12 unions on the East Coast.

The US’s miserly welfare state is known for forcing people to work rather than shielding them from the most exploitative jobs. And in Iowa, GOP lawmakers are taking the Dickensian cruelty further: they’re considering loosening restrictions on child labor.

Work under capitalism sucks, and Gen Z’s disillusionment with the labor market is justified. But work itself is socially necessary and the only way to transform it is through collective power, not withdrawal.

The Biden administration's lofty rhetoric about "vaccine diplomacy" is a blatant lie. The reality is that the US government has actively upheld a system of vaccine apartheid that guarantees vaccine scarcity in the Global South and reinforces US empire.

In medieval Bohemia, religious dissent against the Catholic Church developed into full-blown social rebellion. The radical Hussites put forward daringly egalitarian ideas and held out for years against seemingly overwhelming odds on the battlefield.

In between smiling, waving, and running up a $400 million annual bill, the late Queen Elizabeth II was the face of some pretty bad stuff during her seven-decade reign.
The fear of Greek exit from the euro should no longer cripple us.

Even though Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, raked in billions in profits last year, new documents show their tax rate actually went below zero. This may help explain why CEO Stephen Schwarzman has spent nearly $25 million to help Trump and GOP senators win: to ensure the tax breaks enriching Blackstone stay in place.

We may be exhausted by the effects of the pandemic, but the desire to return to business as usual is a blind alley. The pandemic is simply one facet of the broader crises we face — crises that were forged in yesterday’s normal.

For the poor and working class, Joe Manchin demands work requirements for child tax credits. Yet for the rich, he’s happy to support — and personally benefit from — work-free income.

Though architects have long been seen as privileged creative professionals, they are finding themselves in increasingly de-skilled and exploitative work environments. It’s no wonder that they’re starting to unionize.

There have been eight coups d’état in West Africa since 2020 — a marked uptick after years on the decline. The US has trained and armed many of the responsible parties. It’s 10 PM: Do you know where your tax dollars are going?