For two decades, antiwar protests have been among Britain’s biggest social movements. Today actions against arms firms like BAE Systems are taking things one step further — materially disrupting the British state’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Belgium was a pioneer of industrialization, and class struggle by its workers’ movement created one of Europe’s most impressive welfare states. But with regional divisions now dominating Belgian politics, the country’s long-term survival is deeply uncertain.
The left case for an independent Canada.
In London’s poorest borough, I ran as an open socialist against the Labour Party to become mayor — and I won. Despite Labour’s conservative turn, the Left can win like I did: by going on the offensive.
France’s Greens, Socialists, and Communists have joined a coalition supporting Jean-Luc Mélenchon for prime minister. He has proven that a transformative program is the best way to inspire millions — and to deny Emmanuel Macron a majority in parliament.
In July’s French elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise yet again beat expectations. Its focus on leader and program have proven to be an electoral asset, but its top-heavy structure risks undermining its longer-term sustainability.
Last week’s election performance by the British Labour Party was deeply underwhelming. Despite enjoying every advantage, Keir Starmer has failed to convert a popular backlash against Boris Johnson’s government into support for his own plodding leadership.
The spread of neoliberalism promised economic efficiency and freedom for the powerful while wreaking havoc for millions. In recent years, claims of a post-neoliberal era have emerged, but a new book argues that these claims may be greatly exaggerated.
Liberals say that socialists who don’t support Joe Biden are “like the German Communists who refused to fight Hitler.” The analogy doesn’t hold up — and it’s also historically illiterate.
In Germany, the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance has scored well in its first electoral tests. Its burial of class politics and imitation of right-wing positions on migration show why its rise isn’t good news for the Left.
Head of one of the biggest far-left groups in 1970s Britain, Gerry Healy was accused of rape and sexual abuse. A new biography reflects on the swamp from which he emerged — and how his group’s authoritarian model facilitated his crimes.
The German government’s reluctance to join an anti-Russian bandwagon owes at least as much to commercial interests as to historical guilt. But calls for Berlin to play a stronger role in NATO should be emphatically resisted.
Western hegemony is in decline, and the Left has to reckon with a new international balance of power. Peter Mertens, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, spoke to us about what the “mutinies” in the Global South mean for socialist strategy.
The response to recent protest movements in Britain, from climate justice to Palestine, repeats a familiar story. The British power elite has always vilified protesters and targeted them with bogus prosecutions in a bid to frighten them off the streets.
Ines Schwerdtner is the newly elected cochair of German left-wing party Die Linke. In an interview with Jacobin, she explains how she wants to reconnect the party with a working-class base.
Centrist politicians once based their whole pitch on the claim to possess “electability,” but now they can’t offer a sustainable formula for beating an increasingly militant right. They only develop a sense of urgency for the fight against the Left.
Instead of finger-wagging at other leftists, we should think ecologically about our organizational structures and tactics.
There are plenty of real catastrophes in today’s world. But from military build-up to fantasies of mass deportation, right-wingers are promising their supporters better disasters: ones where they get to be in charge.
In October, Die Linke elected new leadership, which promises to reconnect with working-class voters. With German elections planned for early 2025, they face a race against time to change the party’s culture.
Emmanuel Macron has often warned that France shouldn’t imitate US-style culture wars. But ahead of April’s election, the liberal president and his far-right challengers are all obsessing about what they call an “Islamo-leftist” threat to French national identity.