Kendra Strauss is director of the Labour Studies Program and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.
Following Conservative British prime minister Liz Truss’s U-turn on tax cuts for the rich, the government is now set to attempt sharp spending cuts. More austerity would mean further punishing the poor and crippling already-starved public services.
Last week workers at four different Amazon warehouse across the US walked out to protest the company’s low pay and brutal working conditions. The actions were timed to coincide with Amazon’s Prime Day promotional sales rush.
As local newspapers shut down across the country, partisan mudslinging masquerading as news has filled in the vacuum. The Republicans are trailblazers in “pink slime journalism,” but the Democrats are following their lead.
The Salvadoran civil war didn’t just see US-trained-and-financed far-right forces commit endless war crimes — it also ripped children from families, an unknown number of whom never found their way back to their parents.
Republican Senate nominee Ted Budd helped clear the way for a controversial 2019 bank merger — then took big campaign cash and loans from the resulting financial behemoth.
Policymakers who have belatedly recognized the peril of climate change now promote incremental, market-based solutions to the crisis. But there’s no way we can prevent ecological disaster without tackling the vested interests at the heart of global capitalism.
Video games are the most popular entertainment media on the planet — and one of the American war machine’s most effective propaganda tools.
New Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson comes from a party called the Moderates. But his majority relies on the votes of the far-right Sweden Democrats — and their pressure is already visible in his plans for government.
Intel Corp. successfully pushed for congressional approval of a $76 billion subsidy for the chip industry. Now, it is laying off workers in an austerity regime while continuing to give shareholders massive payouts.
Recent polls suggest that the Democrats’ sidelining of economic issues to go all in on the Capitol riot hasn’t borne fruit. While voters are most concerned about inflation, they think the party’s main priority is January 6, which barely registers.
Neoliberal policymakers present “green finance” as a market-based solution for climate chaos. But the investment scenarios they’ve devised for our transition beyond fossil fuels are really a form of economic planning — one that the Left should take control of.
Democrats running in the upcoming midterms are rightfully pushing the need to protect abortion rights, but they are failing to tie that push to a populist economic message.
In 1981, Lula da Silva spoke to the first Brazilian Workers’ Party convention about his country’s path to democratic socialism. Ahead of the second round of Brazil’s presidential election later this month, we reproduce his speech here.
From chip bags full of air to that suspicious dimple on the bottom of the peanut butter jar, food corporations are shamelessly reducing the treats-per-dollar ratio. Snacks are a small but key pleasure that the capitalists are quietly ripping away from us.
The British sitcom Peep Show depicts the life of a 2000s unemployed guy who lives comfortably. Today, austerity has all but destroyed the possibility of such a slacker lifestyle — an option we all deserve.
At Kaiser Permanente in California, 2,000 mental health care workers have been on strike since August 15. They say Kaiser consistently fails to provide adequate staffing and wages, with patients waiting weeks or months for a second appointment.
Driven by inflation, the prices of basic goods are spiraling out of control. The Fed’s solution of raising interest rates will hurt average workers. Rep. Jamaal Bowman is proposing a better solution: price controls.
Defenders of capitalism insist that chasing profit is the only reason anything ever gets made. But when Warner Bros. Discovery killed Batgirl to take advantage of a tax loophole, it showed the opposite: the profit motive can stand in the way of creation, too.
The Crusades seem like a classic example of religious ideology triumphing over materialism. But a closer look shows that multiple class interests underpinned the crusading enterprise, from merchants seeking trade routes to peasants evading feudal oppression.
Sixty years ago, the world seemed on the brink of nuclear war before the superpowers reached an agreement. The missile crisis led Cuba’s leaders to distrust their Soviet ally — an attitude that ultimately helped their revolutionary system to outlast the USSR’s.