The recent train derailment in Ohio shows the need for more stringent safety rules for train brakes, especially for trains carrying hazardous materials. Transportation regulators are instead bending to the interests of rail industry lobbyists.
Unionized graduate students at Temple University are on strike. The school’s administration has responded with unabashedly brutal retaliation, cutting off their health care and tuition remission, in an attempt to crush them.
Capitalism’s apologists are throwing around economic concepts like inflation, recession, labor shortages, and supply chain shortages to justify ripping off consumers, raising rents, and depressing wages. Don’t ask them to define their terms.
The exploitation of workers is central to the functioning of capitalism. The socialist argument is simple: we can live in a world without such exploitation.
A third Trader Joe’s store location has just voted to unionize, this one in the notoriously anti-union South. “If a Trader Joe’s in Louisville, Kentucky, can do this,” says an organizer, “any Trader Joe's across the country can do this.”
Whether the Ukraine war brings on a global catastrophe will hinge in large part on whether Washington decides to back a Ukrainian effort to retake the Crimean peninsula.
Once a major national force, today’s French Socialist Party finds itself outcompeted by both the radical left and neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron. But last month’s congress shows many leaders would rather kill the party than sign up for radical policies.
Social theorists identify automation as both the main cause of unemployment and the future launchpad for a high-tech post-scarcity world. But, Aaron Benanav argues, the problem is the stagnation of global capitalism and its inability to generate enough jobs.
“Let them eat price gouging” appears to be grocery giant Loblaws’ response to the rising number of food-insecure Canadians. The company blames supply chain issues and inflation for soaring grocery costs — yet is posting stratospheric profits.
Israel routinely refuses to extradite its own citizens — including people who’ve flown there purely to escape justice. Its Law of Return rewards criminals who can claim a vague connection to Israel, even as it denies innocent Palestinians their homeland.
Achieving a fully socialist society is going to take a long time, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But we should never lose sight of the goal, because every step we take in that direction makes life better for working-class people and deepens democracy.
For years, rail companies have resisted federal safety regulations to cut costs. The major train derailment in Ohio last weekend, which resulted in the emergency evacuation of residents nearby, is the fruit of such profit maximization.