Message in a Bottle
In the United States of 2020, millions are desperate for help, and they’re forced to compete for scraps from Twitter philanthropists.
62 Search Results for: Coronavirus COVID-19 Capitalism
Capitalism Caused the COVID-19 Crisis
We cannot let capitalists absolve themselves of blame for the COVID-19 crisis. Their choices have turned an emergency into a disaster.
Yes, Socialism Would Handle the Coronavirus Pandemic Better Than Capitalism
My vision of democratic socialism wouldn’t be Utopia. But here’s the case it would be better than the status quo during both normal times and these times of crisis.
Is This the End of Neoliberal Globalization?
The coronavirus has scattered the pieces on the geopolitical chessboard, revealing the fragility of just-in-time global production. Getting back to normal is the last thing we need.
Seattle’s Socialists Are Now Enemy Number One for Jeff Bezos and Amazon
In 2018, Amazon beat back Seattle’s attempts to tax the corporation. Last week, socialist city council member Kshama Sawant and a working-class movement helped win a veto-proof majority for a new “Amazon tax.” Now it’s time to defend this victory.
Pandemics Show How the Free Market Fails Us
The Spanish flu of 1918 infected a quarter of the world population and was decisive to the rise of public health-care systems. Today’s COVID-19 crisis is again showing that collective problems demand collective solutions — and a state that provides for all our essential needs.
How the Chairman of Spain’s Real Madrid Football Club Presided Over a Coronavirus Catastrophe in Nursing Homes
For decades, oligarchs like Real Madrid chairman Florentino Pérez have made Spain's old-age care sector a favored cash cow. Today, the coronavirus deaths caused by their penny-pinching are a grim monument to the failures of privatization.
Delivering Food in a Pandemic
On Monday, Italy began to ease COVID-19 restrictions, with more than 4 million returning to work. But some, like delivery workers, never stopped working — nor organizing for labor rights in an industry deemed "essential" and putting workers at serious health risk.
Even in a Pandemic, Workers Can Fight Back
During the Great Depression, radicals played key roles in helping organize the worker upsurges that led to the New Deal’s pro-worker policies. We can do the same today in fighting back against the economic misery and unsafe working conditions of the coronavirus pandemic.
For the Love of God, Stop Celebrating Big Pharma’s COVID Profiteers
Over the past few months, pharma giants like Pfizer and Moderna have become household names and fodder for affectionate memes. But their prominence reflects how the market has cannibalized science and public health during a global crisis. Big pharma still is not your friend.
Israel Is Using Emergency Pandemic Measures to Surveil Palestinian Protesters
Israel is currently engaged in a brutal crackdown on Palestinian protesters — and it’s using surveillance measures refined during the COVID-19 pandemic to monitor, track, and harass those protesters.
In Australia, the Ecological Crises Are Escalating
Australia has been hit by one ecological disaster after another this year: first the devastating bushfires, then the COVID-19 pandemic. Both are part of the same rising environmental crisis, and without meaningful action, we’re headed toward dystopia.
How the Global Financial System Is Hobbling South America’s Response to COVID-19
Argentina’s public health response to COVID-19 was far better than Jair Bolsonaro’s disastrous mismanagement in Brazil. Yet as the two countries seek to rebuild, both are enfeebled by their subordinate place in the global financial system, a subordination that is threatening to turn today’s shock into a protracted crisis.
Coronavirus Is Hammering the News Industry. Here’s How to Save It.
Tens of thousands of journalists are losing their jobs, newspaper chains are going under, and vulture capitalists are picking over the remains. We need a news bailout — but one that overhauls the existing corporate model and pushes the media to put the public before profits.
We Can Stop Pandemic Profiteering
If we are going to avert the worst-case COVID-19 scenario and prevent unimaginable human suffering, we have to fight — and even nationalize — the corporations that are trying to profit off of this crisis at everyone else’s expense.
We Don’t Want a Post-Pandemic “Return to Normal,” We Want the End of Capitalism
In 2022, we limped out of the pandemic frying pan into the fire of resumed capitalist crises. Popular yearning to “get back to normal” is a desire for the good life — and making such a desire a reality will require fighting for socialism.
Disaster Capitalism Is Coming for Public Education
While educators across the country struggle to support and teach their students during distance learning, state and federal legislators are preparing to slash public education budgets. Defending public education during the coronavirus will require solidarity across the public sector.
The Climate Crisis and COVID-19 Are Inseparable
Commentators like to point to Wuhan’s “wet markets” as the source of the pandemic, but COVID-19 is the result of a much larger, global phenomenon of environmental degradation. Combatting both means putting the politics of food production and land use at the very heart of our socialist project.
Donald Trump Is a Menace to American Democracy. But He Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere.
Liberals are right to condemn Donald Trump for his disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and his undisguised contempt for democracy. But Trump is no aberration: his rise was only possible because of a Republican and Democratic political consensus that has ravaged American politics and society for a generation.
A Year of Defeat — and Hope
Last year saw setbacks for the Left in much of the world, but recent victories in Latin America are a reminder that socialist politics continue to offer an alternative to a system in crisis.