This article was first published in New Politics . For the second time since the turn of the century, governments in North America and Europe are intervening massively with public funds and in conjunction with central banks to bail out entire sectors of the economy and prevent a general economic […]
Month: April 2020
Rest in Power: Pete Gillard (1949-2020), lifelong fighter for revolutionary socialism
Earlier this week, we received the terrible news that Pete Gillard, a long-standing comrade, passed away on April 21. It appears that Covid-19 ultimately cost him his life—after he fought and survived cancer surgery, sepsis, other health problems after weeks in intensive care. Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (rs21), […]
Sanders backs Biden: Whither the Left?
In what was likely the most predictable event in the Democratic Party primary season, Sen. Bernie Sanders on April 13 endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee to go up against President Trump in November. No one should have been surprised that the Sanders campaign ended this […]
“I hope public health can win out over capitalism”
Buenos Aires-based Claudio Katz, author of many books and articles on political economy, gave this interview on March 30 to El Círculo Rojo, the radio program affiliated with the online socialist news site La Izquierda Diario. Lance Selfa translated the interview with permission from the author. How would you characterize […]
The essential and the expendable: Class, race, and xenophobia during the pandemic
A pandemic is an epidemic stretching across multiple continents. It is therefore a worldwide public health crisis. For this reason, the only effective way to combat the Covid-19 pandemic is through global coordination aimed at advancing a collective international strategy. Yet, the capitalist world order has done precisely the opposite, […]
Socialist tasks during the pandemic
Many excellent articles have appeared analyzing the COVID 19 pandemic from a socialist and Marxist perspective. In this piece, we will look at just one question: what should socialists do during the pandemic? The main components of the answer are supporting essential workers fighting for safety protections, defending workers demanding […]
Coronavirus and the global economic crisis: A crisis triggered by greed for profit
The global economic crisis is deteriorating at a rate as dizzying as the pandemic is. The reduction in economic growth and the sudden halt in China’s production system are now behind us. Now the price of oil has collapsed, stock markets have plummeted and panic in the financial world has […]
Workers’ actions at the start of the pandemic
The COVID19 pandemic and resulting shelter in place orders have obviously led to a tidal wave of suffering and hardship throughout the working class. However, in a number of cases, workers have used traditional labor forms of struggle to push back against this situation. These activities have tended to fall […]