New Future

Wolfgang Streeck’s new book Taking Back Control? argues that the neoliberal era of free trade and trickle-down rhetoric lies in the past. He spoke to Jacobin about the political shocks this might bring.

Donald Trump once told voters he was fighting a corrupt political system. With Elon Musk operating with impunity throughout the federal government, Trump has taken political corruption to new and unprecedented lengths.

Elon Musk’s claim that South Africa’s land expropriation laws are part of a broader attack on the country’s white minority is divorced from reality. But it represents South African elites’ inability to understand the class tensions that define their nation.

Defeating the GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts, which will then fund huge tax cuts for the rich, is an urgent priority. It’s a chance to reestablish the popularity of the welfare state in American politics and hand Donald Trump and Elon Musk a much-needed defeat.

Elon Musk would like you to think he is invincible right now. But the world’s richest man is actually extremely vulnerable to public pressure at the moment — public pressure that federal workers and their unions can take advantage of.

Pundits like Thomas Friedman claimed that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was a reformer committed to liberalization. In reality, the Saudi kingdom remains unflinchingly authoritarian, combining traditional and ultramodern repressive techniques.

A burst of enthusiasm among the membership has given Germany’s socialist party Die Linke what might be its last chance at renewal. But becoming a party of the working class will take a lot more than a last-minute turnaround at the polls.

Throughout the entire history of left-wing and working-class organizing in the United States, the participation in and building of institutions of political education has been key.

Americans are trading bar culture for wellness apps and mocktails. But despite alcohol’s many shortcomings, our national sobering up is not a simple cause for celebration. We’re also losing social spaces and traditions in an increasingly alienated society.

Donald Trump has fired more than a dozen inspectors general, officials who provide independent oversight of federal agencies. At least five of them worked at agencies with previous or ongoing investigations of Elon Musk’s business practices.

Italy’s Five Star Movement was long a classic “populist” movement, rejecting ideological labels. Its recent decision to join the left-wing group in the EU parliament is the latest step in a turn toward a more distinctly pro-labor, pacifist stance.

Amid dangerous droughts, Arizona officials have attempted to address groundwater shortages by limiting development in the Phoenix metro area. Real estate interests have launched a dark money legal campaign to overturn the precedent-setting regulations.

Every year, dozens of accidents occur at high-risk chemical facilities. The chemical industry is pushing Donald Trump’s EPA to delete a public database that at least lets residents know whether a potential disaster could take place in their backyard.

Up against a far worse assault on government and the basic components of democracy than in 2017, an opposition force to Donald Trump and Elon Musk may be cohering.