By James Cairns
A lot of people are angry about the robocall scandal. Even by the low standards of the Harper Conservatives, the covert attempt to block thousands of people from voting in the 2011 federal election is pretty disgusting.
By Adrie Naylor
The claim that economic crises and austerity have an uneven impact on the working class — with the greatest effects being felt by women and children — is one we hear often on the Left. However, with some important exceptions, this claim is all too often just an aside or a footnote.
By Alan Sears
We are still very early in 2012 but so far it seems to be shaping up as the Year of the Lockout.
By Greg Sharzer
Last summer’s London Riots may not have directly anticipated the current Occupy Movement. But they stem from a similar place: a growing outrage at the deprivation and inequality of the capitalist system. And like the Occupy movement, the riots raise important questions about how leftists should relate to them – NS.
By Alan Sears
The Occupy Wall Street movement and the mobilizations of the “indignant” in Europe have sparked solidarity actions in many places around the world. October 15, 2011 was a massive day of action that included over 60 marches in Spain, a huge demonstration of over 100 000 in Rome and Occupy actions in cities and towns across North America and in many other places.
By David McNally
While I was cursing the inane mainstream commentary on the global economy recently, I was reminded of a pivotal scene in the 1976 movie, All the President’s Men.
By Jackie Esmonde
On June 20, 2011, Mayor Rob Ford and his allies on Toronto City Council Executive Committee turned down free money.
By Murray Smith
On May 15, a new force exploded onto the Spanish political scene. A week before regional and municipal elections, tens of thousands of young people occupied the main squares in Madrid, Barcelona and many other Spanish cities.
By Alan Sears and James Cairns
Despite severe problems with electoral politics, radicals building movements for real social change need to engage seriously with elections. In this article, we look at the current Canadian election from a Toronto perspective.
By Tessa Echeverria and Andrew Sernatinger
On a cold January day in Wisconsin, the two of us sat over a couple of cups of coffee and started talking, like many others, about what was happening in the world and remarked on the chain of revolts across Europe and North Africa. We got up to leave and passed a copy of January’s Economist magazine, the cover reading “The Battle Ahead, Confronting the Public Sector Unions.” We crossed East Washington Avenue, a long stretch of vacant manufacturing buildings in Madison, and asked each other, “When is it going to be our turn?”
By Scott Neigh
We hear a lot these days about the need for cuts to public spending, for saving money. The use of this rhetoric to cover massive changes in how our lives and societies are organized has a long history, but in the current “age of austerity” — ushered in by unprecedented giveaways of ordinary people’s money to rich people and powerful institutions and the Toronto G20 meeting’s commitment to make up for that by further attacks on ordinary people — mean that we’re hearing it rather a lot at the moment.
Wanted: A Left to Stop Ford
It will take a mighty movement to defeat the Ford agenda and turn back the age of austerity. We need a Left that can reach out to broad layers of the population, communicating a political alternative effectively and contributing to effective activism that really makes a difference.
In the first part of a two-part article, Alan Sears argues that Toronto’s very right-wing mayor is no mere buffoon, but “the immediate face” of the “Age of Austerity” and a “bad cop” of neoliberalism.
By Alan Sears
Workers in Wisconsin have responded to attempts to destroy collective bargaining rights in the public sector with massive protest actions. These actions have galvanized workers in other states to confront their own employers and to support the movement in Wisconsin.
By Charlie Post
Review of David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011)
By Johanna Brenner
The Great Recession has no doubt punctured US celebration of the unregulated market, generated anger at wealth disparities and shock at the loss of the American Dream. Yet three decades of conservative dominance and political drift to the right have taken their toll.
By Elena Zeledon
This overview article is dedicated to Companera Maria Teresa Flores, part of the leadership of the peasant council coordinating committee and former head of the Honduran Peasant Organization; and to Companero Jose Manuel Flores Arguijo, leader of the Honduran teachers and a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of Central America (PSOCA), both assassinated by the Honduran oligarchy.
By David Camfield and Daniel Serge
Deficits are the difference between what governments spend and what they take in. Governments often claim deficits are the fault of social spending that’s too high. But in fact deficits always grow when capitalist economic activity slows down or contracts because tax revenue falls while state spending rises.