Jacobin Media Bias for Past 90 Days

Italy’s Masses of Unemployed Can’t Live Off Start-Ups Alone

Tech

If you could measure a country’s worth by the number of vapid start-ups it has produced, Italy would come up short. While Britain once produced half a million mostly obscure technology companies over the course of a single year, Italy has only just edged nine thousand in total. So, when new Italian prime minister Mario […]
Jacobin     Mar 07, 2021

The Sexual Abuse Scandal Rocking Australia’s Parliament Is the Tip of the Iceberg

crime, law and justice

Recent revelations have exposed an epidemic of sexual harassment in Australia’s parliament, centered around Scott Morrison’s coalition government. We have learned of an alleged rape that took place in a ministerial office. Other ministers have engaged in extra-marital affairs with female staff before going on to bully and harass those women out of their jobs. […]
Jacobin     Mar 06, 2021

What a Communist City Can Teach Us About Urban Planning

Tech

In summer 1966, the Soviet state signed an agreement with management at leading Italian auto firm FIAT. Their plan was to build a new car factory in the USSR, with the Turin-based company responsible for the technological installations and the training of specialists. The factory was meant to be the heart of a new urban […]
Jacobin     Mar 06, 2021

We’re Stuck in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld

The 1995 movie Waterworld opens with a spinning globe showing the ice caps receding and the continents flooding. “The future,” says the unnecessary, disembodied ’90s narrator. “The polar ice caps have melted, covering the Earth with water.” The camera pans down from the heavens, and we watch Kevin Costner’s unnamed protagonist drink his own piss. […]
Jacobin     Mar 06, 2021

On a $15 Minimum Wage, Bernie Was on the Right Side of History

labour

Senate Democrats’ COVID-19 relief legislation will not include a $15 minimum wage, after eight Democrats joined with Republicans on Friday to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders from moving to add the provision back to the bill. President Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan,”releasedon the day of his inauguration, called on Congress to raise the wage in the […]
Jacobin     Mar 06, 2021

Italy’s Government Is Outsourcing Its Economic Strategy To Private Management Consultants McKinsey

economy and finances

Upon its formation last month, Mario Draghi’s new government was heralded by almost all Italian and international media as a rescue operation. Where the former European Central Bank (ECB) chief Draghi had “saved the euro” in the 2010s, most outlets gushed over “Super Mario” and his plan to “save Italy” by splashing a mooted €209 […]
Jacobin     Mar 06, 2021

France’s Divided Left Is Struggling to Challenge the Macron–Le Pen Duopoly

politics

Will 2021 be a year full of twists and surprises? Many on the Left are hoping for a small miracle, given the desperate political landscape emerging ahead of the presidential election. “We all have the distinct feeling that the New Year is going to see disastrous polls that will cause everyone’s morale to plummet,” a […]
Jacobin     Mar 06, 2021

Third Parties in the US Are More Important Than You Think

politics

Donald Trump put the kibosh on the idea of a new right-wing party at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Trump’s followers will remain in the Republican Party, where they’ve established themselves as the biggest and most influential faction. Even so, the mere fact that the possibility of a new “MAGA” or “Patriot Party” […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

Haiti’s Massive Protests Are a Repudiation of Authoritarianism and US Intervention

unrest, conflicts and war

Since February 14, thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets every weekend in the capitol of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere to protest President Jovenel Moïse’s refusal to abdicate power. Moïse, who was elected with the backing of the United States in November 2016, has exploited a supposed loophole in Haiti’s constitution stating that the duration […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

How Rosa Luxemburg Taught Worker-Militants to Think Differently

labour

For Rosa Luxemburg, political education was hardly just a matter of sitting down in the classroom. In her work The Mass Strike, responding to the 1905 revolution in the Russian empire, she emphasized how the masses learned through experience. As she wrote, “to be able to overthrow [Russian absolutism], the proletariat requires a high degree […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

Rosa Luxemburg’s “The Tactics of Revolution”

unrest, conflicts and war

When considering how to educate Social Democracy about the electoral activities of the bourgeoisie in this country [Poland], one comes up against the general issue of proletarian tactics for the present season. The course and the result of the revolutionary struggle largely depend on how consciously the working class wages the war, and on how […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

Raise the Minimum Wage, Stop the Joe Manchin Presidency

labour

For the last week, Americans paying attention to politics have learned an important truth: Joe Biden may live in the White House, but conservative senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) is effectively president. This depressing reality can certainly be fixed, but only if progressive Democrats in Congress are willing to actually change the dynamic — and they […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

We Need to Rescue Rosa Luxemburg From the Soap Opera Treatment

art and culture

The twentieth century liked to place great revolutionaries on a pedestal, or even in a garish mausoleum. Our own age prefers to see them as the kind of people with whom you could go for a drink. It’s progress of a sort. Everyone knows the story of Karl Marx going on a bender around the […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

Happy 150th Birthday, Rosa Luxemburg

In August 1893, when the chair called on her to speak at a session of the Zurich Congress of the Second International, Rosa Luxemburg made her way without hesitation through the crowd of delegates and activists packed into the hall. She was one of the few women present, still in the flush of youth, slight […]
Jacobin     Mar 05, 2021

Liberals Should Stop Trying to Save the GOP. Republicans Don’t Want to Be Saved.

politics

During an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last fall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned Republican lawmakers for collaborating with Donald Trump, arguing that the party had been transformed into a cult. Pelosi’s censure, however, also carried with it a strangely redemptive cadence. “One of my prayers is that the Republicans will take back their party,” […]
Jacobin     Mar 04, 2021

Trade Agreements Like NAFTA Are a Menace to Democracy

politics

On his first day in office, US president Joe Biden revoked the permit for the controversial Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline. The partially built project was supposed to carry bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries in the United States. Green-lighted by Donald Trump in 2017, but delayed in the courts for years, […]
Jacobin     Mar 04, 2021

Bernie Sanders Hasn’t Given Up on the $15 Minimum Wage

labour

Last week, Bernie Sanders convened a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the following question: Should taxpayers subsidize poverty wages at large profitable corporations? The way the subject is posed is classic Sanders. In the past, the senator has told the Walton family, who own Walmart and remain the richest family in the United States, to […]
Jacobin     Mar 04, 2021

Warehouses Are Today’s “Dark Satanic Mills”

labour

One year into the pandemic, workers continue to suffer at the hands of employers who cut corners on health and safety. Government enforcement of existing safety standards is lackluster: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is understaffed and at times seems willfully uninterested in investigating complaints. Indeed, it wasn’t long ago that the investigative […]
Jacobin     Mar 04, 2021