Author: John McClure

New Day for Podemos? Iglesias to resign as VP; Yolanda Diaz, a Communist, to replace him [A Note on the Spanish Left: The Socialist Party or Socialist Party of Spanish Workers, is a traditional European social democratic party. Like other parties of its kind it embraced neoliberal economic policies in the eighties and nineties and is now caught up in a sharp internal debate over whether to shed them. The three parties to its left, the Communists (a euro-communist party committed to democracy), the United Left (founded by the Communists and still dominated by them), and Podemos (the most...

  In an interview with Noam Chomsky posted recently on Jacobin Radio, the Jacobin team continues to do us all a service by exploring “what is to be done” in the wake of Bernie Sanders’ defeat and in the face of the looming climate crisis. (For a review of another chapter in this discussion, see my P/L post “The Time It Will Take: Building Left Social Democracy in Spain and the U.S.”) Chomsky’s evaluations of the situation are characteristically clear and illuminating. The interviewer Nando Vila brings up Sanders’ defeat early in the interview. In its wake, he declares,...

  In the wake of Bernie Sanders’ defeat in the Democratic primary there’s been considerable talk about what sort of left agenda should shape the American movement–what sort of program it should embrace, what sorts of obstacles that agenda will face on the path to electoral victory, and how long it is likely to take to convince a majority of Americans to make it their own. In this post, I want to explore the case of Spain’s upstart party Unidas Podemos, which after only six years of existence has become the junior partner in Spain’s new left coalition government....

Around here (Easton, Pennsylvania) where people have yards or at least porches and front windows on which to display their election preferences, almost everyone put their Biden and Harris signs away after election day both out of deference to neighbors who had voted for Trump and as a way of declaring the election over, the results sealed. But here are Trump and his despicable enablers, publicly tearing up truth and the Constitution every day. I’m thinking of bringing my sign out again, at least until Thursday, and wonder whether it’s a good idea. It is, isn’t...

  In a recent article in the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson contemplates the looming possibility of a new sovereign debt crisis in Europe. The Great Recession of 2008, he recalls, brought the weaker European economies, including Spain’s, to the brink of default, and the countries themselves to the brink of expulsion from the EU and economic devastation. The COVID-produced economic crisis, Samuelson contends, is having the same effect. Once again the deeply indebted countries of southern Europe will not be able to save themselves either through frugality or through spending: they will have to be “rescued” by the EU...