Social democracy aims to achieve a fairer society through balanced power relations between classes, but no matter how many rights tenants hold under capitalism, landlords still exploit them. Organizers must resist the incorporation of working class struggles into the state, otherwise they ensure the ongoing reproduction of capitalist social relations.

“System change, not climate change.” It’s amazing how these few words so accurately sum up the challenges that face us when it comes to climate change–the single largest challenge humanity has ever faced. As far as slogans go, it’s not as succinct as “no war” or “freedom now,” but on the other hand it represents how far social movements have come in a few short decades.

If we want the recent changing of the guard in the mayor’s office to make any difference, the very worst approach would be to leave it all in Chow’s hands. She will need vigorous social movements pushing at her back, and ready to push harder at the first sign of retreat. If we can muster those forces, some real victories are entirely possible in the days ahead.

After years of passivity in the face of upper class greed workers have begun to fight back. As Henry Heller explains, recent walkouts in Canada and around the world reflect a pattern of rising participation of workers in strike activity evident since 2020 as a belated response to years of wage suppression and recent spectacular increases in consumer prices.

Intentional endings are important. I know very little about the deliberations that went into the decision by OCAP members to retire their organization. But I have deep respect for groups of people that do the difficult, unglamorous work of reflecting on their efforts, determining that their organization is no longer viable, and purposefully bringing it to a close.

The “in and against the state” view that is promoted by the Socialist Register has considerable support on the socialist left. Given the extraordinary period in the evolution of global capitalism which we are living through, this perspective needs to be carefully considered. The latest volume of the Socialist Register is an excellent basis for moving that process forward.

Corporate Pride is not about liberation but about keeping the potentially unruly in line. If Pride must maintain its corporate sponsorships, then I can only work to abolish it in the same vein as I work for police and prison abolition. This June I will be attending Abolition and Anti-Fascist Pride events for the second year in a row, where politics and a good party are intimate partners.

In this moment of global upheaval, and even as we acknowledge how much the political climate has been changed by anti-colonial and anti-racist movements, what would those who are bearing the brunt of our age’s most brutalizing forms of dispossession, disenfranchisement, wars, violence and ongoing genocides have to say of what we do in these institutions today?

The reason why the well-being of landlords is equated with that of tenant families—even during a pandemic—is that landlords are seen as individuals, families, and “mom-and-pop” shops whose financial security depends on their rental income. The widespread notion of “struggling landlords” is a grave mischaracterization of the rental market.

When capital is in crisis, there are always two options—to give in or to move in. If masses are armed with a clear conception of the socialist alternative, they can turn a crisis in capitalism into the crisis of capitalism. Of course, it is possible that the current struggles against the capitalist offensive ultimately may lead to defeat. It is possible but we must take that chance.