Jonathan Chait’s Atlantic essay claims the Democratic Socialists of America has betrayed the legacy of its founder, Michael Harrington. It gets DSA’s history, and what the organization is today, wrong.
An Unchangeable Constitution?
Americans used to fight for constitutional change — and not just in the Supreme Court chamber. Jill Lepore talked to Jacobin about the decline of the amendment process and the rise of judicial power.
When the Personal Is Political — and When It Isn’t
The feminist insight that personal life is political is complicated by neoliberalism, which casts political problems as matters of personal virtue. This moralization of personal conduct can displace the collective action needed to transform society.
What If Socialism Takes Over the Democratic Party?
Could democratic socialism become the brand of a new generation of political actors — not just on the fringe, not just in New York City, but across the country?
Parsing Fact From Fiction on Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries
The last of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, workhouses for “morally wayward” women, closed in 1996. Since then, the institutions’ many horrors have come to light, but misinformation has also been endemic. A new book provides a granular, factual account.
American Freedom Was Built on Endless Conquest
The Founders made expansion the precondition of American freedom. We must find an alternative.
Socialism cannot mean merely managing capitalism more fairly. It must point toward a society where survival is no longer contingent on the market — and where democracy extends into the economy itself.
The Founders Never Meant the US to Be a Democracy
For Madison and the other Framers, the danger wasn’t the power of elites but that of the mob.
Nurses Are at the Heart of the US Labor Movement
Nursing in the US is highly unionized, well-paid, and increasingly central to the economy. Rank-and-file nurses are well-positioned to fight for common good demands and for a broader revival of the labor movement.
Inequality Is Shortening American Lives
The US incarcerates more people than almost any country on Earth. Meanwhile, pharma executives, Wall Street bankers, and fossil fuel companies escape meaningful accountability for harms that have killed far more Americans than street crime ever has.
US Empire’s Belligerent Decline in Latin America
Brutish and bigoted, grubbing and petulant, Donald Trump is an uncannily apt embodiment of the full sweep of US imperial arrogance and decadence in Latin America.
Neoliberalism didn’t win an intellectual argument — it won power. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and ’80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms.
Local Organizing Can Slow the GOP’s Rural Takeover
The Rural Urban Bridge Initiative’s flagship program shows how local organizing can reduce partisan polarization and slow the GOP’s inroads among rural voters — a clue for what it might take for the Left to win in red areas of the country.
Edi Rama Must Go
A luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner has prompted massive protests in Albania, now ongoing for over a month. The project has become a lightning rod for opposition to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s cronyish development model.
The Politics of Mass Deportation
The surge at the border under Joe Biden was a political failure, and one that MAGA weaponized with brutal efficiency. The Left has to offer its own solutions.
Could Democracy by Lottery Fix a Broken System?
Elections keep handing power to elites. Anand Gopal and Ben Burgis debate whether choosing officials by lottery, as ancient Athens did, would be an improvement on representative democracy.