Left-wing writing is often caricatured one of two ways: as impenetrable jargon, weighted with Marxist lingo no-one has the time to look up, or as oversimplified propaganda.

Of course one’s politics never precludes one from being an incomprehensible, lazy, or just plain bad writer. But the Left’s history is full of authors who took to the pen because they had an important message to convey, and who worked hard to make sure that message was understood as broadly and deeply as possible.

Moreover, it is rarely discussed how the goals of a socialist writer, and the methods required to reach such goals, differ from the capitalist or apolitical writer. To find out, Mark Nowak for Jacobin spoke to author and LeftWord Books chief editor Vijay Prashad about the role of writing in socialist politics.