Despite what you may have heard, colonial plunder didn’t give rise to capitalism. In an interview with Jacobin, Vivek Chibber discusses why the “colonialism-created-capitalism” argument fails, and why Marxism provides a better account of its emergence.
Sortition Can Help Cure What Ails Our Democracy
Americans are frustrated with our increasingly oligarchic political system. Selecting an assortment of lawmaking deliberative bodies through random lotteries could help fix it, by empowering ordinary people rather than unaccountable politicians.
Making a May Day 2028 General Strike a Reality
In the wake of the historic stand-up strike two years ago, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain called on the labor movement to prepare to strike together on May 1, 2028. What will it take to make a successful general strike a reality?
Threatened With Jail for Offering Blankets to Migrants
Twenty-four aid workers in Greece are being tried on trumped-up smuggling charges after they gave blankets and water to migrants. Some have been in pretrial detention for months in a case highlighting the EU’s authoritarian clampdown on migrant rescue.
American Socialists Aren’t Tired of Winning
More than 100 democratic socialist elected officials, staffers, and organizers from across the US met in New Orleans for the How We Win conference last weekend. The gathering demonstrated American socialists’ growing influence and confidence.
For 2026, we just released a beautiful, limited-run calendar that marks the great turning points of the labor and socialist tradition. Support our work and get one today.
Labor Isn’t a Special Interest. It Promotes the Common Good.
Decades of data shows that nonworkers, including retirees and students, make up one of labor’s most consistently pro-union constituencies. The movement has more allies than it realizes, and harnessing them could reshape its strategic horizon.
Far-Right Billionaire Vincent Bolloré Returns to Africa
Billionaire Vincent Bolloré is known for his use of his media empire to promote Islamophobic pundits in France. Now the corporation he controls is buying up TV broadcasting and film across Africa.
Google Paid to Fete Key Lawmakers at a Secret Summit
Google recently paid state lawmakers upward of $2,000 as “gifts” to cover their attendance at a secret all-inclusive summit with “educational” sessions discussing artificial intelligence and other issues that many of these officials will soon be voting on.
In Jersey City, Socialists Beat the Democratic Machine
Democratic socialists Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks triumphed in their runoff elections for the Jersey City Council in New Jersey last week. Jacobin followed them at the tail end of their victorious campaigns.
Last night in Brooklyn, after his win in New York’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani gave a victory speech that quoted Eugene Debs, directly challenged Donald Trump, and laid out a vision for a New York City transformed. We reprint it here in full.
The Hague Group’s Insurgent Multilateralism
The US claims to uphold a rules-based global order while letting Israel commit brutal crimes with impunity. Into that breach has stepped a coalition of states, the Hague Group, willing to act on the basic principles of morality abandoned by the old system.
What Incels Learned From Feminism
Confusing marginality with insight leaves movements vulnerable to reactionary mimicry. A renewed engagement with Karl Marx’s structural account of exploitation can give feminism a path out of standpoint theory’s dead end.
Netflix Must Be Stopped
For years, Big Tech’s growing dominance over Hollywood has meant lower-quality movies and TV shows. Now, with Netflix and Paramount Skydance fighting over Warner Bros. Discovery, audiences are left with little say in the matter.
The Secret Plot to Raise Meat Prices
Analytics firm Agri Stats has quietly enabled major meat processors to coordinate price hikes and suppress wages for decades. Despite outcry over algorithmic price-setting, the companies are settling lawsuits over it without paying substantial penalties.