Francis Fukuyama tells Jacobin that decades of suspicion of the state, from both the Left and the Right, helped produce America’s current crisis.
Private Equity’s Pension Heist
Public pension funds’ investment in private credit has soared, but it’s ever harder to tell where the money is flowing. The winners are private equity firms, who take advantage of our pension pots while hiding their activities, and fees, from view.
Ruth First’s Legacy Has Outlived the Regime That Killed Her
South Africa’s racist regime murdered Ruth First, one of the leading activist-intellectuals of the anti-apartheid movement. First’s creative Marxist work on postcolonial Africa has outlived her assassins and is reaching a new audience today.
In Serbia, Few Frankly Reckon With Ratko Mladić’s Crimes
Ratko Mladić was a war criminal who died in detention last week in The Hague. But ahead of Serbia’s elections, President Aleksandar Vučić’s party shied away from criticizing the ethnonationalist general’s legacy.
With Anti-DSA Bill, Congress Is Red-Baiting Like It’s 1955
The House just passed a resolution condemning the Democratic Socialists of America and socialism broadly. While it rehearses opposition to Stalinist authoritarianism, the bill’s real preoccupation is with socialists’ advocacy for expanded democracy.
American Freedom Was Built on Endless Conquest
The Founders made expansion the precondition of American freedom. We must find an alternative.
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.
The Rise of the Billionaire Lobby
California’s Proposition 40 would tax roughly 200 billionaires to fund health care for millions. Google cofounder Sergey Brin and friends have responded by inventing a new kind of pressure group: a lobby whose only client is the billionaire class itself.
The Sewer Socialists Were Pragmatic Class Warriors
Milwaukee’s “sewer socialists” have often been dismissed as tepid reformers. In fact, they were pragmatic champions of a world beyond capitalism who were laser-focused on organizing the working class.
Decades of Growing Inequality Powered MAGA’s Rise
The collapse of the GOP and Democratic establishments, and the rise of Donald Trump, have been driven by popular disillusionment with an economy that has for decades failed millions of people.
In Defense of Victor Serge
Victor Serge’s legacy is not that of a man who abandoned socialism for anti-communism. It is that of a socialist thinker who refused every capitulation — to Stalinism, to liberalism, to despair — and who paid the full price of that refusal.
Mainstream economics cannot accept the concept of contradiction that is foundational for Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism. David Harvey explains why we need the Marxist perspective if we want to make sense of capital’s latest mutations in the age of AI.
Spiking Bond Yields Pay the Rich and Squeeze Everyone Else
Rising Treasury yields are not a market verdict on government recklessness. They are a policy decision that transfers income from workers and borrowers to bondholders and financial institutions.
Trump’s Oil Deal Is a Return to Venezuela’s Colonial Past
Donald Trump’s backroom deal with Venezuela’s leaders formally gives the US control over the country’s oil. It marks the definitive end of modern Venezuela’s social contract, in which oil production was meant to serve national economic goals.
Will AI Destroy the Meritocracy?
The continued development of artificial intelligence could have far-reaching social and economic implications. Matt Bruenig shares his thoughts on three issues where AI may radically change our behavior and self-understanding.
Under Israeli Settler Attacks, I Feel I Am Not Alive
Ruqayya Rabe’i was three months pregnant when a mob of Israelis invaded the village where she lives. She spoke with Jacobin about her lost pregnancy and how settler violence seeks to destroy the basis of Palestinian life.