An Unusable Past

Nicolas Grospierre’s photographs of collective farm buildings in Israel and the Baltic states reveal these communities’ utopian dreams — and their uncomfortable colonial underpinnings.

We Who Plowed the Prairies

Pastoral visions of farmwork don’t square with the reality of what it means to live in rural areas today.

Country Music Doesn’t Deserve Its Conservative Reputation

Musician Nick Shoulders talks to Jacobin about a genre that has long broadcast the struggles and aspirations of working people.

Talking Rural America With Thomas Frank

Urban elites’ contempt for rural America is centuries old — but so is rural populist resistance.

Vivek Chibber’s Reading List on Agrarian Politics

Peace to the Huts, War on the Palaces!

For thousands of years, organized peasants have challenged rural exploitation — and even toppled governments.

Communing With Nature

After stints in Haight-Ashbury, as many as one million hippies headed for the hills. Some of their communes have persisted into the present.

The UAW Heads South

The South has long remained a nearly impenetrable citadel for labor. Fresh off the success of its Big Three strike, the United Auto Workers wants to storm the castle.

Communist Cowboys

The Eastern Bloc’s “Ostern” filmmaking turned the mythology of the American Western on its head.

The People’s Propaganda

In the golden age of American political cartooning, Populist artists lampooned injustices that their contemporaries overlooked.

Issue 54: Dossier

The language of land management.

Issue 54: Letters

Send your crop report to [email protected].

The Black Belt Communists

During the Great Depression, black sharecroppers and the Communist Party waged war against tenant farming in the South.

When Bernie Went Back to the Land

While free love, weed, and tie-dye might not have been his bag, even the young Bernard Sanders of Brooklyn, NY, tried a life of living off the land. It didn’t work out.

Fund the Jacobin Commune

Provincial Pretenders

The only thing more American than living and working on a farm is pretending you do.

Issue 54: Misery Index

Can Policies Make Rural Politics?

The rural divide is deep and, in many cases, based on real abandonment by liberal technocrats. More than just new policies, Democrats need a new approach to rural voters.

A Twenty-First-Century Horse Opera

Yellowstone sells a fantasy of rural America — and conservatism — no different from any other prime-time soap opera.

Tall Tails

Some of the most frightening beasts of American folklore may be hiding out in your neck of the woods.