Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist and coauthor of the forthcoming book The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World.
Instead of celebrating Stephen Breyer’s retirement, we should be weakening the Supreme Court’s power. Popular majorities should determine the course of our society — not nine unelected lawyers.
When socialists talk about creating a more equal society, we don’t mean a society where everyone has an exactly equal share of everything. We mean a society where power has been equalized by extending democracy into the economy.
Right-wingers oppose social programs like Medicare for All on the grounds that they create "powerful new bureaucracies." But it’s means-tested benefits, not universal programs, that empower bureaucrats to act like petty tyrants.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is a living embodiment of what’s wrong with the Silicon Valley venture capital sinkhole. But we can’t get too mad at her for defrauding some of the worst rich people in the world.
Conservatives and libertarians love to cite studies ranking different countries’ levels of “economic freedom” as evidence for the glories of capitalism. There’s just one problem: the rankings are nonsense.
California governor Gavin Newsom ran for office promising to pursue racial justice. But his stance on two recent bills shows that his anti-racism is pure rhetorical posturing.
Once again, Senate Democrats are allowing a nonbinding ruling by the Senate parliamentarian to torpedo their agenda. Could the Dems be any more pathetic?
HBO has a new documentary about Barack Obama. It’s so devoid of politics that a viewer just learning about Obama would have no idea he escalated the war in Afghanistan and presided over eight years of rising economic inequality.
Some hawkish pundits are asking why must America leave Afghanistan when it has a permanent military presence at over 700 military bases around the world. They’re accidentally suggesting a good point: America should leave Afghanistan, and those 700 bases should go, too.
The idea that the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan to stop it from falling to the Taliban is dangerously misguided. But there is one thing the US can and should do: admit every single Afghan refugee.
Recent battles over eviction moratoriums and homeless encampments have shown the depressing limits of our political horizons. We need to envision a radically different system that guarantees everyone the right to decent, stable housing.
Centrist pundits and politicians are cheering the new bipartisan infrastructure bill, even though it slashes a range of vital spending programs contained in the original. We don’t need continued fetishization of bipartisanship — we need measures that actually aid the working-class majority.
There are few summertime activities more essential than trips to the beach. But huge swaths of waterfront throughout the country are private property, off-limits to the public. This is a crime: all beaches should be public.
As protests break out in Cuba, some politicians are calling for US intervention. That would be a disaster. The best thing the United States can do to help the Cuban people is lift its brutal, inhumane embargo.
Pedro Castillo is the next president of Peru. His election was a repudiation of neoliberalism and right-wing authoritarianism — and it could signal a permanent sea change in Peruvian politics.
Bush administration Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is dead at the age of 88. It's a tragedy that Rumsfeld died before he could be put on trial for crimes against humanity.
Marco Rubio has been hailed as an embodiment of some Republicans’ newfound economic populism. But his new student debt relief plan shows how much of a farce that all is: it pauses student loan payments for one year . . . for survivors of terrorist attacks.
There can be no successful left project without a rebuilt and revitalized labor movement at its heart. But that doesn’t mean that union militancy serves the interests of the larger working class in every possible context.
Millions of US workers dream of “being their own boss.” But that kind of autonomy is impossible for the vast majority of the population under capitalism. Under democratic socialism, things could be different.
In his new book, Ben Burgis argues that it’s a mistake for leftists to participate in moralistic “canceling” or retreat into a fringe subculture. We have to create an environment that feels welcoming to millions of people who want to change the world.