Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist and coauthor of the forthcoming book The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World.
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.
We’re often told that creating a single secular democratic state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians would violate Israel’s “right to exist.” But no nation-state has an inviolable right to exist — especially not an ethnostate based on exclusion and ethnic cleansing.
When state officials can murder ordinary citizens in plain sight and get away with it, our society is less democratic. The Derek Chauvins of the world need to be in prison.
Virginia recently became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. That’s a good step — we should end the barbaric punishment everywhere else too.
Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic love Britain’s monarchy because “royals” are emotionally potent mascots of extreme inequality and deference. There’s no reason this heinously undemocratic institution should exist.
Marco Rubio grabbed headlines today by offering a strange and half-hearted endorsement of the unionization drive in Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama. Don’t be fooled, though: Rubio’s absurd “right-wing economic populism” isn’t serious about fighting for the working class.
The notion that we can change the world by “voting with our dollars” has become popular among progressives. But it’s a fundamentally antidemocratic idea that has more in common with libertarianism than egalitarian politics.
Rush Limbaugh was a right-wing demagogue who also happened to have considerable talents as a broadcaster — and he used them to make the world a worse place for the ordinary people he claimed to speak for.
The Senate filibuster isn’t just an impediment to even mildly progressive legislation — it’s one of the most antidemocratic aspects of a deeply antidemocratic institution. It should be abolished immediately.
It’s easy for the Left to cheer when racists, fascists, and reactionaries are de-platformed by tech companies. But the censors aren’t our friends. We should champion free speech online — and argue that the best way to protect it is with a socialist program that brings privatized social media platforms into public control.
Joe Biden has long prized bipartisanship above all, and some of his early actions indicate he simply wants to restore the country to its pre-Trump form. That would be a disaster.
The departure of Donald Trump from the White House is cause for celebration. Our task now is to build a democratic socialist alternative to Joe Biden — and to oppose the Democratic establishment’s neoliberal agenda.
The violent attempt to stop the certification of the electoral vote shouldn’t be ignored. But fascism isn’t on the brink in America. Pretending we’re on the precipice of losing our democracy plays into the hands of those who want to give new, repressive powers to the security state.
Allowing wealth to accumulate from one generation to another is a recipe for unacceptable inequalities. We should abolish inherited wealth.
It’s good that we’re talking about the urgent need for Medicare for All. But democratic-socialist politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t the ones standing in the way of an American welfare state. Let’s figure out how to actually build working-class power and win change.
“Polarization” isn’t intrinsically good or bad, but the kind we have now is a roadblock to progress. We need to find ways to depolarize along culture war lines and repolarize along class war lines.
After four years of having a xenophobic reality TV host in the White House, the desire to just “go back to normal” is understandable. But a return to normalcy would be disastrous, shoring up the plutocratic status quo that gave us Trump in the first place.