Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
Student debt forgiveness is about to become official US policy by a stroke of Joe Biden’s pen. It’s a good time to remember that, just a few years ago, the idea was denounced as hopelessly utopian, a left-wing pipe dream — and that was the liberals talking.
President Biden has announced the cancellation of $10,000 of student debt for borrowers with incomes below $125,000. Even as a matter of naked political calculation, it would be better for him to just cancel it all.
Right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro says that “Marxism can’t work in America” because we have too much income mobility. He has a basic misunderstanding of both income mobility and socialism.
Last weekend, British novelist Salman Rushdie was almost killed for a novel he wrote. It’s a brutal reminder of why the Left’s long tradition of embracing free speech is so vital.
In an ad for his daughter Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney denounced Trump as a “threat to our republic.” Dick seems to have forgotten that, unlike Trump, he and George W. Bush successfully stole an election.
Blake Masters, the GOP’s nominee for Senate in Arizona, claims to care about the working class. Don’t believe a word of it.
The resounding defeat of a ballot initiative to strip abortion rights from the Kansas state constitution is a reminder that we don’t need to rely on benevolent philosopher-kings in black robes to protect our rights. We can mobilize popular majorities.
Jordan Peterson keeps running his mouth on Marx and Marxism, but a new conversation with Kyle Kulinski shows that the Canadian neo-reactionary has forgotten what little he ever knew about the subject.
Nancy Pelosi is in Taiwan. The trip will accomplish nothing except ratcheting up tensions with one nuclear-armed superpower while the United States is already in a proxy war with another.
As progressives debate whether or not to celebrate the Inflation Reduction Act, let’s take a moment to remember Build Back Better: universal pre-K, paid family and medical leave, free community college. It’s all been taken away — and you should be furious.
J. B. Pritzker is a billionaire Democrat who hasn’t even signed on to Medicare for All. But the Illinois governor has captured the imaginations of some progressives simply by doing what most Democrats won’t: running on popular ideas and following through.
In early February, Bernie Sanders advocated US involvement in peace talks to head off an “enormously destructive war” in Ukraine. We should have listened.
Venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s massive wealth and resulting political influence are symptoms of a profoundly unequal society. But don’t buy into his “evil genius” self-branding. His ideology isn’t a dark enigma — it’s just run-of-the-mill rich guy stuff.
As a communicator, John Fetterman has the highly effective Bernie Sanders formula down pat: take progressive positions on social issues while making denouncements of the 1 percent central to his message.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe talks a big game about free speech. But he opposes the unions that protect workers from being fired for expressing their views.
The end of Roe v. Wade is a disaster that voting alone can’t solve. We need an abortion rights movement that organizes beyond individual elections and fights for reproductive freedom as part of a federal universal health plan.
Even among Marx-friendly economists, the labor theory of value has fallen out of favor. But its technical validity is less important than the core message: workers are exploited because the value they create is undemocratically taken by capitalists.
The Biden administration has been floating the possibility of a means-tested cancellation of $10,000 of student debt. There’s no reason not to cancel every penny instead.
Meghan McCain’s new book, Bad Republican, is a testament to how little you have to know about politics to have a career as a pundit if your last name is “McCain.”
Across the country, millions of parents are desperately searching for baby formula. Why are we letting the private sector alone handle such a vital good?