The Party Was Not Always Right
The tragedies, brutalities, and absurdities of Stalinism are all there onscreen in Costa-Gavras’s classic 1970 film The Confession.
90 Article(s) by: Chris Maisano
Chris Maisano is a Jacobin contributing editor and a member of Democratic Socialists of America.
We Can Build Pro-Worker Cities
Progressives at the city level face all sorts of constraints, from business interests to hostile state legislatures. But we shouldn’t preemptively clip our wings: left reformers like Chicago’s Brandon Johnson can transform cities into pro-worker havens.
The Constitution Is a Plutocratic Document
There’s no reason to venerate the framers of the US Constitution. The document they created was explicitly designed to check the democratic will of ordinary people and protect the plutocratic interests of the propertied elite.
When Tito Turned to the West
During the Cold War, Yugoslav socialist Tito tried to chart a course apart from the Soviets. But his actions enraged Stalin — putting Tito on the unlikely path of seeking Western support and revealing the difficulties of nonalignment amid great power politics.
In Bosnia, the End of War Has Not Brought Peace
The Dayton Agreement ended the bloody Bosnian War of the 1990s, but it hasn’t resolved the conflicts plaguing the country. It’s a cautionary tale for finding an effective peace agreement in Ukraine.
US Voting Patterns Are Shifting. But It’s Not Simply “Class Dealignment.”
It’s not that partisan voting patterns are becoming decoupled from class — it’s that a complicated new set of alignments, rooted in the social and occupational structures of a postindustrial economy, is emerging in the United States.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Is a Product of the Soviet Union’s Collapse
The war in Ukraine has overshadowed the ongoing battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But both conflicts show the Soviet Union is still unraveling — with devastating, bloody consequences.
Don’t Overstate the Divide Between the Campus and the Working Class
Leftists shouldn’t counterpose working-class voters on the one hand and college-educated voters on the other. Our strategy can combine a working-class economic program with a progressive approach to social and cultural questions.
Did the 1970s New Politics Movement Fail to Transform the Democratic Party?
The question of what to do about the Democrats is a perpetual quandary for leftists. In the 1970s, the New Politics movement tried to move the party in a more progressive direction. Perhaps the movement deserves more credit than many socialists have given it.
College-Educated Workers Will Continue to Play a Key Part in Labor Organizing
In recent upsurges of working-class organizing among teachers, nurses, Starbucks baristas, and Amazon workers, college-educated workers have played central roles. That won’t change anytime soon.
The Liminal Left’s Bid for Power
Like our leading figures, our new left is young and highly educated. Is that tanking our chances at building a mass working-class coalition?
Workers Need Organization, Not Technocratic Fixes
To strengthen workers’ collective bargaining rights, the Biden administration looks poised to recommend a host of modest reforms to existing programs and policies. But the working class will remain disempowered unless it organizes itself on a mass scale.
Disorganized Democracy
A coalition of industrial workers and small farmers underpinned democratic politics in the twentieth century. Can workers in a precarious service economy fill their shoes today?
When America’s Red States Were Red
This month marks 120 years since the founding of the Socialist Party of America. The party was especially strong in rural areas like Oklahoma — success that the socialist movement could actually replicate today.
How Joseph Stalin Became a Bolshevik
Ronald Suny’s Stalin: Passage to Revolution traces Joseph Stalin’s trajectory from his boyhood in Georgia to the Russian Revolution in 1917. In an interview, Suny explains the specificities of the Georgian socialist movement, Stalin’s role in the revolution, and why Stalinism was “bloody, ruthless,” and “the nadir of the Soviet experiment.”
US-China Tensions Are Escalating. What Does That Mean for the Left?
A key challenge for the Left in the coming years will be to reject attempts to stoke tensions with China — tensions the Biden administration has made worse in its early months.
It Would Be Great if the United States Were Actually a Democracy
The pervasive mythmaking about the supposed wisdom of the founders has covered up a central truth: the US Constitution is an antidemocratic mess. Our task is to push a program of political and economic transformation — so the United States can become, for the first time, a truly democratic society.
Secession Planning
A looser union with more room for state and regional autonomy, as two recent books advocate, would cede much of America to the mercies of the Right.
A Left That Matters
Our still small but growing socialist movement now has a chance to make a real impact.
The Marxism of Leo Panitch
Leo Panitch emphasized three core themes throughout his career: the process of class formation, the key role of political parties in facilitating this process, and the need to transform the state instead of wielding it in its current form. In doing so, he gave the democratic-socialist movement an invaluable trove of resources to change the world with.