Cristina Groeger is a history professor at Lake Forest College and a member of the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.
The 2010s were meant to herald a new generation of party activism, as Europe’s austerity generation built new structures to the left of social democracy. Instead, we got short-lived surges of electoral enthusiasm — without the deeper rebuilding we so sorely needed.
The Labour Party’s election disaster was rooted just as much in its own errors.
Thomas Ferguson’s work traces the history of how big money buys politics in America. He recently sat down with Jacobin to talk about Bernie Sanders, the superrich, and how the flood of corporate cash is shaping the Democratic primary.
Erik Olin Wright devoted his life to figuring out ways the world could finally leave capitalism behind. His final book holds crucial lessons about which strategies belong to the past and which ones can build the bridge to a socialist future.
If we’re going to change the United States, socialists will have to win the working class. And we urgently need a strategy and an organization to do just that.
There’s nothing realistic about passing Medicare for All — we’re outgunned, outspent, and outmatched. And yet we have no other choice.
Jacobin is politically committed. We’re not ashamed of that, and that’s why we need the support of our politically committed readership.
Extinction Rebellion’s cofounder Roger Hallam wants a mass revolt against climate change. But while his new book calls for activists to engage in “disruption” against politicians, it offers no blueprint for the workers who have the power to transform the economic structures that created our climate crisis.
Even if Bernie Sanders — or any other democratic socialist — had an electoral majority for our political revolution, we would have to contend with the power of capital. Investment strikes, capital flight, and the power of finance could turn the euphoria of victory into a disaster unless we have a plan to confront them.
From the end of World War I through the 1970s, filmmakers around the world experimented with film form in the hopes of awakening a new political consciousness. Why did that dream die?
On a forgotten back-and-forth between Nina Simone and John Lennon.
Before Bernie Bros vs. the DNC, there was Jesse Jackson vs. the Atari Democrats.
A Michael Bloomberg presidency wouldn’t be a repudiation of Donald Trump — it would cement the oligarchic status quo and deliver another blow to American democracy. No one should vote for Bloomberg, even if he wins the Democratic nomination.
We can’t avoid confronting the Pentagon and the massive (and lucrative) security state it oversees.
Trump’s inauguration set off an unprecedented dirty war from the Washington establishment. A President Sanders would face even worse.
Workers are frozen out of politics in both the United States and Britain.
How many votes does it take to capture the most powerful assembly in the United States? Turns out, not that many.
History shows that the capitalist class will do whatever it can to undermine our reforms and oust the Left from power.
The best defenders of even the narrow ideals of liberal democracy are not the elites who glorify them but the masses of people whom they so often distrust.