Enver Motala is an associate of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training at the Nelson Mandela University.
The Black Book of Communism has been hugely influential and sold millions of copies since its publication in 1997. Yet some of the dramatic claims made by its editor, Stéphane Courtois, were even rejected by his own contributors when the book came out.
Centrist politicians once based their whole pitch on the claim to possess “electability,” but now they can’t offer a sustainable formula for beating an increasingly militant right. They only develop a sense of urgency for the fight against the Left.
Early US elites drafted the Constitution to check democratic uprisings that threatened the power of the ruling class. The Bill of Rights, a late addition to the Constitution that protected important freedoms, was a concession to these popular struggles.
A new work of labor history charges Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, with retreating from visionary class politics to narrow opportunism. The narrative rests on a simplistic view of labor strategy and omits the union’s major accomplishments.
Irving Howe was the child of Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. He helped to forge the democratic socialist tradition in the US and offered a defense of universalist politics.
Donald Trump’s second term won’t bring smaller government as promised. Instead, it will replace regulations with a system of executive grace and favor. The old bailout standard of “too big to fail” will be supplanted by a new one: only the loyal survive.
In a wide-ranging interview, novelist Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake, discusses the aftermath of the revolutionary ’60s, the allure and brutality of American individualism, and why liberals long for naively romantic depictions of radical politics.
At least 10,457 migrants died trying to reach Spain’s territory in 2024. The European Union’s crackdown on Mediterranean crossings has diverted African migrants toward the even more perilous Atlantic route, turning the ocean into a mass grave.
In the latest episode of the Jacobin Radio podcast Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics and why this form of politics can’t meaningfully fight oppression.
As far back as Aristotle, Western thinkers have been deeply critical of the power that the wealthy hold over society. Historian Guido Alfani sat down with Jacobin to discuss the long history of opposition to elite power in Western politics and religion.
The ghostly emptiness of capitalist realism obscures the potential for collective joy and abundance. Mark Fisher’s writing offers a glimpse of the possibilities that lie beyond the seeming inevitability of the present.
In a wide-ranging interview, the political economist Helen Thompson discusses how the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has transformed the region. With an incoming Trump administration, the stage is now set for hawks to confront an isolated Iran.
After decades of consolidation, just four firms now control at least 97% of the $68 billion frozen potato market. A new spate of antitrust lawsuits accuses them of brazen price-fixing.
The decline of physical media and the death of analog formats is consolidating corporate control over digital content. This shift raises serious concerns about access, ownership, and consumer rights.
When Greece’s left-wing Syriza elected Stefanos Kasselakis — a former registered Republican and businessman — as its leader, it marked a low point for the party. Kasselakis has since left Syriza, but he has left behind a party without a sense of purpose.
Despite Timothée Chalamet’s best efforts, A Complete Unknown is a cookie-cutter Bob Dylan biopic for a legendary artist who deserves something far more interesting.
Thousands of Americans cohabitate but don’t marry because doing so would result in the loss of Medicaid eligibility. Marriage penalties (and bonuses) are just part of why we need a universal social-democratic welfare state.
Despite lofty ambitions, four years of professional-managerial approaches to governing moved the Democrats even further away from their New Deal roots.
The war in Ukraine has given new prominence to Russia’s neo-Nazis, as official media echo their xenophobic claims. No longer afraid of repression, such groups circulate videos of spectacular street violence among hundreds of thousands of followers.
Throughout the Russo-Ukrainian war, each side has cast its enemy as heirs to the Nazis of World War II. In Ukraine, this has fueled comfortable myths about the nationalists of the 1940s, whose role in the Holocaust is routinely ignored.