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Jonah Birch is a regular contributor to Jacobin. He has a PhD in sociology from New York University.
The rich tradition of Black Marxist thought — one that includes W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Frantz Fanon, among many others — emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
Socialists in the US are more likely to be experts on the Russian Revolution than the American civil rights movement. That’s a mistake: this homegrown revolution is a strategic guidebook for winning social change today.
Across the political spectrum, many believe the threat of communist revolution made the 20th century’s social democratic reforms possible. In fact, the Cold War’s hostile environment divided the Left and excluded communist parties from government.
Working from home has obvious benefits, which is why so many people want to keep doing it after the pandemic is over. But the outward appeal of remote work masks serious downsides for workers. We ignore them at our peril.
Capitalists don’t need to directly govern the state, or even be particularly organized, in order to get what they want.
France was once the heartland of revolution. Today, its left is battered, and its far right is rising. To understand why, we have to look at François Mitterrand’s socialist government’s turn from radical reform to neoliberal austerity in the 1980s.
When the Democratic establishment opposes the universal programs in Bernie Sanders’s platform, it’s not because they want to do more to address racism. It’s because they want to do less.
On Memorial Day, socialists honor the victims of war and struggle for a world free of it.
For a few brief weeks in France, not just a government but an entire system was called into question.
Until his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr led an unheralded struggle for economic justice.
“We want a left that can learn from 1917 Russia and 1976 Sweden.”
Even if Macron wins, five more years of neoliberalism in France could further bolster Le Pen’s National Front.
The difficulties facing Benoît Hamon’s campaign reveal a French Socialist Party being outflanked on its right and left.
Movements targeting racial disparities aren’t distracting attention from class inequality — they’re part of a broader radicalization against American capitalism.
Popular protests have erupted against efforts to dismantle France’s labor code.
When business isn’t intimidated enough to accept constraints on its power, capitalism suffocates democracy.
Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste’s Olivier Besancenot on the challenges facing the French left.
The tragic attacks in Paris call for a politics of international solidarity and antiracism — not a new wave of war and repression.
Before Alexis Tsipras, Europe battered François Mitterrand’s reformist ambitions into a sweeping neoliberal program.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, blaming black culture for racial inequality remains politically dominant. And not only on the Right.