Karl Leffme is a socialist in New York CIty.
At a time of historic working-class weakness, it’s tempting to watch the portrayal of Jimmy Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and long for similar labor leadership today. But while Hoffa negotiated contracts that improved the lives of millions, his corruption and autocratic leadership also paved the way for the Teamsters’ decline.
It’s been 100 years since the Bauhaus school of art and design opened in the German city of Weimar. Today it’s best remembered for its clean-line, modernist designs — but behind this banal reputation lies a political project that sought to reimagine art’s role after the devastation of World War I.
In November, the Bolivian military forced Evo Morales to step down: the classic definition of a coup. Despite the evidence, some commentators — even on the Left — have failed to identify it for what it was: an elite plot to oust a progressive president whose program of reforms had transformed the lives of many of the country’s most excluded people.
Bernie Sanders began his political career in Burlington, Vermont. But he’s far from the only socialist representing the city. Brian Cina, a socialist member of the Vermont state house, recently spoke with Jacobin about leftist political power that still exists in Burlington.
Our first piece of 2020: a defense of the great Kenny G.
We covered the good, the bad, and the ugly all year, from Bernie Sanders’s presidential run to the violent coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights).
In the age of gentrification, a financial logic shapes cultural products just as much as the neighborhoods we live in. The rise of graphic novels is a case of aesthetic gentrification — the transformation of comic books into a glossier product marked by high prices and middle-class values.
Before 2019 comes to a close, let’s take one last look at the most obnoxious, appalling, and insidious personalities of the past twelve months. These are eight auld acquaintances we’d desperately like to forget — here’s hoping we’ve heard the last of them.
The 2010s were the decade when climate change stopped being an abstraction for millions of people in the rich countries. With extreme weather events presenting a grim picture of the future, suddenly politicians felt pressure to offer solutions — and young people started wondering how it would affect their own lives.
Last winter, yellow-vested protestors blockaded roads and roundabouts across France, building a social revolt outside of classic labor-movement structures. Today, the trade unions are back at the center of the fight against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms. Yet the spontaneity and militancy that drove the gilets jaunes are again at the heart of the struggle.
Labour’s election debacle had multiple causes: a monolithically hostile media, the Brexit imbroglio, and unfocused messaging in the campaign’s final stretch. But for the hundreds of thousands of left-wing dues-payers who have joined the party — now the biggest in Europe — the mood is one of determination, not despair.
The decade began with Bush-era jingoism intact. Then, the unthinkable happened: radical critiques of America’s endless wars and reflexive militarism that were once hopelessly marginal went mainstream.
In order for the Green New Deal to move forward, organized labor must take it up as a demand. Building trades unions have been written off as hopelessly reactionary on fighting climate change — but they shouldn’t be, as one union electrician explains.
After two decades of rule by the reactionary Dominican Liberation Party reign, the task of democratizing the Dominican Republic remains a difficult one.
After dragging its feet, the International Criminal Court is finally investigating Israel for committing war crimes against the Palestinians over the last five years. It’s long overdue.
Athens’s Exarcheia neighborhood has long been known as a center of political dissent. But the incoming right-wing government’s attacks on its “lawlessness” are a bid to whip up moral panic — and the pretext for a massive extension of police power.
Nikil Saval is a union campaigner, leftist magazine editor, and a democratic socialist who is running for Pennsylvania State House. In an interview with Jacobin, he talks about his history of working on hotel workers’ boycotts and editing n+1, how the Bernie Sanders campaign inspired him to run for office to advance left politics, and building a Pennsylvania and a world for the many, not the few.
The NEP helped the young Soviet Union rebound economically. But its lack of political reform hampered the ability of workers and peasants to resist the onset of Stalinism.
In the early twentieth century, conservative “race leaders” like Booker T. Washington preached self-help and other accommodationist nostrums. William Monroe Trotter was different. A pioneering black editor, he worked closely with African-American workers to advance a liberatory black politics.
Recycling is part of an insidious sleight of hand that reframed our growing waste problem as one not of corporate excess, but of irresponsible consumer choices and individual lifestyles.