Just Give Us the Damn Checks
Opponents of the $2,000 survival checks claim they’re poorly targeted. That’s nonsense. They would help the working class and poor far more than the rich.
19639 Articles by: Kool A. D.
Kool A.D. is a rapper, author, and astrological navigator.
Joe Biden Was Against $2,000 Checks. After Enormous Pressure, He’s Reluctantly Changing His Tune.
Joe Biden is no friend to progressive politics of any kind. But after constant pressure, the president-elect has changed his stance on $2,000 survival checks if Georgia Democrats win.
How Julian Assange Beat Extradition
Julian Assange’s defeat of extradition to the United States was a huge victory — one that couldn’t have been achieved without a public pressure campaign. That same public pressure will now be needed to free Assange from prison.
Marxism Shows Us How Our Problems Are Connected
Why is there so much misery in a world of plenty? Why do private profit and wealth come before human needs and lives? Marxism has answers to these questions — answers that are actually easy to understand.
The RESTAURANTS Act Is the Wrong Way to Save the Restaurant Industry
Workers in the restaurant industry are in dire straits all across the country. But the RESTAURANTS Act proposed in Congress is a $120 billion handout to industry owners with no substantive guarantees for the workers who are suffering immensely right now. We can’t trust celebrity chefs and CEOs with trickle-down relief.
Google’s New Union Will Put an Unconventional Organizing Model to the Test
The newly announced Google employees union, the Alphabet Workers Union, is the first union of white-collar workers at a major tech company. They’ll be tasked with figuring out how to wield power while only a minority of the workforce.
How C. L. R. James Wrote the Definitive History of the Haitian Revolution
The socialist historian C. L. R. James was born 120 years ago today. His landmark text, The Black Jacobins, is a majestic account of the Haitian Revolution and is still the authoritative history of a heroic struggle for freedom and dignity.
Rediscovering Europe’s Lost Revolution
Cold War stereotypes have blocked our understanding of European politics after 1945. On both sides of the future Iron Curtain, liberation from Nazism unleashed a spirit of radical democracy that might have led Europe down a very different path if not for superpower intervention.
R. H. Tawney’s Christian Socialism Was a Moral Crusade Against Capitalism
One of Britain’s most influential twentieth-century socialists, R. H. Tawney, is often presented as a moralist opposed to Marxist notions of social change. In fact, his Christian socialism was deeply committed to political transformation — marrying a critique of “devilish” capitalism with the burning desire to create a new Jerusalem.
Joe Biden’s Nominees Walk Through the Revolving Door
Companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup that paid speaking fees to Joe Biden’s Treasury and State nominees also have business before the departments they are set to run — potentially a serious conflict of interest.
“We Fought for a Freer, Greener East Germany”
The East German protests in the fall of 1989 included many who aspired for a democratic socialism. In the state’s final years, the young supporters of the Modern Socialism Project fought for an alternative to authoritarianism — promoting an ecological socialism rooted in democratic rights.
After Bacurau, Brazil’s Film Industry Is Under Threat From Jair Bolsonaro’s Government
The Brazilian film Bacurau received international acclaim as one of the best films of 2020. In Brazil, however, it has unleashed the ire of a far-right government, intent on smashing the country’s film industry. Bacurau’s directors speak to Jacobin about the Lula government’s revitalization of the Brazilian cultural scene and what Bolsonaro has been doing since to destroy it.
In the 1970s, Social Democracy Was in Retreat. British Columbia’s NDP Fought for It, Anyway.
Dave Barrett’s NDP government in British Columbia was one of the most impressive examples of social democracy in action during the twilight of the Keynesian era. But the BC NDP lacked a proper strategy to deal with the power of capital, which eventually forced it into retreat.
Trumpism Will Endure
Donald Trump is gone. But the conditions that gave rise to his brand of noxious politics aren’t going away anytime soon.
Breaking New York’s Cycle of Austerity
Since the fiscal crisis of 1975, New York has been repeatedly lashed by austerity. Now, with the latest round of post–COVID-19 cuts on the horizon, a group of socialist legislators and movement organizations are spearheading a fight to fund public services through a campaign to tax the rich.
Stop Worrying About Upper-Class Suburbanites
The Democratic establishment’s obsession with courting affluent suburbanites imperils progressive policies and overlooks the changing composition of US suburbs. A progressive strategy must look to mobilize the increasingly diverse, increasingly working-class parts of American suburbia.
The Socialism of James Baldwin
James Baldwin went from espousing radical politics as a teenager to disavowing socialist politics as doctrinaire. But by the end of his life, inspired by the radicalism of the Black Panthers, Baldwin was again ready to proclaim himself a socialist.
The Political Odyssey of Arthur Rosenberg, Germany’s Forgotten Marxist
Arthur Rosenberg was a leading figure in Germany’s Communist movement and a brilliant Marxist historian. Rosenberg’s penetrating analysis of far-right movements, produced in exile after the Nazis seized power, is as relevant as ever today.
Chuck Schumer Begins 2021 Promising To Fight — Then Immediately Surrenders
Chuck Schumer spent New Year’s morning pretending he and establishment Democrats are fighting Republicans for $2,000 survival checks — right before he went to the Senate floor to surrender on live television. It’s January 1 and the mask is already off.
Mank: A Great Screenwriter in Search of a Great Biopic
David Fincher’s ode to Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz revives an eighty-year-old debate over whether or not Orson Welles deserves a co-writing credit — and it’s exactly as entertaining as that sounds.