Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
As badly as Michael Bloomberg performed in his first debate last night — and he was gloriously bad — he’s not going anywhere. Even if he doesn’t get a nomination, his billions will be a massive weapon for Bernie Sanders opponents within and outside the Democratic Party.
A consensus is growing that the worldwide post–9/11 “forever war” must come to an end. But that goal is in danger of being watered down to the point of meaninglessness by politicians and think tanks still in thrall to the national security state and its war on terror.
Nayib Bukele has worked hard during his presidency to cultivate an image as a Silicon Valley–style disrupter fighting corruption. But his recent use of the Salvadoran military to physically occupy the national legislature shows he’s unafraid to use authoritarian tactics reminiscent of the country’s brutal right-wing dictatorship.
The great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass died 125 years ago. Today, Jacobin publishes never-before-transcribed articles from Frederick Douglass’ Paper denouncing capitalism and economic inequality.
Two articles published in 1856 in Frederick Douglass’ Paper: “The Accumulation of Wealth” and “The Land Reformer.”
With a billionaire onstage and every candidate but Bernie Sanders open to unelected and unaccountable superdelegates choosing the nominee, last night’s debate showcased clearly the choice facing Democrats: rule by the majority or rule by plutocratic elites.
Jacobin troll Donald Hughes (@getfiscal) has been pitching us every week for two years. We’ve compiled some of the best, and our responses, without edits.
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.