The Best Books We Read This Year
Dive into Jacobin’s “best books of the year” list. From sweeping 19th-century tales of rural life to the politics of war to contemporary accounts of revolution — we’ve got your reading needs covered.
19645 Articles by: Yi San
Yi San is a freelance writer based in New York.
In 2023, the US Working Class Fought Back
More than half a million workers in the US went on strike this year, winning gains not only for themselves but for nonunion workers too. While there’s much more work to be done, 2023 was a year when the working class punched back at the capitalist class.
2023 Was a Year of Hope Amid the Horrors
This year had plenty of horrors. But there was also much cause for hope, from the burgeoning pro-Palestine movement to the UAW’s historic strike.
J. Edgar Hoover Shaped US History for the Worse
As director of the FBI for several decades, J. Edgar Hoover helped build a massive, professionalized national security state and hounded leftists out of public life. In doing so, he profoundly shaped the course of US history.
South Africa Is Right to Invoke the Genocide Convention Against Israel’s War on Gaza
South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice to rule that Israel is guilty of “genocidal acts” in Gaza. The architects of the Genocide Convention intended it to be used to stop the mass killing of civilians before it is too late.
The Essential Guide to Jacobin
Jacobin has been putting out socialist content at a rapid clip since 2010. Here’s a handy guide to some of the most important works from our archive, from our humble beginnings to the present day.
How Europe Made Indebted African States Into Its Border Police
Since 2015, the EU has increasingly demanded that African states repress migration on its behalf. It secures their compliance through economic coercion — exploiting debt relations which have in recent times sharply turned in favor of rich EU countries.
Unearthing the Often Overlooked Religious Foundations of European Socialism
The diverse mosaic of European socialism engaged both reformists and revolutionaries, often driven by not just intellect but also profound religious conviction. Together, these elements shaped the democratic socialist tradition.
C. L. R. James Showed Us How to Write About the Social History of Sports
Beyond a Boundary turned 60 this year. The classic book by C. L. R. James used cricket as a window into the history of the West Indies as its people liberated themselves from British colonial rule, defying racism to find their place in the world as equals.
Bayard Rustin Showed the Promise and Pitfalls of Coalition Politics
At the height of a calamitous war presided over by a Democratic president, the brilliant socialist organizer Bayard Rustin tried to forge a mass coalition to deliver progressive change. His failure to do so in the 1960s tells us much about building one today.
Gaza After the Deluge
Even before Hamas’s attack on October 7, the Israeli state knew it couldn’t subject Gaza to an unlivable siege forever. Now Israel’s rage has turned huge swathes of the densely populated territory into a howling wasteland.
The Reactionary Jargon of Decoloniality
Cloaked in an impenetrable jargon, “decoloniality” dehistoricizes and culturalizes colonialism. It’s a political and intellectual dead end for socialists.
A Transformative Left Needs to Speak for People Outside the Palaces of Government
Left-wing forces in Spain, France, Germany and Greece all recently suffered damaging splits. They each stumbled over a common problem: how to influence institutions while focusing on priorities ignored by the dominant media-political class.
From Chile to Grenada, Socialism Is What Capitalists Are Really Afraid Of
The history of socialist politics in the Global South shows that all capitalists want a government that will govern unapologetically in their interests — and would prefer the intervention of foreign powers than democracy and socialism at home.
During the 2023 Writers Strike, This Book Helped Me Understand the Depravities of Hollywood
As I covered the Hollywood strike this year, perhaps the best guide was a 1941 novel by a former Communist Party member about the dog-eat-dog scumbaggery of movie executives and the lying and artless bragging that Hollywood runs on.
Israeli Draft Resister Tal Mitnick Is a Hero
Eighteen-year-old Israeli Tal Mitnick has just been sent to prison for refusing to enlist in the army and participate in what he calls a “war of revenge” in Gaza. He’s a hero.
How Giorgia Meloni Made the Far Right Mainstream
Recently genealogists discovered that Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is a distant relative of Antonio Gramsci. Though they share little else, Meloni has engaged in a campaign for control over cultural institutions that Gramsci would understand well.
Arno Mayer Has Died. He Leaves Us an Unorthodox Marxism.
Historian Arno Mayer, who died this month at age 97, infused his work with a Marxism animated by attention to ideology, passion, and the open-endedness of history.
Javier Milei’s Shock Therapy Would Be a Disaster for Working-Class Argentinians
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has issued a decree with over 350 reforms tearing up labor rights and privatizing industries. The “shock therapy” plan marks a dangerous expansion of the president’s powers — but it also faces fierce opposition.
Health Workers in the UK Shut Down the Headquarters of a Gaza War Profiteer
Last week, hundreds of health workers shut down the London HQ of Palantir to protest a tech company profiting off of Israel’s bloody war on Gaza.