Yi San is a freelance writer based in New York.
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.
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.
Donald Trump is gone. But the conditions that gave rise to his brand of noxious politics aren’t going away anytime soon.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
In his literary works, Charles Dickens told the story of a society blighted by inequality — and the cruelty of a ruling class which kept so many living in grinding poverty.
Allowing wealth to accumulate from one generation to another is a recipe for unacceptable inequalities. We should abolish inherited wealth.
Italian prosecutors have called for four Egyptian security agents to be tried for the 2016 kidnapping and murder of labor researcher Giulio Regeni in Cairo. Their appeal follows years in which Egyptian authorities have frustrated efforts to find the killers — and the Italian government has turned a blind eye, for the sake of good relations with Al-Sisi’s military regime.
Slavoj Žižek writes in Jacobin today that we’ve been given a choice between a return to the old exploitative normality and a post-COVID corporate “Great Reset” that promises to be even worse. We need a real alternative, a socialist reset that can win justice for all and save the planet from climate apocalypse.
Democrats and Beltway pundits helped Mitch McConnell undermine Bernie Sanders’s push for direct aid to millions of Americans facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy through $2,000 checks. Even for a party that is constantly disappointing, Democrats’ complete capitulation to McConnell and austerity ideology was shockingly pathetic.
Italian designer Enzo Mari insisted that design wasn’t a game or a hobby, but a battle over the production process itself. His “design-it-yourself” encouraged workers to reclaim their ability to think for themselves — and not just execute other people’s plans.
Economist Larry Summers helped Bill Clinton deregulate finance in the ’90s and pushed Barack Obama to scale back economic stimulus after 2008. Now he’s unhappy with Bernie Sanders’s championing of a $2,000 stimulus check. It’s a useful reminder of how destructive Democratic Party neoliberalism can be.
The fight for Medicare for All is one of the most important in the United States today. And despite the many horrors of 2020, the movement demanding an end to our privatized health system actually made some headway this year.
As Noam Chomsky puts it in a recent interview, “unless working people take part in the class struggle, they’re going to get it in the neck.”
Jeff Bezos’s personal wealth increased more every second of 2020 ($2,800) than Congress is considering giving Americans who are facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy ($2,000).
The lies that have destroyed trust in US institutions didn’t begin with Donald Trump’s presidency, and they will not end with them. From the tobacco industry to fossil fuel companies and the military-industrial complex, the American people have been peddled bullshit for generations.