
The Politics of a Second Gilded Age
The mass inequality of America’s first Gilded Age thrived on identity-based partisanship, helping extinguish the fires of class rage. In 2021, we’re headed down the same path.

The mass inequality of America’s first Gilded Age thrived on identity-based partisanship, helping extinguish the fires of class rage. In 2021, we’re headed down the same path.

Nearly 50,000 voters in Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary just cast ballots for nobody. In state after state, the voters Joe Biden needs are registering their fury about US support for Israel's war on Gaza by voting “uncommitted.”

In 1973, hundreds of thousands of women took to the street to protest dramatic increases in the cost of meat. Grocery prices are growing at a much faster rate than they were 50 years ago. Why don’t we do the same?

From his late-life support for Donald Trump to playing a key role in destroying Gawker, the Netflix documentary series Real American keeps its distance from substantive questions about Hulk Hogan’s legacy.

The aims of the Left are impossible to achieve without community of purpose. Socialists organize around economic justice for a reason: it is the essential foundation for building a sense of solidarity broad enough to drive meaningful change.

Donald Trump is pushing an elite-driven school privatization project that is deeply unpopular with his base. It offers a golden political opportunity for Democrats, if only they would seize it.

In all but abandoning populist economic rhetoric, the Democratic Party is going the wrong way toward November’s elections. Biden’s stepping down from the reelection campaign could give Democrats an opportunity to change course.

Bertolt Brecht predicted it in 1942: American fascism would be democratic in the American fashion. He was right. That's precisely what makes it so hard to stop.

Republicans claim to have abandoned economic libertarianism and embraced labor. But their platform doesn’t mention unions, and the party’s stalwarts at the RNC suggested a second Trump term would let the good times roll for the rich with little for workers.

Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic reports from the RNC that, after claiming the high ground following Donald Trump’s near assassination, the GOP spent night two accusing Democrats of unleashing violent migrants to rape, murder, and sex-traffic their way across the US.

Over nine months since October 7, Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza continues — and the US is still aiding and abetting it. Jacobin spoke with two pro-Palestine activists about the movement for Palestine in the US and its prospects for changing American policy.

In last week’s election, the Democrats performed terribly, despite running during a period of unprecedented crisis against a uniquely unpopular president. Donald Trump’s four years of demagoguery and corporate giveaways should have been easy to run against — but the Democratic Party is unwilling and unable to pose an alternative.

Democrats are suggesting that we can all tune out and go back to brunch if Joe Biden wins the election. If we do that, we’re doomed.

Republicans know the charge their party is racist is a central line of attack on them. On top of their recent inroads among voters of color, this year’s RNC speaker lineup suggested the party has figured out how to effectively parry the accusation of racism.

Celebration of today’s economy reveals more about the class biases of journalists than it does about the daily realities of ordinary workers.

Teamsters president Sean O’Brien headlined the RNC’s opening night and praised two of the party’s leading snake-oil salesmen: vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance and Missouri senator Josh Hawley. The party of billionaires couldn’t be happier.

Everything about Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress yesterday was grotesque. But it will at least provide a historical document that clearly identifies which American elected officials were enthusiastic backers of genocide.

If we view the problems of poverty, health care, and criminal justice through a lens that filters out the political-economic underpinnings of these injustices — informed by the language of moral reckoning — we may just end up with modest reforms at best and symbolic gestures at worst, when what we need is fundamental structural change.

Joe Biden and his political machine damaged the Democratic Party by delaying his withdrawal. The Democrats can still recover from this crisis — but only if they don’t repeat their past mistakes.

Turkey’s war on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party has seen it build a permanent military presence in Iraq. But its de facto occupation is also about building the “Development Road” — a megaproject meant to strengthen Turkey’s power across the region.