Ezra Klein on Abundance and the Left
“When the state can’t deliver, people stop believing in collective solutions altogether.”
“When the state can’t deliver, people stop believing in collective solutions altogether.”

Jacobin Finally Gets the Key to the City

Over the years, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been torn between different approaches to identity and class. She’s no stranger to a universalist approach that emphasizes economic inequality and common struggle. If she runs for president, that’s the ticket.

Neoliberalism didn’t win an intellectual argument — it won power. Vivek Chibber unpacks how employers and political elites in the 1970s and ’80s turned economic turmoil into an opportunity to reshape society on their terms.

After a militant 1970 hospital takeover birthed a pioneering detox program in the South Bronx, New York City is now studying what it dismantled, and what redress requires amid an ongoing overdose crisis.

Israel is mounting an indiscriminate assault on Gaza. To stop more deaths of Israelis and Palestinians alike, we must demand an end to the US government’s support for Israeli apartheid and occupation.

Francesca Hong’s defeat was a setback for the Left. But lost in discussions of the campaign’s shortcomings is how much she actually accomplished. Hong may have opened the door to a new era of politics for Wisconsin and the Left more broadly.

The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is a crude act of Trumpian aggression. Yet it also illustrates the US leadership’s weakness, as it moves to lock down control of the Western Hemisphere.

Claims that socialist party Die Linke threatens Jewish life in Berlin are shameful lies. Sadly, many desperate German politicians would rather make cheap antisemitism accusations than address the cost-of-living issues that drove Die Linke’s victory.

For most of the 20th century, class predicted voting behavior better than anything else. The recent process of class dealignment has proved disastrous for left politics — and to reverse it, we must have clarity on who counts as working-class.

New York governor Kathy Hochul is trying to dodge taxing the rich to please her wealthy donors, argue New York City Democratic Socialists of America’s cochairs Grace Mausser and Gustavo Gordillo.

In New York State, nonprofits complicit in Israel’s illegal settlements rake in tens of millions of dollars in tax-exempt donations per year. Socialist lawmakers are fighting to change that — and loosen the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on US politics.

We spoke to some of the Democratic Socialists of America members deciding the future of the country’s largest socialist organization this weekend.

Ahead of her swearing in today, Seattle mayor Katie Wilson talks to Jacobin about the everyday pressures squeezing working-class people and why she’s a democratic socialist.

For Olivia Reingold, one of the most prominent and prolific contributors to Bari Weiss’s Free Press, defending Israel seems to be a far greater priority than the facts.

Caparezza is one of Italy’s most inventive rappers, and one of few who combine mainstream success with political engagement. He spoke to Jacobin about music, freedom, and his hometown of Molfetta, which recently elected a communist mayor.

Governor Gavin Newsom is siding with California’s billionaires against a proposed wealth tax to fund health care. Progressives like Ro Khanna are challenging him.

Today liberals lead the call for abundance. But if they really want to deliver plenty for all, they’ll need to confront the entrenched power of the capitalist class.

Roger Toussaint, former president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, challenges the claim that New York’s last great transit strike weakened labor — and explains why its real legacy has been obscured.