Andrew Yang Is Ross Perot for Millennials
Andrew Yang likes to present himself as a serious policy thinker. But he's just the latest corporate salesman pitching a quack remedy to suffering people.
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Getting Gene Sharp Wrong
The legendary nonviolence theorist Gene Sharp wasn’t just a lonely scholar studying how political change happens. He was a Cold War defense intellectual whose ideas left a profound imprint on the way America wields power in the world.
Black Power in White Australia
The movement for Aboriginal self-determination has a rich history, steeped in the internationalism of anti-colonial struggles and black liberation movements throughout the world. We shouldn’t ignore it.
The Emancipatory Past and Future of Black Politics
Our conceptions of black politics today are often monolithic and juxtaposed as separate from or even against democratic-socialist politics. But 75 years ago, black leaders and activists shared a broad consensus around the importance of the labor movement and multiracial class organizing for black liberation.
From Acquiescence to Rebellion
People tend not to rebel against their oppressors, because the cost is simply too high. But sometimes they do, overcoming extraordinary odds — and understanding how and why rebellions like the Civil Rights Movement happen is crucial for socialists today.
Bernie Sanders: “We Have Won the Ideological Battle”
In a speech announcing the end of his candidacy, Bernie Sanders was defiant, saying that “together, we have transformed American consciousness as to what kind of country we can become.” We reprint the address here in full.
“We Were Called Comrades Without Condescension or Patronage”
In the Jim Crow South, the Alabama Communist Party distinguished itself as a champion of racial and economic justice — fighting for the rights of black defendants, helping organize hyper-exploited sharecroppers, and welcoming black workers into its ranks on completely equal terms.
The Majority of Americans Aren’t Scared Off by Policies Like Medicare for All
Liberal pundits argue that Bernie Sanders's policies were too radical for “ordinary Americans.” But primary voters are much richer than the average voter in the general. Among working-class Americans, ideas like Medicare for All are becoming common sense.
Capitalism Is Not the Solution to Urban America’s Problems — Capitalism Itself Is the Problem
The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a fresh round of soul-searching in establishment media outlets about the problems of urban America. Unless we address the root cause of those problems in the structure of our economic system, we’ll never be able to solve them.
Donald Trump’s “Antifa” Hysteria Is Absurd. But It’s Also Very Dangerous.
Donald Trump is attempting to drum up hysteria about antifa to clamp down on protest and dissent in the United States. Don't let him.
Big Business Still Has Enormous Control of American Politics at Every Level
Big business has long held an outsize role in US politics. In a plague year, and as politicians prematurely push to reopen the economy, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that its place at the center of American life is more grotesque than ever.
To Fight Racial Inequality, We Have to Attack the Power of Corporations
Corporations are a central driver of racial inequality in American society. But it’s not because they haven’t thought enough about racial injustice — it’s because their basic goal is to maximize profits, even when it decimates the lives of black people.
The Oral History of the Bernie Campaign
Four key figures in Bernie Sanders’s quest for the White House on what really happened.
Marek Edelman and the Struggle for Democracy in Poland
Marek Edelman was a leader of the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi genocide. After 1945, Edelman stayed on in Poland as a champion of democratic socialism who played a courageous role in the country’s dissident movement.
The Young Eugene V. Debs
A pair of leftist historians has undertaken a massive project: compiling a six-volume collection of Eugene Debs’s writings and speeches. We spoke with one of them, who detailed Debs’s extraordinary journey from moderate young trade union leader to courageous socialist militant.
Oliver Cromwell Cox and the Capitalist Sources of Racism
Radical sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox argued that racial antagonism was an essential tool for maintaining capitalist power. Cox’s understanding of race and class can help us forge a broad, multiracial movement against oppression today.
Politicians Come to Selma Every Year to Commemorate the Civil Rights Struggle, But Nothing Changes
Democrats use Selma, Alabama as a political prop and ignore the city’s current struggles. Residents told Jacobin that they need real help, not just annual photo ops with Oprah and Joe Biden.
Why Liberals Should Unite With Socialists, Not the Right
Conservatives are sounding the alarm bell about a Marxist takeover, with at least one philosopher urging liberals to join forces with the Right to destroy the socialist bogeyman. But the values of liberalism have much more in common with socialism than the Right — and liberals sincerely committed to advancing freedom and equality should unite with leftists.
North Carolina Nurses’ Union Victory Is One for the History Books
Earlier this month, nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina voted to unionize. Taking place in one of the most anti-union states in the country, and challenging a bitterly anti-labor employer, the campaign is a monumental victory for labor.
A Human Rights Contradiction
Thirty years since reunification, the former East Germany is routinely presented as a “second German dictatorship” where human rights were all but nonexistent. Yet when that state took sides with Third World causes and antifascists in the West, it frequently used the language of human rights — an expression of solidarity that often clashed with realities in East Germany itself.