The Prince and the Pauper

To Roll Back the Police State, We Need to Tackle Economic Inequality

The last few years have seen unprecedented mobilization of mass outrage against the most blatantly racist aspects of US policing. But we can’t confront police abuses without addressing their role in our society as managers of an unequal class status quo.

How Socialists Should Think About National Independence Struggles

Fashionable academic theorists have dismissed the Marxist approach to nationalism as outdated and inadequate. But it remains an indispensable guide to national independence movements — urging support for them when they represent a challenge to capitalist rule.

A Successful Climate Movement Must Be a Working-Class Movement

The only way to stop climate change is to build a mass, working-class movement whose demands both resonate with average people and take on the billionaires who are profiteering from the climate crisis.

Cultural Capital Is No Substitute for Cold, Hard Cash

The rich used to eat, dress, and even speak entirely differently from the masses. Today they wear T-shirts and sneakers just like the rest of us. But that doesn’t mean we’re all equal. It only lays bare the real source of inequality: actual money.

Against Tipping

So long as the karmic tip jar clouds our perceptions, the insane injustice of an underpaid labor force reimbursed through only the guilty feelings of their coworkers will persist.

Rosa Luxemburg Was the Great Theorist of Democratic Revolution

A new edition of Rosa Luxemburg’s writings, most of which have never appeared in English before, gives us a unique perspective on her thought. Luxemburg believed that a socialist revolution would have to be democratic or else it would be doomed to failure.

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.

The Black Radical Tradition Can Guide Our Struggles Against Oppression

Historian Robin D. G. Kelley has uncovered a tradition of African American radicalism that was — and is — a crucial part of the American left’s history. He talks to Jacobin about the need to connect struggles against racism and class oppression.

Class Struggle Built the Swedish Welfare State

Swedish social democracy produced one of the most humane societies in history. That wouldn’t have happened without a militant labor movement and a working-class political party.

“The Feminism of the 1 Percent Has Associated Our Cause With Elitism”

The likes of Hillary Clinton have tarnished the name of feminism, associating it with neoliberalism and anti–working-class politics. For Nancy Fraser, feminism has to be about overthrowing corporate power, not giving it a female face.

A Road Map to Organize Contingent Faculty in Higher Education

Neoliberalism has gutted higher education. Those conditions won’t change unless contingent faculty figure out how to organize and transform the American university system.

The Class Conflict Between Elites and Workers Goes Back to America’s Founding

You wouldn’t know it from the widespread glorification of America’s “founding fathers,” but the years around American independence were shot through with class conflict between elites and working people. And most of the founding fathers were on the wrong side.

To Fight Racism, the Left Should Revive Its Universalist Tradition

We spoke to writer Kenan Malik, whose new book, Not So Black and White, interrogates race and its relationship to class struggle today, tracing the rise of identity politics alongside the decline of the labor movement and universalism.

How the Left Can Win

Robert Brenner and Bhaskar Sunkara on how the Left can seize the momentum and build a majority.

Simone de Beauvoir Understood the Link Between Gender and Class Oppression

The Second Sex is rightly celebrated as a classic work of feminist theory. But it’s often forgotten that Simone de Beauvoir saw it as a socialist text carefully anatomizing the relationship between gender and class oppression.

There’s No Substitute for Mass Working-Class Parties

Robert Michels developed his “iron law of oligarchy” after seeing the bureaucratization of the early socialist movement. His warnings are relevant today — but the path to social transformation still runs through building mass, working-class political parties.

Nonprofit Workers Need Unions, Too

Young radicals often work at nonprofits out of a genuine desire to challenge the symptoms of capitalism. But they often find that the nonprofit model rests on their own exploitation — and on preserving the political status quo.

Simone de Beauvoir’s Work Shows How We Can Bring Marxism and Feminism Together

Simone de Beauvoir’s reputation as a feminist pioneer is well-established, but the influence of Marxism on her thinking is too often overlooked. She wanted to build a socialist movement that would fight class and gender oppression at the same time.

Trump’s Middle-Class Army

Trump's narrative of American decline has captured a bitter and embattled middle class.