Despite four decades of imperial interventions, the United States was defeated in Afghanistan. Tariq Ali explains the long history of meddling in Afghanistan — and why the US's defeat will set back the broader project of American military supremacy.
Born in Bulgaria, Christian Rakovsky became a major leader of the Russian Revolution who wanted the Soviet Union to be a true partnership of nations. But when Rakovsky challenged Stalin’s dictatorship, he was tried and executed on a trumped-up charge.
Taking stock of the Democratic field on US empire.
Milan Kundera, who died this month, became known as a staunchly individualist critic of one-party Communist rule. Yet his work was also steeped in the rich earlier traditions of left-wing Czech literature, which grappled with the meaning of human freedom.
The Irish fight for freedom inspired revolutionaries around the world. Yet the Comintern founded in 1919 struggled to build a lasting socialist presence in independent Ireland’s politics.
Bashar al-Assad has left the building. It took fourteen years of bloody conflict.
Since taking power, Syriza hasn’t accepted what’s been imposed, but instead fought to create a new political landscape.
Rapper billy woods is a leading figure in contemporary underground hip-hop. He spoke to Jacobin about the inspiration for his music and his left-wing politics.
Gaza and the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh share a history marked by slaughter, displacement, and broken promises from the West. They also have in common the influence of Israeli weapons, which have driven violence and upheaval in both regions.
An exchange between two Jacobin writers on the question of military aid to Ukraine.
The rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland has prompted a wave of troubled reactions in Germany. But authoritarianism isn’t just a far-right creation, and today, liberals are leading the charge against basic democratic freedoms.
Outgoing CENTCOM commander Michael Kurilla has had Iran in his crosshairs for years as part of a larger vision for keeping China out of the Middle East and squeezing it in an eventual conflict.
Critics of Marx have accused him of imposing a European model of historical development on the rest of the world. But the real Marx rejected Eurocentric thinking and developed a sophisticated view of world history in all its diversity and complexity.
"We want a left that can learn from 1917 Russia and 1976 Sweden."
Turkey has toppled the Kurdish-held city of Afrîn. But Erdoğan’s drive to crush the Kurdish liberation movement could backfire.
Cloaked in an impenetrable jargon, “decoloniality” dehistoricizes and culturalizes colonialism. It’s a political and intellectual dead end for socialists.
David Riazanov was a brilliant scholar who pioneered the study of Marxism while playing an active part in Russia’s revolutionary movement. But Ryazanov and the Marx-Engels Institute he founded both fell victim to Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.
As Slovakia heads toward a snap election, former prime minister Robert Fico is surging in polls. His Smer party has a record of defending welfare spending — but its scandals and nationalist rhetoric make it hard for many left-wingers to support.
In an interview with Jacobin, Vivek Chibber discusses why the US desire for global dominance was responsible for the Cold War — and why the United States is inflaming new rivalries with Russia and China today.
Syriza failed to stop austerity in Greece. What can Popular Unity do differently?