In studies of the Soviet bloc and its afterlives, Bulgaria has attracted little attention. But the country’s history, from wartime partisan resistance to state socialism to postcommunist collapse, is essential to understanding the history of the 20th century.
The November Revolution of 1918 replaced Germany’s monarchist regime with a parliamentary system. But its Social Democratic leaders made a pact with the old ruling class to repress the left-wing radicals who wanted to go further, crippling the new Weimar Republic from the start.
As far-right rioters rampaged through Congress, Britain's centrist commentariat absurdly insisted that Jeremy Corbyn's supporters are equally dangerous. Such allegations of left-wing extremism evoke the crudest Red Scare tactics — and whitewash the conservatives who have been enabling Trump for years.
In response to OPEC+’s decision to cut oil production to protect profits, the Biden administration is proposing market intervention. But when American oil companies acted similarly earlier this year, the White House was fine with it.
Today marks 150 years since the birth of Polish-Jewish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. In this 1906 article, published by Jacobin in English for the first time, she drew on the ongoing revolution in the Russian Empire to explain the working class’s power to overthrow the capitalist order.
Many of the national liberation movements that dominated the news throughout the 20th century have given up the gun. Others have risen to take their place.
Renamed after Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, the Russian city of Tolyatti was chosen as home for a FIAT-backed auto plant in 1966, soon making it the USSR’s largest planned industrial center. Yet its urban landscape shows signs of planners’ concern to create livable spaces focused on community need, not just industrial production.
Socialists’ first task in Vladimir Putin’s appalling war on Ukraine: provide unconditional solidarity with its victims.
In New York’s 11th Congressional District, two veterans are competing for the Democratic nomination. One is a centrist who will strengthen the military-industrial complex; the other is a democratic socialist who built her career fighting it.
Our current model of pharmaceutical research is based on patent monopolies designed to enrich drug company executives and shareholders. But there's a better way to develop new drugs and vaccines, based on public funding and open-source research.
With the inauguration of Israel’s new far-right government, Zionism has finally embraced the fascist ideology that inspired major sections of the movement during its formative years a century ago.
If George W. Bush is not going to stand trial for war crimes, he should at the very least stop appearing in public to weigh in on unjustified wars, as he did this week when he accidentally referred to the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”
In an effort to make art more accessible, progressives have often campaigned for its democratization. Speaking to Jacobin, the art historian Boris Groys argues that these initiatives tend to rely on a commodified vision of culture which we should reject.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a fierce debate over realism as an approach to thinking about foreign policy. Historian Daniel Bessner tells Jacobin what socialists can learn from realism and what they should reject.
Before their illiberal turn, Poland and Hungary were lauded as postcommunist poster children. Both nations have combined moderately redistributive welfare states with attacks on civil liberties — but inflation is putting their growth model to the test.
One hundred and fifty years ago today, the Polish Marxist thinker and organizer Rosa Luxemburg was born. She is, without question, one of the towering figures in the entire history of the socialist movement.
Kazakhstan is ablaze with protests driven by mass layoffs and the ever more intolerable cost of living. But in a country where almost all opposition has been silenced for years, the movement has to avoid being captured by rival oligarchic forces.
Soviet chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili has announced that she is suing Netflix for belittling her achievements in The Queen’s Gambit. Her career shows we don’t need fictional rags-to-riches stories but welfare states that allow us to realize our true potential.
States at war generally adopt interventionist economic policies to mobilize resources and manpower. Ukraine hasn’t followed suit, instead pursuing dogmatic free-marketeer measures that suit Western creditors more than its own population.
The carbon removal industry is coming, whether we like it or not. The Left should seize it as an opportunity to articulate and realize a progressive vision for the future — one completely rid of fossil fuels.