The Corbyn Leap

Mass movements outside the Labour Party brought Jeremy Corbyn to power within it. What will it now take to transform British society?

The Age of Regression

Born in the seventeenth century, our faith in progress is now at death’s door. Sociologist Göran Therborn traces the idea’s history — and argues that it must be revived.

The Philanthropic Complex

The Politics of Getting a Life

Work in a capitalist society is a conflicted and contradictory phenomenon.

This Christmas, Radical Christianity and Marxism Can Inspire Us to Build a Better World

The conventional understanding of Marxism as doggedly anti-religious is wrong. In fact, as the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argued, Christianity and Marxism have at times inspired in humanity a radical sense of hope to build a more just world.

Jacques Derrida’s Defense of Marx and the Birth of Hauntology

French philosopher Jacques Derrida is best known as one of the champions of postmodernism. But in the early 1990s, at the height of capitalist triumphalism, Derrida took up the cudgels in defense of Karl Marx — and inadvertently spawned a whole musical genre.

Edward Said Showed Intellectuals How to Bring Politics to Their Work

The Palestinian writer Edward Said wasn’t merely an intellectual who took brave political stands. Said’s whole approach to his work should be a model for politically engaged scholarship that doesn’t get bogged down in the thickets of academic culture.

Fuccbois Need Love, Too

Fuccboi is a novel about the lengths we go to avoid thinking about our own suffering — and the harm we do to others along the way.

No, Karl Marx Was Not Eurocentric

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.

In Defense of Grand Narratives

Restoring big ideas.

Oscar Wilde Wasn’t Just a Satirist. He Was a Socialist.

Much more than just the wit and satirist of his posthumous reputation, Oscar Wilde was a radical thinker who posed a fundamental challenge to the conservative mores of late Victorian England. His thinking on liberation led him to imagine a socialist future in which creativity can flourish across all of society.

Ludwig von Mises Was a Free-Market Ideologue, Not a Hardheaded Thinker

Ludwig von Mises, the influential right-wing economist, thought of himself as a sober, scientific critic of socialism. In reality, he was a free-market ideologue, using dressed-up dogma to prove why workers should bow before their capitalist masters.

Walter Benjamin Warned Us Against the Illusions of Capitalist Progress

Walter Benjamin was one of the most influential cultural theorists of the last century. There have been many attempts to defang and deradicalize Benjamin’s work, but his Marxist commitments run right through his dazzling intellectual legacy.

Slavery Was Crucial for the Development of Capitalism

Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World. He spoke to Jacobin about the intimate links between the slave systems in the Americas and the origins of capitalism.

The Fool and the Madman

Last night, Jordan Peterson spouted nonsense about Marxism. And Slavoj Žižek reminded us of how deep into liberal pessimism he's fallen.

Alain Badiou Is the World’s Leading Philosopher of Communism

While many radicals of the 1968 generation shifted to the right, French philosopher Alain Badiou maintained fidelity to the revolutionary communist project.

When Max Eastman Was Young

For the young Max Eastman, socialism meant open inquiry, cultural experimentation — and above all, freedom.

Domenico Losurdo (1941–2018)

Domenico Losurdo was an acute critic of liberal hypocrisy and double standards in history writing.

The Left Should Reclaim John Rawls’s Theory of Justice

Despite his towering academic reputation, John Rawls’s ideas have had little impact outside the university. That’s a shame: as the failures of neoliberalism have become increasingly stark, Rawls’s egalitarian theory of justice has much to recommend it.

The Right Says to Hell With Equality

The political right is a diverse intellectual tradition and world-making project. But there’s one thing that unites every variant of right-wing ideology: the belief that society will improve if we give up on the dream of a world where people are equal.