
“It’s Important to Talk About the Role That Capital Plays in the Justice System”
Mik Pappas is a Pittsburgh district judge. He’s also a socialist. In an interview, he explains what it means to be approach the criminal justice system from the left.

Mik Pappas is a Pittsburgh district judge. He’s also a socialist. In an interview, he explains what it means to be approach the criminal justice system from the left.

Drugmakers are up in arms over a new program allowing Medicare to negotiate prices on some drugs. The real scandal, of course, is the absurd prices the companies set for these drugs’ sale in the United States, when they are sold for so much less elsewhere.

Marco Rubio grabbed headlines today by offering a strange and half-hearted endorsement of the unionization drive in Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama. Don’t be fooled, though: Rubio’s absurd “right-wing economic populism” isn’t serious about fighting for the working class.

Look past the theatrics of a feisty, bellowing president and reactionary hecklers. Joe Biden’s State of the Union address didn’t offer working-class people a clear economic alternative or signal real opposition to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

America is experiencing a massive shortfall in hospital beds, harmful to both COVID and non-COVID patients needing care. But the pandemic didn’t create the hospital bed crisis — it exacerbated an existing one that our government refuses to address.

Dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal Amy Klobuchar was the most effective messenger for an anti–Bernie Sanders coalition. She would have made a worthy opponent — but party elites were too inept to seize the opportunity.

The argument that we shouldn’t cancel student debt because it’s unfair to those who have paid off their loans doesn’t hold up. Don’t overthink it: we should cancel all student debt and make public universities, community colleges, and vocation schools tuition-free.

In the latest media parlor game, the players try to convince each other that Joe Biden could actually campaign as a progressive. We already know the answer: he can't, because his record is so abysmal.

The Left struggles to speak with the kind of moral clarity Martin Luther King exemplified — but that shouldn't stop us from trying.

A new book shows how the fragmented American state arrests democracy. What we need is nothing short of a reconstruction.

Twenty-five years ago today, a broad progressive coalition of protesters blocked and eventually shut down the Seattle World Trade Organization meetings. A longtime activist-journalist reflects on the long twists and shifts made by the American left since then.

Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to cancel student debt isn’t perfect, but it’s the boldest so far. Bernie Sanders should take notice.

Far-right intellectuals like Steve Bannon claim to speak for a working class put upon by out-of-touch liberal elites. But their anti-modernist, hierarchical vision of the world doesn’t offer workers what they really need: more money in their pockets, and more power at the workplace.

When Bernie Sanders says “It’s not about me, it’s about us,” he’s not just pandering. He’s trying to create a mass movement — because he knows that without one, his agenda doesn’t stand a chance.

Effective states can enforce discipline on elites. The United States is not one of them.

Jacobin has been putting out socialist content at a rapid clip since 2010. Here’s a handy guide to some of the most important works from our archive, from our humble beginnings to the present day.

Here’s something to celebrate this May Day: History may well look back at our era as the moment the working class finally got back on its feet.

Bernie Sanders has restored the socialist tradition to its rightful place at the heart of national politics for the first time in decades. Now it’s up to us to push it further.

It's official: Los Angeles teachers just announced they are going to strike on January 10. They’re challenging not just public education privatizers, but the Democratic Party establishment.

If the GOP has its way, diseases like measles and tuberculosis could make a big comeback.