
Socialism: The Movie
Socialism is often portrayed as a foreign ideology that Americans have never embraced. But the forthcoming documentary Socialism: An American Story shows how deeply rooted the socialist tradition is in the US.

Socialism is often portrayed as a foreign ideology that Americans have never embraced. But the forthcoming documentary Socialism: An American Story shows how deeply rooted the socialist tradition is in the US.

Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad True Love Story was published a decade ago, and it offers a portrait of a near-future, dystopian United States that might suddenly be upon us. It’s perfect reading for the pandemic lockdown.

The movement in Russia against Putin's authoritarian government is dominated by one man: the right-wing populist Alexey Navalny.

For many on the Left, last week’s elections came like a gut punch. But zoom out beyond the high-profile races cable news pundits fixated on, and Tuesday saw many significant victories for left-wing candidates and policies.

The racism and red-baiting of Bari Weiss’s latest book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, isn’t an accident. It reflects her deep conflation of her own Judaism with American exceptionalism and the US global empire.

Socialists have punched above their electoral weight lately, sending candidates to state legislatures and city councils across the country. But to win the kind of power it will need to transform the country, the Left will need to run credible campaigns for governor.

ProPublica’s bombshell story about the financial malfeasance of the richest Americans has stirred bipartisan outrage in Washington. Unfortunately, it's mainly outraged against the whistleblower who exposed the story.


Whatever its shortcomings, Thomas Piketty’s latest book, Capital and Ideology, is a serious attempt to map our social world without resorting to easy abstractions.

Socialists have historically played a key role in the US labor movement as part of a broader current of militant rank-and-file workers. The recent teachers’ strike wave shows that to rebuild unions, we have to build that militant current.

People tend not to rebel against their oppressors, because the cost is simply too high. But sometimes they do, overcoming extraordinary odds — and understanding how and why rebellions like the Civil Rights Movement happen is crucial for socialists today.

Philosopher Richard Dien Winfield has spent his career studying concepts like truth, justice, and freedom. Now he wants to put these principles into practice by bringing an agenda of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and full employment to the nation’s capital.

Even under right-wing governments, local leftist leaders can have a massive impact. Daniel Jadue describes the “people’s pharmacy,” cheap eye-care and glasses, public housing, left approaches to community safety, and much more instituted during his time as the Communist mayor of Recoleta, one of the thirty-seven municipalities that make up Greater Santiago, Chile.

Corporate leaders, reactionary Republicans, and neoliberal Democrats have told Americans to keep lowering their expectations — a better world isn’t possible. They’re wrong. But we’ll only be able to win that improved world by mobilizing workers.

Some observers are hoping that Tulsi Gabbard, as Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, will be a counterweight to warmongering “neocons” in his administration. But a sober look at her record doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Jacobin has been a flagship publication of “millennial socialism,” a phenomenon that began gathering force around 2010 and first fought its way into the political arena through the 2016 Bernie campaign. How did this generational movement come to be? And where does it go now?

The United Kingdom emerged from the horrors of World War II and established a national health system. We can do the same thing with the coronavirus crisis and Medicare for All.

The antislavery movement of the mid-nineteenth century fused moral appeals against the sin of slavery with demands that spoke to the material interests of ordinary Northerners. Matt Karp, author of “The Mass Politics of Antislavery,” explains how that movement led to emancipation — and what lessons it offers to those trying to forge a political revolution today.

The DNC revealed a Democratic Party still in love with the Obamas. The fantasy is that Kamala Harris will be a reboot. Brat summer is cooling — are you ready for an Obama autumn, heavy on feeling good and light on political substance?