What Makes Somebody a Marxist?
Marxism is a social theory about how the world works, and how to change it. Anyone committed to understanding and changing the world should be a Marxist.
Search Result(s) for: “working class”
The Feminist Vision of Friedrich Engels
In his book The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, Friedrich Engels linked the “world-historical defeat of the female sex” to the rise of class exploitation. Engels helped lay the foundations for a Marxist understanding of women's oppression.
Ernest Calloway Fused Civil Rights and Class Struggle
Twentieth-century black labor leader Ernest Calloway never became a household name. But through his work in both the Teamsters and the NAACP, he embodied the transformative potential of a united labor and civil rights movement.
The Essential Guide to Jacobin
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.
How to Be a Partisan Professor
From the failed resistance against Hitler to the Cold War divide, Wolfgang Abendroth’s career was defined by the tragedies of the German left. But as postwar Germany’s most important socialist intellectual, he showed how an academic can keep their work rooted in the struggle.
We’ve Hit Another Climate Dead End. Only Worker Power Can Turn Us Around.
Joe Biden’s climate plans bit the dust, just like Barack Obama’s. But workers are showing us how to organize for climate action where it counts.
The Economy Isn’t Actually Good for Workers Right Now
Celebration of today’s economy reveals more about the class biases of journalists than it does about the daily realities of ordinary workers.
Bernie and the Search for New Politics
Bernie Sanders has called for a “political revolution.” But the New Politics movement shows the challenges of accomplishing that within the Democratic Party.
Rob Ashton, Longshoreman, vs. Canada’s Political Class
Canadian ILWU president Rob Ashton is running for New Democratic Party leadership, arguing that the party has lost touch with its base. His campaign aims to put workers back in charge.
Helen Keller Was One of the Great American Socialists
Helen Keller forged her political ideas in the golden age of American socialism and was patronizingly dismissed by conservative commentators who had previously celebrated her. Keller’s passionate radicalism should be remembered and reclaimed by the Left today.
How the Donald Came to Rule
A radical middle-class insurgency has stormed the Republican Party.
Friedrich Engels, a Thinker for Today
Two hundred years since his birth, Friedrich Engels is often considered a man rooted in the culture of 19-century thought. But if not all his predictions ring true, his critique of the rising industrial capitalism offers penetrating insights into our own present.
Getting Renters Organized
In Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis, two cofounders of the LA Tenants Union offer an account of housing, tenancy, the connections between labor and renters’ organizing, and what the authors call the “centuries-long war on tenants.”
This Vermont Gubernatorial Nominee Is Showing How Successful Third Parties Are Possible
The rules are rigged against third parties in the United States, but that doesn’t mean successful third-party activism is impossible everywhere. David Zuckerman, the lieutenant governor of Vermont and current gubernatorial nominee for both the Democratic and Progressive parties, tells Jacobin how the Progressive Party has figured out how to push left-wing politics in the state.
Rank and File
Without a socialist left, both inside and outside of unions, organized labor will continue to lose ground.
No, the GOP Has Not Become the Party of Workers
The bare minimum requirement of being a party of workers is to actually support measures that would improve those workers’ lives. By that metric, the GOP has failed over and over again.
“Pro-Worker” Republicans Aren’t Serious
Ron DeSantis’s new economic plan promises to stand up to the ruling class and big corporations, echoing the “pro-worker” rhetoric bubbling up from some segments of the Right. But their mega-rich donors aren’t buying the act, and neither should you.
An Empire of Our Lives
How has the rise of finance changed class relationships?
Radical Trade Unionist Harry Bridges Remade the US Labor Movement
Radical labor leader Harry Bridges helped create one of the US's most powerful unions, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Its founding principles were anti-racism and worker autonomy, which he learned from rank-and-file dockworkers and seamen.
Shawn Fain: “Solidarity Doesn’t Stop at the Border”
United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain lays out the union’s vision for rewriting trade rules, raising wages across North America, and challenging the race to the bottom.