Thirty years since German reunification, the “new states” from the former East still suffer the effects of mass deindustrialization and emigration. But if reunification hasn't delivered the promises of 1990, socialists should recognize why most East Germans didn't defend the old system — and why welfare and public services aren’t enough to build a viable socialist society.
Design plays a central role in cultural reproduction. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, for anyone.
We need a movement against war and imperialism that isn’t tied to the Democratic Party.
The US-Mexico border is a site of environmental and humanitarian disaster.
Two-state proponents argue that comprehensive peace is only possible with deeper American involvement in the process. They couldn't be more wrong.
Pete Seeger represented a musical tradition that can’t be divorced from American radicalism.
Over the years, efforts of US workers to build a party that represents their interests have come up short. Why?
After Hurricane Harvey, Trump and one of the most right-wing state governments in history get to “rebuild” an area of more than 7 million people.
Macedonia shows that without radical politics, political crisis is the new status quo.
Woody Guthrie was born 111 years ago today. At the heart of his music and activism was a commitment to socialism, a condemnation of capitalism, and a belief that our society could help rather than hurt average people.
Bernie and AOC have a national platform, an energized base, and the infrastructure to gather small donations. Now they need winnable policies to back. It seems impossible in the MAGA-controlled government — unless they turn to state ballot initiatives.
Television shows across the country are going dark because their writers have walked off the job. The strikers say they had no choice but to walk, as new technology and the squeeze from executives have put their very livelihood in serious danger.
Over the course of decades, social democracy abandoned workers. Then workers abandoned social democracy.
Pink Tide populism was built in the context of two decades of deindustrialization and industrial fragmentation. But we need a socialist left that can reverse those very trends.
Workers in the US were deeply split in the 1930s, not least by race and ethnicity. To organize greater swaths of the working class, the Congress of Industrial Organizations had to turn division into solidarity.
In Pax Economica, the historian Marc-William Palen argues that the Left has a long history of championing open markets as a bulwark against nationalism. Neoliberals quashed this idealism.
Many pundits and policymakers who have never seen combat but rarely see a war they don’t adore are now beating the drums for war on Iran.
As Israel mercilessly bombs Gaza, cable news channels are inviting defense officials turned industry consultants onto their shows to explain the war — and usually to justify the unjustifiable.
And those are exactly the people we need to save the planet.
For the past two weeks, non-tenure-track faculty at Wellesley College in Massachusetts have been on strike to fight for a first contract. Jacobin spoke to two members of the organizing committee who say the college is refusing to bargain in good faith.