Only You Can Save Darfur
“Save Darfur” perfected a simple message: genocide is bad and must be stopped. But rather than examining the United States’ role in Sudan, it created a spectacle of American power and hierarchy.
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Between Chinamaxxing and the Kill Line
A viral Chinese meme imagines Americans one mishap away from ruin, while American influencers fantasize about China as a frictionless techno-utopia. Each reveals less about reality than about shared economic anxieties.
Wall Street–Backed Lawmakers Want to Help Banks Gouge You
State lawmakers across the US have moved to shield residents from sky-high interest rates charged by out-of-state banks. Two GOP congressmen, both heavily financed by Wall Street, are pushing federal legislation to override those state protections.
Donald Trump Is Unpopular. That Only Matters in a Democracy.
US democracy has been degrading for years. Donald Trump has the motive, the disposition, and the political and legal infrastructure to simply circumvent it, especially with such low approval ratings and midterm elections around the corner.
Israel Can’t Even Tolerate a West Bank Football Pitch
In the West Bank village of Umm al-Kheir, a football pitch is named after Awdah Hathaleen, a local man murdered last summer by an Israeli settler. Now Israel has issued an order to destroy the pitch, as part of its continual ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.
Utopia Is a Promise Worth Fighting For
Karl Marx mocked utopians for writing recipes for the cookshops of the future. But at their best, utopians emphasize hope without guarantees — a position that carves a middle path between blind optimism and the resigned inertia of “realism.”
The AI Revolution Could Usher In a New Age of Stagnation
Governments and tech moguls have bet hundreds of billions on artificial intelligence. If the technology does what it promises, we will have to radically rethink how the global economy functions.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Channeling FDR
Working-class economic populism is necessary for both Democrats’ electoral success and the defense of democracy itself. Not many Democrats since FDR have recognized this, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the few who does.
Straying From the Party Line
My last years in the USSR.
The Case for Universal Music Literacy
An ideal society would equitably distribute the means of production, and that includes musical production. Universal music literacy would ensure everyone has the tools to take part in the collective human legacy of music.
A Bolshevik Poet in the Midwest
In 1925, Russian communist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky toured the Midwest, visiting Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, reciting his revolutionary and romantic poetry. His reflections on his visit combine amazement and disgust at industrial modernity.
Vulture Capitalists Want to Flood the Health Care System With Cheap Medical Labor
Private equity firms have conspired to flood the emergency health care market with ER doctors in an effort to cut labor costs — in the midst of what patients will still experience as an acute physician shortage with declining standards of care.
How Local Civil Rights Protests Produced an Increase in War on Poverty Spending
Three social scientists crunched the numbers and found that counties where the Civil Rights Movement was active received almost 50 percent more War on Poverty spending than those counties that didn’t — and the more active the movement, the more funding received. It confirms what the Left has long argued: protests get the goods.
The Rich Are the Ones Burning the Planet
Research repeatedly shows that expanding inequality is intimately tied up with the destruction of the planet. We can’t save the world without taking on the rich.
Kshama Sawant: Why I Signed the Petition for My Own Recall
Since the moment that socialist Kshama Sawant was elected to the Seattle City Council, the rich, the Right, and the Democratic establishment have tried to destroy her. Having failed to defeat her at the ballot box, Sawant explains in Jacobin, they’re now resorting to voter suppression.
Hundreds of Video Game Workers at Microsoft-Owned Studios Are Trying to Unionize
This month, around 300 workers at four Microsoft-owned video game studios across the US are voting on whether to unionize. Jacobin spoke to workers involved in the effort about their organizing and why they want a union.
Indoor Workers Need Protection From the Heat, Too
Rising temperatures and strict productivity standards make a brutal combination for Amazon warehouse workers. In Southern California, these workers are fighting to end the exclusion of indoor workers from basic workplace protection from the heat.
Simone Biles Doesn’t Owe Fans Anything
At the end of the day, Simone Biles is a worker. And she was right to put her mental health first, just as any worker should be able to stay home sick instead of pouring their life force into serving someone else.
Claims That Capitalism Is Eradicating Global Poverty Are Wildly Misleading
Boosters of the capitalist system love pointing to statistics suggesting stunning progress in eradicating global poverty. But those metrics set the bar pathetically low — and don’t account for the obscene explosion in global inequality.
Dear Prime Minister
Frankfurt/Rome, 5 August 2011