Since the 1980s, the US prison system for detaining immigrants has grown exponentially, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. The “nation of immigrants” has created a pervasive system of surveillance and control that makes life hell for those yearning to breathe free.
Much of the news these days is unhinged, but nothing can compare, in terms of pure lunacy, with QAnon. The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, longtime observer of the far right, spoke with Jacobin to explain QAnon’s origins and evolution — and why he thinks the movement is here to stay even if "Q" and "The Storm" are never heard from again.
In Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador faces an uphill battle in getting his energy reforms through Congress. American interests, vehemently opposed to the idea of a public energy sector in Mexico, stand in the way.
From GameStop to COVID-19 relief, the past year has given us an abundance of reasons to ignore the advice of neoliberal economists like Larry Summers. There are tentative signs that the Biden administration might do just that.
After the fall of the USSR, most observers expected Cuba to follow in its wake. But the Cuban system has now lasted for 30 years since the Soviet collapse. To explain its persistence, we need to drop Cold War stereotypes and look at the Cuban experience in its own right.
For companies like BlackRock, the climate crisis is a valuable investment opportunity. They've positioned themselves to make money no matter how — or whether — governments address climate change.
From 2007 to 2017, Ecuador was a beacon of hope on the Latin American left, but the last four years have seen a neoliberal regime imposing IMF-driven austerity. The front-runner in polls for today’s presidential election, left-winger Andrés Arauz, told Jacobin how he’ll continue the Citizen Revolution — and build on his ally Rafael Correa’s legacy.
The term “Orwellian” has long been a vacuous cliché, and now even allies of Trump are making use of it to deride their opponents. But George Orwell, a self-described democratic socialist, always belonged on the Left.
Don’t count right-wing populism out. While technocrats have seen their fortunes rise under lockdown, the sense of national decline and disarray that first brought leaders like Donald Trump to power still has a bright future.
What Texans are suffering through is a failure of deregulation and markets — a neoliberal ideology promoted not just by the fossil-fuel-loving right, but even many environmentally conscious liberals.
Critics say Marxism can’t account for the popular appeal of nationalism. But the Marxist tradition contains some vital insights into the origins and future of national communities.
American leftists are constantly wrestling with the question of how to relate to the Democratic Party. The history of the UK Labour Party’s formation through a break with the Liberals a century ago is full of lessons for socialists today.
In recent years, Marine Le Pen has sought to detoxify her party's brand and distance herself from her father Jean-Marie's crankish outbursts. But his latest volume of memoir is a reminder that her so-called populist right is rooted in fascism and a National Front that united Vichyites and antisemites with radicalized conservatives.
Pete Buttigieg, a shape-shifting knockoff of the Obama original, has written a book about the importance of Trust — a surprising topic for a politician who elicits suspicion every time he opens his mouth. Can we just let bootleg Obama wander off into obscurity?
Figures like Tucker Carlson have hailed Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán for marrying cultural conservatism with protectionist economic measures. Yet for all his demagogic attacks on finance, Orbán's policies have favored local oligarchs and sharply increased social inequality — pointing to the hollowness of his American fans' own "pro-worker conservatism."
Born into a blue-collar family on the eve of World War II, Curt Sørensen became Denmark's most prominent Marxist intellectual. He insisted that Marxism wasn't just a tool for academic analysis — rather, it had to be an aid to the workers' movement, learning from and feeding back into practical efforts to achieve socialism.
In his first State of the Union address, Joe Biden commendably stuck to most of the progressive policy stances he campaigned on in 2020 — but steered clear of identifying or pointing fingers at those culpable for the injustices he claims to want to remedy.
In the US and Canada, the policy measures taken to battle inflation will set the tone for post-pandemic politics. It is of utmost importance that combating inflation does not become an excuse for wage cuts and fiscal austerity.
The United States invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 because its leaders wanted revenge. The US occupation brought misery and destruction for the Afghan people, and its failure was guaranteed from the start.
150 years since the Paris Commune, the militants who built the world's first working-class government are often commemorated as martyrs rather than taken seriously as revolutionaries. Yet in the years after 1871, socialists sought to draw practical lessons from this experience — and build the organizations that could turn the Commune's promise into lasting social change.