The Soviet Union’s Glimpse of an Architecture for the Many

For all the Soviet Union’s faults, by traversing its vast architectural landscape, we can get a glimpse of what a built environment for the many, not the few, could look like.

Welfare State Modernism’s Lost Future

Central European designers and architects who fled fascism brought modernist ideals to Britain, reshaping its urban fabric. Today their work is being demolished, abandoned, or privatized.

In Defense of the Planned City

In 1960s New York, a new urbanist philosophy emerged that argued cities were best developed organically, without municipal planning. But cities like NYC today need a good dose of planned, large-scale public housing to address their housing crises.

Modern Cities Are Haunted by the Ghost of British Empire

Cities in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are indelibly marked by the British Empire. Imperial outposts, structured in accord with the schemes of long-dead aristocrats, form the foundation for the uncanny architecture of today’s commonwealth capitals.

Red London in Tory Britain

Few major cities have welcomed the world’s oligarchs and kleptocrats like London has. Yet nestled within the neoliberal dystopia, London’s neighborhoods reflect the long and ongoing struggle to transform Britain’s capital into a self-managed, social-democratic municipality for its residents.

Mark Fisher, 1968–2017

Mark Fisher gave a moribund left the imaginative jolt it needed to wake from the nightmare of neoliberal complacency.

The Fight Is Far From Over

Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders transformed their respective countries’ policy agendas. That’s exactly why they can’t step aside for other candidates.

How William Morris Became a Socialist

The critique of capitalism was central to William Morris’s vision of an arts and crafts movement in the Victorian era. Against the alienation and exploitation of a rapacious industrialism, he advocated for a conception of art capable of restoring creativity to everyday life.

Issue 13 Preview: “Alive in the Sunshine”

Our next issue will be mailed to subscribers January 2 and released online January 13.

Tribune Masthead

Masthead

New Labour’s Boom and Bust

Ten years after the financial crisis Blairism is finally dead and buried.

The Private Equity Press

We should demand a media that covers the lives and struggles of working people — homeless, on the verge of eviction, trying to hang on. And not the glamorous lives of property speculators.

Telling the Story of Australia’s Soviet Diaspora

Australian historian Sheila Fitzpatrick has spent her career documenting the history of the USSR. She tells Jacobin about her latest project, which looks at the Soviet citizens who migrated to Australia and their complicated relationship with their homeland.

I Want My BBC

British television has increasingly become an arm of the Conservative Party — yet many on the Left nostalgically remember an earlier, more open media landscape. Was the BBC ever ours?

More Fun for More People

The architect, planner, and landowner Clough Williams-Ellis dedicated his estate to an experiment in “propaganda for architecture.” How did it become best known as the cutest of all the fictional dystopias?

Poland’s Milk Bars Live On After Communism

In Poland, postwar Communist rule has few defenders. But state-subsidized eateries known as milk bars, designed under state socialism to free people from “kitchen slavery,” continue to thrive today.

Imagining the Socialist City

We will not go into the socialist city blindly, but with lessons from a century of experiments.

Mike Davis Was the Best Socialist Writer of the Last Half Century

Mike Davis forced himself to look at the very worst of our society and world. What he found wasn’t pretty. Yet he never abandoned the search for seeds of positive change — and for socialism.

King Charles Has Some Very Strange Ideas About How Cities Should Look

For many years, Charles Windsor has foisted his opinions about urban design on the British public. The bizarre projects that the new monarch has sponsored, from Dorset to Transylvania, speak volumes about his cloistered and conservative worldview.