All articles from Jacobin
Neoliberal Globalization Never Abolished the Nation-State
Philip Cunliffe’s analysis of world politics after globalization takes the phony rhetoric of leaders like Tony Blair at face value instead of digging deeper. As a result, he can’t make sense of what g
The Downfall of Larry Summers Was Long Overdue
Larry Summers has been forced to step back from public life after revelations about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. His moment of disgrace comes after decades of work promoting economic policies that hav
Guest Worker Schemes Are a Machine for Labor Exploitation
European governments that have pledged to clamp down on immigration are still expanding schemes for workers to come on short-term visas. Their goal is to maximize predatory exploitation of migrant wor
Democratic Governance Depends on Stable, Affordable Housing
A population that cannot afford to stay in one place cannot build civic associations, and a society without civic associations cannot resist concentrated power. The crisis of affordable housing has se
Squeezing Water From the Rubble in Syria
Reporting from Yarmouk — the devastated Palestinian refugee district on the edge of Damascus — Jacobin follows the Palestinian House, a grassroots reconstruction initiative, as it leads efforts to dig
In Media MergerMania 2025, We All Lose
Whoever comes out on top of the scramble to gobble up Warner Bros. Discovery, media consumers will lose out as a smaller and smaller number of rich people determine what our media looks like. Having a
RIP Rob Reiner — a Mensch Who Made the Films We All Love
Rob Reiner and his wife were killed yesterday. While Donald Trump tweets out a disgraceful, mocking memorial, we’re celebrating a man who made a decade of great cinema as well as a liberal mensch who
Aber Kawas’s Pro-Worker, Pro-Palestine Campaign
Aber Kawas is a Palestinian American community organizer and socialist running for New York assembly. We talked to her about her family history with ICE, the Palestine movement’s turn to electoral pol
Trump Wants Puerto Rico to Be the US’s Aircraft Carrier
Donald Trump is aiming to restore US supremacy in the western hemisphere through presidential will, military power, and emergency authority, unconstrained by Congress or international law — a strategi
The American People Don’t Want a Bigger Military Budget
Only one in ten American voters want a bigger military budget. Congress keeps approving massive spending increases anyway, as it did when it voted for a nearly $1 trillion military budget last week. H
Zohran Mamdani Wants You to Do More Than Survive
Our comrade won because he told New Yorkers they deserve it all — love, leisure, pleasure, sport. Photography by Jack Califano Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscr
America Can’t Build Homes Anymore
Cities stopped building not by accident but by design. Our housing system is constructed on scarcity, speculation, and private veto power. (John Greim / LightRocket / Getty Images) Sorry, this article
What Zohran Can Learn From the Sewer Socialists
From Milwaukee’s sewer socialists to La Guardia’s New Deal metropolis, urban reformers changed their cities by forging alliances beyond local power. Illustration by Gabe Schneider Sorry, this article
When the Leaning Tower Leaned Left
In the 1970s, the Italian Communist Party was again on the rise in Tuscany. Then it all toppled over. Illustration by Gabe Schneider Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here t
Politics Is Something We Do
The hard part is over. The harder part is about to start. Illustration by Rose Wong Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscribe.
Issue 60: Dossier
Everything you need to take over your city. Illustration by Rose Wong Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscribe.
Issue 60: Letters + Internet Speaks
Keeping up with our constituents. Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscribe.
Remembering Red Ken
Ken Livingstone’s legacy in London reminds us just how much democratic socialist leadership can do for a single city. (Roger George Clark / Getty Images) Sorry, this article is available to subscriber
Ezra Klein on Abundance and the Left
“When the state can’t deliver, people stop believing in collective solutions altogether.” Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscribe.
The City the Rich Built — and Broke
A new history traces how elite-driven development made New York richer on paper and poorer in practice. (Bettmann / Contributor) Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to su
Paint the Town Red
Jacobin contributor Paul Heideman’s reading list on municipal socialism explores how workers’ movements, from Milwaukee to Liverpool, built power at the local level — and how they were defeated. So
A Poet in Practice
Aimé Césaire’s time as the mayor of Martinique’s capital city was characterized by his practical, progressive politics — but also by his poet’s eye for beauty. (Roger Viollet / Getty Images) Sorry, th
The German Take on Gotham
Fritz Lang’s masterful visual depiction of class stratification in Metropolis remains unrivaled by its would-be inheritors. (Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images) Sorry, this article is
Stand-In Cities
New York isn’t what it used to be. Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscribe.
Bernie’s Fireside Chats
Before there was a YouTube, and even before there was an internet, there was public-access television. Low-budget, talky, unglamorous, and unfiltered, it was the perfect venue for the political rise o
The Life and Death of Paris’s Red Belt
How discontent over housing, and not workplace struggle, made Paris’s suburbs hotbeds of communism. Adjoining the Karl Marx School was a stadium complex, one of many erected by the suburban communists
The Grass Is Greener
Every game of golf in New York City comes at a cost. (Andrew Milligan / PA Images / Getty Images) Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here to subscribe.
Lost Art
The Geneva Freeport is home to millions of masterpieces you and I will never see. lost-art The Farm by Joan Miró. (Wikimedia Commons) Sorry, this article is available to subscriber only. Click here t
Colonial Plunder Didn’t Create Capitalism
Despite what you may have heard, colonial plunder didn’t give rise to capitalism. In an interview with Jacobin, Vivek Chibber discusses why the “colonialism-created-capitalism” argument fails, and why
Making a May Day 2028 General Strike a Reality
In the wake of the historic stand-up strike two years ago, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain called on the labor movement to prepare to strike together on May 1, 2028. What will it take to make
Sortition Can Help Cure What Ails Our Democracy
Americans are frustrated with our increasingly oligarchic political system. Selecting an assortment of lawmaking deliberative bodies through random lotteries could help fix it, by empowering ordinary
Threatened With Jail for Offering Blankets to Migrants
Twenty-four aid workers in Greece are being tried on trumped-up smuggling charges after they gave blankets and water to migrants. Some have been in pretrial detention for months in a case highlighting
American Socialists Aren’t Tired of Winning
More than 100 democratic socialist elected officials, staffers, and organizers from across the US met in New Orleans for the third How We Win conference last weekend. The gathering demonstrated Americ
Google Paid to Fete Key Lawmakers at a Secret Summit
Google recently paid state lawmakers upward of $2,000 as “gifts” to cover their attendance at a secret all-inclusive summit with “educational” sessions discussing artificial intelligence and other iss
Labor Isn't a Special Interest. It Promotes the Common Good.
Decades of data shows that nonworkers, including retirees and students, make up one of labor’s most consistently pro-union constituencies. The movement has more allies than it realizes, and harnessing
Far-Right Billionaire Vincent Bolloré Returns to Africa
Billionaire Vincent Bolloré is known for his use of his media empire to promote Islamophobic pundits in France. Now the corporation he controls is buying up TV broadcasting and film across Africa. Bil
The Hague Group’s Insurgent Multilateralism
The US claims to uphold a rules-based global order while letting Israel commit brutal crimes with impunity. Into that breach has stepped a coalition of states, the Hague Group, willing to act on the b
What Incels Learned From Feminism
Confusing marginality with insight leaves movements vulnerable to reactionary mimicry. A renewed engagement with Karl Marx’s structural account of exploitation can give feminism a path out of standpoi
In Jersey City, Socialists Beat the Democratic Machine
Democratic socialists Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks triumphed in their runoff elections for the Jersey City Council in New Jersey last week. Jacobin followed them at the tail end of their victorious cam
The Secret Plot to Raise Meat Prices
Analytics firm Agri Stats has quietly enabled major meat processors to coordinate price hikes and suppress wages for decades. Despite outcry over algorithmic price-setting, the companies are settling
Netflix Must Be Stopped
For years, Big Tech’s growing dominance over Hollywood has meant lower-quality movies and TV shows. Now, with Netflix and Paramount Skydance fighting over Warner Bros. Discovery, audiences are left wi
Greece’s Broken Democracy Is a Warning for Europe
European authorities promote Greece as a postcrisis success story. Yet Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s right-wing government relies on spyware and the opaque use of EU subsidies — and is now overseeing a brutal
Critique Is Easy. What’s Your Plan for Power?
The way to help Zohran Mamdani overcome establishment and billionaire opposition to his agenda has to involve organizing bigger and deeper, rather than simply criticizing him harder. There’s far more
Netflix Won’t Give <cite>Wake Up Dead Man</cite> the Release It Deserves
Wake Up Dead Man is another crowd-pleasing entry in writer-director Rian Johnson’s Knives Out murder mystery franchise. It’s the kind of movie that should be crushing it with audiences on the big scre
Emirati CEO Asked Jeffrey Epstein for Elon Musk Connection
Two years before hosting a meeting with Elon Musk in Dubai, Emirati logistics CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem asked Jeffrey Epstein to connect him with the Tesla head, newly released emails show. It’s no
The Data Center Boom Could Trigger Blackouts
The country’s largest electrical grid operator, PJM Interconnection, plans to power new data centers that it knows it doesn’t have the capacity for — prompting an energy watchdog to warn of heightened
An AI-Powered Stock Market
The stock market is touching near all-time highs, while Americans’ credit scores are hitting an all-time low. Indicators of a dynamic business environment couldn’t be further from a realistic picture
Israel and Its Leaders Are Still on Trial for Genocide
Western states would like to move on as if the Gaza genocide never happened, even though Israel is still terrorizing the Palestinian people. But the legal cases holding Israel and its leaders accounta
A Lottocratic Political System Would Empower Ordinary People
American democracy seems to be falling into an ever greater crisis. A lottocratic system, in which citizens are randomly selected to serve as legislators, could empower ordinary people and stem politi
Netflix’s <cite>Jay Kelly</cite> Eulogizes an Industry It’s Killing Off
Noah Baumbach and George Clooney’s Jay Kelly is a Netflix dramedy about the death of Hollywood stardom and the theatrical experience. Ironically, with Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros., the call i
Prediction Markets Are Bookies With Venture Capital Funding
Backed by Silicon Valley–aligned venture capital and legal loopholes, prediction markets are creeping into every corner of life. They turn everything from measles outbreaks to government resignations
Mamdani’s Halal Cart Plan Is Part of a Bigger Agenda
As strange as it may sound, Zohran Mamdani’s new policy on halal cart licenses would lay the groundwork to democratize ownership through cooperatives — an approach that could finally help make New Yor
A Sober Look at Amazon’s Automation Drive
As Amazon rolls out its millionth robot on the warehouse floor, it is important to recognize that the company is not any closer to ridding itself of the burden of human labor. Amazon can still be unio
How the Republican Party Slipped Its Leash
A strong labor movement demanded unified elites. Organized business in turn kept the GOP’s madness contained to ensure a favorable business climate. Today the Republican Party’s descent into chaos is
Fernando Haddad on Brazil’s Place in Global Capitalism
Positioned between major power blocs, Brazil sits at the center of debates on geopolitics, development, and the green transition. In an interview, left-wing finance minister Fernando Haddad assesses d
<cite>The Quiet American</cite> Captured the Hubris of American Empire
It’s been 70 years since Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American was published. Greene’s scathing picture of US foreign policy and the men who carry it out enraged American critics, but the history o
The GOP Wants to Eliminate More Election Spending Limits
Co-filed by then-senator J. D. Vance, a GOP-backed lawsuit aims to erode some of the last remaining limits on unfettered election spending. Even amid unprecedented levels of billionaire and corporate
Digital Sewer Socialism
With the rise of AI slop and overall “enshittification,” it is increasingly the case that the internet is failing to address the public’s needs. What we need is sewer socialism for the digital realm —
Bernie’s Advice to His Fellow Elected Socialists
Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders spoke to a gathering of over a hundred democratic socialist elected officials. Here’s what he said. “You gotta do your job. And if you do your job well, people will gi
Spain’s Left Municipal Governance Lessons for Zohran Mamdani
Balancing the smooth running of local government with a bold reform agenda, as Zohran Mamdani will have to do in New York, isn’t easy. Spain’s recent experiments with left local governance offer some
The US Government Is Letting Southwest Airlines Off Easy
After a Southwest Airlines software meltdown stranded two million customers over Christmas three years ago, the Department of Transportation imposed a $140 million fine. The Trump administration just
Brazil’s Massive Landless Workers’ Movement Leads the Way
After 40 years of struggle, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement is now at nearly two million members and taking center stage in the fight for democracy and equality. It’s done that by flying the most
The Poisoned Lives That US Bombs Leave Behind
Reporting from Fallujah, Jacobin documents how US-made weapons laced with toxic metals and depleted uranium have turned cities razed by war into biohazards. Soil, bodies, and whole generations are bei
The Political Economy of Love in Capitalism
Love requires attention, affection, and reciprocal flow — a natural cycle of giving and receiving. Capitalism can easily commodify the first two, but the third resists the market. That’s precisely why
Why Americans Feel Like They’re Falling Behind
There is a widespread feeling that the living standard of the average American has declined since the mid-20th century. This is false — but it reflects the reality that it is now much harder for singl
Khalid Bakdash and the Tragedy of Syrian Communism
Khalid Bakdash became the first communist MP in any Arab country when he was elected to the Syrian parliament in the 1950s. Bakdash’s party was once a major political force, but it faded into irreleva
Chris Hani’s Murder Robbed South Africa of a Great Leader
Chris Hani, the South African Communist who led the ANC’s military wing, was assassinated in April 1993 before seeing the liberation he had fought for. The loss of Hani and his socialist perspective w
Miami’s Anti-Communist Insider Turns Convicted Foreign Agent
A former CIA station chief revered by Miami’s anti-Castro circles now faces prison in the US as an unregistered foreign agent for Angola. His path from Cold War covert ops to selling secrets says a lo
William Goodell and the Science of Human Rights
A “flaming abolitionist” of lesser fame, William Goodell was praised by Frederick Douglass for being among the most important opponents of slavery in his time. He articulated a radical moral vision: a
Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party Faces an Identity Crisis
From its origins in 1955 as a US-sponsored bulwark against the Left, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party has dominated Japanese politics for seven decades. It now faces a new electoral challenge
Remaking Globalization for an Era of Trade Wars
Few economists have had a greater impact on the way we talk about global trade and China’s role in the world economy than Michael Pettis. He spoke to Jacobin about Donald Trump’s tariffs and why inequ
Theater for the Many
At a time when theater is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority, the theater company Working Theater partners with labor unions to recreate a working-class theater for the 21st century. Cedric
How One Black Labor Union Changed American History
A century ago, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters launched a union drive against a railroad giant, changing the course of the twentieth century and forever entwining the causes of labor and black
The Socialist Case for Nuclear Power
Nuclear energy is still regarded with skepticism. But nuclear power’s critics wildly overstate its dangers, and preserving and expanding this energy source is essential to a just green transition. The
AI Art Is Weird, Sad, and Ugly. Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise.
Because capitalism orients people toward profit rather than allowing us to pursue our interests freely, it inevitably separates humans from the creative act. AI art is just the slop frothing up from t
The Americanization of European Conservatism
Europe’s conservative politicians are increasingly obsessed with online culture wars rather than broad projects for society. It reflects a postmodern shift in which once deep-rooted party organization
The World Cup Shouldn't Be Trump's Toy
FIFA’s newly announced peace prize for Donald Trump is a craven act of stroking his ego. The 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be among the worst cases yet of sports bending to politics. Donald Trump ha
Colombia Is Showing the World How to End Israeli Impunity
President Gustavo Petro’s efforts to halt the genocide in Gaza have brought Colombia into conflict with the neoliberal order. To hold Israel accountable, nations will have to challenge their free-trad
We Need More Leftist Crime Fiction
Critics of crime fiction dismiss the genre as hopelessly reactionary, but its history tells a different story. From hard-boiled American detective novels to the explosion of Scandi-noir, crime fiction
Trump Wants to Privatize Migrant Kids’ Legal Aid
The Trump administration is working to privatize a legal defense program for tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children, opening the door for a for-profit ICE technology contractor to take
Zohran Mamdani Can Reduce New York’s Dependence on the Rich
Time and again, New York City’s dependence on the rich and private corporations has led it into fiscal crisis. As mayor, Zohran Mamdani has the opportunity to start building an economic base that bett
Postliberals Don’t Understand What’s Wrong With America
Frustrated with the state of America, some on the Right have come to embrace postliberalism, an ideology that seeks to invigorate conservative politics by rejecting equality. Under the Trump administr
The Your Party Conference Was for the Few, Not the Many
The launch of a new party was meant to reenergize the British left. But Your Party’s founding conference showed a Left that had forgotten the outward-facing mass politics of the Corbyn-era Labour Part
Maine Governor Janet Mills Keeps Killing Worker Protections
Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, is Democratic Party leaders’ choice for the state’s key 2026 Senate race. She has spent her time in office vetoing protections for workers and tenants and taxes on
Maine Governor Janet Mills Keeps Killing Worker Protections
Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, is Democratic Party leaders’ choice for the state’s key 2026 Senate race. She has spent her time in office vetoing protections for workers and tenants and taxes on
Sven Beckert’s Chronicle of Capitalism’s Long Rise
Capitalism is a global economic system, so a proper chronicle of its rise to dominance has to examine the entire world, as historian Sven Beckert does in his massive new book, Capitalism: A Global His
Momentum Is Building for Medicare for All
As private health insurers jack up premiums for tens of millions, a majority of Americans now want Medicare for All — even if it entails eliminating private health insurers and raising taxes. A new po
Trump’s Cynical Venezuela Saber-Rattling
Authoritarian leaders like to rally their populations against external threats, and Donald Trump has decided that Venezuela is a perfect candidate. So far, though, the public isn’t buying it. Donlad T
Don’t Believe the Hype — or Doom — About AI
For America’s VC-dominated tech industry, AI hype isn’t just a crazy by-product — it’s a structural part of the US economy in which capital tries to write our destinies. We shouldn’t let it. Hype is n
Ukraine Faces an Imperial Carve-Up
The Trump administration’s proposals for peace in Ukraine sound like a real estate deal, where the United States gets a payoff for handing over Ukrainian land. But with Kyiv’s leverage shrinking, the
The US Propped Up the Shah’s Dictatorship to the Bitter End
The shah of Iran faced a secular opposition that wanted to restore constitutional government. Washington continued to back his dictatorship as it faced mass protests, paving the way for Ruhollah Khome