Paul Heideman holds a PhD in American studies from Rutgers University–Newark.
Big business has long held an outsize role in US politics. In a plague year, and as politicians prematurely push to reopen the economy, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that its place at the center of American life is more grotesque than ever.
Manning Marable was a leading radical thinker whose brilliant writings showed how the struggle for black liberation is bound up with the struggle against capitalism. Though he didn’t live to see the rise of Black Lives Matter, his work has a tremendous amount to offer the movement today.
In the past, radical-led unions have been at the forefront of the struggle against police brutality. Unions must step up and do the same today — because racial justice movements can’t win radical reforms without the institutional power of organized workers.
Rioting is a rational response to grinding poverty and oppression. And though it’s not always the case, research shows that it can be effective in winning social change.
In the years immediately following World War II, the movement for black equality, rooted in the militancy of black workers, was making massive strides. The McCarthyist anticommunist campaign of the late 1940s dealt a hammer blow to that project, attacking its unions and scattering its activists, ultimately narrowing the ambitions of the black freedom movement.
The New York Times attack yesterday on socialists who won’t endorse Joe Biden isn’t actually about convincing socialists to vote for him — it’s about performatively denouncing leftists as irresponsible, for the edification of the liberals who are watching.
How do commentators like David Brooks account for the undeniable rise in inequality? Not by analyzing the dynamics of wealth distribution and power that would help us address the problem, but by pointing the finger at the rest of us.
With Bernie Sanders now out of the race, commentators from left and right are finding fault with the campaign itself, arguing that there was too much class politics or not enough. But the problem wasn’t Bernie’s campaign strategy — it was the full force of the Democratic establishment that so effectively consolidated against him.
Having never recovered from the last recession, America’s states are now being dealt another dose of austerity from the federal government, forcing more budget cuts across welfare, education, and even health care. It’s the opposite approach of what’s needed. Unless we can fund these services, the crises will only deepen.
Bernie Sanders is out of the race, but we can’t retreat to the subcultural politics that were hegemonic on the Left before his campaigns began. Mass politics is still our way forward.
In the last two weeks, nearly ten million American workers lost their jobs. This is a crisis unfolding at a speed and magnitude unprecedented in the US and what’s left of our welfare state is uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the fallout.
During World War II, UAW leader Walter Reuther had a plan to reorient the economy toward needed production, centering the interests of labor rather than markets. As the global health system faces massive shortages in vital medical equipment, Reuther’s blueprints can help us generate our own mass-scale response to the crisis.
Bernie Sanders struggled last night not because voters are stupid, but because he’s proposing a way of doing politics that’s different from anything they’ve ever seen. Convincing them of that alternative is extremely difficult — but it’s not impossible.
It took them awhile, but the Democratic establishment is consolidating around Joe Biden. Now the fight begins.
Pundits continue to push the narrative that Bernie Sanders is just another George McGovern, too far to the left to win. He’s not, and by every measure he’s the most competitive candidate to run against Donald Trump.
All the best things in America were once decried as socialist: Medicare, unions, Social Security. Bernie’s democratic socialism is his strength, and we shouldn’t shy away from talking about it.
Thomas Ferguson’s work traces the history of how big money buys politics in America. He recently sat down with Jacobin to talk about Bernie Sanders, the superrich, and how the flood of corporate cash is shaping the Democratic primary.
Impeachment has failed, but Democrats are still trying to defeat Trump by focusing on process over policy. They’re going to keep failing — the only way to get rid of Trump is to beat him at the polls.
For years, Third Way politicians claimed to be modernizing progressive politics by rejecting leftist policies. But their political project now stands in ruins — and it’s democratic socialism that is on the rise.
Centrists like Jonathan Chait are warning that the Democrats are moving too far left, jeopardizing their ability to beat Trump. Don’t listen to them: they’re just mad at how much the ground has shifted under their feet.