Jacobin

In studying with Anwar Shaikh, economist Howard Botwinick learned that Karl Marx’s account of capitalist competition is far richer than his critics assumed. That insight, Botwinick argues in an interview, offers the working class a road map to victory.

Pedro Sánchez’s coalition won reelection in 2023 based on a real record of measures to rein in the cost of living. Pulling off the same trick now may be much harder, after three years of institutional inertia.

The European Green Party rushed to condemn the Greens of England and Wales when they voted to support a single democratic state in Palestine. It has never condemned the German Greens for supporting Israel’s genocidal violence against the Palestinians.

The politically driven attempt to deport war critic Leonid Ragozin from Latvia shows that liberal democracies are starting to employ the very Trumpist and Putinist measures they claim to despise.

The start of the school year drew attention to disastrously dilapidated classrooms in the Paris suburbs. Rather than listen to students’ complaints, the government has responded with violent repression.

After opening an investigation into political strategist Fernando Cerimedo, “MAGA’s man in Latin America,” for attempted femicide and drug ties, Bolivia’s attorney general was arrested by his own government. Even the vice president now fears for his life.

Part of Karl Marx’s project was a thoroughgoing critique of capitalism as system of exploitative social relations. But he also thought seriously about the essential place of work in the good life.

For over a week, high school students and teachers in France have been protesting the state’s abandonment of the education system. The government response: send in police to subdue them.

Anwar Shaikh was the most brilliant Marxist economist of his generation. He leaves behind a legacy that has the potential to drive political economy forward for years to come.

Just a few years ago, tech workers held enormous leverage over their employers. That power has eroded recently, especially because of AI. Tech workers can find new sources of leverage, but only through waging struggles at the workplace.

Newspapers around the world have anointed Canada’s prime minister the new “leader of the free world.” But Lula links democracy to economic equality and solidarity, while Mark Carney revives the technocratic neoliberalism that helped create its crisis.

In an interview with Ezra Klein, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang floated the possibility that AI might offer a solution to the climate crisis. That would require taking AI under public control.

The arguments of Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics, which first appeared in Jacobin, sparked debate across the political spectrum. Here he responds to critics and explores how a “strategy of patience” could help the Left escape its hyperpolitical impasse.

The first Labour conference under new leader Andy Burnham saw a rhetorical turn away from his predecessor’s austerian and managerial approach. Burnham has regained trade unions’ confidence, but his real policy shifts have been cautious.

Marxism is a social theory about how the world works, and how to change it. Anyone committed to understanding and changing the world should be a Marxist.

The major factors bringing about the current, continuing inflation are unlikely to be much affected by the Fed’s recent interest rate increases. But those increases weaken labor’s bargaining power, so Washington welcomes them anyway.

Publishing a theory of capitalist peace six weeks into World War I was catastrophic timing. The problem is that the post-war order looked a great deal like what Karl Kautsky described.

Donald Trump won in 2024 by casting billionaires and blue-collar workers as allies against a liberal professional elite. As working-class voters lose faith in him, the Left has a chance to consolidate support around economic populism.

Echoing the outrage of housing protesters, Minister Pablo Bustinduy admonished Spanish politicians for betraying the working class in favor of rentiers. The legislature’s rejection of two vital housing decrees led PM Pedro Sánchez to call snap elections.

The critics savaging Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger are right, and so is the public who stayed home — missing a Tom Cruise movie, no less. Watch Dr. Strangelove instead.