Jacobin Radio

Vanessa Wills, author of the book Marx’s Ethical Vision , speaks about the morality behind Marxian science. Mathis Ebbinghaus discusses the recent paper he co-wrote about the effects of the summer 2020 anti-cop protests on police budgets. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the arch...

There are plenty of reasons to be discouraged about the world today, but the labor movement is giving us real cause for hope. Across industries and regions, workers are organizing on a scale we haven’t seen in decades — and they’re winning. What sets this new wave of labor activism apart from the usual staff-driven campaigns is that workers themselves are leading the way. Important challenges rema...

Featuring Eric Blanc on We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big . Interview conducted by guest host Gabriel Winant. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Defend federal workers and federal services: actionnetwork.org/forms/let-us-work/ Contact the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) for help organizing your workplace: workerorganizing.org...

Donald Trump has made restoring American industry a priority across his administrations. But rather than continue Biden’s efforts to bolster domestic manufacturing through subsidies, Trump has instituted a series of tariffs intended to reshore former pillar industries and improve US trade balance. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber and Jacobin contributor Mel...

Ben Tarnoff talks tech worker militancy and the bosses’ reaction: a crackdown and hard turn to the right. Jodi Dean, author of Capital’s Grave , discusses the concept of “neofeudalism.” Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radi...

Featuring TrueAnon hosts Brace Belden and Liz Franczak on our freakish and reactionary tech oligarchy. Musk and friends built a technological infrastructure that has warped everyone’s minds, including their own. Now they’re seizing the state. The hideous AI “art” we discuss: https://bit.ly/4ksG1aM http://bit.ly/3DmDfTD Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Register for the Socialism Conference at...

Eric Blanc, author of We Are the Union , talks about worker-led organizing at Amazon, Starbucks, and beyond. Molly O'Neal , Quincy Institute fellow, analyzes the recent German election. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver...

Jacobin Radio presents a webinar, moderated by Suzi and sponsored by Haymarket Books and the Ukraine Solidarity Network, marking the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Just days after this discussion, the Trump administration laid out a deal that trades an end to the fighting for U.S. economic control over Ukraine’s minerals without providing security guarantees. This is no peace p...

Featuring Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Mike McCarthy on the MAGA and DOGE war on woke, the complicity of bankrupt liberal identity politics, and the centrality of various oppressions to the class domination of capital and struggles against it. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig Read Mike’s article “The Problem of Class Abstractionism” epublications.marquette.edu/socs_fac...

Among the many government agencies facing cuts from President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, USAID has garnered wide support in the media. But for whatever humanitarian good it’s done in the world, the agency has played a role in US imperialism. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber examines the true history of USAID and breaks down the false dichotomy between sof...

On February 21, Suzi talked to Zakhar Popóvych, a Ukrainian researcher and activist in Kyiv with roots in labor and socialist organizing, and Ilya Budraitskis, a Russian historian and political theorist now in exile, about Trump’s foreign policy moves regarding Ukraine on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The Trump administration has engaged in peace talks in Saudi Arabia that...

Anatol Lieven looks at the global dimensions of Trumpism. Quinn Slobodian, who wrote a recent article for the New York Review of Books , muses on whether Trump is a neoliberal and examines the three major strands of DOGE-ism. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: h...

For now, the ceasefire deal between Hamas and the Israeli government appears to be holding. However, Donald Trump has openly proposed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Trump has used the destruction of Gaza with American-made bombs as a rationale for his plan. Paul Rogers, emeritus professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford and the author of many books, joins Long Reads for a conversatio...

Featuring Danielle Carr on the history and present state of American unwellness and how that’s been shaped by psychiatry, prescription drugs, neuroscience, popular culture, smartphones and social media. We trace the rise of psychiatry as a Gilded Age human science, the disastrous contradictions of asylum deinstitutionalization, the invention of neuroscience and deep brain stimulation, Elon Musk’s...

Our theme for today’s program is resistance in the time of monsters: resistance to the Trump/Musk wrecking ball that threatens the well-being of millions of people here and across the globe. Their actions are illegal, have provoked a constitutional crisis, and constitute a technical coup. At the same time, the Trump/Musk rampage has galvanized resistance in the courts and on the streets. Suzi talk...

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò picks apart the contradictory strands of the DEI obsession. Sophia Rosenfeld, author of the book The Age of Choice , explores the history of that concept over the last few centuries. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobser...

Within weeks of assuming the presidency, Donald Trump has instituted tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. Trump has touted protectionism as a way of supporting American workers. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber and Jacobin contributor Melissa Naschek discuss how nineteenth and twentieth-century protectionist trade policies helped build domestic manufacturi...

Kristin Du Mez, author of the book Jesus and John Wayne , looks at the world of Christian nationalism. Jennifer Middlestadt, who wrote a recent opinion piece in the New York Times , speaks about the “sovereigntism” guiding the foreign policy of Trump et al. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the gl...

Featuring Chris Newman on Trump's far-right anti-migrant agenda and Democrats' cruel and stupid complicity. Read All-American Nativism versobooks.com/products/704-all-american-nativism Read Dan's essay on Gaza and migration politics in n+1 nplusonemag.com/issue-48/politics/do-border Trump's immigration executive orders propublica.org/article/donald-trump-immigration-executive-orders Support The Di...

Last year, Martin Empson joined Long Reads to speak about the German Peasants’ War, Europe’s biggest social revolt before the French Revolution. Martin returns to talk about what happened next. After the revolt was crushed, radical religious tendencies became a vehicle for social discontent. The most famous of those tendencies was known as Anabaptism. A group of religious radicals inspired by Anab...

Just two weeks in power, the new Trump administration has already led a horrifying whirlwind of attacks on immigrants, transgender people, tribal nations, people of color, and women. Government institutions are being dismantled. Make no mistake, these shock-and-awe actions are designed to keep people in fear and paralyzed as a fascistic presidency stages what is being called an administrative coup...

Eoin Higgins, author of Owned , talks about tech moguls and the journalists, like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, who work for them. Ronnie Grinberg, author of Write Like a Man , on the mostly male, mostly Jewish New York intellectuals of the postwar scene. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the g...

Featuring Hannah Srajer on building tenant unions by applying labor organizing models. The Connecticut Tenants Union is partnered with SEIU 1199NE to organize fighting super majority tenant unions that win collectively bargained leases and wield working class political power. It's a model that's spreading nationwide. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Peruse The Dig's vast archives at thedigrad...

President Trump is back in power and immediately moved to carry out his xenophobic policies with a slew of unconstitutional executive orders and plans for mass detention and deportation of the nation’s immigrants. Suzi talks to three extraordinary activists whose organizations and coalitions are building effective solidarity and defense for those about to be detained and deported: Victor Narro, UC...

There is no cultural phenomenon more hated today than what is called wokeness. While it is wrongly associated with the Left, the Right is very successfully taking advantage of it. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber traces the political and economic origins of it, and argues that the Left should be at the forefront of criticizing it. Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber...