Jacobin Radio

Featuring Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal on their book Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis . Tenant unions fighting to transform Los Angeles, the country, and the world. Support Reclaim RI https://secure.actblue.com/donate/reclaimri Buy Abolish Rent haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent Subscribe to Dissent at dissentmagazine.org/subscribe Use code ‘DIG50’ for 50% off y...

Mouin Rabbani surveys the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s plans for the Middle East. Angela Jones and Bernadette Barton discuss the new book they co-edited, Sex Work Today . 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/radio.html

Akbar Shahid Ahmed returns to Long Reads to discuss the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas — and what’s likely to happen next. Akbar is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Huffington Post and the author of a forthcoming book about the Biden administration and the Israeli attack on Gaza. He has been a guest on the show several times last year. This conversation was recorded Janu...

Laura Jedeed , author of an article for the New Republic , talks about San Francisco and tech moguls’ plans to “fix” it. Yasha Levine , co-director of a new documentary, Pistachio Wars , talks about billionaire couple and self-styled philanthropists the Resnicks and their involvement in the California water crisis. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politi...

Featuring Michael Denning on Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order , collectively authored by Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Hall’s method of Marxist conjunctural analysis applied to the generalized crisis that paved the way for neoliberalism's rise; a model for how we should ask questions about ou...

Jacobin Radio has featured many presentations from the recent conference held in honor of Boris Kagarlitsky, author of The Long Retreat , a sobering analysis of the international Left that was discussed in our previous episode, and currently a prisoner in Russia for speaking out against Putin’s war in Ukraine. We continue with Trevor Ngwane, a South African scholar-activist at the University of Jo...

Colette Shade , author of Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything , talks about culture at the turn of the millennium. Tim Shorrock discusses the political crisis in South Korea. 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/radio.html

Foregrounding workers’ material interests used to be commonplace among socialists. But as the Left faced decades of defeat, a materialist approach to politics fell out of favor. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber defends materialism from its critics and discusses how a materialist perspective understands rationality, the challenges around collective organizing, and cultural...

Featuring Michael Denning on Stuart Hall’s Marxism—a Marxism without guarantees. This is a comprehensive introduction to Marxism as a method to analyze historically specific, complex and contradictory capitalist social formations, and what that means for making, rather than assuming the existence of, a working-class socialist politics. Next week Dan interviews Denning on Policing the Crisis , a 19...

This week is a best of 2024, with Rashid Khalidi, Pankaj Mishra, Annelle Sheline, Aziz Rana, Anna Kornbluh, Brooke Harrington, and, in memoriam, Jane McAlevey. 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/radio.html

Branko Marcetic, staff writer at Jacobin and author of Yesterday's Man , says farewell to Joe Biden (and takes some shots at Joe Scarborough too). Santiago Pérez, co-author of a recent paper , discusses his research on how little the class composition of elite college student bodies has changed. Behind the News , hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex...

In the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the Left's association with identity politics has been a major focus of public debate. But what identity politics is or who primarily benefits from it remains contested. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics, why this form of politics can't fight oppression, and the rea...

Suzi recently participated in a conference in honor of the dissident sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who is languishing in Putin's prison for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. On this episode of Jacobin Radio , we bring you a panel from the conference discussing Boris's latest book, The Long Retreat , published while he was in prison. Three activist-scholars, Bill Fletcher Jr., Alex Callinic...

Featuring Bassam Haddad on the historical and geopolitical origins of Assad’s rise and fall — and what might happen next. We think through the contradictions: honoring the joy felt by Syrians at Assad’s ouster while simultaneously taking stock of a truly bad geopolitical outcome. Want to learn more? Listen to “Thawra,” our series on the 20th-century political history of the Arab East thedigradio.c...

Trita Parsi and Joshua Landis analyze what’s been going on in Syria. Tina Gerhardt reviews the annual UN climate conference, COP29, where little happened. 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/radio.html

As with many other periods, the history of the Roman Empire has often been told from the vantage point of a minoritarian social elite. Sarah Bond, a professor of classics at the University of Iowa, set out in her research to uncover something different: a "history from below" detailing the class struggle in ancient Rome. She joins Long Reads to discuss this project. Sarah's book Strike:...

Featuring Patrick Blanchfield on assassination and political violence: from the routine to the extraordinary; authored by the state, capital, the left, the right, the unwell and alienated; as an anxiety, in our fantasies, as a morbid symptom and repetition compulsion; and as expressing distinctively American logics of domination and human disposability. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Listen...

Bernie Sanders resurrected socialist politics in the United States after many decades of defeat. But what socialism will entail or how we get there remains unclear. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber discusses the difference between social democracy and socialism, how progressives won policies in the past, and where the Left should go after the Bernie moment. Confronting Cap...

The Democratic Party has long clung to the notion of “demographic destiny,” the view that minorities will vote blue no matter who. But now it is clear that workers of all races are abandoning the Democratic Party, either by moving to the right or dropping out of politics altogether. In this episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek discuss how Donald Trump’s recent vict...

Larry Bartels discusses his Foreign Affairs article about the right-wing “populist wave." Sopo Japaridze, co-author of a recent Jacobin article , examines the crisis of democracy in Georgia (the country, not the US state). 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:...

Suzi talked to Gilbert Achcar just before the spectacular collapse of the Assad regime that has ruled Syria for more than fifty years. Achcar, author of many books on the region, explains Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)’s origins, what is behind the lightning offensive that toppled Assad's government, and how that overthrow was prepared by Israel’s war on Lebanon and Gaza. We will also get Gilbert’s ta...

In the inaugural episode of Confronting Capitalism , Vivek Chibber is joined by Jacobin 's editorial director Bhaskar Sunkara to discuss why Trump won the election, how socialists should think about strategic alliances with liberals, and what it means to be an anti-capitalist. Read the articles mentioned in this episode: https://jacobin.com/2024/09/liberalism-marxism-cohen-rawls-workers https://ja...

Brooke Harrington, author of Offshore , uncovers how and where the mega-rich stash their cash. Mahendran Thiruvarangan talks about a new leftish government in Sri Lanka. 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/radio.html

Featuring Quinn Slobodian and Wendy Brown on Trump’s triumphant return to power and the freakish, obscene, billionaire-dominated, capitalist reactionary, Christian nationalist, contradiction-ridden MAGA movement that surrounds him. A comprehensive early assessment of what is going on, where it’s coming from, and where it all might be heading. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Share Thawra with...

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. It was a rare moment of hope for Palestinians, but the US government responded with outrage. Earlier this year, a report by the Guardian and +972 Magazine showed that Israel had been spying on the ICC for a number of years. The aim of th...