Jacobin Radio

Ordinary language is the sound of hegemony; it is also an archive of the struggles to overturn it. Language is an institution and a constantly emergent field of struggle; it is the product of power relations and it is also itself power relations. Dan interviews John Patrick Leary, the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing t...

The question of how socialists should engage with the labor movement has always been a critical one. One proposal: the rank-and-file strategy, which the Democratic Socialists of America adopted in its recent convention. But what is it? Labor sociologist Barry Eidlin explains. Barry Eidlin is an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal and the author of Labor and the Class...

<font color="#000000">Suzi talks to UCLA law professor </font> Gary Blasi , a longtime housing activist and advocate for the homeless about the staggering increase in homelessness in LA city and county (indeed across the country). But there are misconceptions about what is driving this surge in people living on the streets. Put simply, says Blasi, homeless people are homeless because t...

Dan talks to Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara about his book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality . We must study socialism's history and plan for its future. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jobs have in recent years gotten much worse for millions of service workers at Amazon, McDonalds and call centers. Dan interviews Emily Guendelsberger on her book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló a...

Dan interviews Lily Geismer, the author of Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. While Boston whites fought school busing in the streets, suburban liberals along Route 128 maintained and benefited from the larger system of metropolitan residential and school segregation that made the crisis possible. Suburban liberals also played a key role in creating a...

The Democratic Socialists of America's biennial convention is in Atlanta this weekend. The rise of the DSA is one of the most promising developments in American politics in at least half a century. I talked to Andrew Sernatinger, a member of Madison DSA, an elected delegate to the convention, and a rank-and-file member of Teamsters 695, about what's at stake at the convention. You can read Andrew'...

Dan is taking his first week off ever in Dig history to finish his book. Here's a classic from deep in the archives: our first interview with Aziz Rana, on his book The Two Faces of American Freedom, aka episode 62. If you've already heard this one and are hungry for more content we've got everything organized by date, guest and topic at www.thedigradio.com . Support this podcast with your money a...

Suzi talks to historian Myrna Santiago and immigrants' rights specialist Alicia Rusoja , who just returned from a week at the border, where they talked to men, women, and child migrants, sat in immigration court, and spoke to support groups — as well as deported veterans, and deported mothers of Dreamers in Tijuana. Their reflections and revelations include the way abuse and corruption are adding...

Dan's lengthy interview with two brilliant Chilean social movement organizers: Alondra Carrillo and Pablo Abufom. Carrillo organizes in the country's massive feminist movement. Abufom works in the labor-backed movement for a just pension system. Read Dan's interview with Daniel Jadue, the Communist mayor of Recoleta, in Jacobin . Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing t...

Professor of philosophy Bernat Tort on Puerto Rico’s economic and political crisis. Then, sociologist Sahan Karatasli on Turkey’s economic and political crisis.

It's gotten heated this last week between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the squad, on the one hand, and Nancy Pelosi, centrist Democrats, and the House Democratic Party leadership on the other. But this conflict isn't empty intra-party bickering. It's an actual political and moral battle, with one side, AOC's, on the right side of history and one, Pelosi's, not. Miles Kampf-Lassin wrote about the b...

Dan interviews Sophie Lewis about her new book Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family. Something is deeply wrong with commercial surrogacy—but it's just not what you might think. What's wrong is the brute labor exploitation taking place at the reproductive crossroads of a racialized global capitalist order. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobook...

The New York Times recently attacked Bernie Sanders’s record on solidarity with Nicaragua in the 1980s. It probably won’t be the last time we see red-baiting attacks against Sanders in the election season, so it’s important to establish what exactly happened in Central America in the 1980s, how brutal US intervention in the region was, what the Central American solidarity movement of that era look...

Suzi does three stories on this episode of Jacobin Radio, beginning with Katie Halper 's expose in Jacobin of <wbr />the New York Times 's problem with Bernie Sanders, evident in their coverage. The problem is their correspondent Sydney Ember, who has a long record of unfairly attacking Sanders — while neglecting to mention that the sources she quotes as objective authorities are corporate l...

For much of the twentieth century, Cold War politics defined socialism as the antithesis of democracy. Today, an insurgent democratic-socialist movement is transforming US politics. It is socialism that is at the forefront of a fight for a radical deepening of democracy, one in which ordinary people exercise control over our political, economic, and social lives — and one in which the people is ex...

Elizabeth Warren is, by American political standards, a very strong presidential candidate. She has taken up a robust domestic social-democratic agenda — one that, while not as strong as Bernie Sanders’s, is pretty damn good. Foreign policy, however, is a different story. Here, Elizabeth Warren is far from the most hawkish in her party. But she still leaves much to be desired, as Sarah Lazare rece...

<style type="text/css"></style> <style></style> What is a socialist society going to look like? Like, actually look like? We have to have some answers to this question. Luckily, Sam Gindin has some. He talks to Micah about his article in Catalyst, “Socialism for Realists,” which you can read here .<o:p></o:p>

Dan's lengthy interview with Nick Estes on his remarkable book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. The problem that settler colonialism was repeatedly trying to solve by unleashing such terrific violence — through massacres, by nearly eliminating the buffalo, in reservation confinement, in dominating the Misso...

Bernie Sanders has been talking a lot about the New Deal lately, mentioning it in his recent speech on democratic socialism. Ironically, the response from many liberals has been to argue that the New Deal wasn’t really socialism. Jacobin’s Seth Ackerman has a few quibbles. Plus, we talk about why the idea that the New Deal was racist doesn’t fully capture its relationship to white supremacy. Read...

On this episode of Jacobin Radio, Suzi focuses on the intensifying US-Iranian crisis and war brinkmanship that saw us about ten minutes away from military strikes, before Trump pulled back. We get MIT historian Pouya Alimaghum ’s analysis of the crisis, the implications and goals of the increasing bluster and ever more draconian sanctions, and what they mean for domestic dissent in Iran. Then Suzi...

Russia intervened and Trump is a criminal who committed obstruction of justice and is surrounded by constant criminality. But it's no doubt also true that this situation and the hawkish liberal response to it have dangerously damaged US-Russia relations. At the core of Western misunderstanding is the way we think about Vladimir Putin, which is what Dan is discussing today with Tony Wood, the autho...

Political scientist Rune Møller Stahl on the Danish elections, which the Left won but partly by going anti-immigrant. Then, Heidi Matthews , author of this article , on Canada’s genocidal treatment of its indigenous people.

There is perhaps no more depressing situation in Western Europe than that which prevails in Italy: a coalition government between the far-right Lega party and the now subordinate, bizarre, amorphously anti-corruption, internet-fetishist, pseudo-directly democratic Five Star Movement. In other words, Italian politics is dominated by a viciously racist anti-migrant politics; the left, along with mos...