Is This Really the “Age of Class Dealignment”?
Class dealignment perspectives tend to overstate the extent to which center-left parties can boost their fortunes today through a strict focus on pocketbook issues.
67 Article(s) by: Chris Maisano
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Chris Maisano is a Jacobin contributing editor and a member of Democratic Socialists of America.
Trump Doesn’t Win by Bread Alone
Donald Trump offers a bleak vision of the good life, founded on hierarchy and self-indulgence. The Left needs to put forward a politics that can counter the affective pleasures of Trumpism, rooted in solidarity rather than cruelty and exclusion.
Republicans’ and Democrats’ Biggest Corporate Sponsors
Both political parties in the US receive exorbitant amounts of donations from corporations and the very rich. A close look at the money trail shows which sections of capital favor Republicans and Democrats, respectively.
The Passions and the Interests
An effective left politics can’t just speak to workers’ material interests. It also has to construct myths that speak to people’s sense of dignity and humanity.
There’s No Outbidding the Right-Wing Politics of Strength
Defeating Donald Trump will require going beyond rational appeals to economic self-interest.
Bayard Rustin Showed the Promise and Pitfalls of Coalition Politics
At the height of a calamitous war presided over by a Democratic president, the brilliant socialist organizer Bayard Rustin tried to forge a mass coalition to deliver progressive change. His failure to do so in the 1960s tells us much about building one today.
The Making of Millennial Socialism
Jacobin has been a flagship publication of “millennial socialism,” a phenomenon that began gathering force around 2010 and first fought its way into the political arena through the 2016 Bernie campaign. How did this generational movement come to be? And where does it go now?
The Left’s Electoral Strategy Is Working. Let’s Keep Building It.
Democratic socialists have made their most significant electoral inroads in years by operating as a left-wing faction in the Democratic Party. Chris Maisano argues that we should own that strategy, and push it further.
Like It or Not, the Left Can’t Get Away From the Democrats
While the Left agonizes over its relationship to the Democrats, the extreme right has few qualms about throwing elbows within the GOP. Socialists should follow their lead and accept doing battle within the Democratic Party as the only viable political option.
Don’t Blow Up a Pipeline
The clock is ticking on averting the worst of climate disaster, raising the question for many if activists should turn to militant actions like industrial sabotage. But it’s not time to give up on democratic politics to save the planet.
Beyond Chomsky and Walzer
We must condemn US foreign policy — but we must also articulate the socialist alternative to it.
Rolling Back Birthright Citizenship, Rolling Back Democracy
The Right’s recent attacks on birthright citizenship are a further step in their slide toward “postfascism.”
The Party Was Not Always Right
The tragedies, brutalities, and absurdities of Stalinism are all there onscreen in Costa-Gavras’s classic 1970 film The Confession.
When Tito Turned to the West
During the Cold War, Yugoslav socialist Tito tried to chart a course apart from the Soviets. But his actions enraged Stalin — putting Tito on the unlikely path of seeking Western support and revealing the difficulties of nonalignment amid great power politics.
US Voting Patterns Are Shifting. But It’s Not Simply “Class Dealignment.”
It’s not that partisan voting patterns are becoming decoupled from class — it’s that a complicated new set of alignments, rooted in the social and occupational structures of a postindustrial economy, is emerging in the United States.
Don’t Overstate the Divide Between the Campus and the Working Class
Leftists shouldn’t counterpose working-class voters on the one hand and college-educated voters on the other. Our strategy can combine a working-class economic program with a progressive approach to social and cultural questions.
Did the 1970s New Politics Movement Fail to Transform the Democratic Party?
The question of what to do about the Democrats is a perpetual quandary for leftists. In the 1970s, the New Politics movement tried to move the party in a more progressive direction. Perhaps the movement deserves more credit than many socialists have given it.
College-Educated Workers Will Continue to Play a Key Part in Labor Organizing
In recent upsurges of working-class organizing among teachers, nurses, Starbucks baristas, and Amazon workers, college-educated workers have played central roles. That won’t change anytime soon.
The Liminal Left’s Bid for Power
Like our leading figures, our new left is young and highly educated. Is that tanking our chances at building a mass working-class coalition?
Workers Need Organization, Not Technocratic Fixes
To strengthen workers’ collective bargaining rights, the Biden administration looks poised to recommend a host of modest reforms to existing programs and policies. But the working class will remain disempowered unless it organizes itself on a mass scale.