Table Of Content№44 / WINTER 2022 REASON IN REVOLT JACOBINMAG.COM
“After the failure of every revolu-
tion or counterrevolution, a feverish
activity develops among the fugi-
tives, who have escaped to foreign
countries. The parties of different
shades form groups, accuse each
other of having driven the cart into
the mud, charge one another with
treason and every conceivable sin.
At the same time they remain in
close touch with the home country,
organize, conspire, print leaflets
and newspapers, swear that the
trouble will start afresh within
twenty-four hours, that victory is
certain, and distribute the various
government offices beforehand on
the strength of this anticipation.”
— Friedrich Engels, “The Program
of the Blanquist Fugitives from the
Paris Commune,” 1874
Citoyens
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Contributors
cover art by
Liam Eisenberg
Loren Balhorn is a Jacobin contri- Michael Grasso is senior editor at Chris Maisano is a Jacobin
buting editor and an editor of the We Are the Mutants, a web contributing editor and a board
German language edition of magazine analyzing the pop and member of Catalyst: A Journal
Jacobin. underground culture of the of Theory and Strategy.
Cold War era.
Ross Barkan is a Jacobin columnist Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff
based in New York City. He is the Owen Hatherley is the culture writer and the author of Yesterday’s
author of The Prince: Andrew editor of Tribune. He is the author Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of several books, including He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
of New York. Red Metropolis: Socialism and the
Government of London. Natalie Shure is a writer and
Marianela D’Aprile is a writer living researcher in Boston. Her work
in Brooklyn. She is a member Anton Jäger is a doctoral student focuses on history, health, and
of the Democratic Socialists of at the University of Cambridge, politics.
America. working on the history of populism
Bhaskar Sunkara is the editor and
in the United States.
Liza Featherstone is a columnist publisher of Jacobin and the
for Jacobin and the author of Eileen Jones is a film critic at author of The Socialist Manifesto:
Selling Women Short: The Jacobin and author of Filmsuck, The Case for Radical Politics in an
Landmark Battle for Workers’ USA. She also hosts a podcast Era of Extreme Inequality.
Rights at Wal-Mart. called Filmsuck.
Daniel Finn is the features editor at Fergal Kinney is a freelance music
Jacobin. He is the author of One and culture journalist based in
Man’s Terrorist: A Political History Manchester.
of the IRA.
Photo Attributions — Page 15: Photo by Yogesh Rane / Getty Images; Page 25: Photo by David Fenton / Getty Images; Pages 32–33: Photo by Frank May / picture
alliance via Getty Images; Photo by Daniel Schäfer / picture alliance via Getty Images; Photo by Martin Divisek - Pool / Getty Images; Photo by Popow / ullstein bild
via Getty Images; Photo by snapshot-photography / ullstein bild via Getty Images; Pages 34–35: Photos by Filip Singer - Pool / Getty Images; Pages 36–37: Photos by
Clemens Bilan - Pool / Getty Images; Pages 38–39: Photos by Christophe Gateau / picture alliance via Getty Images; Page 41: Photo by Matthias Makarinus, Moment;
Page 43: Photo by 20th Century Fox / Handout, Moviepix; Pages 46–47: Photos by Evening Standard / Stringer, Hulton Archive; Page 49: Photo by Keystone / Stringer,
Hulton Archive.
ISSUE 44 WINTER 2022
Features
19 NATALIE SHURE 32 LOREN BALHORN
Are These the Last
The End of the AOC
Days of Die Linke?
Honeymoon
In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio- Die Linke was founded on the
Cortez was heralded as the promise of unifying Germany’s
millennial successor to Bernie left and rejuvenating what
Sanders. Today, some on the was once the world’s leading
Left are starting to have doubts. socialist movement. Fifteen
years later, it’s struggling to
survive.
51 ADAM TOOZE 76 ANTON JÄGER
A Historian of Economic From Post-Politics
Crisis on the Fire This Time to Hyper-Politics
Adam Tooze is the leading If everything is political, then
expert on how economic crises nothing is political.
have remade the modern
world. Here, he tells Jacobin
that the covid-19 pandemic
will transform global politics
even more than the 2008
financial crash, inaugurating
an age of instability.
Departments
FRONT MATTERS READING MATERIEL CULTURAL CAPITAL
08 PARTY LINES 27 CANON FODDER 41 WAYS OF SEEING
The Left in Purgatory The Liminal Left’s Bid Palaces of Lost Promise
for Power
12 THE SOAPBOX 43 RED CHANNELS
Letters + Internet Speaks The Coen Brothers and
Their Big Socialist Losers
14 STRUGGLE SESSION
The Coming Democratic 46 BASS & SUPERSTRUCTURE
Minority The Beatles
and the Revolutionaries
49 RED CHANNELS
The Tenured Radical
on the Telly
THE TUMBREL LEFTOVERS
64 THERMIDOR 87 DUSTBIN
The Socialist (Almost) And Now, a Message From
Mayor of Buffalo Our Sponsors — the
Organized Working Class
68 GIRONDINS
Working-Class Politics 91 POPULAR FRONT
Without the Working Class The Political Isn’t Personal
74 VERSAILLES 96 MEANS & ENDS
The New State Church Jacobin in Purgatory
DEPARTMENT NAME
SUB-DEPARTMENT NAME BY AUTHOR NAME
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FFrroonntt
Dolor Sit Amet
MMaatttteerrss
DEK: Nam aliquet, ipsum et
semper convallis, quam lacus luctus
nisi, ac cursus enim diam ut leo.
LLOOCCKKEEDD OOUUTT
OOFF HHEEAAVVEENN
FRONT MATTERS
PARTY LINES BY BHASKAR SUNKARA
organized in industrial unions tied a political presence in parts of the and specifi cally in the home, today
to socialist parties fi ghting for country — and a subculture for we seem to be trying to escape
democratic rights, workers in the thousands of activists — but far a scenario where politics is only
United States were represented too disorganized and powerless to personal — and where we lack any
by narrow craft unions and carry out your political program. means to express collective
pledged allegiance to bourgeois agency.
That is the path to political self-
parties. Classwide worker
satisfaction, a marginality that is And yet there was something
organizing capable of bridging
just large enough to sustain itself undeniably collective in the exper-
The Left in ethnic and racial divides remained
but that will never be strong ience thousands of us had of Bernie
elusive.
enough to move beyond perma- Sanders’s presidential campaigns.
Purgatory When glimmers of radicalization nent resistance. Will it be enough They not only off ered the prospect
did emerge through organizations for the thousands of people who of improving the lives of millions
like the Industrial Workers of read this magazine, or the many of workers, they also helped to
the World and the Socialist Party, more radicalized by recent years cohere widespread discontent into
they were smashed by state and across the United States? communal diagnoses of common
employer violence. At best, in problems — a shared worldview
the twentieth century, those on Nine Circles of Hyper-Politics that saw the political and economic
Socialists in the United States are Dante sees much the same ten- the American left were voices I hope not, and I hope we won’t system was designed to benefi t
dency in his audience. At one of conscience, pushing a certain confl ate the cultural radicalism of a tiny elite.
stuck. How do we become masters
point, he warns against abandoning strain of liberalism toward recent times with real advance.
As Natalie Shure and Chris
of our own fate? penitence because it seems too confrontation with capital and As Anton Jäger writes in this issue,
Maisano remind us in their articles,
diffi cult: “Reader, I would not have racist reaction and winning while our era has certainly moved
the Bernie moment shaped the
you fall away from good intentions concessions for working people. beyond the post-politics that
politics of a generation of young
when you hear the way God wills dominated the 1990s and 2000s, it
The fi rst century and a half of the people and gave the Left nation-
the debt be paid.” has not done so on the terms many
US left told a story of qualifi ed ally recognized tribunes. Most
of us on the Left might have
After all, the Italian poet says but not absolute defeat. How, then, of these successes, however, have
imagined.
reassuringly, whatever suff ering should we situate what’s happened happened at the local level, in
we incur “cannot last beyond to us in the past decade? In place of a post-politics, we now relatively low-turnout races. The
Here is a place where time But for Dante, Purgatory was the fi nal Judgment.” Failure to live in what he describes as a considerable talents of even
There is no doubt that we’re at the
stretches on. Where food has no somewhere physical: a mountain confront your sins involves a more “hyper-politics,” a time when national fi gures like Alexandria
end of a period of rapid politiciza-
fl avor. Where we grow neither the penitent must climb to eternal damnation. everything is seen as political — Ocasio-Cortez seem to be directed
tion and settling into one of either
old nor young. It’s not bad, exactly. approach Paradise, replete with and subsumed within the culture less toward confrontation with
gradual decline or slow advance.
But it’s not where we had hoped stages, each of which imposed The Fires of History war debate — but we lack the political and economic elites and
Hence “the Left in Purgatory.”
to be. their own challenges that must be Okay, maybe it isn’t all our fault. organization to actually progress more toward the terrain of
Socialists are now an entrenched
overcome to address past sins. Certainly, any account of today’s political disagreement beyond cultural battles of late, destined to
Don’t worry, American socialist, part of mainstream American
That sounds a lot like our current socialist movement in the the discursive level. Power is rarely resonate most in “deep-blue”
you’re not in the Inferno — politics — no immediate setback,
political predicament. United States has to start with an contested, let alone seriously districts.
hey, it’s not like we’ve ever had like the defeat of Buff alo mayoral
awareness of history and the challenged.
the power to err and commit mass The Left, however, isn’t always so candidate India Walton, covered Even when we do foreground
obstacles in the way of our eff orts.
crimes — you’re in Purgatory! willing to undertake this trek. in this edition by Branko Marcetic, Liza Featherstone adds, later in bread-and-butter issues, we’re
When we fail in our eff orts to Our early progress was stymied or even the possible return of this volume, that this state of couching them in rhetoric that has
When we use the word “purga-
reach promised lands, we are often less by America’s bounty of “roast Donald Trump to the White aff airs brings into question some limited appeal. That was the
tory” today, we tend to think
content in blaming the incalcu- beef and apple pie” than by a House in 2024, will relegate us to popular left-wing common sense. lesson from a new study Jacobin
of stasis, interregnum, even
lable power of our opponents or peculiar combination of early our pre-2011 state. When once feminists argued did with YouGov and the Center
unresolved contradiction. It’s
the intractable maze of the system. industrialization and white male that socialists needed to see the for Working-Class Politics,
a place between places, a some- Yet there is something dangerous
Our own misdeeds are rarely suff rage. Instead of being politics in their day-to-day lives, whose director, Jared Abbott, was
what empty impermanence. about being large enough to be
identifi ed, let alone rectifi ed. interviewed in this edition.
10 № 44 / WINTER 2022
