Podcasts about jacobin radio

Suzi talks to Capital & Main reporter Jesse Baum and David Williams, a Dollar General stocker and organizer with Step Up Louisiana, about how workers are fighting for dignity and better working conditions in “right-to-work” states — places where an anti-union climate, legal roadblocks, and intimidation make winning union recognition nearly impossible. Dollar Store workers in Louisiana organized with Step Up Louisiana and won tangible gains despite the system being rigged against them. They used the Pre-Majority Unionism strategy — acting like a union without having one — walking out, marching on shareholders, and forcing companies to raise wages and improve safety and respect on the job. We talk about whether this organizing could chart a path forward for labor in the US's low-wage sectors, short of unionizing. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Professor Tom Alter, a tenured historian at Texas State University, was recently fired for speaking at an online socialism conference. His remarks were secretly recorded and doctored by a self-proclaimed fascist influencer who launched a smear campaign. There was no due process, a blatant violation of his First Amendment and academic freedom rights. The president of Texas State University upheld the firing of Tom Alter after a court ordered his reinstatement. A broad coalition has formed to “Defend Tom Alter.” Tom joins Suzi to describe what happened and why his case has become a flashpoint in the new McCarthyism sweeping US campuses. Then, longtime Chicano activist Bill Gallegos tells the story of how Los Angeles united to defeat Trump's deployment of troops to enforce ICE raids and terrorize immigrant communities. Unions, immigrant organizations, artists, faith leaders, and even business groups built a united front demanding troops out — and they won. Trump's troops were forced to withdraw. LA showed the country what resistance and broad solidarity can achieve: when people organize and stand firm, even a president bent on repression can be pushed back. LA was supposed to be Trump's model for his authoritarian power grab, but instead it was the template for defeating it. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

At the end of September, political theorist Ilya Matveev joined the Critique editorial board to present his ideas about imperialism in the 21st century. Suzi Weissman moderated that enlightening discussion and brings it now to Jacobin Radio. Matveev examines the emerging era of inter-imperialist rivalry and asks what's really driving the strategies of Russia, China, and the United States. China has risen as a manufacturing superpower, with national capital tightly fused to the party-state. Russia, in a neo-fascist turn, has shattered the global free-trade order with its invasion of Ukraine. The United States, still unmatched in military and financial power, confronts both as rivals even as Trump's second administration dismantles the alliances and institutions that once underpinned American primacy. What theories of imperialism can help us make sense of this fractured world order? Matveev argues that to grasp today's disjointed global system, we must reckon not only with the structural contradictions of capitalism but also with the sovereign decisions and ideological projects of political elites. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Hello Interactors,Fall is in full swing here in the northern hemisphere, which means it's time to turn our attention to economics and economic geography. Triggered by a recent podcast on the origins of capitalism, I thought I'd kick off by exploring this from a geography perspective.I trace how violence, dispossession, and racial hierarchy aren't simple externalities or accidents. They emerge out of a system that organized itself and then spread. Capitalism grew out of dispossession of land and human autonomy and became a dominant social and economic structure. It's rooted in violence that became virtuous and centuries later is locked-in. Or is it?EMERGING ENGLISH ENCLOSURESThe dominant and particular brand of capitalism in force today originates in England. Before English landlords and the state violently seized common lands back in the 1300s, economic life was embedded in what historian E.P. Thompson called “moral economies”.(1) These were systems of survival where collective responsibility was managed through custom, obligation, and shared access to resources. Similar systems existed elsewhere. Long before Europeans arrived at the shores of what is now called North America, Haudenosaunee longhouse economies were sophisticatedly organized around economies of reciprocity. Further south, Andean ayllu communities negotiated labor obligations and access to land was shared. West African systems featured land that belonged to communities and ancestors, not individuals.Back in medieval English villages, commons weren't charity, they were infrastructure. Anyone could graze animals or gather firewood. When harvests failed, there were fallbacks like hunting and gathering rights, seasonal labor sharing, and kin networks. As anthropologist Stephen Gudeman shows, these practices reflected cultures of mutual insurance aimed at collective resilience, not individual accumulation.(2)Then landlords, backed by state violence, destroyed this system to enrich themselves.From 1348-1349, the bubonic plague killed perhaps half of England's population. This created a labor shortage that gave surviving so-called peasants leverage. For the first time they could demand higher wages, refuse exploitative landlords, or move to find better conditions.The elite mobilized state violence to reverse this. In 1351 the state passed The Statute of Labourers — an attempt to freeze wages and restrict worker movement. This serves as an early signal that reverberates today. When property and people come in conflict, the state sides with property. Over the next two centuries, landlords steadily enclosed common lands, claiming shared space as private property. Peasants who resisted were evicted, sometimes killed.Initial conditions mattered enormously. England had a relatively weak monarchy that couldn't check landlord aggression like stronger European states did. It also had growing urban markets creating demand for food and wool and post-plague labor dynamics that made controlling land more profitable than extracting rents from secure peasants.As historian J.M. Neeson details, enclosure — fencing in private land — destroyed social infrastructure.(3) When access to common resources disappeared, so did the safety nets that enabled survival outside of market and labor competition. People simply lost the ability to graze a cow, gather fuel, glean grain, or even rely on neighbors' obligation to help.This created a feedback loop:Each turn made the pattern stronger. Understanding how this happens requires grasping how these complex systems shaped the very people who reproduced them.The landlords driving enclosure weren't simply greedy villains. Their sense of self, their understanding of what was right and proper, was constituted through relationships to other people like them, to their own opportunities, and to authorities who validated their actions. A landlord enclosing commons likely experienced this as “improvement”. They believed they were making the land productive while exercising newly issued property rights. Other landlords were doing it, parliament legalized it, and the economics of the time justified it. The very capacity to see alternatives was constrained by relational personal and social positions within an emerging capitalistic society.This doesn't excuse the violence or diminish responsibility. But it does reveal how systems reproduce themselves. This happens not primarily through individual evil but through relationships and feedback loops that constitute people's identities and sense of what's possible. The moral judgment remains stark. These were choices that enriched someone by destroying someone else's means of survival. But the choices were made by people whose very selfhood was being constructed by the system they were creating.Similarly, displaced peasants resisted in ways their social positions made possible. They rioted, appealed to historical customary rights, attempted to maintain the commons they relied on for centuries. Each turn of the spiral didn't just move resources, it remade people. Peasants' children, born into a world without commons, developed identities shaped by market dependence — renting their labor in exchange for money. What had been theft became, over generations, simply “how things are.”By the mid-16th century, England had something new. They'd created a system where most people owned no land, had no customary rights to subsistence, and had to compete in labor markets to survive. This was the essence of capitalism's emergence. It wasn't born out of markets (they existed everywhere for millennia) but as market dependence enforced through dispossession. Out of this emerged accumulated actions of actors whose awareness and available alternatives were themselves being shaped by the very system they were simultaneously shaping and sustaining.REPLICATING PATTERNS OF PLANTATIONSOnce capitalism emerged in England through violent enclosure, its spread wasn't automatic. Understanding how it became global requires distinguishing between wealth extraction (which existed under many systems) and capitalist social relations (which require specific conditions).Spain conquered vast American territories, devastating indigenous populations through disease, warfare, and forced labor. Spanish extraction from mines in the 16th century — like Potosí in today's Bolivia — were worked by enslaved indigenous and African peoples under conditions that killed them in staggering numbers. Meanwhile, Portugal developed Atlantic island sugar plantations using enslaved African labor. This expansion of Portuguese agriculture on Atlantic islands like Madeira and São Tomé became a blueprint for plantation economies in the Americas, particularly Brazil. The brutally efficient system perfected there for sugar production — relying on the forced labor of enslaved Africans — was directly transplanted across the ocean, leading to a massive increase in the scale and violence of the transatlantic slave trade.Both empires generated massive wealth from these practices. If colonial plunder caused capitalism, Spain and Portugal should have industrialized first. Instead, they stagnated. The wealth flowed to feudal monarchies who spent it on palaces, armies, and wars, not productive reinvestment. Both societies remained fundamentally feudal.England, with virtually no empire during its initial capitalist transformation, developed differently because it had undergone a different structural violence — enclosure of common land that created landless workers, wage dependence, and market competition spiraling into self-reinforcing patterns.But once those capitalist social relations existed, they became patterns that spread through violent imposition. These patterns destroyed existing economic systems and murdered millions.English expansion first began close to home. Ireland and Scotland experienced forced enclosures as English landlords exported the template — seize land, displace people, create private regimes, and force the suffering to work for you. This internal colonialism served as testing ground for techniques later deployed around the world.When English capitalism encountered the Caribbean — lands where indigenous peoples had developed complex agricultural systems and trade networks — the Spanish conquest had already devastated these populations. English merchants and settlers completed the destruction, seizing lands indigenous peoples had managed for millennia while expanding the brutal, enslaved-based labor models pioneered by the Spanish and Portuguese for mining and sugar production.The plantations English capitalists built operated differently than earlier Portuguese and Spanish systems. English plantation owners were capitalists, not feudal lords. But this was also not simply individual choice or moral character. They were operating within and being shaped by an emerging system of capitalist social relations. Here too they faced competitive pressures to increase output, reduce costs, and compete with other plantation owners. The system's logic — accumulate to accumulate more — emerged from relational dynamics between competing capitalists. The individual identities as successful plantation owners was constituted through their position within the competitive networks in which they coexisted.New location, same story. Even here this systemic shaping doesn't absolve individual responsibility for the horrors they perpetrated. Enslaved people were still kidnapped, brutalized, and worked to death. Indigenous peoples were still murdered and their lands still stolen. But understanding how the system shaped what seemed necessary or moral to those positioned to benefit helps explain how such horror could be so widespread and normalized.This normalization created new spirals:This pattern then replicated across even more geographies — Jamaica, Barbados, eventually the American South — each iteration destroying existing ways of life. As anthropologist Sidney Mintz showed, this created the first truly global capitalist commodity chain.(4) Sugar produced by enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples — on their stolen land — sweetened the tea for those English emerging factory workers — themselves recently dispossessed through enclosure.At the same time, it's worth calling attention, as Historians Walter Rodney, Guyanese, and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Malawian, have point out, that African societies weren't passive.(5,6) Some kingdoms initially engaged strategically by trading captives from rival groups and acquiring weapons. These choices are often judged harshly, but they were made by people facing threats to their very existence. They were working with frameworks developed over centuries that suddenly confronted an unprecedented system of extractive violence. Historians Linda Heywood and John Thornton show that African economic strength and political organization meant Africans often “forced Europeans to deal with them on their own terms” for centuries, even as the terms of engagement became increasingly constrained.(7) This moral complexity matters. These were real choices with devastating consequences, made by people whose capacity to perceive alternatives was constrained by their eventual oppressors amidst escalating violence by Europeans.Native American scholars have documented similar patterns of constrained agency in indigenous contexts. Historian Ned Blackhawk, Western Shoshone, shows how Native nations across North America made strategic choices — like forming alliances, adapting governance structures, and engaging in trade — all while navigating impossible pressures from colonial expansion.(8) Historian Jean O'Brien, White Earth Ojibwe, demonstrates how New England indigenous communities persisted and adapted even as settler narratives and violence worked to wipe them out of existence.(9) They were forced to make choices about land, identity, and survival within systems designed to eliminate them. These weren't failures of resistance but strategic adaptations made by people whose frameworks for understanding and practicing sovereignty, kinship, and territorial rights were being violently overwritten and overtaken by colonial capitalism.Europeans increasingly controlled these systems through superior military technology making resistance futile. Only when late 19th century industrial weapons were widely wielded — machine guns, munitions, and mechanisms manufactured through capitalism's own machinations — could Europeans decisively overwhelm resistance and complete the colonial carving of Africa, the Americas, and beyond.LOCKING-IN LASTING LOOPSOnce patterns spread and stabilize, they become increasingly difficult to change. Not because they're natural, but because they're actively maintained by those who benefit.Capitalism's expansion created geographic hierarchies that persist today: core regions that accumulate wealth and peripheral regions that get extracted from. England industrialized first through wealth stolen from colonies and labor dispossessed through enclosure. This gave English manufacturers advantages. Namely, they could sell finished goods globally while importing cheap raw materials. Colonies were forced at gunpoint to specialize in export commodities, making them dependent on manufactured imports. That dependence made it harder to develop their own industries. Once the loop closed it became enforced — to this day through institutions like the IMF and World Bank.Sociologists Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy show how these hierarchies get naturalized through moral categories that shape how people — including those benefiting from and those harmed by the system — come to understand themselves and others.(10) Core regions are portrayed as “developed,” “modern,” “efficient.” Peripheral regions are called “backward,” “corrupt,” “informal.” These aren't just ideological justifications imposed from above but categories that constitute people's identities. They shape how investors see opportunities, how policy makers perceive problems, and how individuals understand their own worth.Meanwhile, property rights established through colonial theft get treated as legitimate. They are backed by international law and written by representatives of colonial powers as Indigenous land claims continue to get dismissed as economically backward. This doesn't happen through conscious conspiracies. It's because the frameworks through which “economic rationality” itself is understood and practiced were constructed through and for capitalist social relations. People socialized into these frameworks genuinely perceive capitalist property relations as more efficient, more rational. Their (our?) very capacity to see alternatives is constrained by identities formed within the system in which they (we?) exist.These patterns persist because they're profitable for those with power and because people with power were shaped by the very system that gives them power. Each advantage reinforces others. It then gets defended, often by people who genuinely believe they're defending rationality and efficiency. They (we?) fail to fathom how their (our?) frameworks for understanding economy were forged through forceful and violent subjugation.INTERRUPTING INTENSIFICATIONViewing capitalism's complex geographies shows its evolution is not natural or even inevitable. It emerged, and continues to evolve, as a result of shifting relationships and feedbacks at multiple scales. Recognizing this eventuality creates space for imagining and building more ethical derivatives or alternatives.If capitalism emerged from particular violent interactions between people in specific places, then different interactions could produce different systems. If patterns locked in through feedback loops that benefit some at others' expense, then interrupting those loops becomes possible.Even within capitalist nations, alternative arrangements have persisted or been fought for. Nordic countries and Scotland maintain “Everyman's Right” or “Freedom to Roam” laws. These are legal traditions allowing public access to private land for recreation, foraging, and camping. These represent partial commons that survived enclosure or were restored through political struggle, showing that private property needn't mean total exclusion. Even in countries that participate in capitalist economies. In late 19th century America, Henry George became one of the nation's most widely read public intellectuals. More people attended his funeral than Abraham Lincoln's. He argued that land value increases resulting from community development should be captured through land value taxes rather than enriching individual owners. His ideas inspired single-tax colonies, urban reform movements, and influenced progressive era policies. Farmers organized cooperatives and mutual aid societies, pooling resources and labor outside pure market competition. Urban communities established settlement houses, cooperative housing, and neighborhood commons. These weren't marginal experiments, they were popular movements showing that even within capitalism's heartland, people continuously organized alternatives based on shared access, collective benefit, and relationships of reciprocity rather than pure commodity exchange.Or, consider these current examples operating at different scales and locations:Community land trusts in cities like Burlington, Vermont remove properties from speculative markets. These trusts separate ownership of the land from the buildings on it, allowing the nonprofit land trust to retain ownership of the land while selling homes at affordable prices with resale restrictions. While they're trying to break the feedback loop where rising prices displace residents, gentrification and displacement continue in surrounding market-rate housing. This shows how alternatives require scale and time to fully interrupt established feedback loops.Zapatista autonomous municipalities in Chiapas, Mexico governed 300,000 people through indigenous forms of collective decision-making, refusing both state control and capitalist markets — surviving decades of Mexican government counterinsurgency backed by US military support. In 2023, after three decades of autonomy, the Zapatistas restructured into thousands of hyperlocal governments, characterizing the shift as deepening rather than retreating from their fundamental rejection of capitalist control.Brazil's Landless Workers Movement has won land titles for 350,000 families through occupations of unused land. These are legally expropriated under Brazil's constitutional requirement that land fulfill a social function. Organizing 2,000 cooperative settlements across 7.5 million hectares, this movement has become Latin America's largest social movement and Brazil's leading producer of organic food. They're building schools, health clinics, and cooperative enterprises based on agroecology and direct democracy.(11) Still, titled arable farmland in Brazil is highly concentrated into a minuscule percent of the overall population. Meanwhile, capitalist state structures continue favoring agribusiness and large landowners despite the movement's successes with organic food production.Indigenous land back movements across North America demand return of stolen territories as restoration of indigenous governance systems organized around relationships to land and other beings rather than ownership. Through the InterTribal Buffalo Council, 82 tribes are restoring buffalo herds. The Blackfeet Nation is establishing a 30,000-acre buffalo reserve that reconnects fragmented prairie ecosystems and restores buffalo migrations crossing the US-Canada border, reclaiming transnational governance systems that predate colonial boundaries.These aren't isolated utopian fantasies, and they're not perfect, but they're functioning alternatives, each attempting to interrupt capitalism's spirals at different points and places. Still, they face enormous opposition because for some reason, existing powerful systems that claim to embrace competition don't seem to like it much.Let's face it, other complex and functional economic systems existed before capitalism destroyed them. Commons-based systems, gift economies, reciprocal obligations organized around kinship and place were sophisticated solutions to survival. And extractive and exploitive capitalism violently replaced them. Most of all them. There are still pockets around the world where other economic geographies persist — including informal economies, mutual aid networks, cooperative enterprises, and indigenous governance systems.I recognize I've clearly over simplified what is a much more layered and complex evolution, and existing alternatives aren't always favorable nor foolproof. But neither is capitalism. There is no denying the dominant forms of capitalism of today emerged in English fields through violent enclosure of shared space. It then spread through transformation of existing extraction systems into engines of competitive accumulation. And it locked in through feedback loops that benefit core regions while extracting from peripheral ones.But it also took hold in hearts and habits. It's shaping how we understand ourselves, what seems possible, and what feels “normal.” We've learned to see accumulation as virtue, competition as natural, individual success as earned and poverty as personal failure. The very category of the autonomous ‘individual' — separate, self-made, solely responsible for their own outcomes — is itself a capitalist construction that obscures how all achievement and hardship emerge from relational webs of collective conditions. This belief doesn't just justify inequality, it reproduces it by generating the anxiety and shame that compel people to rent even more of their time and labor to capitalism. Pausing, resting, healing, caring for others, or resisting continue exploitation marks them as haven chosen their own ruin — regardless of their circumstance or relative position within our collective webs. These aren't just ideologies imposed from above but the makings of identity itself for all of us socialized within capitalism. A financial analyst optimizing returns, a policy maker promoting market efficiency, an entrepreneur celebrating “self-made” innovation — these aren't necessarily cynical actors. They're often people whose very sense of self has been shaped by a system they feel compelled to reproduce. After all, the system rewards individualism — even when it's toxins poison the collective web — including the web of life.Besides, if capitalism persists only through the conscious choices of so-called evil people, then exposing their villainy should be sufficient. Right? The law is there to protect innocent people from evil-doers. Right? Not if it persists through feedback loops that shape the identities, perceptions, and moral frameworks of everyone within it — including or especially those who benefit most or have the most to lose. It seems change requires not just moral condemnation but transformation of the relationships and systems that constitute our very selves. After all, anyone participating is complicit at some level. And what choice is there? For a socio-economic political system that celebrates freedom of choice, it offers little.To challenge a form of capitalism that can create wealth and prosperity but also unhealthy precarity isn't just to oppose policies or demand redistribution, and it isn't simply to condemn those who benefit from it as moral failures. It's to recognize that the interactions between people and places that created this system through violence could create other systems through different choices. Making those different choices requires recognizing and reconstructing the very identities, relationships, and frameworks through which we understand ourselves and what's possible. Perhaps even revealing a different form of capitalism that cares.But it seems we'd need new patterns to be discussed and debated by the very people who keep these patterns going. We're talking about rebuilding economic geographies based on mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a deep connection to our communities. To each other. This rebuilding needs to go beyond just changing institutions, it has to change the very people those institutions have shaped.As fall deepens and we watch leaves and seeds spiral down, notice how each follows a path predetermined by its inherited form. Maple seeds spin like helicopters — their propeller wings evolved over millennia to slow descent and scatter offspring far from competition. Their form has been fashioned by evolutionary forces beyond any individual seed's control, shaped by gusts and gravity in environments filled with a mix of competition and cooperation — coopetition. Then reflect on this fundamental difference: Unlike seeds locked into their descent, we humans can collectively craft new conditions, consciously charting courses that climb, curl, cascade, or crash.ReferencesChibber, V., & Nashek, M. (Hosts). (2025, September 24). The origins of capitalism. [Audio podcast episode]. In Confronting Capitalism. Jacobin Radio.1. Thompson, E. P. (1971). The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century. Past & Present, 50(1), 76–136.2. Gudeman, S. (2016). Anthropology and economy. Cambridge University Press.3. Neeson, J. M. (1996). Commoners: Common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700–1820. Cambridge University Press.4. Mintz, S. W. (1985). Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history. Viking Penguin.5. Rodney, W. (1972). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Bogle-L'Ouverture.6. Zeleza, P. T. (1997). A modern economic history of Africa: The nineteenth century (Vol. 1). East African Publishers.7. Heywood, L. M., & Thornton, J. K. (2007). Central Africans, Atlantic creoles, and the foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. Cambridge University Press.8. Blackhawk, N. (2023). The rediscovery of America: Native peoples and the unmaking of US history. Yale University Press.9. OBrien, J. M. (2010). Firsting and lasting: Writing Indians out of existence in New England. U of Minnesota Press.10. Fourcade, M., & Healy, K. (2017). Seeing like a market. Socio-Economic Review, 15(1), 9–29.11. Carter, M. (Ed.). (2015). Challenging social inequality: The landless rural workers movement and agrarian reform in Brazil. Duke University Press. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Thomas Ferguson has investigated money in politics for decades, and he has found, over and over again, that money and election outcomes are directly linked. He joins Suzi to talk about how Silicon Valley, finance, defense, and crypto have fused into what he calls “red tech.” Ferguson explains why the Democrats' crisis isn't about messaging — it's about failing to deliver for working people while catering to donors. We dig into the investment theory of politics, the K-shaped recovery, crypto's bipartisan capture, and the structural impasse at the heart of the Democratic coalition. What does this new tech-capital bloc mean for labor, democracy, and the future of US politics? Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

The Roberts Court gave Trump sweeping immunity — and he's using it to intimidate critics, greenlight ICE's racial profiling raids, extort universities, law firms, corporations, and foreign governments, and crack down on political speech. Pema Levy of Mother Jones joins Suzi to unpack the landmark decision in Trump v. United States, a ruling that didn't just grant Trump protection for official acts but armed him with the ability to wield the Justice Department as a personal weapon against political rivals. It's as if the DOJ were Trump's private legal office. Levy traces how legal and political practices are converging in an authoritarianism that threatens us all. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Suzi talks to Sebastian Budgen in Paris about the collapse of Prime Minister François Bayrou's government and the “Block Everything” mobilization against Macron's austerity agenda, which brought unions, students, and grassroots activists into the streets. Another national strike is set for September 18. What makes this mobilization different — and what does the crisis mean for the Left, the far right, Macron's presidency, and the future of the Fifth Republic? Suzi then talks to Joe Allen about his new book Teamsterland, exploring the Teamsters' notoriety and contradictions, the near-strike at UPS, and how Teamsters president Sean O'Brien's embrace of Trump mirrors the challenges facing US labor today. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Suzi talked to Vermont state senator and democratic socialist Tanya Vyhovsky, just back from several weeks in Ukraine. Senator Vyhovsky traveled from Kyiv to L'viv, Kryvyi Rih, and Dnipro, meeting with trade unionists, feminists, students, and survivors of Russia's bombardment. Her visit came as Putin sat down with Trump in Alaska without Zelensky at the table. Tanya shares her eyewitness reflections and analysis of Ukraine's fight for survival, the central role of labor and grassroots organizations in keeping society alive, and why international solidarity has never been more urgent. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Labor sociologist Barry Eidlin joins Suzi to discuss the recent Air Canada strike, which has now reached a tentative agreement. The strike began when 10,000 flight attendants, organized in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), walked off the job on August 16, after months of failed negotiations. The Canadian government responded with its usual move: a back-to-work order under Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code — a provision that ostensibly regulates strikes, but is instead used to short-circuit them. But this time, something unusual happened: the workers defied the order, chanting “Forced to fly? We won't comply!” After an all-night bargaining session, they secured a tentative settlement on August 19th — showing what labor can do when it doesn't back down. We talk about the strike, the government response, its outcome, and what it portends. We'll also talk about the differences between Canadian and US unionizing and labor law, strike outcomes, and public policy. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Ukrainian left activist, historian, and soldier Vladyslav Starodubtsev joins Suzi to connect two moments, separated by more than a century, in the fight for Ukrainian self-determination. We begin with the Trump–Putin Alaska photo op summit on August 15th, an attempt to decide Ukraine without Ukraine at the table. Thankfully, a Munich in Alaska was averted, no deal was struck. We then turn to the Ukrainian People's Republic of 1917-1923, born in the revolutionary upheavals of 1905, WWI, and the February 1917 Russian Revolution. Built on grassroots power from peasants, workers, soldiers, and cooperatives, the Ukrainian People's Republic legislated sweeping land reform, gender equality, national-personal autonomy for ethnic minorities, and a cooperative economy. It did not last. Its history is tied to the larger story of revolution, civil war and defeat. Starodubtsev traces the through-line from that struggle to today's resistance: lessons on power, sovereignty, and the future of democracy. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Suzi speaks to Tariq Ali about Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's new party — provisionally called Your Party — which has surpassed Labour's membership with over 650,000 sign-ups. Your Party calls for public ownership, redistribution, and a politics rooted in communities, unions and social movements. Starmer's Labour government has nothing for the population, but billions for war and complicity in genocide. Supporters see a historic opening for the Left; critics warn it could split the vote and hand power to Nigel Farage's far-right Reform UK, which has overtaken the weakened Tories. We get Tariq Ali's assessment of Your Party's politics, prospects, and perils. Then Flor Melendrez of CLEAN Carwash, the country's first car wash worker center, talks to Suzi about the escalating ICE raids on carwasheros across Southern California. ICE uses racial profiling to conduct suspicion-less stops, warrantless home raids, and illegal workplace actions. A new class action lawsuit demands an immediate halt to these violations of the 4th and 5th Amendments of the Constitution. Flor tells us how ICE raids are hitting carwasheros in their workplaces, and how these workers are organizing to defend their jobs and families. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Suzi speaks to Yoav Peled of Tel Aviv University about the accelerating crisis in Israel and Gaza. Though there is a “humanitarian pause” in Israel's war, the relentless and devastating destruction of Gaza grinds on with staggering human costs. Gazans are starving and the world is taking notice. Netanyahu faces growing international condemnation and internal anger. Along with Israeli spokesmen and far right cabinet members, he denies there is starvation, or blames it on Hamas. Polls now show that most Israelis want the war to end and the hostages returned even if Hamas remains in power. Weekly public protests are growing, but haven't yet matched the pre-war anti-Netanyahu demonstrations. We explore the broader political implications of the war: the disarray of the opposition, the growing authoritarianism of the state, public awareness and public opinion, and the push to disqualify Arab parties from the slated October elections which Yoav thinks could come earlier. Can Netanyahu stay in power? Peled says Bibi has worked hard to remove any potential threat or successor, so “there's no government, there's no Israel, there's only Bibi.” Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

This is a recording of a panel from the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, held over July 3–6. It examines Putin's repression of critical voices, those who have publicly opposed his war of aggression against Ukraine. Boris Kagarlitsky, the well-known Marxist critic of Putin's regime, is currently serving a five year sentence in a penal colony for "justifying terrorism" – a charge stemming from a satirical comment about the Crimean bridge explosion. While Kagarlitsky's case has drawn international attention, many other leftwing critics remain imprisoned in obscurity, often held in appalling conditions. The panel was moderated by Suzi Weissman, editorial board member of Against the Current and Critique, host of the Jacobin Radio podcast and author of 'Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope'. It features contributions from Russian socialist Ilya Budtraitskis, Ksenia Kagarlitskaya, the daughter of jailed Russian Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky, Grusha Gilaeva, managing editor of Russian anti-war website Posle, and Simon Pirani, historian and researcher on Russia and Ukraine. You can read Green Left's extensive coverage of the campaign to free Boris Kagarlitsky and other jailed anti-war Russian dissidents here: https://www.greenleft.org.au/people/boris-kagarlitsky If you like our work, become a supporter: https://www.greenleft.org.au/support Support Green Left on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/greenleft Green Left online: https://www.greenleft.org.au/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/greenleftonline YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/greenleftonline TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greenleftonline Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenleftonline/ Podbean: https://greenleftonline.podbean.com/ Telegram: https://t.me/greenleftonline Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenleftaction

At the recent Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, Suzi moderated a panel about political prisoners in Russia and brings it now to Jacobin Radio. We hear from Ksenia Kagarlitskaya, founder of the Freedom Zone campaign that organizes festivals around the world in support of political prisoners and their families. She plays a recorded message from her father, imprisoned Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky in Penal Colony No. 4. Historian Simon Pirani and exiled scholar Ilya Budraitskis draw attention to the silenced left prisoners of conscience resisting war — both from inside Russia's prison system and in exile. This is not just about Russia. As authoritarianism surges globally, the criminalization of dissent follows a familiar script. The day before this panel on July 3, eleven political prisoners, including Kagarlitsky, issued an open letter to world leaders. They called for the mass release of Russian political prisoners and Ukrainian civilian hostages — an estimated 10,000 people — as part of any peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. As pressure builds for an end to the war, their call must become ours: freedom for all political prisoners! Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, just stunned the political establishment—defeating Andrew Cuomo to win New York City's Democratic mayoral primary. If elected, he'll be NYC's first Muslim mayor and the first democratic socialist to lead a major American city in generations, one that is both the epicenter of world finance and marked by extreme economic inequality. Mamdani's campaign, powered by DSA activists and 50,000 volunteers, grew from years of organizing among young progressives and working-class immigrant communities long pushed to the Party's margins, and he won across the city in nearly every constituency. Alan Minsky of Progressive Democrats of America, argues that Mamdani's win is a vindication of Bernie-era politics, the best way to fight the far right, and a challenge to the Democratic Party establishment to open its doors to America's vibrant left. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Late on June 21st, Trump joined Israel's war on Iran. Just two days after warning Iran it had two weeks to make a deal, Trump unleashed the military might of 30,000-pound bunker busters delivered by B2 bombers on Fordo, while Tomahawks struck Natanz and Isfahan. With typical bombast, Trump bragged that Iran's nuclear sites were “totally obliterated." Iranian officials, however, claim the facilities had been emptied of nuclear materials months ago. Suzi spoke to Yassamine Mather just before Trump started bombing to get her analysis of Israel's “Operation Rising Lion” — a unilateral military strike on Iran marking a dangerous new escalation in an already volatile region. The attack comes amid Israel's ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, accelerating dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank, pager bomb assassinations in Lebanon, and land grabs in Syria. Netanyahu's war cabinet is committed to military solutions on all fronts — now including Iran. Iran has retaliated deep inside Israeli territory. This is a first for Israel, and it is dangerous in every way. Although the US was fully informed of Israel's intentions, Netanyahu defied Trump's public opposition to the strike. Trump then flipped, backing Netanyahu's attack and warning Iran to make a deal or else. Now we see the 'or else.' Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

David Ost, professor of politics and Hobart and William Smith, joins Suzi to unpack Poland's June 1 presidential election. The race was tight, but in the end, Karol Nawrocki, the far-right, hardline nationalist with MAGA-style politics and Trump's backing, narrowly defeated Warsaw's liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski. After voters rejected Trumpist candidates in recent elections in Canada, Australia and Romania, Polish voters went the other way, swinging back to the hard right just two years after electing liberal leader Donald Tusk. What does this election reveal about the continuing attraction of the authoritarian and nationalist right to working class voters? Ost argues that Tusk in power promised a program of radical changes, but delivered too little, dampening enthusiasm and turnout, echoing the troubles of Biden and Harris in the US. There was also the liberal-left campaign which focused on Nawrocki's negative personal qualities, including criticism of his tough working class background, rather than his reactionary, xenophobic, chauvinist agenda — missteps that fed class resentment and fueled the far right. Populism has shown to have staying power, and center-left governance has failed to offer a durable counter. Is Poland a warning to liberal democrats everywhere? What are the implications for Ukraine, Europe and the globe? Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Journalist and author John Dinges joins Suzi to discuss his new book, Chile in Their Hearts. The book reopens the case of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi — two young Americans who went to Chile to experience the radical democratic socialist experiment of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government — and were detained and executed in the days following the brutal military takeover of September 11, 1973. The story was immortalized in Costa-Gavras' Oscar-winning film Missing, which depicted Horman as the man who knew too much about U.S. involvement in the coup. That became the widely accepted story of Horman's death, as well as that of Frank Teruggi, who was arrested, tortured and killed during the coup's brutal early days. But John Dinges, himself a young journalist who lived in Chile from 1972-1978, uncovered circumstances and facts of their cases that challenge this version as a myth. His meticulous examination of the evidence reveals the shoddy investigation of the facts and the coverup behind its false conclusions. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Juan Cole joins Suzi to break down Donald Trump's dramatic pivot in the Middle East: sidelining Israel, cozying up to Gulf monarchies, cutting billion-dollar deals, promising to lift sanctions on Syria, and exploring a new nuclear agreement with Iran. Trump vowed quick peace in Gaza and Ukraine, but neither materialized because the aggressors don't want peace. Putin wants Ukraine without Ukrainians. Netanyahu wants Gaza without Palestinians. Now he's zigzagging between billion-dollar deals and back-channel diplomacy. Is this strategic realignment, opportunism, or just more chaos? We unpack the U.S.-brokered hostage deal with Hamas that bypassed Netanyahu, the collapse of the Assad regime, and the regional powers now vying for influence over Syria's new government — amid Trump's promise to lift sanctions. Is a coherent Trump doctrine beginning to emerge? Juan Cole gives us the big-picture view. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Emil Draitser — Soviet satirist turned American memoirist — joins Suzi to talk about his new book, Laughing All the Way to Freedom: The Americanization of a Russian Émigré. It's a sharp, funny, and moving account of his journey from censorship and conformity in the USSR to the chaotic freedoms of the 1970s United States. We explore how satire served as both survival and resistance in the Soviet Union, and how his identity was reshaped — culturally, politically, and personally — through the messy process of becoming American. Emil reflects on the welcome once extended to Cold War refugees like himself, and the stark contrast with today's hostile climate for immigrants. We also touch on the uneasy “friendship” between Putin and Trump, imperialists determined to redefine the character of politics. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Suzi talks to Alan Wald, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan and a member of the academic council of Jewish Voice for Peace, to unpack the Trump offensive against higher education — a campaign that escalated after last spring's clampdown on student encampments protesting the Israel–US war on Gaza. Since October 7, universities have cracked down on protests under the guise of protecting “Jewish student safety.” What does it mean when many of those protesting are themselves Jewish? And, despite the repression, these crackdowns haven't earned universities any favor with the government. Congressional hearings forced the resignation of university presidents, and now the Trump administration is threatening to withdraw federal research funds. Columbia University buckled, while Harvard, Princeton, and others are holding the line and fighting back. At the center of it all is the redefinition and weaponization of antisemitism as a political tool used to quash criticism of Israeli policy and chill speech. This isn't just censorship. It's an authoritarian bid to impose ideological control over the academy. Alan Wald has tracked this turn — its roots, its enablers, and its eerie echoes of McCarthyism. He helps us understand where we are — and what it means. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Journalist and historian Joy Neumeyer joins Suzi from Warsaw to discuss her March 13 piece in the New York Review of Books, “Russia: Letters from the Opposition.” Last summer, Neumeyer wrote to 14 of Vladimir Putin's political prisoners — dissidents locked away in penal colonies for opposing Russia's war on Ukraine. While human rights organizations estimate that some 20,000 anti-war critics have been detained, a smaller number face trial and sentencing, disappearing into Russia's vast prison system. Neumeyer was struck by the deeply personal, often unexpected responses she received — offering a rare glimpse into the lives, fears, and resilience of those behind bars. While figures like Boris Kagarlitsky, Russia's most well-known left-wing critic, have drawn international attention — including on this podcast — many political prisoners remain unknown, their suffering largely overlooked both inside and outside Russia. Neumeyer shares the powerful insights from her correspondence, revealing not just the punishments these prisoners endure, but also their defiance, hope, and unwavering resistance. We explore Putin's escalating repression, the deeply human stories of imprisoned dissidents, and the culture of war and propaganda that fuels the political climate in Russia. And we ask a critical question: what happens to these prisoners if — and when — the war ends? Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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 remain. Organizing is up, but nowhere near the scale needed to reverse labor's trajectory. And with the Trump–Musk attack on workers' rights and MAGA's onslaught on democracy writ large, labor organizing is more important than ever. Eric Blanc, labor activist and teacher, joins Barry Eidlin to discuss his new book, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. Based on in-depth research and his own on-the-ground organizing experience, Blanc lays out what is driving the organizing upsurge, and how it provides a model for reversing labor's fortunes. Blanc sets out a vision of worker-to-worker organizing, explaining how it works and why it is labor's best and only hope for the future. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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 plan but a surrender, a betrayal of Ukraine's fight for self-determination. Denys Pilash, Grusha Gilaeva, and Howie Hawkins unpack Trump's blackmail, the consequences of a more Putin-friendly policy, what's at stake for Ukraine, and what it will mean for political prisoners and the left in Russia. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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 excluded Ukraine entirely. Trump has even embraced Putin's revisionist narrative claiming Ukraine started the war. What does this mean for Ukraine's survival, Europe's stability, and the broader left struggle against imperialism and authoritarianism? Suzi asks Zakhar and Ilya to unpack the shifting geopolitical landscape, the implications of Trump's concessions to Putin, the resilience of Ukraine, and the role of the internationalist left in an era of resurgent imperialism. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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 talks to Geologist and IFPTE local president Colin Smalley, who is part of the Federal Unionists Network, or FUN. They have called for a national day of action, an SOS — Save our Services — for February 19. We then turn to Canada, where Trump's across-the-board tariffs — though temporarily paused – threaten economic havoc with our largest trading partner, an unprecedented trade war. The promised tariffs have sparked a spontaneous national resistance across the country and across the political spectrum, uniting Canadians as never before. Canadians are fighting back against Trump's suggestion that Canada join the US as the 51st state. Suzi talks to NDP MP Charlie Angus about the power of a grassroots Canadian boycott and the ways Canadians are coming together to stop the Trump-Musk goon squad reign that threatens Canadian sovereignty. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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. Our guests today, David Cobb and Kali Akuno, are among the few who saw this moment coming years ago, and have never stopped organizing against the fascist threat. In their work, including the creation of the People's Network for Land and Liberation, they take a programmatic approach to overcoming fear through clear analysis and direct action. They aim not only to resist, but to build real infrastructure to keep people safe, meet basic needs, and cultivate the idea and practice of political and economic democracy on a mass scale. As the Italian antifascist and theorist Antonio Gramsci said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” For David and Kali, as well as for our guest host Meleiza Figueroa, the way through is not only fighting the monsters, but bringing that new world into being. We'll spend the hour with our guests discussing the nature of this current historical conjuncture, and what they have been doing to prepare the people for this very moment. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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, UCLA's long time expert on immigrant rights and low-wage workers, works in the sanctuary movement, Nana Gyamfi of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), and Aquilina Soriano-Versoza of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California explain what their Black, Latino, and Filipino led and focused coalitions are doing to counter the Trump offensive against immigrants. This is practical solidarity that builds power — and it is moving and uplifting. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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 January 23rd. Read more about the role of Gaza in the 2024 election: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/kamala-harris-gaza-israel-biden-election-poll And find our previous interviews with Akbar here: https://jacobin.com/author/akbar-shahid-ahmed Subscribe to Jacobin Radio to hear a special Long Reads series starting next month. Red Star Over Palestine will look at histories of the Palestinian left, from the Communist movement to groups like the PFLP. Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine's longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

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 Johannesburg, and Nancy Fraser, professor of philosophy and politics at the New School for Social Research, who bring to the table some difficult truths and critical questions for the global Left. After brief introductory comments from Patrick Bond, Trevor Ngwane outlines the brutal history of South Africa's turn to neoliberalism and its consequences — widespread suffering and deepening despair among ordinary people as well as a political crisis in the African National Congress. He asks what it will take to revitalize the vibrant, militant, working-class movements that once overthrew apartheid. Nancy Fraser then reflects on Kagarlitsky's analysis of the chaotic political reality we face today, and raises three central strategic questions for the Left and mass politics: How can we engage with actually existing social forces towards positive social change? How do we navigate the geopolitics of war and migration in mass movement organizing? And what could a transformative working-class movement even look like in the 21st century? Guest host Meleiza Figueroa and Alan Minsky, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, follow with a discussion of the critical insights and questions brought up by Trevor Ngwane and Nancy Fraser, and consider what this means for American politics at this particular moment in history, as we face a new year filled with uncertainty, political confusion, and deepening crisis. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Suzi recently attended 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 the 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 Callinicos, and Jayati Ghosh, present their appreciation and their critiques of Kagarlitsky's analysis of the rise of the right and the decline of the left over the last forty plus years. Our speakers address Kagarlitsky's internationalist account of left organizations across the globe that, he argues, remain stuck in the past, unable to come to terms with new realities. The speakers also address Kagarlitsky's critique of identitarian politics of difference, which makes forming broad mass political projects difficult. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

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 take on the collapse of the political center and rise of the far right worldwide, including in France and the US. What new dangers does Gilbert see for the Middle East with Trump's election? The conversation was recorded December 5. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Support the show and get the postgame shows at patreon.com/leftreckoning We are joined by NYU professor of sociology, author of "Class Matrix" & "Confronting Capitalism" and a new podcast premiering on December 4th on the Jacobin Radio feed, Vivek Chibber. Vivek breaks down the election, debunks the false consciousness argument, and talks about the middle-class problem on the left. Vivek's new podcast will be available on the Jacboin Radio feed, subscribe here to get it when it releases: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jacobin-radio/id791564318  We are joined by Lever News journalist Freddy Brewster to talk about the Crypto election bomb, how they spent, and what the industry hopes to gain under a Trump administration. Read Freddy's work and support the Lever: https://www.levernews.com/the-crypto-triad-won-the-election/

Veteran journalist Marc Cooper joins Suzi to talk about the landslide that wasn't, Trump's transition swamp, and the state of the Fourth Estate. Trump's victory is confined to the undemocratic electoral college. His winning margin in the popular vote is 1.6 percentage points, the smallest in more than 20 years. Trump may claim an historic, unprecedented mandate, but he just squeaked by. He is still dangerous but vulnerable. We talk about the danger and the chaos to come, including the threat to formal democracy.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzi talks to UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley, who has written a great deal about fascism and far right politics. The US has just elected to the Presidency a man who represents a dire threat to democracy and constitutional rule as we know it. We get Dylan's understanding of the specificity of Trump's politics, the basis of his support, and the fascistic measures favored by people in and around his party, including the frightening Project 2025. Central to MAGA is a reactionary view of gender, which sees women's advances happening at the expense of men and their traditional family role. Dylan sees Trump as more of a patrimonial misfit, a charismatic leader who rules more incoherently than a consistent fascist. We also ask how Trump fits in with analogous movements of the far right around the world.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We look at the election results that took many of us by surprise — giving Donald Trump and Republicans an across the board victory. For a look at the bigger picture, Suzi speaks to Robert Brenner, professor of history at UCLA, for analysis and some post-election blues. This podcast was recorded on November 8, before all the votes were counted along the West Coast. The final tallies will likely shrink Trump's margin of victory, but not the overall results. The striking character of the Trump victory is attributable virtually entirely by the drop off in the vote for the Democrats. We try to understand what happened, and how to analyze this shift to the right.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alan Minsky sits in for host Suzi Weissman on a special pre-election edition of Jacobin Radio. In the first half, Alan speaks with economist Mark Paul, Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University, about a California ballot measure, Prop 33, that addresses one of the top concerns of voters across the country: the cost of housing. Prop 33 would eliminate statewide restrictions on rent control measures. Predictably, a PAC supported by large real estate corporations is spending over $100 million to try to defeat it. Paul explains why the arguments made by opponents of Prop 33 are misguided, and that the measure, if passed, will provide much needed relief for over-burdened poor, working- and middle-class Californians.Then, in the second half of the show, John Nichols, the National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, talks with Alan about the homestretch of the presidential election. Just like 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump is in a virtual tie with the Democratic nominee. John reflects on the race in his home state of Wisconsin, which is once again one of the few swing states that will decide the election — and explains why the Harris campaign would be well-served by campaigning on a progressive economic and pro-labor platform.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On October 8, the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign held an online conference on “Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left.” Although Kagarlitsky is serving a five-year sentence in a Russian penal colony, he has just published a book called The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left. The conference addressed Kagarlitsky's wide-ranging analysis of the left's dilemmas in the face of multiple global crises, including the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. We will bring the whole conference to Jacobin Radio with a stellar lineup of international scholars and activists.Today we hear the panel “Imperialism(s) Today,” looking at the nature of imperialism historically and in the present. Robert Brenner begins with the theory of imperialism from before WWI through the post-war period and up to the present, essentially arguing that in the present period of American hegemony, imperialism is the weapon of weaker powers. Ilya Matveev follows by examining three theorists of imperialism—Lenin, Schumpeter, and Mearsheimer—and looks at the Russian case through the lens of their different theories. Hanna Perekhoda, originally from Donetsk in the contested Donbas region, examines Putin's view of Ukraine as a creation by Russia's enemies. According to Putin, Lenin's support of the self-determination of Ukraine divided Russia, preventing it from becoming a leading power in the world. For proponents of this view, Russian sovereignty is under threat so long as Ukraine exists.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The rise of the labor movement in the US constitutes one of the brightest spots on the political horizon. Auto workers were joined by academic workers, actors, writers, hotel workers, UPS teamsters won without striking, and union drives have hit Amazon, Starbucks, universities and other sectors. Are these union drives and strikes opening a new period, igniting a newly energized working class?Live from the Progressive Central conference held in Chicago before the Democratic National Convention, Jacobin Radio features an all-women panel of labor leaders and champions celebrating "Organized Labor on the Rise: the 2020s and Beyond." This panel, introduced by Alan Minsky and Hartsell Gray of Progressive Democrats of America, opens with Nina Turner on overcoming racism in the labor movement, followed by Saru Jayaraman from One Fair Wage and UC Berkeley's Food Labor Research Center, Sara Nelson, President of CWA's flight attendants union, and Stacey Davis Gates, President of the Chicago Teachers Union.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yoav Peled, Professor Emeritus of Tel Aviv University, is able to speak to us again for the first time since 2023. He helps chart the evolution of Israeli politics since the October 7 attack by Hamas, which was quickly followed by Israel's devastating war on Gaza, showing total disregard for the lives of Palestinians. That war is now extending to the North as Israel unleashes terror in Lebanon. And in Israel, the reverberations of October 7 continue to affect domestic politics. It also has created divisions within the Jewish community in the US. We get Yoav's analysis of the mood in Israel, what the massive demonstrations against Netanyahu signal, and the relationship between the expanding war and Israeli party politics. We'll also get Yoav to discuss his research on the rise of ethno- and religio-national populism, especially among the Mizrahim, who form the base of the Likud and the far right.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bernie Sanders delivered the keynote speech at Progressive Central 2024, a conference held at the Chicago Teachers Union building just ahead of the Democratic National Convention. The two-day event posed progressive solutions to the crises undermining contemporary society and politics — many things missing from the convention itself.The session, introduced by Alan Minsky of Progressive Democrats of America (and producer of this podcast), opens with remarks from Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, followed by features Senator Bernie Sanders in dialogue with The Nation's John Nichols. Lastly, we hear from Representative Maxwell Frost. Progressive Central 2024 was hosted by PDA in coordination with The Nation, The Arab American Institute, and Operation Rainbow/PUSH.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Journalist Marc Cooper and historian Robert Brenner, two long-time left socialists, join Suzi to talk about the state of the election after a knockout convention that lifted spirits and Kamala Harris' chances to defeat Trump. The convention was historic in several ways: it was pro-union and the speakers were younger and more openly progressive on issues that matter. It also appeared to unite the old neoliberal wing of the party with the more radical base, emphasizing unity in the fight to protect the freedoms under attack. Judging by the polls, candidates Harris-Walz successfully walked the delicate tightrope that is internal Democratic politics but this meant downplaying both Palestinian issues and climate catastrophe. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russian dissident activists and scholars Ilya Budraitskis and Grusha Gilayeva last spoke to us after the Marxist critic Boris Kagarlitsky lost his appeal and was sent to a penal colony on a trumped-up charge of “justifying terrorism.” A few days later, Alexei Navalny died. Suzi talks to Ilya and Grusha to get their views about the complex multi-prisoner swap that happened at the start of this month and what it represents.Kremlin spies, sleepers, and killers imprisoned in the west were exchanged for prisoners held in Russia's penal colonies, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, British-Russian Vladimir Kara Murza, and Russians Ilya Yashin, Oleg Orlov and others. Sixteen have been exchanged. More than a thousand are still in prison. Millions remain in Russia. Of the Russian prisoners, Ilya Yashin was forcibly removed from Russia and exchanged against his will. Vladimir Kara Murza has vowed to return to Russia. We'll hear more about the politically courageous Russians who were held (and now exchanged) for speaking out against Putin's savage war in Ukraine like Yashin, Orlov, and Kara Murza. We'll also ask what it means for Putin: will he continue to hold hostage human “assets” to be exchanged? Does the timing of the exchange signal Putin favors a Harris presidency over another Trump term?Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzi talks to writer Micah Sifry, who covers US & Middle East politics on his Substack newsletter The Connector, about whether he thinks a Harris presidency could change the dynamic of the Israel-US relationship, what it will mean for the war on Gaza, as well as Netanyahu's political survival. The withdrawal of Biden from the presidential race has upended what looked like a death march to a Trump/Vance victory. Netanyahu's dreadful speech to the joint session of Congress on July 24, boycotted by half the Democratic caucus in both houses, including VP Kamala Harris, highlights the opportunity she has to win back the votes of those who threatened to stay home unless the US stop funding Israel's wars — an opening that is particularly important in the swing state of Michigan. Micah Sifry untangles all these threads, which constitute what he sees as the black hole of foreign policy.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second round of elections in France and in Iran both yielded surprise results that we could characterize as historic, especially in France, and to be seen in Iran. Sebastian Budgen returns to discuss the French results, which upset Le Pen's far right RA and Macron's Center, putting the left New Popular Front in the strongest position in Parliament. How were the various organizations of the left able to come together so quickly in their new alliance? How did they achieve agreement with the center to get candidates in constituencies with 3 or 4 candidates to withdraw so that only the strongest candidate could face down the RA rightist candidate? What comes next? With the left now the majority force in France's parliament, we get Sebastian's take on the challenges it faces in implementing the popular proposals in their platform — and whether they can continue the alliance with the center to thwart the right.Suzi also talks to Yassamine Mather to get her views on the surprise result in Iran's second round. At a moment when the hardliners seemed fully in control, the Iranian people elected Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate reformer, as President. He won with 3 million votes over the regime insider and hardliner Ali Jalili, who mouthed all the regime's hardline positions on internal security and foreign policy. It is a dramatic turn of events signaling the population's desire for change. Pezeshkian focused on social reforms, economic improvement and renewed nuclear negotiations — and won, but his success depends on the Supreme Leader's approval. We get Yassamine's understanding of this result and ask if it sets the stage for potential change in Iran where the nation is grappling with deep-seated discontent, geopolitical turmoil, a crippled economy, rampant corruption, and a repressive regime.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Journalist Marc Cooper and historian Robert Brenner join Suzi in conversation following the painful first presidential debate held on June 27. Most of the immediate post mortems are panicked responses and calls for Biden to step out of the race. We go beneath the surface to parse the issues discussed or omitted, and ask what they think is now possible in the remaining months before the election. We also look at the way CNN handled, or mishandled, the debate itself, with no attempt to fact check or challenge falsehoods. Finally we look at the danger of a possible second Trump term for the US and the world.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sebastian Budgen, Editorial Director of Verso Books, splits his time between London and Paris. He joins us to discuss the surprising elections called in each country.In the UK, Rishi Sunak called a general election for July 4 at what seems like the worst time for Tory rule. And across the pond, Emmanuel Macron called a snap election in France for June 30 and July 7 after Marine Le Pen's far right Rassemblement National swept the European elections on June 9. He didn't have to do it, any more than Sunak did, though Macron's government isn't teetering like Sunak's.Why now? Conventional wisdom holds that Macron called the election after the right trounced the center in the European elections because he was certain the divisions in the left would make him the rational choice, apparently betting that the center can hold. But the left responded to this new reality, getting its act together and forming a New Popular Front consisting of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Insoumise, the Parti Socialiste, the Greens, and the Communist Party. According to the NYT on June 21, the new coalition is increasingly well-positioned to form a new government that could weaken Macron's grip on power.In the UK, PM Rishi Sunak called a general election for July 4 at a terrible time for his government. Whereas Macron is unpopular, Sunak's Tories are falling apart after fourteen years in power. What's behind both these elections? What are the possible outcomes? To get a deeper analysis and perspective, we turn to Sebastian Budgen in Paris.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Jacobin Radio, guest host Barry Eidlin assesses the most recent Labor Notes conference held near Chicago from April 19-21. The Labor Notes conference is the premier gathering of rank-and-file labor activists and organizers from across the U.S. and around the world. This year's conference was the biggest yet, with over 4,700 people gathered to hear the latest on organizing strategy and contract victories. In a bit of serendipity, Labor Notes conference goers got to watch live the vote tallies coming in from a union election at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The United Auto Workers won an historic 3-to-1 victory, organizing the first foreign-owned auto transplant in the South.What does this year's Labor Notes conference tell us about the state of the U.S. labor movement, and what lies ahead? Barry discusses these questions and more with two long-time Labor Notes conference organizers, Alexandra Bradbury and Jane Slaughter.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On June 5, Boris Kagarlitsky's appeal against a five-year prison sentence was rejected by the Russian Supreme Court's Military Chamber. Kagarlitsky must now serve his sentence in a penal colony in Torzhok some 155 miles northwest of Moscow. The decision was unjust, but not unexpected.Kagarlitsky spent nearly five months in pre-trial detention, charged with "justifying terrorism" for ironic remarks he made on his social media channel after the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in 2022. He was freed after a military court handed him a fine in December. But in February 2024, there was an unexpected appeal trial at a military court of appeals where the prosecutors overturned the December verdict that freed him, citing excessive leniency.During the June 5 appeal hearing, Kagarlitsky explained that the title of the offending YouTube video, “Explosive Congratulations for Mostik the Cat” — a reference to a real cat that lived on the Crimea bridge — was “an extremely unfortunate joke.” He argued that his jail term was disproportionate to the offense. Kagarlitsky's attorney plans to appeal the verdict with Russia's Constitutional Court on the grounds that his client received “excessive” punishment.The case against Boris Kagarlitsky is indicative: He received five years not for the content of the video, but for the words of its title. The judges' cruel decision reflects the determination of the Putin regime to crush domestic opposition to its war on Ukraine. This is a state bent on suppressing all forms of criticism, jokes included. In this context, the basic democratic and legal rights of anti-war activists like Boris Kagarlitsky and thousands of others count for very little.Boris Kagarlitsky is in prison for courageously speaking out against the war in Ukraine. He is the victim of a gross but entirely deliberate miscarriage of justice and has become a symbol of the struggle for the right to freedom of expression. He is a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience.Ilya Budraitskis, another Putin critic, was dismissed from his job at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and forced to flee Russia to avoid arrest for his active critique of the war in Ukraine and consistent opposition to Putin's regime. He joins us with his take on the fate of opposition in Russia and the case of Boris Kagarlitsky in general.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzi talks to Isabel Kain at UC Santa Cruz, Marie Salem at UCLA, and Anna Weiss at USC — all UAW academic workers — about the unprecedented labor action on their campuses and the violent response from police called in by their administrations.We recorded the interview with Isabel at UCSC as the police in riot gear moved into the campus. Santa Cruz was the first to go on strike and unlike the other UC campuses, the administration was passive and did not call in the police. Until 1am on May 31. At the heart of the action is the war in Gaza, which has inflicted unspeakable suffering and carnage, provoking widespread actions in solidarity with Palestine on campuses. New movements organized in encampments have demanded an immediate ceasefire and university divestment from companies tied to Israel's war and occupation. The response from the administration at UCLA in particular was brutal. They called in police who assaulted the encampment and stood back when a mob of white nationalists and neo-Nazis joined forces with Zionists to attack the camp, whose residents included a large number of Jewish students.Outraged grad students at UC, organized in UAW Local 4811, have launched a strike, turning the right to protest and freedom of speech into a labor issue. The local represents some 48,000 postdocs, teaching assistants, academic and student researchers across the UC system. At USC, academic workers filed an Unfair Labor Practices (ULP) after five grad student members were arrested on campus during the crackdown on the protests. We get the story.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.