Very sleek stuff, but reading the analysis gives bad vibes - what is their deal? Trot stuff? Can someone give me a good workup (I'm lazy)?
They let all kinds of leftists write stuff, but the overall vibe is IMO more academic-brained bad rather than Trotskyist, trot vibes are a little bit funnier.
They let some dipshit write an article titled "Why socialists shouldn't abandon liberalism" or something lmao
Yeah! The vibe is so weird, I'll be looking at an elegant graph demonstrating income inequality and the next page is an article like that
It's academia brained "acceptable" socialist rhetoric. They are allowed to point out iniquities but when it comes to discussing What Is To Be Done
they limit themselves to liberal electoral politics and cannot offer anything revolutionary because when it comes down to it they are almost entirely wealthy intelligentsia afraid of risking their cushy ivory tower positions.wealthy intelligentsia
What's funny about this is that academics are cushy but they're not even close to the wealth and power of the bourgeoisie. Yet another case of a group of people captured by liberalism because they earn a bit more than everyone else.
Let alone Jacobin for a second:
You think getting one article placed in a magazine makes you wealthy intelligentsia? Lol how much do you think writers make?
Unless they are already independently famous as an author, or it's a mega publication, the author of most magazine articles you've read probably made somewhere between 2 and low-4 figures for weeks worth of work
yeah this is true. Jacobin might trend a bit wealthier than a similarly (small) sized general interest mag, and intelligentsia I would say applies to the majority of their writers regardless (as professors and think tank people,) even if though they probably aren't wealthy. Article writing itself is generally not lucrative, and honestly neither is most levels of academia.
It'd be convenient if they were just rich but I think they're mostly genuine libs. It is probably still true that they would risk their jobs by advocating revolutionary actions
I think there's also simply the problem that magazine editors today will not print "I would like to behead my landlord", and that magazine may not even be its own landlord to be able to print that. What makes it into published periodicals is not necessarily the most left thought the author or the editor has ever had.
That's a good point, like they allowed some nerd-brained dudes read the cliffnotes of Marxism and then locked them in a room with a high grade printer and the 1968 Encyclopedia Britanniaca
Bhaskar Sunkara created Jacobin specifically with the intent of making Marxism more academic and aimed at the intelligentsia.
If you think that sounds like an attempt to sequester Marxism away from the proletariat by concealing it with obscurantist language and focusing on topics that are divorced from the concerns of the working class in order to strip all revolutionary potential from Marxism, well have you ever considered that maybe Kautsky was right all along?
Bhaskar Sunkara created Jacobin specifically with the intent of making Marxism more academic and aimed at the intelligentsia.
Menshevism then
is that true? it's really not a very highbrow publication, and it's not like marxists need help being obscurantist
There was a quote from him about Jacobin wanting to be highbrow from a long time ago. I have probably read two Jacobin articles since the early days of the publication so I'm not sure where it's at today tbh.
Sunkara is a curious figure because he either changes his position a lot, he says what his interviewer wants to hear, or he is intentionally concealing what his goals are. He vacillates from being a loyal opposition Democrat supporter to a revolutionary communist to a person who extols the virtues of social democracy and European welfare capitalism. It could be that he's just flattering whoever hosts him or that he's trying to sugarcoat his words so that his message is well-received by the audience of the publication in question idk. I haven't bothered to look closely enough to try getting a decent read on the guy.
Maybe obscurantist was a poor choice of words on my part but in that old quote he was saying that he wanted to make a socialist publication that was slick and intellectual. So if I gave the impression that he said he wanted to rival French philosophers or the Frankfurt School for their obscuranism then that's my bad.
No, worse, Kautskytes: https://jacobin.com/2019/04/karl-kautsky-democratic-socialism-elections-rupture
orthodox marxists. Kautsky before 1910 was not bad and he published a lot of Engels writings
Jacobin is like the DSA, all over the place and often quite shit
Even the other trots dunk on them, e.g. WSWS - Jacobin magazine embraces Trump administration’s murderous “herd immunity” policy
As long as they're not talking about how communist AES is WSWS has fairly good takes.
- Show
Confusingly takes on Epstein seem fine from the briefest of skims
CW: SA
I don't find it surprising, it's a typical patriarchy enjoyer take to denounce the most egregious sex pests to protect the rest. Only the most unhinged incels will openly call for their right to assault people, but a lot of men are way too comfortable with the kind of culture that enabled Weinstein and Spacey because they - often correctly - have a hunch that they themselves did clearly boundary violating things to their dates in the past and are scared they'll get called out for that.
WSWS published a series of articles defending Roman Polanski and a bunch of stuff against #MeToo. I don't think they have good takes outside AES either. I believe that they think feminism is "identity politics" and a distraction from revolution, which will somehow unify the whole working class without addressing the special problems within its constituent blocs. Common L.
I think they're closer to where the DSA was maybe 6-7 years ago when it was basically an amalgam of social democratic aims and means with Trotskyist analysis.
it's literally called Jacobin, they're liberals don't overthink this
They have good takes and bad takes, when it comes to socialist advocacy I don't think Jacobin is really something worth getting upset over
they have everyone from liberals to soc-dems to actual communists
Ye Jacobin by name, give an ear, give an ear,
Ye Jacobin by name, give an ear,
Ye Jacobin by name,
Your fautes I will proclaim,
Your doctrines I maun blame, you shall hear, you shall hear Your doctrines I maun blame, you shall hearTo liberals you do bow, lend an ear lend an ear
To liberals you do bow, lend an earTo liberals you bow, with avaricious caw
Your unbecoming trows bring your traitors heart to shewYour base revision open and clear, yes it's clear. Your base revision open and clear
The poor you do betray, lend an ear, lend an ear The poor you do betray lend an ear.
The poor you do betray, with everything you say
Your articles to bray your contempt throughout the day.Your editors are craven with fear, yes with fear Your editors are craven with fear.
Jacobin is by and large good. As another commenter pointed out, they give space to all kinds of lefties. That leads to some pretty lib takes now and then, especially in the online edition. If tendencial purity or hard-line anti-electoralism is your chief desire then sure, not for you. But I think generally it's good for promoting left unity, discussing historical and current events, propagating trade union news &c. It's probably the closest we've got to a mass left publication in the US.
I think it's pretty broad, has different kinds of leftist. Haven't read it much either (I'm lazy)
The glossy cover and infographics are cool, but reading the articles makes you go "huh?"
