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)?
It’s all Trots right?
I literally spit my drink everywhere what the fuck lol
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
The name:
JacobinThe character of the writing:
Narodnik
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.
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
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.
As long as they’re not talking about how communist AES is WSWS has fairly good takes.
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
I prefer Teen Vogue.
No, worse, Kautskytes: https://jacobin.com/2019/04/karl-kautsky-democratic-socialism-elections-rupture
They still exist?
How is anyone still a Kautskyite in the year of our Lord 2024?
Actually, Kautsky wasn’t that bad
I know one IRL, he’s in local DSA leadership
Of course the DSA of all orgs would harbor modern Kautskyites.
they have everyone from liberals to soc-dems to actual communists
Jacobin, don’t you mean Yakubian?
They come out on the side of the US state dept too often.
More like jack off in a bin
Wish they were.
BTW anyone can send articles there so while i like to dunk on their shitty takes i think it would be more constructive if ppl just started sending in articles debunking the shitty takes (theres a good chance they wont publish them tho but then again there are other places you can send them).
What i want to say is, ive been in this space for about seven years and id love it if the relentless critiques people can muster up here would leak from the commentariat to the surface.
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?”
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.
Nice song, I think this is Scots…
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.
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
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.
Okay that’s the bingo
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.