The arguments of Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics, which first appeared in Jacobin, sparked debate across the political spectrum. Here he responds to critics and explores how a “strategy of patience” could help the Left escape its hyperpolitical impasse.

Before the end of this year, the United States will have broken two political records. According to the organizers’ own estimates, No Kings Day on March 28 was the largest single-day protest in recent American history. At the same time, no US president has so successfully enriched himself in office as Donald Trump has — 2026 is set to be the most lucrative year of his career so far.

The concept of “hyperpolitics” is an attempt to explain these coincident phenomena. It describes a process of repoliticization without reinstitutionalization that has overtaken every layer of society in the wake of the 2008–9 crash. This surge in political activity has been organizationally uneven, difficult to relate to historical precedents, and, more worryingly, has no guaranteed effect on power relations between elites and masses.

In its current iteration, the idea first emerged in Jacobin, where it provoked a lively debate. Published in monograph form four years later, Hyperpolitics has also met with varied engagement, both critical and laudatory, from writers across the political spectrum. Even the misreadings have been productive.

Part of the reason for returning to these criticisms is that the conversations the book has spawned are not purely of academic interest. Instead, they carry strategic import for the Left, since the book closed on a fundamental question: What can facilitate the rebuilding of class power in the new century, and what locks the Left in the hyperpolitical morass?

Our new issue, “The New Empire,” argues that under Donald Trump, US imperialism is making itself felt in its most blatant and dangerous forms. Alongside tariffs, trade wars, and “America First” rhetoric, Trump’s intensification of military and economic coercion has been catastrophic.

Trump and his allies have dispensed with the language of nation-building and humanitarian intervention once used to justify American aggression. In its place is a more brazen politics of military force and personalized dealmaking.

This isn’t the behavior of a resurgent power, however. These are the tactics of an empire that has grown far less confident.

Beyond Trump, we ask why the erosion of US dominance has generated more violence rather than less, why militarism remains so durable at home, and which institutions still sustain American power. We examine NATO, the global role of the dollar, the arms industry, and the prospects for a renewed left internationalism capable of dismantling empire and capital alike.

“The New Empire” is for socialists confronting these questions and the urgent need to challenge US power in all its military, political, and economic forms.

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