Jacobin editorial digest

View in Browser OCT. 1 Economic democracy is at the heart of socialism The following is adapted from The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World by Mike Beggs, Ben Burgis, and Bhaskar Sunkara, available for order on the Jacobin website. In 1872, British courts prosecuted more than seventeen thousand workers for a single offense: leaving their jobs. Under the Master and Servants Acts, wage laborers who quit before the end of an agreed term or who merely refused to show up to work could be sentenced to three months of hard labor. Employers who violated the same rule, by withholding wages or firing someone without notice, owed just a civil debt. Across the 1860s and early 1870s, as the labor market tightened and approached full employment, the number of prosecutions rose. Even before the eight-hour day became one of organized labor’s defining demands, one of the British trade union movement’s earliest sustained legislative campaigns was to end the criminal punishment of workers who left their jobs. They won that right in 1875, when workers were finally allowed to sell their time and withdraw at will, coerced though they still were by the mute compulsion of economic relations. Today even socialist critics of capitalism count the freedom to leave a job as one of the basic liberties that separates a wage earner from a serf. But we need to demand more. Decisions about labor discipline, the pace of work, shift length, and how the proceeds are divvied up belong unambiguously to workers. While past struggles secured us the freedom of exit, the freedom to not be jailed for simply walking out of our workplaces, it left untouched the question of who rules within them when we have no choice but to stay. Keep reading Here’s the latest… The freedom and flourishing of children were central to Marx’s vision of human emancipation and his critique of capitalism. From the print issue: The Barack Obama Presidential Center promised to be more than an ode to the former president. In reality, it’s an $850 million monument to the vacuousness that defined Obama liberalism. The first computers were designed with labor discipline in mind. Today’s AI industry is finishing the job, and young white-collar workers are already paying the price. Subscribe to get our must-read issue on empire Get four issues for $20 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. 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 challenging 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. Subscribe Confronting Capitalism: What Makes a Marxist? Karl Marx famously declared that he was not a Marxist. But his theoretical work spawned many branches of research, political movements, and heated debate. Can we identify a set of unifying ideas that make up Marxism? On this latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek look at the foundations of Marx’s writing and explain how Marxism has both developed and degenerated over the past century. Listen Jacobin Roundup is a weekly newsletter you can receive by email. To opt out of emails like this one and other promotions, manage your email preferences. To stop receiving all email communications, unsubscribe.