Jacobin weekly editorial digest

View in Browser OCT. 13 Where are the Democratic Socialists of America going? The following was first published in Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy. Click here to subscribe today for just $20 to get the new issue and full access to our back catalog. The history of the American left is marked by imposing peaks and valleys. Over the last century and a half, organizations have sprung up and, often within a decade of their founding, become major institutions of US politics. They have typically declined nearly as quickly, with few sustaining their positions in American society longer than a decade or so. The Populist Party emerged in the early 1890s, won nearly 10 percent of the vote in the 1892 presidential election, and had largely disappeared by 1900. The Communist Party, founded in 1919, reached about seventy-five thousand members in the mid-1940s, only to collapse, through repression and its own mistakes, to under ten thousand by the end of the 1950s. The trajectories of the Knights of Labor, the Socialist Party, and Students for a Democratic Society, despite their different structures and purposes, are all strikingly similar. In the last decade, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has formed a new peak in this landscape. Growing rapidly since 2016, the group jumped from about 6,500 members in 2014 (with a median age of sixty-eight) to over one hundred thousand members (with a median age of about thirty-three) in 2026. At the same time, the group has elected hundreds of members and endorsed candidates to offices from county boards to US Congress. In its size and impact, it now sits with the most significant institutions of the American left. What accounts for this ascent, and what does it portend? Answering these questions requires resisting two temptations that have shaped much of the commentary on DSA. The first is triumphalism, the assumption that the organization’s growth is the leading edge of an irreversible socialist revival and that its trajectory can only continue upward. The second is the mirror image of this, a declinism that reads each of the group’s many internal crises as the beginning of the end. Both err in the same way: they mistake the story of a single organization for that of a whole political conjuncture. Keep reading Here’s the latest… In studying with Anwar Shaikh, economist Howard Botwinick learned that Karl Marx’s account of capitalist competition is far richer than his critics assumed. That insight, Botwinick argues in an interview, offers the working class a road map to victory. The message from United Auto Workers members in their recent internal elections, in which President Shawn Fain and his slate are poised to win big, is clear, argues former Fain Chief of Staff Chris Brooks: they want their union to keep fighting. Part of Karl Marx’s project was a thoroughgoing critique of capitalism as a system of exploitative social relations. But he also thought seriously about the essential place of work in the good life. Order a copy of American Socialist: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V. Debs (Hardcover) — only a few left! Order a copy for $29.95 Written by former Jacobin editor Shawn Gude, this is the first popular biography of Eugene Debs, the railroad worker turned radical visionary whose leadership helped elect more than a thousand Socialists across the country during the Progressive Era and inspired generations of Americans to fight back against the power of the rich over our politics and our lives. We only have a few copies left, so be sure to order yours today. Order Long Reads: Telling the truth about Biden and Gaza with Akbar Shahid Ahmed After three years of slaughter in Gaza, some leading officials of the Biden administration are trying to justify their record. Figures like Antony Blinken and Brett McGurk have been on media tours recently giving their version of the story. Meanwhile Akbar Shahid Ahmed, diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Sun, has been