The ABCs of Jacobin

[Dowwie]

While I think it is important to consider arguments across the entire political spectrum, reading Jacobin takes effort. It promotes a fictional world view where a command and control society makes purely altruistic, utilitarian decisions to maximize economic and social equality. Good and evil are too quickly ascribed to actors without consideration of attribution error. There is too much black and white thinking..

[peisistratos]

> a command and control society

If peacetime USA 2018 is not an industrialized command and control society, I don't know what is. The difference is all is geared towards the heirs who expropriate surplus labor time, instead of those of us who work and create wealth.

[djrobstep]

If your version of "across the political spectrum" stops short of democratic socialism, perhaps it's time to try harder to expand your mind.

[abvdasker]

The quality and depth of the writing in Jacobin's stories is what keeps me coming back. They go very in-depth in each story and aren't afraid to use a diction that's probably a bit more academic than the average American is comfortable with. Each piece is exactly as long as it needs to be, and they don't dumb down the content or try to soften their ideological views the way most mainstream publications do.

I especially love that the subject matter is political but not reactionary, taking a longer view of social and economic issues rather than just producing articles focused solely on the outrage of the week. Only the writing in The New Yorker is better.

[zozbot123]

> I especially love that the subject matter is political but not reactionary

And for those who do like reactionary subject matter, there is a nice alternative publication - which is of course named Jacobite https://jacobitemag.com/

[shanghaiaway]

It's a leftist publication, of course it's not reactionary. It's Marxist, of course it uses obscure language.

[fancyfish]

The graphic design of Jacobin is what always stands out to me. There is sort of a retro playful feel to the cover art and images inside. And a mix of different typefaces from article to article. Not to mention the articles themselves are printed on a variety of paper types within a single issue, from glossy and thin to thicker with a fold-out.

One of the few print magazines where I enjoy physically flipping through the pages.

https://coverjunkie.com/cover-categories/best-of-the-rest/ja...

[yellowbuilding]

Jacobin is one sharp publication. Baskar runs a tight ship, and somehow the books are even in order! Who would have thought?

[Ar-Curunir]

This article gives me the feeling that the folks who run Jacobin have a "holier-than-thou" attitude towards the rest of the left. I get the feeling that they look down upon more idealistic leftists, and think of themselves as pragmatic and grounded, a quality they deem that the rest of the left lacks.

Might be the way the article is written (it seems to try hard to portray Jacobson's success as a demonstration of capitalism's successes), but there definitely seems to be an underlying kernel of truth. Turns me off of Jacobin even more.

[wazoox]

Jacobin is really good and Catalyst, its long form companion publication, is even better. They're certainly surprisingly radical for the US; they're "leftists" in the European sense (not in the US sense, where a light-pink centrist such as Bernie Sanders is seen as some sort of rabid Bolshevik by many).

[ahartmetz]

IMO, more ethics of responsibility instead of ethics of conviction is exactly what is needed. Because "right-think" does not improve people's lives, but results do. They have every right to feel superior over lazy thinkers who just subscribe to some currently fashionable belief system including the crazy parts.

[tuxmascot]

A large portion of the radical left feels this way about Jacobin. I enjoy some of their articles, but it doesn't come without critique.

Famously, a post-leftist, anarchist organization called "Crimethinc" published an essay called "Your Politics Are Boring As Fuck"[0] which addressed some of the problems with the attitudes of "Jacobin Leftists". I really like this quote:

> The truth is, your politics are boring to them because they really are irrelevant. They know that your antiquated styles of protest — your marches, hand held signs, and gatherings — are now powerless to effect real change because they have become such a predictable part of the status quo. They know that your post-Marxist jargon is off-putting because it really is a language of mere academic dispute, not a weapon capable of undermining systems of control. They know that your infighting, your splinter groups and endless quarrels over ephemeral theories can never effect any real change in the world they experience from day to day. They know that no matter who is in office, what laws are on the books, what “ism”s the intellectuals march under, the content of their lives will remain the same. They — we — know that our boredom is proof that these “politics” are not the key to any real transformation of life. For our lives are boring enough already!

0. https://crimethinc.com/2000/09/11/your-politics-are-boring-a...

[barking]

I googled Jacobin and on the results noticed a tweet from the Jacobin account

Angela Merkel has resigned as CDU leader. Her failed promises of "prosperity for all" are leading to the disintegration of the traditional mass parties.

Reads bit sacred scripturey to me, as in Marx tells us in chapter X verse XX

I wonder if they address one another as comrade?

[geofft]

And? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make / what you're trying to communicate.

[adwhit]

The left regularly address each other as "comrade", albeit sometimes a little tongue-in-cheek. Solidarity is an important and necessary part of the culture, given the odds are heavily stacked against them.

[ghostcluster]

To name your magazine after the frenzied murderous excess of the French Revolution reminds me of how rabidly violent the far left is. And when we have so many examples of radical collectivism leading to mass suffering (much of humanity's gains in the last 40 years can be traced to China's rejection of it in the late 1970s), and an intellectual foundation based on patently false dogma like Marx's 'labor theory of value'.. I wish the left would adopt some new role models and theory based on reality

[dang]

Please keep generic ideological flamewar off this site. I realize the article is tempting in that direction, but there's also an interesting story there and plenty of specifics.

"Frenzied murderous excess" of whoever is the last thing the internet has anything new to say about, and in addition to being tediously repetitive, these discussions get hostile very quickly. Those are two reasons why they're off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[Synaesthesia]

Yeah the Kingdom of France didn't have mass suffering or murderous excesses ... That wasn't shocking to the elite at the time, but people taking power were.

In principle, a democracy with mistakes is better than an enlightened monarchy.

Look at how the US has done business with tyrants, their foreign policy has a terrible record.

[Ar-Curunir]

If you'd bother to read the linked article or to do a moment's research, you would have learned that the magazine is not named after the French Jacobins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(magazine)#Title_and_l...