Jacobin Radio Folgen

Featuring Melinda Cooper on Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. Balanced budget conservatism and supply side populism engineered a politics of austerity and budget deficits. Deep cuts to the social wage like welfare reform disciplined labor so severely that Fed chair Alan Greenspan opened the floodgates of easy money confident it would juice the price of assets alone. Assets like homes, the value of which spiraled ever upward until the global financial crisis. The crash made the politics of revolutionary conservatism that dominate us today with MAGA. But the crisis also revealed powerful monetary tools that we could wield to make socialism—if only we organize the power necessary to seize them. The second in a two-part series. Call in to leave a question for The Dig’s mailbag episode: speakpipe.com/ListenerMailbag Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Get your first month free at OVID.tv using promo code DIG25 Visit dropsitenews.com/DIG20 for 20% off an annual Drop Site subscription The Dig goes deep into politics everywhere, from labor struggles and political economy to imperialism and immigration. Hosted by Daniel Denvir.

In this tumultuous political era, it’s common to hear that the Left needs to rebuild its historic sources of power. But it’s more accurate to say that the Left is essentially in the process of starting over again. On this episode of Confronting Capitalism, we share Vivek Chibber’s keynote address at the Jacobin conference, “Socialism in Our Time,” which marked the 15th anniversary of the magazine. He discusses how capitalism has changed since the turn of the century, how the Left has been neoliberalized, and why Zohran Mamdani’s campaign may point in a new direction. The latest issue of Catalyst is out and you can subscribe for just $20 using the code CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM: https://catalyst-journal.com/subscribe/?code=CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM Have a question for us? Write to us by email:  confronting.capitalism@jacobin.com Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

At the end of September, political theorist Ilya Matveev joined the Critique editorial board to present his ideas about imperialism in the 21st century. Suzi Weissman moderated that enlightening discussion and brings it now to Jacobin Radio. Matveev examines the emerging era of inter-imperialist rivalry and asks what’s really driving the strategies of Russia, China, and the United States. China has risen as a manufacturing superpower, with national capital tightly fused to the party-state. Russia, in a neo-fascist turn, has shattered the global free-trade order with its invasion of Ukraine. The United States, still unmatched in military and financial power, confronts both as rivals even as Trump’s second administration dismantles the alliances and institutions that once underpinned American primacy. What theories of imperialism can help us make sense of this fractured world order? Matveev argues that to grasp today’s disjointed global system, we must reckon not only with the structural contradictions of capitalism but also with the sovereign decisions and ideological projects of political elites. Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.