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Jacobin
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Jacobin Magazine
13 books11 followersJacobin is an American political magazine based in New York. It offers socialist perspectives on politics, economics and culture. As of 2023, the magazine reported a paid print circulation of 75,000 and over 3 million monthly visitors.
The publication began as an online magazine released in September 2010, expanding into a print journal later that year. Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara describes Jacobin as a radical publication being "largely the product of a younger generation not quite as tied to the Cold War paradigms that sustained the old leftist intellectual milieux like Dissent or New Politics, but still eager to confront, rather than table, the questions that arose from the experience of the left in the 20th century".
In 2014, Sunkara said that the aim of the magazine was to create a publication which combined resolutely socialist politics with the accessibility of titles such as The Nation and The New Republic. He has also contrasted it to publications associated with small leftist groups, such as the International Socialist Organization's Socialist Worker and International Socialist Review which were oriented towards party members and other revolutionary socialists, seeking a broader audience than those works while still anchoring the magazine in a Marxist perspective. In an interview he gave in 2018, Sunkara said that he intended for Jacobin to perform a similar role on the contemporary left to that undertaken by National Review on the post-war right, i.e. "to cohere people around a set of ideas, and to interact with the mainstream of liberalism with that set of ideas". In 2016, the Columbia Journalism Review called it "most successful American ideological magazine to launch in the past decade".
Jacobin's popularity grew with the increasing attention on leftist ideas stimulated by Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, with subscriptions tripling from 10,000 in the summer of 2015 to 32,000 as of the first issue of 2017, with 16,000 of the new subscribers being added in the two months after Donald Trump's election.
In late 2016, Jacobin's editorial team unionized, including a total of seven full- and part-time members. An associate editor and co-chair of the union explained that Jacobin had only recently had enough full-time members to warrant unionization.
In spring 2017, Jacobin launched a peer-reviewed journal, Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, which is today edited by New York University professor Vivek Chibber and a small editorial board. As of 2022, Catalyst claims a subscriber base of 7,500.
In November 2018, the magazine's first foreign-language edition, Jacobin Italia, was launched. Sunkara described it as "a classic franchise model", with the parent publication providing publishing and editorial advice and taking a small slice of revenue, but otherwise granting the Italian magazine autonomy. A Brazilian edition appeared in 2019, and a German version started publishing in 2020; the latter grew out of Ada, an independent online magazine established in 2018 which primarily published translations of Jacobin articles. The first issue of the German edition featured interviews with Kevin Kühnert and Grace Blakeley. A Spanish-language version of Jacobin, Jacobin América Latina, was also launched in 2020.
In April 2020, Jacobin launched its YouTube channel featuring the Weekends program with Michael Brooks and Ana Kasparian. Brooks died suddenly in July 2020.
In May 2020, some time after Bernie Sanders suspended his 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders' former adviser and speechwriter David Sirota joined Jacobin as editor-at-large.
In 2020, Jacobin became an affiliated member of the Progressive International.
The name of the magazine derives from the 1938 book The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C. L. R. James in which James ascribes the Haitian revolutionists a greater purity in regards to their attachment to the ideals of the
The publication began as an online magazine released in September 2010, expanding into a print journal later that year. Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara describes Jacobin as a radical publication being "largely the product of a younger generation not quite as tied to the Cold War paradigms that sustained the old leftist intellectual milieux like Dissent or New Politics, but still eager to confront, rather than table, the questions that arose from the experience of the left in the 20th century".
In 2014, Sunkara said that the aim of the magazine was to create a publication which combined resolutely socialist politics with the accessibility of titles such as The Nation and The New Republic. He has also contrasted it to publications associated with small leftist groups, such as the International Socialist Organization's Socialist Worker and International Socialist Review which were oriented towards party members and other revolutionary socialists, seeking a broader audience than those works while still anchoring the magazine in a Marxist perspective. In an interview he gave in 2018, Sunkara said that he intended for Jacobin to perform a similar role on the contemporary left to that undertaken by National Review on the post-war right, i.e. "to cohere people around a set of ideas, and to interact with the mainstream of liberalism with that set of ideas". In 2016, the Columbia Journalism Review called it "most successful American ideological magazine to launch in the past decade".
Jacobin's popularity grew with the increasing attention on leftist ideas stimulated by Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, with subscriptions tripling from 10,000 in the summer of 2015 to 32,000 as of the first issue of 2017, with 16,000 of the new subscribers being added in the two months after Donald Trump's election.
In late 2016, Jacobin's editorial team unionized, including a total of seven full- and part-time members. An associate editor and co-chair of the union explained that Jacobin had only recently had enough full-time members to warrant unionization.
In spring 2017, Jacobin launched a peer-reviewed journal, Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, which is today edited by New York University professor Vivek Chibber and a small editorial board. As of 2022, Catalyst claims a subscriber base of 7,500.
In November 2018, the magazine's first foreign-language edition, Jacobin Italia, was launched. Sunkara described it as "a classic franchise model", with the parent publication providing publishing and editorial advice and taking a small slice of revenue, but otherwise granting the Italian magazine autonomy. A Brazilian edition appeared in 2019, and a German version started publishing in 2020; the latter grew out of Ada, an independent online magazine established in 2018 which primarily published translations of Jacobin articles. The first issue of the German edition featured interviews with Kevin Kühnert and Grace Blakeley. A Spanish-language version of Jacobin, Jacobin América Latina, was also launched in 2020.
In April 2020, Jacobin launched its YouTube channel featuring the Weekends program with Michael Brooks and Ana Kasparian. Brooks died suddenly in July 2020.
In May 2020, some time after Bernie Sanders suspended his 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders' former adviser and speechwriter David Sirota joined Jacobin as editor-at-large.
In 2020, Jacobin became an affiliated member of the Progressive International.
The name of the magazine derives from the 1938 book The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C. L. R. James in which James ascribes the Haitian revolutionists a greater purity in regards to their attachment to the ideals of the
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 10, 2021
Although it was written in 2017 and reflects some of that contemporary setting, this issue of Jacobin is mostly about the Soviet Union's history: its rise, its fall, and its legacy. It is a work of near-communist leftism, though with an occasional penchant for practical reform, and filled with a certain "in-the-know" sense of humor. If you aren't already in this subculture, you may be a little more confused, but there's still a lot of history and information to unpack.
This is a dense magazine issue. It features entire pages of graphs and charts, and references to historical events that you have to search for online just to fill yourself in on. It also has humerus moments though, entire articles in there for largely comedic effect, even if for their very specific readership. I learned about people I'd never heard of before through fascinating character pieces and about history I had never been taught in school. This is information I likely wouldn't have gotten outside of Jacobin.
It is also something of a Soviet apologist piece, which can prove uncomfortable at various points. It argues that Soviet terror, the kind that caused millions of deaths, had some good effects, "if we can close our eyes to the costs". And throughout the magazine, one will find a sadness in tone of the fact that the Soviet Union is no longer around. It's a perspective that may resonate with the magazine's core readers, but likely one that would not click with the general public.
Jacobin is a lot like a book, but it is at its core a magazine. That means the tone shifts article-to-article, and it also means you can skip over what doesn't interest you. I'm generally a believer in reading every word of what I read, but I grew bored with some of Jacobin's list articles. If you're looking for a left-wing magazine to flip through whenever you catch a quick break, Jacobin will become one of your favorites, and this particular issue will give you a different perspective on the Soviet Union.
This is a dense magazine issue. It features entire pages of graphs and charts, and references to historical events that you have to search for online just to fill yourself in on. It also has humerus moments though, entire articles in there for largely comedic effect, even if for their very specific readership. I learned about people I'd never heard of before through fascinating character pieces and about history I had never been taught in school. This is information I likely wouldn't have gotten outside of Jacobin.
It is also something of a Soviet apologist piece, which can prove uncomfortable at various points. It argues that Soviet terror, the kind that caused millions of deaths, had some good effects, "if we can close our eyes to the costs". And throughout the magazine, one will find a sadness in tone of the fact that the Soviet Union is no longer around. It's a perspective that may resonate with the magazine's core readers, but likely one that would not click with the general public.
Jacobin is a lot like a book, but it is at its core a magazine. That means the tone shifts article-to-article, and it also means you can skip over what doesn't interest you. I'm generally a believer in reading every word of what I read, but I grew bored with some of Jacobin's list articles. If you're looking for a left-wing magazine to flip through whenever you catch a quick break, Jacobin will become one of your favorites, and this particular issue will give you a different perspective on the Soviet Union.
Displaying 1 of 1 review