Colfax
17th March 2013, 17:04
I'm curious what others think about the American neo-Marxist magazine/journal Jacobin. I encountered it several years ago and have some admiration for its visual flair, a number of its articles, and, above all, its success in promoting a theoretical viewpoint that is hardly popular in trying times for publishing in general.
That said, it is obvious that the perspective advocated by the editors and the overwhelming majority of its contributors is on the more social democratic end of the spectrum. I have heard that a number of the participants are affiliates of Democratic Socialists of America, which supported Obama in 2008. Point being: they are not exactly advocating immediate revolution.
We might take this stance as the mature response to a realistic assessment of objective conditions. But it does beg the question, to some extent, of what they are doing new or differently. Do you see any distinction between their project and that we find in The Nation, New Politics, or In These Times, to name only a few? Jacobin has the advantage of youth, but ideologically is this much the same as those elements of the American Left who have staked out a position within the electoral orbit of the Democratic Party, in the hope of forcing it in their preferred policy directions?
That said, it is obvious that the perspective advocated by the editors and the overwhelming majority of its contributors is on the more social democratic end of the spectrum. I have heard that a number of the participants are affiliates of Democratic Socialists of America, which supported Obama in 2008. Point being: they are not exactly advocating immediate revolution.
We might take this stance as the mature response to a realistic assessment of objective conditions. But it does beg the question, to some extent, of what they are doing new or differently. Do you see any distinction between their project and that we find in The Nation, New Politics, or In These Times, to name only a few? Jacobin has the advantage of youth, but ideologically is this much the same as those elements of the American Left who have staked out a position within the electoral orbit of the Democratic Party, in the hope of forcing it in their preferred policy directions?