Jacobin Radio

Yael Bridge, documentary director of Who Moves America?, joins labor filmmakers Jeremy Flood and Erick Stoll to discuss the unrealized 2023 UPS Teamsters strike. They explore workers’ mixed reactions, the strike’s potential impact on organized labor, everyday workplace organizing, and the challenge of making and funding films that center working-class voices.

Agustín Santos Maraver, Spain’s former UN ambassador and a Sumar lawmaker, discusses the housing uprising sparked by an elderly woman’s eviction, financialized rents, coalition turmoil, and an unprecedented pre-election general strike. Verso European editor Sebastian Budgen examines France’s banlieue-led school revolt, crumbling education, police repression, and the stakes for a Mélenchon-Le Pen presidential race.

Vivek Chibber, NYU sociology professor and editor of Catalyst, joins Melissa Naschek to examine the Left’s electoral rise and the danger of electoralism. They discuss why elections became the Left’s main vehicle, how capital constrains elected officials, the role of unions and working-class organizations, and how socialist strategy can use office while building power beyond the state.

Sam Stein, geographer and author of A Right to Housing?, explores New York’s housing crisis, tenant power, social housing, public disinvestment, and the property-value trap. Journalist and educator Natasha Lennard, author of On Un/Certainty, examines how language, borders, gender categories, and “permanent crisis” rhetoric turn uncertainty into political paralysis. Both discuss how collective action can challenge entrenched systems.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed, a Washington Sun diplomatic correspondent and author of Crossing the Red Line, examines the Biden administration’s record on Gaza. They discuss early warnings ignored, the collapse of the first truce, doubts about civilian casualty figures, UNRWA, Rafah, campus protests, electoral politics, and officials’ attempts to rewrite the history of U.S. policy.

Chris Brooks, a labor organizer, strategist, and former UAW chief of staff, examines unions at a breaking point. He discusses militant organizing, UAW reform, the 2023 stand-up strike, and campaigns at Volkswagen and Mercedes. He also explores the federal monitor’s fight with UAW reformers, labor’s role on Gaza and AI, and plans for coordinated action by May Day 2028.

Owen Zidar, economist and co-author of The Everywhere Millionaire, explores America’s hidden rich: tax-advantaged pass-through firms, local monopolies, private equity, succession, and business owners’ political power. Jake Werner, Quincy Institute researcher on East Asia, examines Trump’s diplomacy with Xi, Taiwan and tariffs, supply-chain warfare, China’s AI strategy, and Washington’s bipartisan hawkishness.

Quinn Slobodian, a historian of capitalism and neoliberalism, and Ben Tarnoff, a journalist covering technology and labor, explore “Muskism” as a new political-economic formation. They discuss meme-driven finance, state-backed Silicon Valley power, fortress futurism, Musk’s far-right turn, AI, automation, and disposable populations. The conversation also considers tech oligarchy, China’s development model, and democratic strategies for reclaiming technological power.

What makes someone a Marxist? Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek explore Marxism as a flexible social theory rooted in class struggle, exploitation, and collective action. They debate the labor theory of value, examine how Marxist thought has evolved, and ask why it declined amid weaker labor movements, academic pressures, and shifting left politics.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and biographer Benjamin Moser discusses Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History. He traces Jewish opposition to Zionism through figures including Hannah Arendt, Edwin Montagu, Jacob Israel De Haan, Ronnie Kasrils, and Nan Goldin. The conversation explores American Jewish identity, Arab Jewish history, Palestinian advocacy, censorship, and solidarity with Gaza.