Anton Jäger is is a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, working on the history of populism in the United States. Together with Daniel Zamora, he is currently working on an intellectual history of basic income.
Rutger Bregman made a name for himself by dressing down Tucker Carlson and calling out the ultrarich at Davos. But his new book is closer to a hopeful self-help guide than a manifesto for radical political change.
The Bernie movement can win precisely because we’re learning from the mistakes of Corbynism, not to mention our own.
Four years ago, we celebrated Europe’s left-populist push. Now we have to look seriously at how little was accomplished and what might have been lost.
Socialists and populists have found plenty to disagree about over the years, from private property to trust-busting. But their shared commitment to fighting corporate power often brought them together — and it should today, too.
History shows that when working-class strength threatens the status quo, even moderate conservatives won’t balk at making common cause with fascists.
Left populism is the new idiom of radical politics worldwide. It emerged as the answer to the problem of a weak and disorganized working class — but despite its electoral successes, that class remains weak and disorganized.
Critics of populism lament the rise of “emotion-driven” politics. But instead of asking why politics has become so “irrational,” we should ask why people are so angry in the first place.
“Post-work” Marxism aims to liberate us from the coercion of wage labor. But without a program for reorganizing production, it can only return us to the tyranny of the market.
Britain’s leading liberal newspaper has set out on a mission to define and defeat “populism.” It has not gone well.
Many on today’s Left seek to abolish work. But the goal of socialism is to transform it.
Left populism might be working in practice — but does it work in theory? A review of Chantal Mouffe’s latest salvo in the “populism wars.”
Populist symbolism can be powerful — but we can’t drop the old language of class.
It's the transatlantic commentariat’s favorite political put-down. It’s also historically illiterate.