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Zohran Mamdani stands at the podium during a campaign rally.

Zohran Mamdani Is Part of Municipal Socialism’s Long History

If he wins the New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani will not be in totally uncharted territory.
by Shelton Stromquist via Jacobin on August 20, 2025
George Lunn, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and other politicans at the Democratic National Nominating Convention in 1924.
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The Socialist Mayor Who Came 100 Years Before Zohran Mamdani

George Lunn, socialist mayor of Schenectady, New York rose to power in 1911 by making a difference in people's lives.
by Andrew Morris via Made By History on July 22, 2025
The Communist National Convention at its first session on June 24, 1936, at the Manhattan Opera House in New York City.

The Long Anti-Zionist History of the American Jewish Left

Thousands of left-wing American Jews have protested Israel. They are taking part in a tradition of anti-Zionist Jewish radicalism.
by Benjamin Balthaser via Jacobin on July 21, 2025
Fiorello La Guardia.

How Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Transformed New York City

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is questioning what a socialist might accomplish as mayor of NYC. To answer it, it’s worth looking back on Fiorello La Guardia.
by Joshua B. Freeman via Jacobin on April 23, 2025
Front cover of the 1940 issue Anvil by John C. Rogers showing a muscular man in bold red strokes.

Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism

Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.
by Marc Blanc via Jacobin on February 23, 2025
A group of adult students at Highlander Folk School holding class outside.

The Left Needs Its “Schools of Enlightenment and Revolution”

Throughout the entire history of left-wing organizing in the United States, the building of institutions of political education has been key.
by Nelson Lichtenstein, Steve Fraser via Jacobin on February 9, 2025
Portrait of Morris Hillquit.

When Socialists Run for NYC Mayor, Good Things Can Happen

Socialist legislator Zohran Mamdani is running for New York City mayor against a corrupt, unpopular mayor. Morris Hillquit did the same thing a century ago.
by Charlie Dulik via Jacobin on December 19, 2024
Crowd marching on Wall Street.

Nationalize the Banks

Grassroots support for public banks early in the 20th century revealed the popularity of socialism-aligned economic ideas.
by Christopher W. Shaw via Catalyst on September 20, 2024
Governor Philip La Follette signing the old-age pension bill in Madison, Wisconsin in 1931.

The Golden Age of Wisconsin Socialism

At its peak in the 1920s and early ’30s, the Socialist Party in Wisconsin used confrontational tactics and nonsocialists alliances to make legislative advances.
by Joshua Kluever via Jacobin on September 12, 2024
Eugene V. Debs delivers an antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918.

The Unsung History of Heartland Socialism

The spirit of socialism has coursed through the American Midwest ever since the movement emerged, continuing to animate the political landscape today.
by Miles Kampf-Lassin via In These Times on August 30, 2024
Eugene V Debs speaking at a rally, c1912-18. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

For Socialism and Freedom: The Life of Eugene Debs

How Eugene V. Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom.
by Tom O’Shea via Aeon on October 2, 2023
Eugene Debs with Texas and Oklahoma socialists, c. 1910–14.

Texas Was Once a Hotbed of Socialism

In the early 1900s heyday of the Socialist Party, Texas boasted a vibrant state party that attracted oppressed farmers in droves.
by Thomas Alter II, Yaseen Al-Sheikh via Jacobin on April 21, 2023
Eugene Debs speaking to a crowd.

A Brief History of American Socialism

A look at socialism’s far-reaching influence on American thought.
by Michael Kazin via Literary Hub on January 5, 2023
Photograph of author Mike Davis.

Mike Davis Revisits His 1986 Labor History Classic, Prisoners of the American Dream

The late socialist writer's first book was a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened.
by Mike Davis, Daniel Denvir via Jacobin on October 31, 2022
Illustration of Hubert Harrison by Joe Ciardiello.

Hubert Harrison, Giant of Harlem Radicalism

A two-volume biography tracks the life and times of one of Harlem’s leading socialists.
by Robert Greene II via The Nation on June 1, 2022
"What difference would another world make?", Sam Pulitzer, 2021.

New Left Review

Who did neoliberalism?
by Erik Baker via n+1 on March 8, 2022
African Americans boarding an integrated bus, following the Supreme Court ruling ending the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956. The boycott inspired many US socialists to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the civil rights struggle.

Socialists Organized in the 1950s Civil Rights Movement

In 1950s America, the Cold War was raging, but socialists were playing key roles in the early civil rights movement.
by Joel Geier via Jacobin on October 2, 2021
Political cartoon of people reaching toward a woman symbolizing Milwaukee who herself is reaching toward socialism.

When Socialists Swept Milwaukee

Democratic socialists attending the 2020 Democratic Convention won’t be out of place in a city with a long history of socialist governance.
by Lindsey Anderson via Belt Magazine on May 21, 2019
The Tower of Babel painting by Pieter Bruegel The Elder

Identity Crisis

It’s only by acknowledging the roots of identity politics in the emancipatory movements of the past that we can begin the work of formulating an alternative.
by Salar Mohandesi via Viewpoint Magazine on March 17, 2017
Brigham Young

The Reds Under Romney’s Bed

The most ambitious social experiment in American history that until 1877, explicitly rejected the core values of Victorian capitalism.
by Mike Davis via Los Angeles Review of Books on October 25, 2012
A. Philip Randolph.
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A. Philip Randolph Lambasts the Old Crowd

A Black socialist magazine urges solidarity and action in 1919.
by A. Philip Randolph, Martha H. Patterson, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. via HNN on September 9, 2025
Photo taken by FBI agents in Jonestown following the Jonestown massacre of November 18, 1978. via Wikimedia Commons
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One Woman’s Path to Jonestown

While the events that led to the Jonestown massacre included tragedy, the life—and death—of one of its residents offers lessons on community and resilience.
by Sarah Rex via JSTOR Daily on August 20, 2025
Mike Gold fading into a field of stars of David.

On the Decades-Long Erasure of Jewish Working-Class Anti-Zionism

Mike Gold, Alexander Bittelman, and the paradoxes of left-wing Zionism.
by Benjamin Balthaser via Literary Hub on July 23, 2025
Lionel Trilling photographed by Walker Evans in the 1950s.

Colony, Aviary and Zoo: New York Intellectuals

A new book examines the aggressive masculinity that the editors of the Partisan Review brought to their art and literary criticism.
by David Denby via London Review of Books on July 3, 2025
Jewish activists hold Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City to demand an end to Israel's war on Gaza.

The Past, Present, and Future of Left Jewish Identity

Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations are part of a long history of Jewish identity being bound up in leftist politics.
by Benjamin Balthaser, Shane Burley via Jacobin on June 8, 2025
Cover of book. Red text on a blue background with stickers of Karl Marx's face arranged like the 50 stars.

Marx: The Fourth Boom

Were you to vanish Marx from every library, you’d destroy the central interlocutor around which most of capitalism is built.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 27, 2025
John Cassidy

John Cassidy on Capitalism and Its Critics

The author on capitalism’s critics, why everyone is so unhappy with the system, and what may come next.
by John Cassidy, James Surowiecki via The Yale Review on May 27, 2025
W.E.B. DuBois, seated in garden reading book, while Shirley Graham DuBois waters plants.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
by Jeff Goodwin, Jonah Birch via Jacobin on February 17, 2025
David Montgomery in a picket line during a 1955 UE strike.

The People in the Shop

A new collection of essays by David Montgomery shows how he used labor history as a means of grappling with the largest questions in American history.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on December 17, 2024
John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard.

American Marxism Got Lost on Campus

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.
by Russell Jacoby via Jacobin on December 8, 2024
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