Jacobin Radio Folgen

Sure, the concept of socialism sounds nice, but people aren’t very nice, right? Isn’t capitalism much more suited to human nature — a nature dominated by competitiveness and venality? Isn't socialism great in theory but terrible in practice? Adaner Usmani, a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University, answers these questions in a discussion with Jacobin's Jason Farbman.This is the second episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism. Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book for just $5 at the Jacobin store: https://www.jacobinmag.com/store/The sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.

On the Left, few forms of mainstream journalism are more detested than political reporting. It often substitutes the horse race for substance, dresses up conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom as real analysis, and resorts to the false balance of he-said-she-said instead of establishing facts. Political reporters took a serious hit after Donald Trump won the Republican primary and then the presidency, and Bernie Sanders mounted a real challenge to the Democratic Party’s anointed candidate. Trump is now using his bully pulpit to wage an assault on empirical reality, clinging to his own “alternative facts” and labeling the media as an opposition party purveying “fake news.” My guest today is Dave Weigel, a reporter at the Washington Post who is amongst the best in the game. Weigel has also worked for Slate and, in his early years, at the libertarian outlet Reason. He doesn’t come from the Left, but he gets us better than any mainstream reporter out there.

Socialists put the working class at the center of their political vision. But why, exactly?Vivek Chibber, Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, answers this question here, as well as capitalism's inability "to deliver the goods" for workers, who exactly workers are, the precarity of work today, and the problems with the twenty-first century labor movement. Chibber is in discussion with Jason Jacobin's Farbman.This is the first episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism.Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2219-the-abcs-of-socialismThe sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.