Bhaskar Sunkara
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| A Jacobin começou como uma publicação online em setembro de 2010 e rapidamente passou a ser impressa. |
It’s the best time to be a socialist in the United States since the 1970s. The bad news is that it’s still not a very good time to be a socialist in the United States.
But things are certainly better than when Jacobin launched six years ago. Back then, I knew next to nothing about editing and publishing. Not surprisingly, the initial rollout was a failure: a few hundred visitors to an ugly website the first day, mostly people already on the Left or friends and family.
The turn to print shortly after was an act of desperation — maybe people would notice us if we were competing with a smaller pool of publications. We got a hundred or so subscribers, enough to help finance the first print run. We needed a couple hundred more between its release and the second issue to keep things going. Things were looking so bleak that the third Jacobin volume, just as thin as the first two, was billed as a double issue.
If the early execution was wanting, the core purpose was always clear. Before we understood publishing, Jacobin had politics. Granted, our contributors didn’t always agree, but they shared a desire to win a tiny, fragmented left back to fundamentals: a class-based analysis of the world that knew (if not exactly how) that the Left’s task was to rebuild working-class organizations capable of capturing and transforming state power.
But we didn’t just want to convince a few thousand people already on the Left. Our ideas were marginal, but they captivated us: the dream of a society without exploitation or oppression, without unnecessary suffering, where every person could reach their potential. A world with our animal problems solved, so we could start dealing with our human ones. This was a vision that once stirred hundreds of millions around the world. And we knew there was still an audience for it beyond the Left’s ghettos.
The second purpose of Jacobin, then, was to be an ambassador for socialist ideas. We wanted to be plain spoken and bullshit free. At our best we’ve done this, reaching thousands through our reading groups and print publications and millions online.
After a rocky start we’ve grown faster and more sustainably than we ever expected. But we have no illusions about how marginal we still are. Going from a few hundred to twenty thousand subscribers in a few years is a nice story, but it only matters if our political mission is advancing.
What that mission is, however, has never been clearer. Publicamos artigos que revelam a verdade sobre o capitalismo: um sistema baseado na exploração e na degradação do espírito humano. A maioria dos nossos posts diários não parece ir mais afundo do que isso. Mas também temos uma visão de um mundo após o capitalismo, construído a partir da riqueza e abundância ao nosso redor. Queremos estender radicalmente a democracia em esferas que o liberalismo sempre se esquivou – o domínio social e econômico – e desafiar a propriedade privada a fim de promover o tipo de coletivismo que pode criar condições reais para o florescimento individual.
But most importantly, we have some idea about how to get from our miserable here to that lofty there. Nós, como muitos antes de nós, vemos a classe trabalhadora como um agente de mudança. Embora a classe trabalhadora seja diversa e esteja dividida, é ela quem pode ainda sacudir a jaula capitalista e obter ganhos reais. Como socialistas, acreditamos que a luta de curto prazo por reformas pode não apenas ajudar milhões de pessoas que sofrem hoje, mas também colocar os trabalhadores em uma posição melhor para conquistar demandas mais radicais no futuro. Isso não significa que a luta aconteça em um ritmo constante ou em linha linear – haverá grandes reviravoltas e rupturas no caminho para uma sociedade socialista –, mas significa que levamos a sério o encontro entre pessoas comuns, militantes e movimentos onde eles estejam.
Of course, even amid a small revival of socialist thought and practice, this abstract vision seems just that. William Morris wrote in 1885 that the real business of socialists is to convince workers that they are a class, whereas they ought to be a society. Today, we might have to convince about that class part too.
Still, I hope this note provides some clarity about our aim: helping in small part to foster class consciousness and build the institutions that can tame and eventually overcome capital.
Socialism is the name of our desire, but it may not be what the movements that will one day transform the world will use. In the meantime, we hope we can continue to play a role keeping alive the dream of liberty, equality, and solidarity.
Donate online or by check to Jacobin Foundation, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11217. Become a lifetime subscriber or get a friend a gift subscription.
Thank you for all your support.
Sobre o autor
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.
But things are certainly better than when Jacobin launched six years ago. Back then, I knew next to nothing about editing and publishing. Not surprisingly, the initial rollout was a failure: a few hundred visitors to an ugly website the first day, mostly people already on the Left or friends and family.
The turn to print shortly after was an act of desperation — maybe people would notice us if we were competing with a smaller pool of publications. We got a hundred or so subscribers, enough to help finance the first print run. We needed a couple hundred more between its release and the second issue to keep things going. Things were looking so bleak that the third Jacobin volume, just as thin as the first two, was billed as a double issue.
If the early execution was wanting, the core purpose was always clear. Before we understood publishing, Jacobin had politics. Granted, our contributors didn’t always agree, but they shared a desire to win a tiny, fragmented left back to fundamentals: a class-based analysis of the world that knew (if not exactly how) that the Left’s task was to rebuild working-class organizations capable of capturing and transforming state power.
But we didn’t just want to convince a few thousand people already on the Left. Our ideas were marginal, but they captivated us: the dream of a society without exploitation or oppression, without unnecessary suffering, where every person could reach their potential. A world with our animal problems solved, so we could start dealing with our human ones. This was a vision that once stirred hundreds of millions around the world. And we knew there was still an audience for it beyond the Left’s ghettos.
The second purpose of Jacobin, then, was to be an ambassador for socialist ideas. We wanted to be plain spoken and bullshit free. At our best we’ve done this, reaching thousands through our reading groups and print publications and millions online.
After a rocky start we’ve grown faster and more sustainably than we ever expected. But we have no illusions about how marginal we still are. Going from a few hundred to twenty thousand subscribers in a few years is a nice story, but it only matters if our political mission is advancing.
What that mission is, however, has never been clearer. Publicamos artigos que revelam a verdade sobre o capitalismo: um sistema baseado na exploração e na degradação do espírito humano. A maioria dos nossos posts diários não parece ir mais afundo do que isso. Mas também temos uma visão de um mundo após o capitalismo, construído a partir da riqueza e abundância ao nosso redor. Queremos estender radicalmente a democracia em esferas que o liberalismo sempre se esquivou – o domínio social e econômico – e desafiar a propriedade privada a fim de promover o tipo de coletivismo que pode criar condições reais para o florescimento individual.
But most importantly, we have some idea about how to get from our miserable here to that lofty there. Nós, como muitos antes de nós, vemos a classe trabalhadora como um agente de mudança. Embora a classe trabalhadora seja diversa e esteja dividida, é ela quem pode ainda sacudir a jaula capitalista e obter ganhos reais. Como socialistas, acreditamos que a luta de curto prazo por reformas pode não apenas ajudar milhões de pessoas que sofrem hoje, mas também colocar os trabalhadores em uma posição melhor para conquistar demandas mais radicais no futuro. Isso não significa que a luta aconteça em um ritmo constante ou em linha linear – haverá grandes reviravoltas e rupturas no caminho para uma sociedade socialista –, mas significa que levamos a sério o encontro entre pessoas comuns, militantes e movimentos onde eles estejam.
Of course, even amid a small revival of socialist thought and practice, this abstract vision seems just that. William Morris wrote in 1885 that the real business of socialists is to convince workers that they are a class, whereas they ought to be a society. Today, we might have to convince about that class part too.
Still, I hope this note provides some clarity about our aim: helping in small part to foster class consciousness and build the institutions that can tame and eventually overcome capital.
Socialism is the name of our desire, but it may not be what the movements that will one day transform the world will use. In the meantime, we hope we can continue to play a role keeping alive the dream of liberty, equality, and solidarity.
Donate online or by check to Jacobin Foundation, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11217. Become a lifetime subscriber or get a friend a gift subscription.
Thank you for all your support.
Sobre o autor
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.
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