Jacobin Radio

The Right has long looked to lower taxes, especially for rich people, out of a belief that rich people deserve to keep their money because they earned it. In other words, taxes impinge on their freedom. Mike McCarthy argues this is the wrong way to think both about taxation and about freedom.

Mike McCarthy is a sociologist at Marquette University in Milwaukee and the author of Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions Since the New Deal. He has a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism called “Don’t the rich deserve to keep most of their money?”

The ABCS of Socialism is available for only $5 on Jacobin’s web site. You can get it at jacobinmag.com/store. Also, be sure to listen to the other podcasts in our ABCs series, which tackle questions that include Why do socialists talk so much about workers? Doesn’t human nature make socialism impossible? Is socialism a western, Eurocentric concept? And isn’t the United States already king of socialist?

Max Sawicky on Republican tax schemes and Vijay Prashad on Syria.

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Max Sawicky on Republican tax schemes and Vijay Prashad on Syria.

Trump’s oligarchic regime is an extreme version of the imperial and economic vision that has guided presidents of both major parties. But the popularity of Trump’s chauvinist, xenophobic appeal points to a major crisis in the ideological and political-economic regime of the United States and the world for decades. That’s neoliberalism, a system that isn't quite over under Trump. But as Nicole Aschoff argues in the most recent issue of Jacobin, it has radically changed. Today, my guest is Nicole Aschoff, managing editor at Jacobin and the author of The New Prophets of Capital, part of Jacobin's Verso Series. You can read her article "The Glory Days Are Over" in the new issue of Jacobin and at jacobinmag.com.

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Trump’s oligarchic regime is an extreme version of the imperial and economic vision that has guided presidents of both major parties. But the popularity of Trump’s chauvinist, xenophobic appeal points to a major crisis in the ideological and political-economic regime of the United States and the world for decades. That’s neoliberalism, a system that isn't quite over under Trump. But as Nicole Aschoff argues in the most recent issue of Jacobin, it has radically changed.

Today, my guest is Nicole Aschoff, managing editor at Jacobin and the author of The New Prophets of Capital, part of Jacobin's Verso Series. You can read her article "The Glory Days Are Over" in the new issue of Jacobin and at jacobinmag.com.

Suzi Weissman talks with Verso Books editor Sebastian Budgen about the French elections.

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Suzi Weissman talks with Verso Books editor Sebastian Budgen about the French elections.

Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future, on getting beyond folk politics to a world where robots work more and people (supported by a universal basic income) work less.

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Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future, on getting beyond folk politics to a world where robots work more and people (supported by a universal basic income) work less.

You’ve probably seen the memes purporting to show just how socialist the United States already is by listing a bunch of government programs, services, and agencies. The idea that any government activity is synonymous with socialism has major political and strategic implications. After all, if our country were already at least partly socialist, then all we would have to do is keep gradually expanding government.But simply electing politicians to office or watching the government expand by its own momentum has never been, and never will be, enough. Economic power is political power, and under capitalism the owners of capital will always have the capacity to undermine popular democracy—no matter who’s in Congress or the White House.This is the last 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.Chris Maisano is a contributing editor at Jacobin and a union staffer in New York.

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