One of the most common question readers ask me is what publications I read, podcasts I listen to and streamers I watch. The honest answer is everything and nothing; I have a firehose of RSS and Twitter feeds that I keep an eye on, but there isn’t some particular person or outlet who I consistently read or would always recommend.

That said, since I am obviously not the only socialist posting stuff, I thought it might be useful if I started doing an occasional roundup of content that I think readers will find interesting. My goal with this newsletter will be to provide a snapshot of recent socialist discourse; it is not meant to be exhaustive, nor a “best of” list, but I think it may be useful particularly for people who want an idea of what socialists have been talking about lately.

Interregnum - on the lockdown “sceptics” - Richard Seymour, Politics Theory Other. Begins with a fairly dry factual takedown of so-called Covid “skepticism” on the left, but around 25 minutes in starts to escalate into such a ferocious critique of the reactionary ideology and dishonesty of this discourse that they evidently had to re-record part of it.

Failure to cope “under capitalism” - Clare Coffey, Gawker. Marxist critiques of capitalism may have some significant implications for mental health, but that doesn’t mean that we can always explain mental health issues in Marxist terms. Clare on how “capitalism” has become a rhetorical scapegoat that we use to externalize personal problems.

US Voting Patterns Are Shifting. But It’s Not Simply “Class Dealignemnt” - Chris Maisano, Jacobin. Maisano argues that while it may seem that the working class is fleeing left parties around the world (and the Democrats in the US), this reading largely relies on education rather than income as a measure of class.

We Can’t Ignore Class Dealignment - Matt Karp, Jacobin. In response to Maisano’s argument, Karp insists holds that even if we look at non-educational indicators, the working class is indeed leaving left parties (and the Democrats).

Polarization of the Rich: The New Democratic Allegiance of Affluent Americans and the Politics of Redistribution - Sam Zacher, Perspectives on Politics. Yet another take on class and partisan alignment. Note the left graph and the 1% line in particular on figure 3. This paper is a good example of how one can draw very different conclusions from the data depending on where you think that the upper class begins, because while its argument is that the rich are increasingly voting for Democrats, we can see that their vote share among the super rich has been falling.