This week's Philosophy for the People essay is up--I take a break from the usual subjects to talk about the subject of my dissertation:
GTAA host, Jacobin columnist, adjunct philosophy prof, TMBS crew for life
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This week's Philosophy for the People essay is up--I take a break from the usual subjects to talk about the subject of my dissertation:
Michael and I have been working on this paper on and off for what feels like forever--feels really good to have finally finished revising it and sent the damn thing to the journal.
I only have one extremely vague memory of meeting the man when I was a little kid. (My sister remembers it better. Apparently, he told us Russian fairy tales.) He got a one-paragraph shoutout in my book "Canceling Comedians While the World Burns":
A little family history I've been looking at and thinking about while prepping to start teaching a Capital Vol. 2 class on Sunday: This is a copy my great-grandfather Morris (Moshe pre-Ellis Island) used when leading a Capital study group that included Walter Reuther's wife May.
And with that, I think I'll leave it there and go back to my life of nefariously "running interference" (as a Jacobin columnist and the host of a niche Marxist podcast) for the most popular show on the planet. Definitely how that works!
And truly, just on a basic human level, if I ever start denouncing real-life friends to prove myself to shrieking social media idiots, I truly hope someone does me the favor Chief Bromden did for McMurphy at the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Because that is no fucking way to live.
To take the most obvious example, two of those three years you're talking about were spent in large part being one of the strongest high-profile voices speaking out about the genocide in Gaza.
Anyone with left-wing values who's not consumed by little internet beefs to the point of completely losing perspective should be able to see that Ana is a force for good, even if you don't agree with 100% of her takes.
Very excited that "Analytical Marxism and Democratic Socialism in the 21st Century: Revisiting G.A Cohen" edited by myself and @benburgis.bsky.social now has a website and release date of Jan 11th, 2026! link.springer.com/book/9783032...
The live show Jason Myles and I did in San Francisco ("Is Trump the End of the End of History?") is finally up on YouTube:
I'll be there. Jake, Andy, and Cale will be there. Who knows who's going to show up. It should be a good time.
On September 13th, I'm going to be speaking on a panel at the Jacobin conference in NYC on possible "blueprints" for a post-capitalist economy. The night before, on September 12th, there'll be a GTAA Meet & Greet Happy Hour thing at 6 PM at Bar Freda in Queens. (No cover, but order drinks!)
My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social is a quick introduction to the basics of "luck-egalitarianism" a la G.A. Cohen, pitched at non-philosophers:
This week's Philosophy for the People essay just went up:
Starting in a week! The reading for the first Zoom session of the Vol. 1 class will be the Preface to the First Edition + Section 1.1 and for the Vol. 2 class we'll ease in by reading Ernest Mandel's introduction to the Penguin edition of Vol. 2. Really looking forward to both.
The Leipold is great! But I remain a Fowkes apologist.
I can finally reveal why @jacobappet.bsky.social left @benburgis.bsky.social GTAA show.
Good piece by @benburgis.bsky.social in @jacobinmag.bsky.social on performative maximalism. The left always risks loving "people" more than actually existing individuals, and that bleeds into the rhetoric sometimes used. jacobin.com/2025/08/left...
"Instead of trying to persuade the hundreds of millions of Americans to our right, left-wing activists sometimes seem to be competing to prove our radical bona fides to each other. That’s not politics — it’s just wasting precious time." My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social:
No actual Philosophy for the People essay this week, sorry--it's been a strange and busy week for many reasons--but I did a quick post with a bunch of details about the upcoming Capital classes:
Fantastic event last night w/Pelle Dragsted & Meagan Day. If anyone else took any photos, send them over! We do have a recording, so we should be able to put that up on the GTAA YouTube channel in a week or so.
It's on! patreon.com/benburgis
As a teenager, I was a trotskyist (so I liked Lenin) but I always hated Stalin and Stalinism. And it's been decades since I had even that position.
I've never been a tankie, no. That's false.
If you think I've ever, at any point, been even slightly pro-Putin, you're an idiot on the level of people who used to say that leftists were "pro-Saddam" in 2003.
In this week's Philosophy for the People essay, my friend and frequent co-author Michael Sechman and I take a look at what Karl Kautsky's analysis of European colonialism and John Roemer's work on exploitation might tell us about the grim dynamics at play in Israel/Palestine:
The "pretty clear senses in which the description fits" are laid out (briefly) at the end of the new article you just QT-ed, and on Sunday's Subtack there's going to be an essay I co-wrote w/Michael Sechman going deeper on that point.
First I'm hearing of it--the author isn't anyone otherwise on my radar--but (a) they just fundamentally misread the article & (b) they're talking out of both sides of their mouth on whether indigeneity is just structural or involves ancestry. On (a), see benburgis.substack.com/p/marx-and-r...
My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social covers the attempt of Democratic politicians to thread the needle by saying they're pro-Israel but anti-Netanyahu:
Webpage for the collection I edited with @benburgis.bsky.social "Analytical Marxsm and Democratic Socialism in the 21st Century: Revisiting G.A Cohen" is now live. link.springer.com/book/9783032...
...the real things reactionary anti-feminist "tradwife" influencers are latching onto, and how social democratic policies *actually* help families in a way that none of that nonsense does. No postgame tonight, sorry, but we'll make it up next week!
On tonight's GTAA starting at 8 ET, chat a bit about the Epstein clusterf*ck and what it says about our late capitalist hellscape, and then Meagan Day will be joining me to talk about...
communispress.com/beyond-the-c...
Jodi Dean carpet-bombing whole armies of straw men here:
This week's Philosophy for the People essay just went up:
On Aug 1, @pelledragsted.bsky.social will begin the U.S. tour for his book, Nordic Socialism: The Path Toward a Democratic Economy, with events in DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Chicago, Madison, St. Paul, Seattle, and Culver City--all of which are open to the public!
Showed up in yesterday’s mail:
I'm in MSNBC today, writing about the late Hulkster, whose WWF career I remember fondly (I was an avid viewer as a kid) but who was also the ultimate symbol of Reagan-era jingoism at its "USA! USA!" dumbest:
The coolest dog in Tijana (spotted wandering around Avenida Revolución):
Israel could built full-on death camps with crematoria in Gaza and the usual cast of idiots on here would respond by saying "well, if you don't like it, blame Hamas."
The introduction is (as was requested) much more about Michael than it is about Matt's book, and I'm reprinting it here because it's the most extensive reflection I've ever managed to write about him.
Today is the fifth anniversary of Michael's passing so, instead of a regular Philosophy for the People essay, I reprinted the introduction I wrote three years ago for @mattpolprof.bsky.social's book on Michael's cosmopolitan socialism, with permission from Matt and the publisher.
I might be getting a little obsessed *now* though, since I'm so fascinated by this claim! Has she just invented these people, or is she conflating me with someone else who has written about her before day before yesterday, or...?
And again: Literally that article is the only time I've ever so much as mentioned her name in an article. I don't think I've ever said her name on a podcast either.
Even that's not really true? I devoted two paragraphs to it in this Substack, but at least off the top of my head I can't recall anywhere else besides that and the Jacobin article Lewis was responding to. Can you think of a third place I've written about it?
This is literally the first time I’ve mentioned your name in print, and I only did it now because the article I was responding to mentioned you.
My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social gets into why anyone who's serious about making it easier to start families should like Zohran's childcare plan--and responds to the absurd claim from the libertarians at Reason that wanting free daycare shows that "socialists don't understand motherhood."
Link to the full article:
An illustration that was included with my "The Case for Democratic Socialism" article in Skeptic magazine--the two camping trips described at the beginning of G.A. Cohen's "Why Not Socialism?"
Coming soon!
My article "The Case for Democratic Socialism," from the last print issue of Skeptic magazine, is now available online:
@benburgis.bsky.social's and my collection on democratic socialism and G.A Cohen finally has a cover! We're really excited to share with the world. Includes contributions from critics like Chris Freiman, advocates like Christiny Sypynowich and more.
Starting pretty much now:
Considerably later than usual, but this week's Philosophy for the People essay just went up. It covers the Nozick discussion in Steve Paxton's book "How Capitalism Ends." I'll have a larger discussion with Steve about the rest of that book on tomorrow's Bastille Day episode of Give Them An Argument.
Well that clears that right up.
Mark your calendars if you live in or near LA--Meagan Day and I will be chatting with Danish parliamentarian Pelle Dragsted about his book "Nordic Socialism: The Path Toward a Democratic Economy" at 6 PM on August 16th at the Village Well bookstore in Culver City.
Ha nvm just realized that sentence was cut in the edits. (I originally mentioned right up at the top that undocumented immigrants and their children have obviously always been "under the jurisdiction" of the U.S., clearly not enjoying any immunity when caught breaking non-immigration-related laws!)
My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social covers the Right's collective meltdown about the apparently shocking revelation that socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Kwame Mamdani supports socialism.
This touches on a point that I think is rather important for socialism: if someone has a very general objection to markets per se (as not all socialists do, but some for sure do) then I basically think that amounts to an admission that either we should not try for socialism right now...
Just the light reading for a July Sunday...
cover for me and @brunoleipold.com’s new album just dropped
This week's Philosophy for the People essay just went up:
Especially since this is a point explicitly discussed right at the beginning of the article!
Happy 4th of July! I'm in UnHerd today, talking about one of the very best things about America (which the current administration is, of course, trying to destroy).
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb... Good forbid we should treat Americans like humans.
I’m in MSNBC today, writing about Zohran’s proposal to experiment with a few publicly-owned grocery stores:
If you're going to be in London in November, I'm going to be presenting my paper "What Marx's Comments About Aristotle and John Stuart Mill Reveal About His Theory of Value" at the Historical Materialism conference. (Might also be doing some other stuff while I'm there--stay tuned!)
This week's Philosophy for the People essay just went up. It's a guest post by Sam Badger (whose own excellent Substack, linked here, you should check out) on the contributions of Engels to what we now know as "Marxism."
Scary stuff.
My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social covers on of the most revealing last-minute endorsements before today's vote in NYC:
But we're supposed to believe the same regime can't wait to commit national suicide by initiating a nuclear exchange? Come the fuck on.
After delays from some late submissions @benburgis.bsky.social and I have finally been able to send in our Cohen collection to Palgrave MacMillan
Excited to be chatting about ideology with @michaelburns.bsky.social and @benburgis.bsky.social later today www.youtube.com/watch?v=IidB...
If you really think this, own it. And tell me what on earth about the evidence of the last few decades makes you take it seriously.
So don't do the thing where you say "religious fanatics who chant 'Death to Israel' and 'Death to America' can't be trusted with nuclear weapons," which strongly insinuates that a nuclear Iran would commit national suicide by initiating a nuclear exchange without quite saying it.
But they've also been casting around for an exit ramp. In the days leading up to Trump joining the war they even signaled their willingness to go back to the negotiations with the U.S. that were broken off by Israel's Pearl Harbor-style attack on them w/US weapon and US approval.
This time, after Israel did a massive "preemptive" sneak attack while they were in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with Israel's sponsor, Iran retaliated more seriously, including by committing some small-scale war crimes of their own.
(Remember the last time Israel hit them before this? When they did they whole "hey JUST SO YOU KNOW in 48 hours we're gonna be sending our slowest-moving drones to retaliate, y'know, if you all wanted to do something about that...." dance?)
In fact, Iran has more often than not been extremely cautious and conservative about the direct use of their own army--to the point of being ludicrously restrained in how they retaliate against attacks from other powers.
In the 1980s, for example, the U.S. under Carter and then Reagan armed and funded the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. But we didn't nuke Moscow. And anyone trying to cite the former (as bad as it was!) as evidence that we'd do the latter would be rightly dismissed as a hysteric.
And if you find the importance of the distinction between "funding proxies to fight with a rival power" and "fighting them with your own army" elusive, maybe take five seconds to apply that to our own country.
The big war they've been in was Iran/Iraq, and Iraq was the aggressor there. In fact, 22 years ago when George W. Bush was doing what Trump is doing now, that war was often cited on the list of Saddam's crimes.
While they've certainly been interested in being a regional counterweight to Israel & the U.S. and they've aided plenty of insurgent and terrorist groups, what they've never ever done is initiate a direct land war with Israel or anyone else. But they'd start a nuclear exchange?
The Islamic Republic is a bad regime that does lots of bad things. Like any decent person around the world I was rooting for the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. But this idea that they're chomping at the bit to do a nuclear murderer-suicide? Come the fuck on.
We have nearly half a century of evidence about Iran's behavior since the Islamic Revolution.
If nothing ele, if this doesn't end with regime change this time, Iran will very obviously draw the conclusion that they desperately need a nuclear deterrent to avoid a reenactment. I'd be against war to prevent that then too!
But the anti-war case is considerably strengthened when you realize that, even if the premise that Iran was actively pursuing and had almost achieved a nuclear weapon *were* true, the idea that this would justify war is ridiculous.
And look, I get that understandably a lot of people's focus is on the fact that there's zero meaningful evidence for the nonsense-claim that they were on the brink of getting one before this war started. (Tulsi now has to lie about her previous testimony on this, etc.)
The idea that if Iran joined the nuclear club, they'd immediately commit national suicide by initiating a nuclear exchange with Israel is absolutely absurd on its face. That's why it's usually insinuated rather than stated outright by people who want to scare you with that. 🧵
(Credit to Politics Sloth on Twitter, who seems to be the original source of the video.)
My latest for @jacobinmag.bsky.social:
I was interviewed on Ian Masters's radio show today about why I've been struggling with confusing and disturbing feelings of agreeing with Tucker Carlson lately. (I'm sure it'll pass the next time he opens his mouth about literally any topic except why the push for war with Iran is so awful.)
In the last several days since Iran started its retaliatory strikes, Israeli leaders and their chorus of apologists and enablers in the West have made an amazing discovery. Apparently, bombing civilians is wrong. I discuss in my latest for @unherd.com:
I'm in @msnbc.com today, writing about the split within MAGA over Trump's lurch toward war with Iran:
If you live in or near LA and you're interested in socialism, mark your calendars! Danish parliamentarian Pelle Dragsted is going to be in town, and on August 16th at 6 PM at the Village Well bookstore in Culver City, Meagan Day and I are going to be interviewing him about his book Nordic Socialism.
This week's Philosophy for the People essay is up:
