Jul 13, 2021

Founded in 2010 by political writer Bhaskar Sunkara, the influential quarterly magazine Jacobin offers left-wing perspectives on politics, economics and culture similar to those popularized by the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It has paid print circulation of 60,000, and its website boasts 2 million views a month.

Sunkara credits his own political awakening to reading Orwell and Trotsky as a teenager. By 17, he was editor of The Activist, the youth blog for the Democratic Socialists of America. He would launch Jacobin while still at George Washington University. Within three years, The New York Times was commenting on Jacobin’s unexpected successful engagement with mainstream liberalism. Even more surprising, last year Fortune magazine—nothing if not a safe place for unrepentant capitalists—put Sunkara on its 40 Under 40 list.

Sunkara is the author of 2019’s “The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality” He’s at work at another book and his writing can also be found in Vice, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Washington Post.