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Articles by Stephen Maher
Treasury Market Volatility Is Capital Disciplining the State
Since the 2008 financial crisis, American economic policy has rested on the seemingly unshakable conviction that global markets for US government debt were bulletproof. This fact would supposedly allow the state to run enormous deficits indefinitely, financing massive tax cuts for the wealthy even while military spending approached $1 trillion. The same confidence underpinned the idea that the Federal Reserve possessed virtually unlimited firepower to contain economic crises.
Contemporary Capitalism Is Brutally Competitive
We are now living under the most aggressive form of capitalism in history. The global circulation of capital compels states and the workers living within them to compete for investment and jobs — leading to exploding inequality and eroding protections for labor and the environment. Meanwhile, investment is booming, R&D spending is growing, technological development is proceeding rapidly, and profits have reached historic highs.
It’s Not Neofeudalism, It’s Hypercapitalism
One of the most persistent left shibboleths is the notion that productive investment is giving way to unproductive speculation, leading to the “hollowing out” of the industrial economy and the decline of capitalism. After all, it seems obvious that capitalists would rather make a quick buck than undertake the arduous and risky process of actually producing something. Neo-feudalism is having a moment.
TODAY! LIVE + IN PERSON MEET THE NEW EDITOR OF MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
Join us 5/28 in-person for the first-ever live launch of the Socialist Register in New York City, at The People’s Forum! This is also your chance to come meet, in person, our new editor, Arun Kundnani, alongside the (relatively new) coeditor of the Socialist Register, Steve Maher, joined by three contributors to this year’s volume: Ibrahim Shikaki, Costas Lapavitsas, and Paul Heideman. Together they will consider these and other questions: –What kind of world order is now emerging?
Under Capitalism, Democracy Stops at the Economy
The dominant mode of socialist analysis of contemporary capitalism very often focuses on its corruption or decay through financialization, monopolization, deregulation, or corporate influence over politics.
Under Capitalism, Democracy Stops at the Economy
The dominant mode of socialist analysis of contemporary capitalism very often focuses on its corruption or decay through financialization, monopolization, deregulation, or corporate influence over politics.
We Can Organize Amazon, but Only if We Understand It
We Can Organize Amazon, but Only if We Understand It Published March 16, 2025 Interview by Benjamin Y. Fong and Scott Jenkins If we count Amazon’s roughly 500,000 subcontracted drivers alongside its 1.5 million employees, this modern corporate behemoth is likely the largest employer in the country — edging out Walmart, which has held that designation for three decades.
We Can Organize Amazon, but Only If We Understand It
Interview by Benjamin Y. Fong and Scott Jenkins If we count Amazon’s roughly 500,000 subcontracted drivers alongside its 1.5 million employees, this modern corporate behemoth is likely the largest employer in the country — edging out Walmart, which has held that designation for three decades. It is second only to Walmart in total revenue (a fact that may well change very soon, too), and it’s got the fourth-largest market cap ($2.47 trillion) after Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft.
In the 1970s, the Left Put a Good Crisis to Waste
The long 1970s crisis demonstrated that Keynesian “managed capitalism” was no longer viable. The accumulating contradictions of that order demanded a restructuring in the form of neoliberal capitalism. The rise of finance in this new regime was critical for supporting globalization, restoring class discipline, increasing the rate of exploitation, and boosting profits — even as fewer American workers were employed in industrial jobs and working-class life became ever more precarious.
Book launch: The Fall and Rise of American Finance
With authors Scott Aquanno and Steve Maher. Moderated by Lenart Nici. Recorded in Toronto, 27 April, 2024. The Leo Panitch School for Socialist Education is proud to present the launch of the new book from Scott Aquanno and Steve Maher: The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock (Verso, 2024). Today, it is all but taken for granted that finance is parasitic on industry.
The Case for Capital Controls
Globalization is a form of class war. Yet the Left has today failed to offer a coherent strategy for challenging it. On one level, this is understandable: in the face of a menacing far-right MAGA movement, focusing on the dangers of globalization may seem to risk playing into nationalist sentiments.
The Power of Finance Is Inherent to Capitalism
Much of the Left sees finance as being parasitic on industry. Financialization, in this view, amounts to financial institutions capturing the state, hollowing out the “real” economy, and hastening the decline of capitalism. But if we survey the last century of capitalist development, we find that, despite the costs to workers and the middle class, financialization has actually boosted competitiveness and strengthened capital – all with the support of an ever stronger and more authoritarian state.
The Problem With Finance Is the Problem of Capitalism
It is today all but taken for granted by political figures from Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders that the rise of finance in recent decades has come at the expense of industry. Such views are similarly widespread among critical political economists, perhaps most prominently Robert Brenner and Cédric Durand.
I’m a Socialist. Joe Biden Is Not.
When I debated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk last fall in Arizona, he showed up wearing a “Socialism Sucks” T-shirt. He cheerfully told me in the green room that he changed into it when one of his staffers told him I was wearing a Bernie Sanders shirt. I can understand why he thinks “Socialism Sucks” makes sense as a jab at me or a jab at Jacobin — but why on Earth would TPUSA think it made sense as a jab at Joe Biden?
The January 6 Hearings Are Failed Political Theater
Not long after the Capitol riot in early 2021, I suggested four possible measures that among others would be practical, effective ways to respond to the incident and help prevent something like it from happening again: a comprehensive inquiry into the baffling law enforcement failure on the day; a nationwide investigation into police around the country and the extremists among them; steps to curb the power of corporate media monopolies, particularly on cable; and taking on the system of...
The State Organizes the Capitalist Class. The Working Class Will Have to Organize Itself.
It seems everyone agrees: American democracy has been corrupted by corporate lobbying. Donald Trump’s promises, however disingenuous, to take on the role of money in politics by “draining the swamp” resonated with his frustrated followers. Meanwhile, progressive liberals like Elizabeth Warren have focused on addressing “corruption” by limiting the influence of business over our elected leaders.
The State Organizes the Capitalist Class. The Working Class Will Have to Organize Itself.
It seems everyone agrees: American democracy has been corrupted by corporate lobbying. Donald Trump’s promises, however disingenuous, to take on the role of money in politics by “draining the swamp” resonated with his frustrated followers. Meanwhile, progressive liberals like Elizabeth Warren have focused on addressing “corruption” by limiting the influence of business over our elected leaders.
Joe Biden’s Stimulus Is Financing Republican-Backed Tax Cuts for the Rich
President Joe Biden’s pandemic relief bill included Democratic lawmakers’ language designed to prevent states from using the federal aid to subsidize tax cuts. But after Republicans protested, Biden’s Treasury Department said it will not aggressively enforce the provision — and now, some GOP legislatures may be using the stimulus cash to finance tax cuts for the rich.
Biden’s Infrastructure Deal Is Terrible. Progressives in Congress Should Block It.
After months of standstill and tedium, we’re finally getting a sense of the endgame for Joe Biden’s infrastructure package. And what it could amount to is a moment of truth for the burgeoning progressive and socialist bloc in Congress. Let’s rewind and remember how we got here.
Biden’s Increase in Government Spending Won’t Touch Capitalists’ Power
Joe Biden’s turn to supporting large-scale government spending, after rallying the Democratic Party establishment to defeat Bernie Sanders in the primary, has stunned much of the Left. After signing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, he is now advancing an additional $1.7 trillion infrastructure bill, to be spent over the next eight years. These bills include far more than the base level measures necessary to address the pandemic or to simply repair highways and bridges.
We Can’t Bookend Vivian Gornick
Review of Taking a Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time, by Vivian Gornick (Verso, 2021).
Leo Panitch Was a Sober Optimist and an Anti-Utopian Utopian
Standing outside a conference with a group of devotees, a famous political scientist brags that there’s only two people in the world he’s afraid of: his mother and Leo Panitch. To anyone who knows Leo, this revelation elicits knowing smiles and an affirmative nodding of heads. But it also poses a question. Those with an authoritative and intimidating presence tend to bring a distancing from others. How, then, did so many nevertheless come to feel so close to Leo?
Understanding the Right-Wing Political Ecosystem
Despite liberal appeals to the contrary, the right wing is not going anywhere after Trump’s loss and the January 6 capitol riot. Instead, right-wing organizations will use the coming years to mobilize and radicalize while seeking to take advantage of divisions in the Republican party to change the US political landscape. Understanding the dynamic between the mainstream right and their more radical counterparts is vital to stopping their growth.
Today, We’re All Living in Mad Max’s World
It’s been forty-two years since Max Rockatansky burst onto screens in the first Mad Max film. Since then, director George Miller’s postapocalyptic vision, explored over the course of four enduringly popular films, has generated a common language to describe a ravaged future. Miller cobbled together the wasteland setting, post-punk costumes, weapons, and machines from discarded parts of our own world. The phrase “Mad Max” itself has become shorthand for violent social breakdown.
The Marxism of Leo Panitch
Ralph Miliband begins his classic book, Marxism and Politics, with the striking observation that no major figure in the Marxist tradition, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves, offered a systematic elaboration of Marxist political theory. For Miliband, this glaring absence could be explained by the ambivalent position Marxists typically assigned to politics in their conceptions of social life in class societies.
Communists Like My Uncle Fought to Expand American Democracy. Fascists Fought to Destroy It.
My late uncle, LeRoy H. Wood, spent years in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for what he did in Washington, DC. Roy was convicted of “conspiring to teach the advocacy of the overthrow of the US government by force and violence.” No, Uncle Roy was not a billionaire who incited a mob to storm the US Capitol with Molotov cocktails. He did not shut down a session of Congress as it completed the final stages of an electoral process.
The Capitol Riot Was Bad Enough. New Domestic Terrorism Legislation Would Make It Even Worse
On January 6, the world watched a far-right mob force the US Congress to temporarily halt its proceedings and flee for cover. The group had gathered outside the Capitol, egged on by President Trump and nurtured by deranged conspiracy theories, believing they could install the loser of an election as the winner. And on live television, they were able to enter one of the most secure buildings in the world, ransack it, threaten lawmakers, and temporarily halt the counting of electoral votes.
Ken Klippenstein Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried
Interview by Luke Savage If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, there’s a good chance you’ve come across Ken Klippenstein. From getting into a fight with Elon Musk to tricking GOP congressman Steve King into retweeting the words “Steve King is a white supremacist” to his own followers, the former Young Turk and reporter for the Nation has helped to elevate the humiliation of awful people into an art form.
Corey Robin: What Impeachment Could Mean
Over the last four years, I’ve argued that this is a potential moment of realignment, where the Reagan regime we’ve been living under could be shattered and repudiated, and replaced by a new political regime. One of the reasons I’ve pressed so hard on the Trump/Carter comparison is to point out that the Reagan regime, like the New Deal regime in the 1970s, is more vulnerable than we realize.
Morbid Symptoms Can Persist for a Long Time
Failed Beer Hall Putsch reenactments aside, Donald Trump will be leaving the White House on January 20, if not sooner. The focus now shifts to the post-Trump world: What can we expect from the incoming Biden administration? The short answer is “not much.” While lacking Trump’s predilection for outright nepotism and sycophancy, Joe Biden clearly values personal loyalty and has made his staffing choices accordingly.
The Washington Riot Was a Defeat for the Far Right, Not a Triumph
The attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, DC on Wednesday by a mob of Trump supporters reinvigorated fears of a fascist threat to liberal democracy. Social media posts and liberal magazines of record immediately characterized the rampage as a coup.
Leo Panitch Was a Mentor for a New Generation of Socialists
You can recognize a mentor by how often certain arguments or ways of thinking flash up in contemporary discussions; by the gratitude you feel towards those who affected your own intellectual, political, and moral journey. And by how their behavior served as a role model. For me, Leo Panitch was all these things. I’d first been consciously exposed to his work by Frank Deppe during my studies at Marburg University.
Leo Panitch and the Socialist Project
The death of Leo Panitch has made the world a darker place. His writings have carried us through some of the most difficult periods in the history of the socialist left, as wave after wave of the neoliberal onslaught broke workers’ organizations, serving up one defeat after the next. Leo’s work sustained so many of us during these years, pushing us on and pointing the way through the storm. This was not because he sowed illusions about just how bad things have been.
Hugh Keays-Byrne Showed Us the Danger of Demagoguery and the Promise of Solidarity
Acclaimed actor Hugh Keays-Byrne died this week at the age of seventy-three. Enthusiastic tributes to the kindness of a man known for his on-screen cruelty dutifully poured in. When director Brian Trenchard-Smith announced his friend’s death last Thursday, he wrote that Keays-Byrne “cared about social justice and preserving the environment long before these issues became fashionable.
Donald Trump Was a Monster Forged by the American Free Market
Donald Trump was everyone’s monster. “Monster” comes from monstre and monstrum, a portent, warning, or revelation — as in “demonstration.” After Trump’s general election loss, everyone wants to know, or thinks they know, what his dishonest, chaotic, and bigoted administration reveals about the country that elevated him.
Aaron Sorkin Turned the Chicago 7’s Militancy and Defiance Into Bland Liberalism
You don’t have to know a lot about the actual history that inspired Netflix’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 to get the sense that Aaron Sorkin’s version softens, tames, and fictionalizes these wild events of the late 1960s.
The Neoconservative Counterrevolution
If New Leftists gave shape to one side of the culture wars, those who came to be called neoconservatives were hugely influential in shaping the other. Neoconservatism, a label applied to a group of prominent liberal intellectuals who moved right on the American political spectrum during the sixties, took form precisely in opposition to the New Left.
Jack Welch Is Dead. Neoliberalism Lives On.
Jack Welch, rock star former CEO of General Electric and Fortune magazine “manager of the century,” has died. Taking the helm at GE just after the 1980 election, Welch was the preeminent corporate counterpart of Reagan’s neoliberal revolution. His two decades as CEO — the longest in GE’s history — signaled the durability of the order that he and Reagan had ushered in, regardless of which political party was in power.
I Like Elizabeth Warren - Here’s Why I Think She Should Drop Out
When Trump won the 2016 general election, my wife was eight months pregnant. And while I am no great fan of Hillary Clinton, on the morning of November 8, just weeks before my daughter was born, I foolishly assumed that she would be raised in a world with a female president. Instead, she’s lived through nothing but the Trump administration. Not surprisingly, I’m desperate to get someone else in the White House and begin constructing a better America.
Workers Are Standing Up to Far-Right Violence
The news reports about the far right’s anti-democratic attack on the Capitol have been terrifying for many.
Socialist Strategy and the Capitalist Democratic State
The democratic socialist movement in the United States today is emerging from a central impasse: the dual failure of both social democratic and Leninist politics. Though social democratic parties could once plausibly claim to be pursuing incremental reforms as a path to something better, the contemporary collapse of parties formed from this tradition across the core capitalist countries following their retreat into ‘Third Way’ politics suggests otherwise.
I Can’t Believe Elizabeth Warren Is Losing to These Guys
Almost every day Elizabeth Warren comes out with serious policy proposals. They’re rarely even baby steps down the road to socialism, but most of them would make this country a better place. But lacking a media-friendly history of being a skateboarding “punk” rocker or a stint with McKinsey — and you might think, not being a man — she can’t get any attention for them.
Can I Talk to a Manager?
If Guy Debord were alive today, he might say that “in societies where the neoliberal conditions of political economy prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of customer service interactions.” That is, to the liberal, all relationships are business transactions.
Girls to the Rescue
Fashion has long had a love/hate relationship with youth. As consumers, the kids are alright — influencers, even — but as laborers in textile factories, they’ve been known to reduce Kathy Lee Gifford to tears on national television.
A Future in Common
On Monday night Jacobin hosted a rally at The World Transformed conference in Liverpool, addressed by France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The event took place alongside the Labour Party conference, at which the French radical-left leader also met with Jeremy Corbyn. In an enthusiastically received speech, Mélenchon called for new forms of mobilization able to confront the challenges of environmental disaster, war, and the neoliberal destruction of democracy.
It’s Not Just the Lobby
In March 2006, the Harvard Kennedy School posted a working paper by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt on its website. Shortly after, the ran a condensed version titled “The Israel Lobby.” And in 2007, it came out in book form. The rare academic work to redefine popular discourse, “The Israel Lobby” broke in grand fashion the taboo against discussing the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its allies. But the paper exaggerated the lobby’s power.
“Cynthia Moved the Debate”
Originally I thought that Cuomo might be such a cynical politician that in order to gear up for his 2020 presidential ambitions, which I still believe he has, he would be like, “Okay, I’ll do single-payer health care. Okay, I’ll do a massive public investment program to deal with climate change. Okay, I’ll do any of these things in order to beef myself up as the progressive governor.” Then in his press conference right after the election, he punched on progressives and the Left numerous times.
Segregation Is Back - And It’s Profitable
A new report from the Urban Displacement Project confirms what anyone who’s lived here already knows: rising housing costs are resegregating the Bay Area. Researchers found that between 2000 and 2015, soaring rents pushed thousands of low-income black households out of what were once racially and economically diverse neighborhoods in Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Richmond.
Accountable Capitalism or Democratic Socialism?
Elizabeth Warren’s “Accountable Capitalism Act” promises the most radical shift in economic power since the New Deal. It contains four essential components, including campaign finance regulations, an attempt to limit corporate “short-termism” that has supposedly accompanied the rise of finance, and a requirement that corporations serve the “public benefit” rather than just shareholders.
The Latest Incarnation of Capitalism
Philosophers and economists have decried the parasitical effect of finance on productive economic activity. Plato opens his Republic with an exchange challenging the idea that one should always repay one’s debts. Adam Smith argued for attacks on landlords’ entrenched privileges, while Keynes called for the “euthanasia of the rentier.” This narrative is still prominent today.
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