Jacobin is an explicitly socialist publication that fortunately has very little influence outside of the Crazy Bernie crowd. As far as I can recall, I’ve only cited its work four times.
- In 2019, I gave it backhanded praise for admitting that the left’s agenda would require huge tax increases on lower-income and middle-class households.
- In 2020, I mocked Jacobin for an article that argued Amazon should be nationalized and made part of the Postal Service.
- Also in 2020, I condemned the magazine for its defense of East Germany’s horrid communist dictatorship.
- In 2022, I returned to mockery because Jacobin had a piece in favor of nationalized dating apps.
Today’s column also will be about Jacobin, but I won’t have to do any work.
Instead, I’m simply going to share a tweet from the magazine because readers gave it a community note that is far more vicious and brutal than anything I coud write.
As you can see, Jacobin attacked WalMart because its wages supposedly are too low, but readers pointed out that the company is far more generous than…you guessed it…Jacobin.
Ouch! As I wrote yesterday with regards to another tweet: Game, set, and match.
I’ll close by bending over to be fair. Some opinion magazines don’t offer any pay to writers, but authors still submit articles for other reasons (ideological commitment, boosting one’s profile, etc).
But if you’re part of a socialist magazine that wants to condemn pay levels at private companies, it would be wise to remember that sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.
P.S. I debated a Jacobin guy back in 2019. I don’t believe the full debate is available online, but you can see a couple of my clips here and here.
