The Dutch edition of the originally American magazine Jacobin will start early next year. Jacobin, which also has an English, German and Brazilian edition, has a distinctly socialist signature. It emerged at the time of the Occupy movement, which occupied stock exchanges around the world to protest against capitalism. They also made no secret of their support for the campaign of leftist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
I wanted to know more about it. Not because America is such a great political guiding country, but because editor-in-chief of the Dutch edition is Hannah van Binsbergen. Van Binsbergen is a novelist and poet and her latest collection of poems was about Kokanje, the mythical land of paradise where food is plentiful and you never have to work. And she’s not the only poet in the editorial office. Could poetic imagination solve the crisis of ideas on the left that is so often hated (eg by me)? And can Jacobin’s socialism help us realize an enticing post-capitalist future?
In any case, that question is central to the first issue, as I learn when I speak of Binsbergen in her Amsterdam apartment. The theme is: “a world to win”. Van Binsbergen strives with her editors for a freer and more autonomous society, in which there is sufficient prosperity for everyone. Because although there are dozens of flavors of chips for sale in today’s society, the possibilities to shape your life as you see fit are limited. “Marx said: the proletariat has a lot of freedom, namely, the freedom to sleep under a bridge or to sell their labor on the labor market. That is still true I think, those are the flavors that are out there,” says Van Binsbergen.
“Another world is possible, even in the Netherlands,” it says in large white letters against a red background on Jacobin’s new website. There is a logo of someone with a stitch on his head. It depicts Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the Haitian Revolution who, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, rose up against slavery with his “black Jacobins”.
The aim of Jacobin’s socialism is that “the means of production should be in the hands of the people who produce, so that they can decide for themselves whether, what and how to produce”. According to van Binsbergen, no strict ideological line is set, but the magazine functions as a platform for discussion. They want to post articles that you could not read “in the Groene Amsterdammer or the Volkskrant”. “In those media you first have to explain: there is such a thing as capitalism. It does this and this and this to the world, and we would like to change that. That is a step in your argument that you can skip with Jacobin.”
Van Binsbergen became acquainted with the magazine at the start of her student days. “I was quite outspoken left then. I noticed then very much that the attitude of people in the Netherlands towards everything that has to do with socialism is pitying. As if it were something of the past, as if as a socialist you are nostalgic for the VARA as it used to be.” Those who still believed in the power of the left also often reverted to earlier movements. “I associated squatters and left-wing groups with the mimeographed sheet, the stickers and being content to operate on the margins.”
Her introduction to Jacobin was therefore a relief: “I was surprised that it was so obvious from now on, and that also had a lot to do with how it looked. Very cool and fresh. It exuded a non-marginal left. A popular left.” She thinks part of that coolness might have to do with the fact that it’s an American magazine: “They don’t have, like us, parties that call themselves socialist or social-democratic, but then, when they get power, they start tearing down the welfare state. .” When she heard that a number of Dutch left-wing writers were toying with the idea of bringing the magazine to the Netherlands, she was quick to apply for editor-in-chief.
It may be an imported concept with partly translated articles, but the Dutch Jacobin will certainly focus on the Dutch situation. As part of their search for alternatives to the status quo, they also look at the past with a different perspective. According to Van Binsbergen, the socialist side of history is unfairly underexposed. “There are also inspiring socialist figures in the Netherlands who were extremely important internationally, and perhaps not as white and masculine as people imagine.”
For example, she wrote an article on the English-language Jacobin appeared about the Henriëtte Roland Holst. “People know her as a poet, later she also went a bit in a Christian direction. But she really is a huge linchpin in European communism. She was the person in Western Europe who had contact with the leaders of the early Soviet Union. That’s how you get the idea: The Netherlands has always been much bigger than we might imagine.” She emphasizes that the Soviet Union is not romanticized by Jacobin, but also says: “When you talk about the history of the Soviet Union, you should not confuse the ideas with the implementation in a political system that was not at all faithful to those ideas.”
When I ask enthusiastically whether the land of Kokanje will also be promoted in Jacobin, Van Binsbergen responds somewhat reluctantly. “Kokanje is just a utopian dream, born in the Middle Ages as a form of escapism. Roasted pigeons flying through the air is not a situation we can achieve, because that’s not how biology works, unfortunately.” She says that socialism, on the other hand, pursues a “concrete achievable ideal” that capitalism says is not possible: “A greater degree of shared prosperity, and less scarcity of things people need and want; food, safety, fun, sex.”
Yet her poetry does feed her political struggle. “You have a very famous statement, almost a clincher: it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This saying was popularized by cultural critic and blogger Mark Fisher, following the example of philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and has become an integral part of internet culture in recent years. “It frames the problem of a lack of activism as a lack of imagination. As a poet I think: I can do something about that.” says van Binsbergen. “Writing a poem is a vaguely esoteric process, in which I have a kind of vision that makes me very happy and I try to drag it into reality. Jacobin is a much more straightforward project, but I do notice that it helps that I can put things into words. There are certain socialist ideas and I want more people to get to know them, in a fun and accessible way.”
One of those ideas, which in a sense also rubs against the utopian Kokanje, comes from Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law. “I also think that is a very nice figure. He has written a book: The Right to Laziness. Not really a good book, but an inspiring idea. He says that production and work are actually enemies of human nature, and that the struggle we must fight should be aimed at reducing that evil. If it’s up to me, we’re going to dedicate a song to that too. There was also a very strong anti-work movement in the Netherlands in the 1980s: people became unemployed and wondered whether they should actually go back to work.” Van Binsbergen says that this philosophy brings us to a very fundamental question: “Suppose you didn’t have to work, what would you do? Then you end up with a desire. Maybe then many more people will find out that they are actually poets.”
