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Greetings everyone,

I’m writing to inform you of a new project I will be posting on here. In the past few months, I’ve received a lot of requests on “good” (i.e. leftist) Russian/ Soviet history books. While there are certainly a few out there (I recommend Ronald Suny’s “The Soviet Experiment”) I decided to begin writing my own.

The book I aim to write is both for popular readers but also potentially appealing to academics. I intend for the book to be short but informative, covering both the history and the historiographical debates.

Books are not easy to write, and once you are done writing you have to farm it out to publishers. I’m not sure which publisher I want to pitch the project to, so I figured why not upload chapters on here one-by-one as I finish drafts. The chapters will be exclusively for paid members and will come out as I “finish” them.

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In the meantime, if any publishers do happen upon this blog, feel free to reach out. The potential for a book such of this is huge—the history of Russia through a distinctly left perspective by a certified expert—is something that a lot of people yearn for.

When I wrote Fear Before the Fall, I really wanted to treat the introduction of Horror films into the Soviet cannon as a product of larger socio-cultural changes. The truth is that all Soviet films reflect their time and place in important ways, and Soviet directors remain some of the most innovative in terms of technique, style, narrative, plot, and set design.

This class will meet for 5 weeks and there will be roughly two films per week. You can watch one or both of them to keep up.

Information on enrolling is in the poster attached here. Once you send payment (include your email) I will send you the syllabus with the schedule and all the necessary links. Closer to the end of August we will decide as a class when to meet (day and time).

Hope to see you in there!

Some years ago I ran a relatively popular fanzine, Punks Around – where my Instagram handle comes from. By “relatively popular” I mean I distributed it to 36 states, spent around $1500 to print, assemble, and ship, and just about broke even from sales. (If you’re interested, Microcosm Publishing still prints back issues). Zine culture was something that I dove head first into as an outlet to explore the complications, contradictions, and merits of independent publishing. Punks around has issues on topics like Women in Punk, Straight Edge, All But Cis Punks, Mental Health, and many more. I used to get fan mail from people around the country sending me praise and copies of their own inspired fanzines.

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One day I received a letter from a prison somewhere in the Midwest. I opened the letter and read a hand-written review of my “Zine about Zines” that contained an abundance of reminiscing, praise, and nostalgia. It also included scanned copies of his former zine that reviewed bands from around the world. Clearly, someone locked up was really into my shit, so I wrote back equal praise and respect. My partner at the time saw the letter postmarked from a prison and asked, as anyone would, “aren’t you interested to know why they’re in prision?” The truth is I wasn’t. I had zero interest in knowing, all I cared about was that someone ‘inside’ was interested in my stuff and had a lot of experience and knowledge about zine making and writing.

We continued the correspondence for about three rounds, exchanging our penchant for writing, our interests in the intricacies of the punk scene. His letters were handwritten, mine were always typed.

It turns out the curiosity of my partner got the better of them, because by the third message received they decided to investigate his name and record. To their shock, they found that he was in prison for pedophilia, perhaps the most condemning, irredeemable sentence in the American psyche (thinking about the guy who rides around my town with bumper stickers about hunting pedophiles, etc.)

My partner had to break the news to me, and I think they assumed the news would somehow break my willingness to correspond. Instead, when they told me, my first response was “well, you know Pedophilia can mean many things. It could mean that at age 18 he was caught with a 15 year old, or worst case scenario, it could mean that in his 20s he was with a preteen. It’s not my place to judge or condemn.” My partner was shocked—probably disgusted—knowing that, at this point, I was willingly corresponding with a pedophile. Except in my mind I wasn’t. I was corresponding with a fellow zinester who fucked up.

Within the highfalutin ethics of the American left there lies a deep contradiction over restorative justice. By contradiction I mean that we have a deep understanding of the problems with our country’s prison industrial complex. The fact that over 4,000 corporations profit from incarceration through complexes that retain roughly 2 million people, only 500,000 of which are released annually, and of those, 35% return to prison. Leftists understand the problem with this—America’s incarceration rate and recidivism is astounding compared to other countries. As a nation we have a real issue with rehabilitation.

Yet, if you were to use the case of my ex-partner or even those condemning Graham Platner, you’d hear the same kind of unforgiving condemnation parroting the prison industrial complex. Platner’s case is an interesting one. As of July 8th, 2026, he has been accused of everything from sexting, sexual assault, Nazism, and his work with a military contractor. All of these things are probably true—Platner has been very up front about his dark past and he has held no punches in condemning his past self. As far as I know, the most recent allegation dates back just 5 years, before his marriage and activism with leftist groups.

It is not difficult to believe in the possibility that Platner has been rehabilitated—that something about his past has provoked a deep wreckening with himself that has lead to fundamental ideological, ethical, and material improvement. He has certainly demonstrated as much in his deeds and rhetoric.

Making this point has led to a lot of backlash and scorn from people on social media. I’ve been called a rape apologist among other things and told to “do better.” I get it—certain crimes and transgressions cut deeper than others and have broader social and cultural implications. They provoke traumas of those baring witness and our knee-jerk reaction is condemnation and distancing. But my point here is that as leftists, we need to leave space for the possibility of rehabilitation and restorative justice, not just in rhetoric but in acts. From the inmate that sent me letters to Platner, and everyone in between if we simply replicate the cancel culture that feeds the prison industrial complex, are we really any better than them?

When someone asked me, “what has Platner done to demonstrate he’s better now?” I flipped the question and asked, “What would he have to do to prove it to you?” because it seems to me that the expectations we have for rehabilitation are subjective, unrealistic, and outright imaginary. If someone who has been upfront about their past, publicly condemned it, and lead a powerful campaign to fight the same systems we want to dismantle cannot be deemed “rehabilitated” then I’m not sure what can. What distinguishes Platner from other transgressors, say Donald Trump, is their willingness to admit past transgressions and address them publicly. I cannot think of anything else Platner could do to demonstrate rehabilitation.

Whether Platner drops out or stays in, appoints a replacement or disappears, I think the American left needs to take a serious look at how willing it is to deal with forgiveness. After all, we’re all just humans floating on earth who, by our 40s, have lived what feels like multiple lives. We’re all imperfect, have skeletons, and fundamental flaws. The question is not whether your closet holds skeletons, but how you deal with them when the door is opened.  If all we’re capable of is condemnation and cancelation, we could be losing very effective and powerful allies.

This is a nine-week course that meets once a week for nine consecutive weeks. We will go over the history and contents of Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. We will cast a vote for a day and time a week before the second week of June.

You are highly encouraged to purchase the Penguin version of Capital volume 1 so that we can read together and follow page numbers.

This is a reading-intensive course that will test your patience and reading comprehension. Take it in sections at a time, and read a little bit each day. The best advice that I can give is to take notes while reading by underlining text, highlighting, writing in marginalia, or taking notes (with page numbers) in a notebook.

Each session will last roughly one hour, and the class is capped at 20 people.

How it works:

1. The admission fee is $100 and can be sent directly to Venmo @punksaround or Cash App $punksaround. Alternatively, you can use PayPal alexanderherbert45@gmail.com. Please include your email in the payment.

2. Once you pay the admission fee, you will have access to a word doc that contains the syllabus, Zoom link, and link to a Telegram channel. If you do not have Telegram, please download it, as it is a vital means of communication for the class.

3. Should you miss a class, I will be recording each session and posting it to the shared folder.

The $100.00 fee amounts to about $10.00 per session and no part of that can be refunded or partially paid. In other words, you cannot pay $20.00 to attend two sessions. The class is designed as a totality.

Reviews from the previous class:

“The instructor is a great teacher and is super knowledgeable about the material. Because Alex is so knowledgeable about the topic, I walked away with a greater understanding. I also would have given up without the accountability of weekly class (even though I was always behind and had to skip sections).”

“I enjoyed going over the text to gain some clarity on what Marx meant in certain passages. I don’t know that I would have ever sat down to read Capital all the way through just on my own.”

“The synthesis of discussion within each chapter. Highlighting the main ideas Marx was discussing. Providing context to certain ideas and elaborating on those not fleshed out by Marx.”

I am writing this article by way of introducing my subscribers briefly to the theme of Environmental History. I will be teaching an online course on Environmental History beginning at the end of May. To enroll, just send $65.00 to Venmo (@punksaround), Cash App ($punksaround), or PayPal (message me for my email) and include your email address. That will give you access to a Google folder that contains a syllabus, Zoom link, and Telegram channel. Join the Telegram channel for updates and polling on meeting times. See you in class!

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Trump’s nominee of New Mexican Republican Congressman Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is just another massive move toward the erasure of any morsel of public property. A devout Trump devotee, Pearce stated on March 4^th that he does not support the selling of federal land, but if other Trump nominees are any indication, he’s probably not telling the truth. The truth is that Trump has previously stated his intention to “drill baby, drill!” which requires penetration into America’s preserved land and privatization to America’s oil companies. Land estimated to contain oil and gas is directly managed by the BLM and covers approximately 700 acres of onshore minerals, and that’s not even including the rare earth minerals and other materials the administration has its sights set on.

As in previous instances of closing and selling public lands, the future of America’s conservation areas speaks toward a further widening of capital interests at the expense of nature and quality of life. For near-term cheap gas prices, Americans seem poised to allow a shrinking of their natural heritage.

Like the present, the historical enclosure movement in early modern England marked a decisive shift in the organization of land, labor, and capital. Common lands, once collectively used by rural populations to pasture their livestock, were gradually restricted, privatized, fenced, and integrated into a market-oriented system of private land ownership. This transformation displaced the peasantry, intensified class divisions, and enabled the expansion of capitalist agriculture. As described by Karl Marx, this process formed part of what he termed “primitive accumulation,” the violent precondition for capitalist development. In the contemporary United States, a growing political and economic willingness to sell or transfer federal land to private ownership reflects a structurally similar process. While separated by centuries and context, both developments reveal a shared underlying logic: that capital must expand into previously non-commodified land in order to grow. This essay argues that current efforts to privatize federal land represent a modern form of enclosure, driven by similar economic imperatives and producing comparable social and ecological consequences.

The enclosure movement unfolded gradually between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries in England. Initially justified as a means of improving agricultural efficiency, enclosure involved the consolidation of scattered strips of land into unified holdings and the elimination of communal rights. Parliamentary Enclosure Acts formalized this process, allowing landowners to legally appropriate common fields, forests, and pastures and sell them to private owners (usually members of Parliament). As social theorist Karl Polanyi once wrote, enclosure signified the commodification of land, a resource previously understood to be inherently communal.

Before enclosure, rural communities depended on shared resources for subsistence. Common rights included grazing livestock, gathering firewood, and cultivating small plots. These practices formed the economic foundation of peasant life, as they also allowed farmers to “muck” manure from pasture lands to their plots (or, in the best case, the livestock ate the common grass and transported it themselves to the peasant plot). It also determined simple procedures of everyday life, or what E.P. Thompson called “task-oriented” time, before industrial capitalism standardized the clock. Enclosure disrupted this system by converting land into exclusive private property for sale and rent, a new source of surplus extraction. Landlords fenced off previously accessible areas and reoriented production toward market profitability, particularly through sheep farming and later capitalist agriculture.

The consequences were profound. Dispossessed peasants lost their means of subsistence and were forced into wage labor. Many migrated to urban centers, contributing to the labor supply that fueled industrialization. Marx emphasized that this separation of producers from the means of production was foundational to capitalism’s emergence.

At its core, enclosure represented the extension of market relations into spaces that had previously operated outside them. Karl Polanyi described this transformation as part of the creation of a “market society,” in which land, labor, and money were treated as fictitious commodities. What he meant is that land, labor, and capital have no inherent value, but are endowed with value through their socialization within the market. Land that had been governed by custom, tradition, and communal use was redefined as a commodity subject to ownership, exchange, and profit maximization. Once land was rendered into a commodity, it became subject to whatever designs humans had for it.

This transformation aligned with earlier insights from Adam Smith, who emphasized the productivity gains associated with improved land use and specialization. However, while Smith highlighted efficiency and growth, Polanyi and Marx drew attention to the social dislocation and coercion embedded in these changes.

The process was not merely economic but also legal and ideological. Property rights were strengthened and redefined to favor exclusivity and transferability. The concept of land as a shared resource gave way to land as an asset. This shift required both state intervention and cultural change, as enclosure was often resisted by affected communities.

Importantly, enclosure targeted land that was not fully integrated into capitalist circuits. Common lands represented a form of “untapped” value from the perspective of emerging capitalist interests. By enclosing these lands, elites unlocked new opportunities for investment, production, and profit. This dynamic—capital seeking new frontiers for expansion—remains central to understanding contemporary land policy.

The United States federal government controls approximately 28 percent of the nation’s land, concentrated primarily in western states. These lands are managed by agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Forest Service. Historically, federal land has served multiple purposes, including conservation, recreation, and public access.

Unlike private property, federal land is held in trust for the public. It represents a form of collective ownership, though mediated by state institutions. While not identical to the commons of pre-enclosure England, federal land shares key characteristics: broad accessibility, multiple use rights, and a degree of insulation from pure market logic. In Polanyi’s terms, such land remains partially “embedded” in social and political relations rather than fully subordinated to the market.

The push to sell or transfer federal land is driven by several intersecting factors. First, fiscal pressures and ideological commitments to limited government have encouraged policymakers to view public land as a financial asset. Selling land generates immediate revenue and reduces maintenance costs.

Second, demand for natural resources has intensified interest in previously protected or underutilized areas. Energy companies seek access to oil, gas, and mineral reserves. Real estate developers target land for housing and infrastructure projects. These interests frame federal land as an underexploited resource that could be more profitably managed in private hands.

Third, political narratives emphasize local control and economic development. Western states in particular have argued that federal ownership restricts growth and limits opportunities for investment. Privatization is presented as a solution that aligns land use with market demand, echoing Adam Smith’s emphasis on efficiency and productive allocation.

The similarities between the enclosure movement and contemporary federal land privatization are structural rather than superficial. Both involve the transformation of land from a shared or publicly accessible resource into a privately controlled commodity. Both are facilitated by state action, whether through executive acts or legislative and administrative decisions.

In each case, the process targets land that exists partially outside market relations. Common lands in England and federal lands in the United States function as buffers against full commodification. They provide access, stability, and alternative forms of value that are not strictly economic. Enclosure removes these buffers, integrating land into circuits of capital accumulation. Marx’s framework highlights how this process reinforces class power by concentrating ownership.

Displacement is another key parallel. In England, enclosure displaced rural populations and undermined traditional livelihoods. In the United States, privatization threatens to restrict public access, displace indigenous and local communities, and alter patterns of land use. While the forms of displacement differ, the underlying dynamic—loss of access to shared resources—remains the same. The role of ideology also aligns. Enclosure was justified through arguments about efficiency, productivity, and modernization. Similarly, contemporary privatization is framed as a rational response to inefficiency and underutilization. Polanyi would interpret both as efforts to expand the reach of the self-regulating market, often provoking social resistance.

The movement toward privatizing federal land reflects a broader pattern within capitalism: the continual search for new areas of accumulation. Marx identified this tendency as intrinsic to capital’s expansionary nature. When traditional markets reach limits, capital turns outward to incorporate new resources.

Today, the increasing willingness to sell or transfer federal land in the United States reflects a similar logic to the British enclosure movement. Both processes are driven by the expansion of capital into land that has not yet been fully commodified. Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation, Polanyi’s theory of market society, and Smith’s emphasis on productive efficiency together illuminate different dimensions of this transformation. While the contexts differ, the underlying dynamics of dispossession, commodification, and accumulation remain consistent. Contemporary federal land policy thus represents not a departure from history, but its continuation in a new form.

Looking for a way to acquire some knowledge and meet new people through the first month of summer? Curious about the history of Europe and its empires? The USSR?

I am writing this short message to you all to urge you to sign up for my summer course, “Modern European History.” It’s going to be a fun look at Europe from the Ancient Regime to the disappearance of the USSR and everything in between. We will meet once or twice a week, and each session will be split between a lecture and a discussion of shared texts. Here are some reviews from previous iterations:

“The readings that were picked out were excellent and informative. I appreciate the flexibility with course meetings.

Open discussion, flexible scheduling

The course started with readings that needed little context, and worked through the writings of those that built in them. This presented the development of ideas that underpin some of the politics present in all the countries of the world today in a very short time.

Good lecture tempo (not too slow, not too fast) - in discussion Alex seems to know how to ask the right questions (in discussions) to steer us (students) in the right direction

Clear and easy to follow presentation, Alex is very knowledgeable and connects the different ideas and theories together well, informal setting is enjoyable, the recorded video is great for when I can’t make it live and to go back to.

Very informative, good resources

I liked the way the content was organized both in the lecture and the selected reading. I feel that the content presented by the professor gave me a good understanding of the fundamentals . I also like how the course was set up such that while there was new information present it also built on the content presented in the previous readings and lectures.

The in depth lectures and the reading materials. I also like that there is an actual class and this isn’t asynchronous.

I like learning more about the various schools of economics, with the combination of placing it within the historical context.

I really appreciate the perspective and approach this brief class takes. The exposure of new texts expands and adds to my nascent understanding. Alex is fantastic as professor; I am challenged without feeling like I’m being talked down to. The people in the class are also quite welcoming and thoughtful in their comments.”

If you are interested in signing up, please follow these instructions.

1. The fee for enrollment from Substack is $50.00. I have bypassed Patreon and other third-party platforms that charge you a fee and selected to have it direct. So you can send your payment through Venmo (@punksaround), Cashapp ($punksaround) or Paypal (alexanderherbert45@gmail.com). BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL IN THE COMMENTS!

2. Upon payment, you will receive an invite to a Google folder. The Google folder contains the syllabus and the readings. Open the syllabus and find the Telegram channel link. Join the Telegram channel.

3. At this point, you are all set. All major communications, including the poll for meeting time and day, will be distributed through the Telegram channel.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2019 did not happen in a vacuum. In fact, it was the result of a series of events that culminated in the disintegration of the USSR and its messy aftermath. The only way that we can fully understand the intricacies of “collapse,” the Ukraine conflict, and modern Russia is by careful study of its history. This course begins with the late Tsarist Empire, assessing its imperial structure and its fault lines, taking students through the collapse of Autocracy, the two revolutions of 1917, all the way to Putin’s ascent. Combining over 10+ years of study (my PhD is in Russian History), personal knowledge, archival experience, and more, it offers students a thorough understanding of Russia and the USSR.

The class is split into 7 sessions, comprised of lectures and discussion. We will begin meeting at the end of March on a day and time decided together.

To pay, please venmo/cashapp/paypal @punksaround (or $punksaround) (last 4 digits 7882) and include your email address. If you forget to include your email address, you can send it to me here in a message. I find it easier to pay this way so that you do not get charged extra from Patreon or Apple Pay, and so that you can be easily refunded, should you need to cancel (within 14 days of class starting). You will then receive a Google Doc that contains the syllabus with the course schedule, telegram channel link, and the zoom link for class.

Brief schedule:

1. The Multiethnic, Multiconfessional, and Multitroubled Russian Empire

2. Revolutionary Decade, 1905-1917

3. Civil War and the New Economic Policy

4. “The Great Turn” to World War

5. Late “Stalinism” and Khrushchev

6. Corn, Construction, and Communism: The Apogee of Soviet Power

7. Perestroika and Disintegration

If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact me.

As many of you know, I recently decided that I am ready to lead a 8-week long course on Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. You can find the link to sign up, but in case you need further convincing, here’s a short article about why you should read it. To sign up, follow this link and purchase the post, which will give you access to a google doc with the zoom link, telegram link, and schedule.

If you are confused by any of the following text, a course is the perfect venue to ask questions and become familiar with the common terms associated with Marxism.

Reading Karl Marx’s Capital remains essential for understanding the structure and dynamics of the contemporary global economy and for organizing an effective, grounded critique of capitalism as a compendium to community activism. Capital is not a historical curiosity tied narrowly to nineteenth-century industrial Europe. It is a systematic analysis of how capitalist societies reproduce themselves through exploitation, capital accumulation, crisis, and ideology. Its conceptual framework allows readers to move beyond surface phenomena such as prices, wages, or individual corporate behavior and to grasp the deeper social relations that govern economic life. For activists, this theoretical clarity is not academic luxury, but a practical necessity. Without it, critique risks remaining moralistic, fragmented, or easily absorbed by the system it seeks to challenge.

At the core of Capital is Marx’s insistence that capitalism must be analyzed as a social relation rather than a neutral system of exchange. The global economy today is often described in technical terms: markets, growth rates, supply chains, productivity, and innovation. These descriptions obscure the fact that capitalism organizes human labor and social cooperation in a specific way. Marx begins Capital with the commodity because it is the elementary form of wealth in capitalist society. The commodity is both an object and a social relation mediated through exchange. By unpacking this form, Marx shows how social labor appears as a relation between things, a process he famously describes as commodity fetishism. This insight remains indispensable in a world where global production networks stretch across continents, yet appear to consumers as isolated goods on a shelf or images on a screen.

Understanding commodity fetishism is especially important in the contemporary global economy, where production is geographically fragmented and politically opaque. A smartphone, for example, embodies labor from miners in the Congo, assembly workers in East Asia, software engineers in the United States, and logistics workers worldwide. Market ideology presents this object as the outcome of innovation and consumer choice. Capital teaches readers to see instead a coordinated system of labor extraction organized through capital’s command over production. This perspective allows activists to connect local struggles, such as warehouse labor disputes or housing insecurity, to global processes of accumulation rather than treating them as isolated injustices.

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Marx’s labor theory of value, built on Adam Smith’s, is another reason Capital remains vital today. Critics often dismiss it as outdated or purely theoretical. Yet its importance lies not in predicting prices but in revealing the source of profit and exploitation. Marx argues that value arises from socially necessary labor time and that surplus value is generated when workers produce more value than they receive in wages. This concept explains how capital accumulates even when exchanges appear fair. In contemporary capitalism, exploitation is often obscured by service work, financialization, and the language of flexibility or entrepreneurship. Gig workers are framed as independent contractors. Salaried professionals are encouraged to identify with their employers. Capital cuts through these narratives by focusing on the underlying relation between labor and capital, clarifying that exploitation persists regardless of contractual form.

For community activists, this analytical clarity is crucial. Campaigns that focus solely on corporate greed, corrupt politicians, or individual bad actors often fail to produce lasting change because they do not address the structural necessity of exploitation within capitalism. Capital shows that profit is not an ethical deviation but a systemic requirement. Thus, appeals to corporate responsibility or moral reform alone are dead ends. Instead, Capital suggests that the only way to combat this system is by targeting power at the point of production, distribution, and social reproduction, where capital depends directly on collective labor.

Capital also provides a framework for understanding inequality beyond income disparities. Marx demonstrates that capitalism inherently produces class polarization. Accumulation concentrates wealth and power in fewer hands while dispossessing others of independent means of subsistence. This process is visible today in rising wealth inequality, housing crises, precarious employment, and the erosion of public goods. Marx’s analysis of primitive accumulation is especially relevant in a global context marked by land grabs, privatization, debt regimes, and the enclosure of digital commons. These processes are often presented as development or modernization, yet they follow the same logic Marx identified: separating people from the means of life in order to compel wage labor.

For activists working at the community level, this perspective transforms how social problems are understood. Housing insecurity is not merely a result of zoning policy or insufficient supply. It is linked to real estate speculation, financialization, and the treatment of housing as a commodity rather than a social necessity. Environmental degradation is not simply the result of poor regulation but of capital’s drive to externalize costs and expand production endlessly. Capital equips activists with a language to articulate these connections, enabling coalition-building across issues that are often treated separately.

The housing market bubble, the tech bubble, the AI bubble are not new. Capital shows that capitalism is prone to recurring crises due to internal contradictions, particularly the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the mismatch between production and consumption. While the specific forms of crisis have evolved, the basic pattern remains recognizable. Financial crashes, supply chain breakdowns, and debt crises are not anomalies but expressions of systemic instability. The global financial crisis of 2008 and the economic disruptions following the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate how deeply interconnected and fragile the global economy has become.

For community activists, understanding crisis theory has strategic implications. Crises open political space, but they also generate confusion, fear, and reactionary responses. Without a structural analysis, blame is easily redirected toward migrants, marginalized communities, or abstract market forces. Capital provides tools to explain why crises occur and who benefits from their management. This understanding helps activists intervene with demands that address root causes rather than symptoms, such as advocating for decommodified healthcare, public control over finance, or collective ownership of key industries.

Capital also remains relevant because it foregrounds collective agency. Marx does not present workers as passive victims but as central actors whose labor sustains the system and whose collective action has transformative potential. This emphasis is essential for effective community organizing. Activism grounded only in critique can slide into pessimism or performative resistance. Capital insists that the same processes that produce exploitation also create the conditions for solidarity. Workers share common interests not because of shared identity or morality but because of their position within the production process.

This insight is particularly valuable in diverse, fragmented communities where building unity is challenging. Capital encourages organizers to focus on material conditions and shared dependencies rather than abstract appeals to unity. It also helps activists recognize the limits of individual solutions within a systemic problem. Cooperative projects, mutual aid, and local reforms are important, but Marx’s analysis reminds organizers that such efforts must be connected to broader struggles over power and ownership if they are to endure.

In sum, reading Capital is indispensable for understanding the global economy today because it reveals capitalism as a structured system of social relations, exploitation, and power rather than a collection of neutral market outcomes. It equips readers with concepts that cut through ideological mystification and connect local experiences to global processes. For community activists, this theoretical grounding strengthens critique, sharpens strategy, and sustains collective action. Capital does not offer a blueprint for activism, but it provides something more durable: a method for understanding the world in order to change it.

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Between its founding in 1889 and its collapse during the First World War, the Second International positioned itself as the chief institutional expression of international socialism. It aspired to offer a universal theory of emancipation grounded in class struggle, historical materialism, and proletarian internationalism. Yet on the question of Jewish repression and political representation, socialists had no ready-made answers. The International remained formally opposed to antisemitism and consistently hostile to Zionism. At the same time, it failed to develop a coherent theory of Jewish workers as a collective subject. The result was a persistent contradiction. Jewish oppression was acknowledged, but Jewish political distinctiveness was denied. This tension was never resolved and exposed a structural weakness in socialist internationalism at the turn of the twentieth century, allowing former communists to fall for the antisemitic politics of interwar Europe. Not only did antisemitism persist, but Jews, both as a result of the antisemitism and the lack of clear analysis, turned away from socialism and towards Zionism, particularly in the mid twentieth century, as it seemed to resolve the contradiction, albeit in a truncated way. The trend was already established long before the Holocaust, but it is important to understand today for a true socialist approach to the Jewish question and the state of Israel today.

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A DISCOUNT CODE FOR SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBERS WILL BE SENT OUT IN MESSAGES.

Published September 14, 1867, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital remains one of the foundational texts of modern Marxist political economy, revolutionary theory, and sociology. It is a mammoth book, with the Penguin edition numbering 940 pages excluding the Appendix. Its size and density are most often the major deterrents for would-be readers, as it can be hard to digest alone. Yet, it is a must-read for any revolutionary, and I am so thrilled to finally offer a course on it.

The course will be capped at 20 people.

Logistics:

This is an 8-week course on Volume One of Karl Marx’s Capital beginning in March 2026. We will meet once a week at a designated time and day chosen by the class before we begin.

Each session will be devoted to one of the 8 parts of the book. There is little to no lecture component, as historical context should be acquired through previous course offerings (Modern Europe, Modern European Socialism, and Intro to Political Economy). However, these courses are not required prerequisites; they just help place the text in context. We will be using the Penguin edition, and it’s important that you have access to that specific edition so that our page references line up.

How to enroll:

To enroll in this course, you need to go to my Patreon page, navigate to “Shop” and purchase the post. The fee of $100 covers costs of setup (including Zoom), course preparation, advising, and time spent in and outside of the session. Once you purchase the post, you will be granted access to a Google folder (located below the post) that contains the syllabus, which includes links to the course Telegram channel and the Zoom meeting. All course meetings are recorded and uploaded to that folder, so if you need to miss a session, you can watch it on your own time.

I should note that those using iOS are charged $43 more by Patreon. If you have the means, consider enrolling outside of iOS to save yourself some money.

As we draw closer to March, I will send out a Google poll in the Telegram channel to vote on a time and day of the week.

Sign up for “A History of European Socialism” here to learn more with me!

Any aspiring Marxist worth their salt reads Marx and Engels at some point in order to solidify their understanding of dialectical and historical materialism. One of those readings, I hope, is Engels’ famous piece “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” where he clearly explicates the difference between the socialists of old and what he and Marx considered to be scientific, that is, objective, socialist theory. For context, in the mid-to-late 19th century, Europeans became increasingly obsessed with all things scientific. The mania to render everything “science” blended formerly distant fields with Natural History, bringing new concepts, laws, and disciplines into focus. Charles Darwin (Evolutionary Biology) is probably the most easily recognizable, but we can’t forget Emile Durkheim (Sociology), Gregor Mendel (Genetics), and Sigmund Freud (Psychology), among others. If one could demonstrate the objective principles dictated by “laws,” that would lend credibility to your larger theoretical extrapolations.

Engels’ work was precisely an attempt to separate himself from the so-called “utopian” socialists, a somewhat condescending label given to people like Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and, to a lesser extent, François-Noël Babeuf. Among socialists of Engels’ time and our own, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” buried the metaphorical hatchet and condemned those pre-Marxist thinkers as unscientific, and therefore utopian in their imaginings of an alternative to industrial capitalism.

Today, that means that most Marxists do not extend their knowledge of the “utopians” beyond Engels’ own derisive description of them. To be sure, Engels had some amount of respect for his predecessors longing for a better world, but by condemning them as “utopian,” he branded them as archaic, naive, and unserious, even though many still had ardent followers within Europe and America.

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Skip to the bottom if you’re here for the discount codes.

From the homie who brought you “Introduction to Political Economy” and “Modern European History” comes a course so sensational critics are calling it “Revolutionary” and “Chain Breaking.”

Winter 2025— The History of European Socialism.

Thats right people, I will be offering a 5-week course on the history of Modern European Socialism.

Since the mid-2000s, “Socialism” has re-entered mainstream political discourse, becoming a rallying call for new political organizations and parties, and a boogeyman for the right wing. But what is socialism? Where did it come from and how did it emerge? Karl Marx did not invent socialism, but his dialectical materialism added a “scientific” basis to a decades-old concept that seemed to make sense of the changes wrought by industrial capitalism. We find ourselves in a similar historical time and place as Karl Marx: a new type of labor and workforce emerging in tandem with breakthrough inventions within the context of an emboldened right-wing grasp on state power.

To understand what socialism is, we must study it historically, paying particular attention to the names, places, ideas, and events that bookmark its development from a relatively obscure social movement to a revolutionary platform that has taken on an almost dogmatic adherence.

This course is a 5 week course that begins with the so-called ‘utopian’ socialists who emerged out of the French Revolution. We will examine people like Saint-Simon, Robert Owens, and their ilk before turning to Marx and Engels in their time. From the First International, we will explore the revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, and the emergence of the Second International. World War One destroyed the Second International, but we have to understand why and who stood at the center of its implosion. We will also cover the Russian Revolution and the emergence of the USSR as the homeland of international socialism, and consider why European socialists broke from their Soviet counterparts after the Second World War.

To sign up go here and follow the instructions (after purchasing you will have access to a google folder with course information and the readings).

Below this subscriber line is a promo code for 15% off. Any subscriber can use it!

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Code: MARX5

Below this paywall line is a 20% promo code for paid subscribers.

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Despite writing an article months ago arguing that we do not need Lenin anymore, permit me to utilize a key idea from him once again as a point of entry. Maybe it comes from my total immersion into his work with the ongoing project @Lenin_in_45_Volumes, or maybe it just has to do with history rhyming now more than ever. I should state that I still believe we don’t need to emulate Lenin, we don’t need to cosplay his attitude in our clubs and groups, but his experiences can at least shed light in this new moment of rhythm.

On his podcast recently leftist influencer Hasan Pakar quoted Lenin’s speech regarding antisemitism as a tool to turn the working class of Europe against itself. That speech certainly seems relevant for us today, but an important context for that speech is the moment in which Lenin gave it. In March 1919, in the midst of a full-blown civil war, Lenin gave a speech called “On Anti-Jewish Pogroms” in response to an uptick in pogroms during the civil war. Although an aspiring leftist might dismiss the pogroms as “white” and counter-revolutionary actions, we know for a fact that many socialists at the time—or at least Bolshevik sympathizers—held antisemitic ideas. One major example is the Kronstadt sailors who had helped the Bolsheviks come to power in 1917. In their weekly rag, published in Kronstadt, they railed on the supposed corruption of Lenin’s Bolshevism by “the jew Trotsky” and other Jewish Bolsheviks in Lenin’s circle. By the time of their revolt in 1921, many of them were convinced that jews had infiltrated the Bolsheviks and were sabotaging their program. The possibility of slipping into antisemitic tropes on the left remains as prevalent now as it was then, but the urge to address it came at a time when the Bolsheviks were being squeezed by counter-revolutionary forces and struggling to establish ruling legitimacy.

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In 1881, a revolutionary terrorist group, the Narodnaia Volia (People’s Will) assassinated the Russian “Tsar Liberator” Alexander II. In her memoirs, Vera Figner, one of the leaders of that group, reflected on her cognitive passage from reformist advocacy to terrorism:

“If any group in our society had shown me a path other than violence, perhaps I would have followed it. . . But, as you know, we don’t have a free press in our country, and so ideas cannot be spread by the written word. I saw no signs of protest. . . nor was literature producing changes in our social life. And so I concluded that violence was the only solution. I could not follow the peaceful path.”

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The sense of frustration resonates with Americans today who, upon the assassination of right-wing media influencer and founder of Turning Point, Charlie Kirk, flocked to social media to post their opinions. One left-wing page justified the assassination of Kirk as indigenous “Sacred Rage” despite that fact that anti-colonial violence is categorically different than trying to foment a domestic revolutionary situation. Others claimed that because Kirk advocated for the Second Amendment, he politically endorsed violence, so therefore his assassination is a case of “you get what you deserve.”

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes in surprising ways. The culture of regular mass shoots, assassinations, attempted assassinations, and even the new penchant for Horror films speaks towards an American zeitgeist that is increasingly polarized, radicalized, and desperate for change. That statement is true for both sides of the isle: on the right, people like Kirk and Vance have been advocating for an American renewal based on Christian fundamentalist ideas and conservative home values. On the extreme left, Anarchists and Socialists have been gunning for a social revolution to root out inequality, bigotry, and corruption.

The sharp polarization of sentiment finds historical precedent in the past, not as bona fide “revolutionary situations,” but as precursors to implosion. Historian Christopher Clark titled his work on the lead up to World War One “Sleepwalkers” precisely because all of the World expressed a sense of imminent disaster and could do nothing about it. Richard Overy titled his book on interwar Britain “The Morbid Age” to capture a sense of a decrepit society, dead culture, and dead capitalism that pervaded Britain between the wars. History has given us moments of acute social tension, often confused for revolutionary situations.

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In fact, the opposite is true. Assassinations and wars alone do not create revolutionary situations. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand did not create a revolutionary situation in Europe. Instead, the protracted stalemate of war, the social strife felt at home, and the unconcerned tsarist leadership created a situation whereby the masses of people, including sailors and military personnel, lost faith in the ruling family.

Nobody expressed a clearer understanding of terrorism and revolutionary situations than Lenin himself. Having experienced the execution of his brother, Aleksandr Ulyanov, for the act of political terrorism against Tsar Alexander III, Lenin grew to dismiss acts of Terrorism as counter-revolutionary.

There are three predominant reasons that Lenin dismissed acts of political terror.

1. Terrorism distracts from work with the masses. It is an act that is germinated and carried out by a select group of highly isolated and insular individuals without consultation or approval from the masses.

“No matter how many reams of paper the Socialist-Revolutionaries may fill with assurances that they are not relegating work among the masses into the background or disorganising it by their advocacy of terrorism—their spate of words cannot disprove the fact that the actual psychology of the modern terrorist is faithfully conveyed in the leaflet we have quoted. The theory of the transference of strength finds its natural complement in the theory of elusiveness, a theory which turns upside down, not only all past experience, but all common sense as well. That the only “hope” of the revolution is the “crowd”; that only a revolutionary organisation which leads this crowd (in deed and not in word) can fight against the police—all this is ABC. It is shameful to have to prove this. And only people who have forgotten everything and learned absolutely nothing could have decided “the other way about,” arriving at the fabulous, howling stupidity that the autocracy can be “saved” from the crowd by soldiers, and from the revolutionary organisations by the police, but that there is no salvation from individuals who hunt down ministers!!” – Revolutionary Adventurism, 1902.

Others, far removed from any theory of “gradualness”, said that it is possible and necessary to “bring about a political revolution”, but that this does not require building a strong organisation of revolutionaries to train the proletariat in steadfast and stubborn struggle. All we need do is to snatch up our old friend, the “accessible” cudgel. To drop metaphor, it means that we must organise a general strike, or that we must stimulate the “spiritless” progress of the working-class movement by means of “excitative terror”. Both these trends, the opportunists and the “revolutionists”, bow to the prevailing amateurism; neither believes that it can be eliminated, neither understands our primary and imperative practical task to establish an organisation of revolutionaries capable of lending energy, stability, and continuity to the political struggle. – What is to be Done? 1902

2. Terrorism elicits a reaction that most often comes back on real political advocates and organizers. The act of a terrorist destroys even movements that had nothing to do with the attack, so long as it gives the ruling class the justification to impose martial law, arrests without due process, and even executions.

3. Terrorism wastes the life and energy of a revolutionary, who becomes a sacrificial lamb. Reactionaries can replace an assassinated stooge, but it’s a lot harder to replace an active and convicted revolutionary.

“How amazingly clever this is in all truth: to sacrifice the Life of a revolutionary for the sake of wreaking vengeance on the scoundrel Sipyagin, who is then replaced by the scoundrel Plehve—that is big work. But to prepare, for instance, the masses for an armed demonstration—that is petty work.” Revolutionary Adventurism, 1902.

For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, terrorism did not and could not create a revolutionary situation; only the natural implosion of compounding contradictions could lead to a general, mass disavowal of state power. "To the Marxist, it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms:

(1) When it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change, when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classes”, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to rule in the old way;

(2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual;

(3) When, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peacetime”, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the “upper classes” themselves into independent historical action.

Instead, would-be revolutionaries were better served by devoting their time and energy to working with the masses, educating the working class, and strengthening the struggle.

While I am always careful to apply Lenin or any historical figure to our time, I do believe that his position on terrorism has broad applicability to our own situation. Although the United States feels like an AI dystopia with no escape, we are not yet living in a revolutionary situation. The broad masses have not come to the side of liberation, the police and military remain firmly on the side of the state, and no number of assassinations will change their mind. In fact, probably the opposite.

Finally, the more pervasive trend to assume that any political assassination or attempt is the plotting of some larger conspiracy (either the CIA, FBI, Mossad, etc.) are usually based on arguments that cannot be disproven (“look at this guy, he gave a hand gesture!”) but also, once again, detract from the project of exposing, ridiculing, and criticizing the ruling class. If all violence against the state and its lackeys is reduced to a conspiratorial “inside job,” then we lose the possibility of using these events to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the system that created them.

Do not conflate my anti-terror reflections here as sympathy for Kirk. History rhymes but it also likes to play with karma, and while I don’t think his assassination is useful in any way, and downright counter-productive, I do suspect that in the distant future we will look back on it and understand all of the violence that pervades our time as the precursor to a real revolutionary situation.

In the class, we go through the history of political economy (or, simplified to “economics” in the 20th century). We start with the Classical school, and go through the Austrian, Marxists, Chicago, Keynesian, and Supply Side “schools.” It’s a relatively quick class packed with information to help you understand economics a little better.

For being a Patreon Subscriber, you can use the code CD774 for 10% off at checkout. As always, if you really want to take the course but are experiencing financial struggles, it should not be a hang-up. Just reach out to me.

Here are some reviews from the last class to get you excited:

Q: What did you like about this course?

The readings that were picked out were excellent and informative. I appreciate the flexibility with course meetings.

Open discussion, flexible scheduling

To learn about something new and relevant. 👩‍🏫

The course started with readings that needed little context, and worked through the writings of those that built in them. This presented the development of ideas that underpin some of the politics present in all the countries of the world today in a very short time.

Good lecture tempo (not too slow, not too fast) - in discussion Alex seems to know how to ask the right questions (in discussions) to steer us (students) in the right direction

Clear and easy to follow presentation, Alex is very knowledgeable and connects the different ideas and theories together well, informal setting is enjoyable, the recorded video is great for when I can't make it live and to go back to.

Very informative, good resources

I liked the way the content was organized both in the lecture and the selected reading. I feel that the content presented by the professor gave me a good understanding of the fundamentals of each school of economics covered and the ideas therein. I also like how the course was set up such that while there was new information present it also built on the content presented in the previous readings and lectures.

The in depth lectures and the reading materials. I also like that there is an actual class and this isn’t asynchronous.

I like learning more about the various schools of economics with the combination with placing it within the historical context.

I really appreciate the perspective and approach this brief class takes. The exposure of new texts expands and adds to my nascent understanding of Marx, political economy and Marxism. Alex is fantastic as professor; I am challenged without feeling like I'm being talked down to. The people in the class are also quite welcoming and thoughtful in their comments.

Q: What did you dislike about this course?

Microphone quality was…not great. Lots of scratchy static sound like something was hitting the mic.

(A: fixing that! New microphone acquired).

Schedule flexibility is a double-edged sword sometimes!

There was nothing I disliked. Although I'll probably dislike that it will end, which isn't a fair critique, it is nonetheless true. 😞

The readings were a little heavy at times for someone not used to academic reading. It was hard sometimes to get a picture of what the writers were trying to say. It's understandable though for compressing 250 years of thought into only a couple months.

scheduling was a bit unpredictable

The timing of the live session is tricky to attend because of work schedule. But the recorded video fixes that.

Time schedule conflictions

I think it was sometimes difficult to pick up on what specifically in the readings we were meant to take away. I often found myself concerned after reading that I had missed a point or a key idea in the readings. I didnt have this problem with the first reading as it came with a reading guide with questions that helped me focus my reading and assured me that at the very least I had gotten at the basics of what I was meant to learn, I think a similar tool for the other reading would easily solve this problem. Also for when classes were rescheduled, I am not sure if counts or polls were taken by the instructor to make sure that the rescheduled date was the time that the most students were available, if a count was not privately kept by the instructor, a poll for these instances would have been useful.

(A: Will provide reading guides for each class in the future).

The self guided nature can make it hard sometimes. I liked the reading guide we had for week 1.

I can personally say that I don’t have any dislikes. If I had one comment, I wish it was more than 5 weeks, so that we could dive deeper into each school of thought.

Not much, other than it could go longer, but I think as an intro, and that Alex has a lot going on, I'm good. Much respect to Alex for even doing this.

Q: Would you recommend this course to a friend and why?

I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone interested, as well as any future courses

For sure. Great overview of the subject.

I recommended the course to some friends and told them I'd tell them about any future courses I heard about. ☺️

Yes! The course provides an overview of various writers in the past, who's ideas on politics and the economy influenced the way we live and work today, as well as the context in which they themselves lived. I recommend this course to anyone who wants to understand the schools of economic thought in politics in the past and present.

Yes -- challenging but accessible, especially for people who aren't engaged in any active academic/intellectual study

Yes. Clear and understandable history that connects to our present day circumstances

Yes, it's a good starting point for someone who is interested in the subject and has the time to do the class and reading.

Yes because I think many people are often left at a loss when economics comes up but are frustrated by the consequences of certain modes of economic thinking and the polices based on those ideas but throw thier hands up when the defense of expertise comes up. This course easily provides the necessary background to understand the principles and ideas on which modern liberal economics operate on and the historical/modern challenges to those modes of thinking that dismantle that defense of expertise and "most optimal" organzation of society.

Yes. It is an in depth course that introduces you to different forms of economic thought. This is unlike a lot of other economics courses that use one form of economic thought and claims it is the ultimate truth.

Yes, I think it is important to understanding where much of the decisions that impact our lives today derive from.

Why? Because we could all use a better appreciation for our current condition, how we got here, and how we could do better.

I’ve also been devoting more time to meeting you all one-on-one through my online courses. The reviews of Political Economy are in, and it is clear that participants gained a great deal from the course and enjoyed working with me on a personal level through the live lecture and discussion component. I asked participants to contribute anonymous “course evaluations,” and these are the answers I got…

• The readings that were picked out were excellent and informative. I appreciate the flexibility with course meetings.

• Open discussion, flexible scheduling

• The course started with readings that needed little context, and worked through the writings of those that built in them. This presented the development of ideas that underpin some of the politics present in all the countries of the world today in a very short time.

• Good lecture tempo (not too slow, not too fast) - in discussion Alex seems to know how to ask the right questions (in discussions) to steer us (students) in the right direction

• Clear and easy to follow presentation, Alex is very knowledgeable and connects the different ideas and theories together well, informal setting is enjoyable, the recorded video is great for when I can't make it live and to go back to.

• Very informative, good resources

• I liked the way the content was organized both in the lecture and the selected reading. I feel that the content presented by the professor gave me a good understanding of the fundamentals of each school of economics covered and the ideas therein. I also like how the course was set up such that while there was new information present it also built on the content presented in the previous readings and lectures.

• The in depth lectures and the reading materials. I also like that there is an actual class and this isn’t asynchronous.

• I like learning more about the various schools of economics with the combination with placing it within the historical context.

• I really appreciate the perspective and approach this brief class takes. The exposure of new texts expands and adds to my nascent understanding of Marx, political economy and Marxism. Alex is fantastic as professor; I am challenged without feeling like I'm being talked down to. The people in the class are also quite welcoming and thoughtful in their comments.
  
  

Initially, I offered the ‘Introduction to Political Economy’ course as a foundation for understanding Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, which I still intend to do in the future. However, as we delved into the history of political economy, I realized there is an abundance of historical detail supporting the major schools of thought, particularly the classical, Austrian, and liberal schools that we just couldn’t give adequate attention to in just one hour lectures. A comprehensive course on Modern Europe would incorporate all of this context. Therefore, from mid-July to mid-August, I will be offering a course on Modern European History (1789-2019).

There is so much to go over to slowly undo the liberal historicism that no doubt you’ve all been taught, and yet I understand attention spans are short. I’ve designed the class to be 5 weeks long, with one meeting per week. We will begin with the Ancien Regime and end with the War in Ukraine, paying particular attention to the themes of revolution, capitalism, nationalism, political economy, cultural change, and that sticky word “modernity.”

I am convinced that a materialist understanding of European History, and by extension (and thanks to capitalism) world history, sufficiently contextualizes our world today. Usually, when I start the course, I open with former Chancellor of Germany Olaf Sholz’s speech to the German Bundestag upon Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (skip to 7:11). In it, he makes references to a “world order” created after World War Two. By the end of the class, students are able to explain what that world order is, how it came to be, and why Russia is threatening it, not in ‘civilizational’ terms but in real materialist terms.

So if you are interested, please follow the link here and at checkout use the code CD774 for 10% off the price. Once you pay, read the instructions for enrollment. I look forward to seeing your name pop up in the Telegram channel!

It’s been a while. I haven’t made a post in quite some time because I’ve been extremely busy with work, lenin_in_45_volumes, my own personal life, and my book project.

In addition, I, like many of my colleagues, have been confronting the general anxiety of federal cuts to academia and education. The colleges I teach at receiv…

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I aim to release at least two articles per month, but I typically publish three or four. To become a paid subscriber it costs $5.00 a month, which means on a bad month you’re paying $2.50, and on a productive month you’re paying a little more than a dollar per article and episode. This goes a long way in helping me, as both writing the articles and recording them is a lot of work (not to mention thinking through the points I want to make!)

Every year on Christmas night I watch my favorite holiday special, The Twilight Zone’s 1959 “Night of the Meek.”

The story takes place on Christmas night as a department store Santa Claus (Henry Corwin, played by Art Carney), willows in misery of material poverty and alcoholism. I never quite understood what specifically drew me to this episode. Perhaps it was the fantastical conclusion in which he becomes Santa (a sort of death and rebirth) or the sympathy that the show manages to evoke for people like Henry Corwin.

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In the opening scene, Santa is seen in a bar, late for his appearance at the department store drunk off brandy and looking for more. As he pays his tab, children knock on the door to get a glimpse and wave at Santa Claus. The camera fixates on Corwin’s drunken face as he asks the bartender “Why do you suppose there isn’t really a Santa Claus? For kids like that?” The bartender responds, “What am I supposed to be—some kind of philosopher?” I never understood why the episode was called “Night of the Meek” until now.

The dynamic between the two characters is striking, and it really only stood out to me this year. Corwin, an impoverished alcoholic who only finds work during the holiday season as Santa, sympathizes with children who, like himself, do not have the means for an abundant Christmas. In other words, he is of the same socio-economic class as the children, and thus cannot do anything to alleviate their poverty except pretend to be a beloved symbol. He sees the children playing in the snow ignorant of the implications of their poverty, and wishes to reclaim the imaginative reality that they so easily embody. The bartender, on the other hand, content with an average but steady-paying job, refuses to think about the causes of material poverty, a sort of ‘ignorance is bliss’ that is so endemic in our own time.

Contrast this to the department store owner, Mr. Dundee, who cares little for poverty and only for the income that Santa generates for the store. Or the parents in the store, who are clearly of means, reflexively moving through the rituals of Christmas without a thought of the poverty outside.

The “meek” in the title of the episode refers to Psalm 37:11: "But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace." The “meek” are those who are humble, patient, and gentile, connoting those who can suffer quietly and obediently. In this story, Corwin and the children are the meek.

Even when Corwin is fired aggressively by Mr. Dundee, he responds “Thank you very much Mr. Dundee. As to my drinking, this is indefensible and you have my abject apologies. I find of late that I have very little choice in the matter of expressing emotions. I can either drink or I can weep. And drinking is so much more subtle.”

As of 2022 12.4% of children in the USA lived in households with incomes under the poverty rate, a doubling of the 5% in 2021. In 2023, the number jumped to 14%. What we are witnessing in our own time is that as economic inequality intensifies and wealth consolidates more and more into the hands of the Mr. Dundees of the world, childhood poverty is steadily increasing. The meek are multiplying.

This cognizance of economic inequality in the context of 1950s America was humanized through the abstract notion of the “Christmas Spirit.” Christmas night has always been singled out as a night where those of means are supposed to recognize and do good by those without means. It is the night when Santa is supposed to distribute goods for girls and boys regardless of their socio-economic conditions. Santa, in other words, transcends divisions of class, which is precisely the reason why Mr. Corwin dreams of becoming Santa for real. What is interesting is the Twilight Zone’s willingness to acknowledge the plight of the meek so long as it served to remind viewers of the “spirit of Christmas.” In other words, Christmas is an exceptional night where the “giving” spirit is supposed to suspend class divisions, at least that is the way it is marketed, and it serves as a coy propaganda tool to circumvent the reality of systemic inequality.

The key quote of the entire episode is when Corwin explains why he drinks: “I don’t know how to tell you, Mr. Dundee. All I know is that I’m an aging purposeless relic of another time and I live in a dirty rooming house in a street filled with hungry kids and shabby people where the only thing to come down the chimney on Christmas Eve is more poverty… You know the other reason why I drink, Mr. Dundee? So that when I walk down the tenements I can really think it’s the North Pole and the children are elves and I’m really Santa Claus bringing them a bag of wonderous gifts for all of them. I just wish Mr. Dundee on one Christmas, only one, that I could see some of the hopeless ones and the dreamless ones just on one Christmas I’d like to see the meek inherit the earth. And that’s why I drink Mr. Dundee, and that’s why I weep.”

I am fascinated by the material messaging in this episode, as it deviates so much from the typical occult and paranormal entertainment of the Twilight Zone. Corwin finds a magical bag that contains whatever everyone asks for Christmas, and he goes to the rooming house and the children in the streets distributing presents to those in need. In contrast to someone like Elon Musk who has the wealth to become a veritable Santa Claus in real-time, Corwin the Meek is fulfilled by giving the people the humble things they desire— a smoking jacket, a pipe, and a sweater. The ability to produce presents for people turns Corwin’s depression into elation, evincing the humble desire of the meek with the power of material abundance. Think of go-fund-me and the implication of crowdfunding, where the working class helps each other, or the satisfactory feeling one gets from providing guests with food or a place to sleep. One can see it as “mutual aid,” but we can also understand it as the inherent empathy of the meek, the moral righteousness of those who suffer and live through the worst conditions our society has to offer.

As we embark on a new year, one destined to see deeper inequality and an entrenchment of oligarchic rule, I think we can all empathize with Henry Corwin in the pervasive sense of misery. But it’s not his alcoholism or misery worth dwelling on. Instead, it’s his hope and conviction that someday the meek will inherit the earth, for it is only the meek who have the empathy to do what is right at a time when so much is wrong.