In the wake of the global financial meltdown, Jacobin magazine has emerged as the preeminent mouthpiece for a resurgent Marxist intelligentsia. It attracts a steady stream of articles from academics who, in uncharacteristically readable English, preach about the inequity of liberalism. It can claim two issues with titles like “Liberalism is Dead,” and none, henceforth, that have shined such a harsh light on conservatism. Conservativism, as its contributors consistently note, can only be defeated if liberalism is brought low. This abiding antipathy for the democratic tradition is hard to reconcile with the magazine's masthead. Though all stripes of revolutionaries have routinely been attacked as “Jacobins,” the term refers specifically to a radical contingent of the quintessentially liberal French revolution. Real Jacobins helped birth capitalism out of the womb of a bloodied aristocracy and counted themselves radicals because they fought for ideals like the rule of law and the disestablishment of state churches. Far from eager apostles of the socialist millennium, they exiled Babeuf, the Abraham of revolutionary communism, from their group.
