Bhaskar Sunkara

He has said he was born in June 1989, about a year after his parents moved to the United States from Trinidad; his father did clerical work and his mother telemarketing, and he calls his background typically immigrant lower-middle class.⁠[1]

He went to school in Westchester County and spent afternoons reading in the library; Orwell led him to the Spanish Civil War and Trotsky, and at 17 he joined the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and edited The Activist, the blog of its youth wing.⁠[1]

In 2010, while an undergraduate at George Washington University, he launched Jacobin.⁠[2]

By March 2013 the quarterly, published since September 2010, had a print run of 5,000, was sustaining itself through donations and sales, and had drawn attention from mainstream U.S. outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBCMS NOWMS NOW (My Source for News, Opinion and the World) is an American cable channel for political news and commentary. It was formerly MSNBC, launched in July 1996 as a joint venture of NBC and Microsoft, adopted its current name on November 15, 2025, as its business was spun off from Comcast, and since January 2026 has belonged to the independent public company Versant Media Group. It is known for its liberal-leaning commentary programs.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

He has written for The Nation since 2013.⁠[4]

Jacobin has operated as a nonprofit since 2014; its subscription and book revenue grew from just under $200,000 in 2014 to more than $1.1 million in 2017, and after Bernie Sanders’s run its circulation rose from 10,000 in summer 2015 to 32,000 in early 2017.⁠[5]

In May 2018 Ada, a German magazine that sees itself as Jacobin’s “kleine Schwester” (little sister), went online; Jacobin’s print edition then reached about 40,000 readers.⁠[6]

In 2018 he bought Tribune, a British left-wing publication founded in 1937 whose literary editor had once been George Orwell; in September it was relaunched as a bimonthly at a Labour Party conference fringe event, edited by Ronan Burtenshaw. He said the magazine could sustain itself with some 10,000 paying subscribers.⁠[7]

Three writers owed back pay by the previous owner publicly criticized the takeover after not being asked to write for the first issue; he replied that they had been meant to write for later issues but had different visions.⁠[5]

The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, published in April 2019, surveys the socialist tradition from Marx to the present and proposes actions for today’s socialists; Kirkus Reviews called it a useful primer but short on evidence that a socialist future is at hand.⁠[8]

Publishers Weekly found its recommendations logical but noted that he draws more positives from the Russian and Chinese movements than most history textbooks; the book argues that without democratic accountability any postcapitalist society risks creating a new class of oppressors.⁠[9]

In 2020 Fortune named him to its 40 Under 40 list for government and politics.⁠[4]

As of July 2021 the quarterly Jacobin had a paid print circulation of about 60,000 and some 2 million website views a month, with perspectives similar to those popularized by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.⁠[10]

On February 23, 2022, The Nation named him president, responsible for publishing and business strategy alongside publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel and editor D. D. Guttenplan, succeeding Erin O’Mara, president since 2016; Jacobin was to promote new leadership internally.⁠[4]

At the time Jacobin had a paid circulation of nearly 70,000 and 2.6 million monthly unique visitors in 2021, and published Britain’s Tribune.⁠[11]

He appeared on episode 349 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a democratic socialist, political writer, founding editor of Jacobin, president of The Nation and author of The Socialist Manifesto; topics included socialism and communism, class struggle, unions, free speech, Karl Marx, AI and socialism, billionaires, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and China.⁠[12]

On July 10, 2024, as president of The Nation, he interviewed Senator Bernie Sanders in Washington about his political past, lessons from his two presidential campaigns and advice for a new generation of organizers.⁠[13]

In October 2024 he debated Matthew Schmitz, editor of Compact, at the Brooklyn Public Library on the Democratic Party’s problems with working-class voters, and the two reprised the debate on March 8, 2025.⁠[2]

He served as a Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, leading a seminar series on class politics, the American left’s relationship with the Democratic Party, social democracy and “Third Way” politics.⁠[14]

On April 13, 2026, he led the series’ final seminar, on whether the Democratic left’s shifts have broadened working-class support, using younger democratic socialists such as Zohran Mamdani as test cases; he is a board member of the Center for Working-Class Politics.⁠[15]

As of October 2026 he is president of The Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and publisher of Catalyst, a former vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and a Guardian columnist, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.⁠[16]

X: Public account: https://x.com/sunraysunray (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

Jacobin: Official website: https://jacobin.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

The Nation: Official website: https://www.thenation.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

Democratic Socialists of America: Official website: https://www.dsausa.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[17]