Author: Samuel Barney

Samuel Barney is a political activist and aspiring historian in Upstate NY.

Rural Prisons and False Consciousness

By: Samuel Barney Summer 2026

Samuel Barney argues that prison building in rural United States is used as a way to incorporate the precarious rural working class into the state’s repressive apparatus.

Incarcerating Radicals

Dannemora Prison and the Class Struggle

By: Samuel Barney Winter 2026

Samuel Barney narrates the history of Clinton Correctional Facility, a prison in upstate New York long used to imprison left radicals.

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The New Politics Summer 2026 issue is now in the hands of subscribers, featuring articles on Democracy versus Degeneration in the United States (with contributions by Dan La Botz, Ellen Schrecker on McCarthyism Then and Now interviewed by Elizabeth Rapaport, Ben Silverman on the fascism debate, Samuel Farber on free speech, Samuel Barney on rural prisons, and Raoul Cansino and Bill Kelly on nativism), Imperialism Around the World (with articles by Lisbeth Moya González on Cuba, Husam Mahjoub on Sudan, Siyavash Shahabi and imperialism and the working class, and Matt Benson on the Mapuche in Chile), interviews on labor struggles and Russian political prisoners, a history of the International Socialists, review essays by Frieda Afary on AI, Javier Sethness on Western Marxism, and Peter Drucker on Molly Crabapple, as well as reviews on Ukraine, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, white rage, South Asia, and Afghanistan, plus a letter on women under the Taliban.

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