Most of the staff of the socialist magazine Current Affairs have been sacked “without warning” after they tried to apply socialist principles to the magazine by making it a worker’s co-op.
According to Lyta Gold, once an editor at Current Affairs, now unemployed, the attempt to turn the company into a worker’s co-op, “in alignment with our socialist values,” was initially positively received by the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, Nathan J Robinson, author of Why You Should Be a Socialist.
Unfortunately for the staff Robinson eventually realised that turning the business into a co-op meant other people would be able to ignore “his vision for Current Affairs as published in the first issue.” Robinson ultimately decided to protect his control of the organisation by sacking everyone involved.
An open letter published by a number of the staff who were fired, and addressed to “comrades,” reports Robinson as initially saying “I was in denial about the fact that the answer is I think I should be on top of the org chart, with everyone else selected by me and reporting to me,” before trying to backtrack and say “I think you saw yesterdays that ultimately I just felt Current Affairs slipping slowly away from me and I took an insane course of action to do what I thought would get it back.”
Robinson took to Facebook to comment on his newfound conversion to heartless, Dickensian capitalism, saying “I screwed up badly and did not live up to my values…I’m not sure if CA will survive, as subscribers rightly feel betrayed and we’re getting cancelations.”