What Is Left of American Democracy on the Eve of the 2020 Elections? David North & Adolph Reed
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- Опубликовано: 8 ноя 2024
- Join San Diego State University's Department of Political Science for a panel discussion featuring two eminent public intellectuals, whose critical perspectives challenge us to think beyond the paradigm of mainstream American politics.
As the Presidential elections approach, there are troubling signs that American democracy may be in its death throes: daily breaches of long-standing democratic norms, warnings that the elections will not be settled through the ballot box, appeals to the military to uphold electoral results, assassination plots by fascist militias, and all of this in the context of a deadly pandemic, a spiraling economic crisis, racial unrest, and the destruction of the environment.
How did we get to this point? And what is the way out of this very dangerous crisis?
Adolph Reed is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in African-American political thought, and the politics of race and class. His recent publications include “Socialism and the Argument Against Race Reductionism” (2020) and “Antiracism: A Neoliberal Alternative to the Left” (2018).
David North is chairman of the editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org), and the author of numerous books, including The Crisis of American Democracy (2004), The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century (2014), and A Quarter Century of War (2016).
I think David North articulated his ideas amazingly he was very clear and concise and I think he put forth a vision for the working class that is achievable while Professor Reed seemed to base his analysis in my opinion off of emotions and continue the unsuccessful policy that I see that a lot of progressives have adopted of herding people back into the Democratic Party and then trying to push them left when we have seen time and time again their clear disdain for progressive policies . Great job gentlemen 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
David North's comments have aged very well. Far more politically grounded and farsighted
I voted for Joe Kishore and Norissa Santa Cruz, and proudly so.
Reed takes me back to my university years where I came out more confused than when I went in. To be quite frank , like Chomsky and Hedges, Reed's obscurantism over the building of an independent party of the working class reflects a very definite class character . It is not an accident that the mass of youth flooding out of the Universities for decades have disappeared down the rabbit hole of reformism and a dead end road . The 'so called' ''intellectual '' classes have concerned themselves more with climbing academic ladders with fancy wages attached .Warm and cosy offices and the drip drip of routinism will addle the brain in no time. Idealism of youth swapped for a steady wage and a foot in the door. Little do such people cognise and all too late, if indeed they ever do....that as the world changes, and as ''necessity'' bares down on the working class and not those in their ivory towers....''they are behind events and not in front of them''.
I voted for Joseph Kishore and Norissa Santa Cruz.
So did I! And proud to have!
Thanks to the speakers and to the SDSU Poli Sci dept for hosting this event. It was a highlight of political life in 2020.
Thanks for posting, Political Science Department. This was a very illuminating exchange.
Good question, Emmanuele!
I've always appreciated Professor Reed's principled Marxist opposition to identity politics, and his defence of viewing class as the fundamental defining line in society. But it was unpleasantly clear in this discussion that his pragmatic perspective of building an "institutional left" forces him to at times cast aside Marxism entirely.
The claim that the main feature of history is its "specificity", i.e. that any attempt to draw lessons from history is futile, is a complete rejection of historical materialism, and Professor Reed would ridicule this claim had it come out of anyone else's mouth, except that he knows that the historical record can't possibly justify his support for a bourgeois party as providing "breathing room" from fascism.
His response to a worker who complained about the Democrats' promotion of identity politics shows that the opportunism behind Professor Reed's call to elect Biden is even incompatible with his usual principled opposition to identity politics. The basic feature of the US's two-party system is that both parties attack the conditions of the working class, but the Democrats couple their right-wing agenda with more progressive social policies -- the worker who has identified that both the Democrats and Republicans are opposed to the interests of his class has taken a major step towards breaking with the two-party system. But the position that Professor Reed implicitly put forward -- that the only thing stopping this worker from voting for the Democrats is a prejudiced opposition to their social policy, and that it would be a step forward to convince this worker to vote for Biden -- requires promoting illusions in a thoroughly anti-working class party, and while still rejecting the theory of identity politics of the material interests of "white supremacy" etc., concedes to its conclusion that a bigoted "white working class" is responsible for Trump.
A principled and honest response would be "These 'moral issues' are an important part of the fight for complete human equality. But the Democrats promote them so heavily to disguise the fact that they stand for enormous social inequality, and to divide the only force which can bring about true equality: the working class. Both parties offer social devastation to the working class, and will worsen inequality. Their methods are different: Trump is planning to enforce his attacks by building a fascist base and destroying workers' abilities to fight back, and Biden would prefer to use the politics of race, gender, etc. to divide and demobilise all opposition, and to enforce the requirements of Wall Street through the existing state apparatus." One could find everything in that response in Professor Reed's writings, but why could he not respond in that way to the worker he mentions? If advocating a Biden vote as a lesser evil doesn't require promoting Biden's politics, then why not explain precisely what the Democratic Party is? In this case, honesty about the Democrats leads inevitably to the conclusion that an "irresponsible" rejection of both parties is necessary, and for the working class to defeat fascism itself - and the agreement between Professor Reed and David North on the nature of the Democratic Party breaks down when it comes to a political programme because only one of the two is unafraid to draw the revolutionary conclusion: the urgent task facing socialists is to establish the independence of the working class from all the agents of capitalism.
Yes, one should contrast Reed's perspective in this discussion from his much stronger and harmonious critique of the 1619 Project in his interview with the World Socialist Web Site, which may be found here: www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/20/reed-d20.html
I completely agree.
🤣 Mr. Reed trying hard to be edgy by cursing. The fawning of everyone involved over him was sad. Comrade North's scientific analysis of capitalism's current crisis and historical perspective that he applied was, in my opinion, quite accurate and he and the SEP are the only ones offering a true socialist alternative to capitalist slavery.
Starts at 4:45
yeah i really want to join=this team
I left when Prof. Reed mentioned cleaning the toilet. I was sickened by his attitude. I am coming back to it today in order to hear David North's response to Reed's drivel.
Oh great! Another sectarian WSWS troll arrives. General strike! General strike!
I thoroughly enjoyed this video but felt the need to comment about one observation. The argument that leftists place too much emphasis on the vote and on elections as the premise for concluding that they should then proceed to support Democratic candidates in elections falls entirely to pieces when the inherent assumptions of said premise are applied inversely.
Voting is just something you do for at most a day, if you live where votes are suppressed and lines are long, or less than a half hour if you live where it's easy. Voting is instrumental, it doesn't define your politics. For the vast majority of people who are leftists, it really shouldn't be complicated: vote for the one that will do less harm and then spend the rest of your life organizing and actually being political. Once there's a powerful socialist movement we can talk about how to use it in elections, if that's even what we want to do. Until then, punch the ticket and get back to organizing.
Adolph Reed is bound up in identity politics, he's just better at masking it, than say Nikole Hannah-Jones. Both support Biden, so what's the difference, really? The difference is how much education & intelligence they are wasting.
Ric Size is bound up in a keyboard bigger than his brain, knowledge and understanding combined.
what is going on in your addled brain that you felt the need to post the same drivel twice? given Reed's well known positions on identity politics, we are left to assume that you are literally basing your argument entirely on the fact that he's black.
@@janosmarothy5409 You didn't capitalize the 'B' in black, which means you're a racist according to your liberal colleagues. You & others here accuse me of slander, then attempt to slander me as a racist, all to avoid any discussion of class politics. All you know is the big lie.
Racialism is a Democratic Party construct. It's defined as being obsessed with race, and it's the liberal form of racism. Liberals don't want to discuss class issues, so they accuse anyone who does, as being a racist. That's the 'Big Lie Technique' straight from Langley. Those are the tactics of fascism, yet liberals never see it in themselves.
@@InfinitelinkRecords "the big lie" lmao get over yourself. I like no one here knows how to succinctly and honestly address points, all they know is deranged mendacious gish gallops
Reed tries to shut North up. Reed is contemptible.
WSWS, where you hang out, keeps anyone with a coherent disagreement blacklisted from the discussion. Reed didn't censor north, did he?
He works at the U of P yada yada, so this is to be expected as is he is expected to be like by PENN if he still expects to hang with THEM!
@@none194 Not true, they'll keep fascists and trolls off tho yeah.
@@donbarzinitut "Troll" is a nice loose term that encapsulates anyone whose arguments they can't answer. I know this to be a fact.
@@none194 Well you seem to have been employing the term liberally in this comment section lol.
There are many trolls in wsws comment sections who solely exist to downvote supporters of the SEP and make strawman arguments which try and frame wsws supporters as racist or sexist or both.
Anyone arguing in bad faith shouldn't be able to have the privilege to preach to readers of the website.