Class Unity

On May Day, we had the great pleasure of interviewing Alex Shah, Co-Founder and Staff Writer with the Toronto-based Class Collective magazine. Class Collective describes itself as “an annual literary magazine that illuminates the class struggle(s) hidden in the shadows of our culture.”   We start the conversation by inviting Shah to reflect on Class Collective’s own recent interview with Class Unity, called “On the Left’s Middle Class Problem.” What exactly is the left’s middle class problem and why is it such an important topic? Focusing specifically on the sometimes thorny question of class politics versus “identity” politics, we were curious to hear what theoretical waypoints Shah might be able to offer to help us orient our own approach.   Staying with the middle class problem, we ask whether the Canadian experience can offer any unique lessons for those interested in workplace organizing, here in the US. What kind of reactions does Shah encounter when he talks to fellow leftists in Canada about Class Collective’s perspective on identity politics? Whereas Class Unity members often discuss the “iron triangle” thesis (namely, the role of middle class institutions such as academia, the media, and NGOs) as a way of addressing the power and function of the urban, college-educated middle class in the US, to what extent is this framework applicable in Canada? And if it is, to what extent does the Canadian left recognize it as a problem?   Changing register, we then discuss Class Collective’s literary sensitivity. With the amount of poetry and prose on offer throughout its pages, the Editors clearly hold literature in high regard. For some, this disposition might suggest too much of an affinity for a kind of kind of middle-class or bourgeois-decadent perspective. Yet, while such scorn is regretfully common on the left, it is often too hasty as, from Dickens to Wilde to Brecht, the left has always had its own literature. We ask Shah for his views about left poetry, working-class poetry, and whether or how he sees any necessary linkages between the two – and whether he has any favorite leftist poets that he would recommend.   Moving to the end of the interview, we discuss Class Collective’s recent engagement with Midwestern Marx, on Building a Socialist America. One of the interesting tensions explored in this intervention is the tension on the left between, on the one hand, a kind of pro-State Department reflex on the part of many leftists, who refuse to critique “the US imperialist cold war against China and Russia” and, on the other, a kind of radical “death to America ‘ultra’” position which reduces America to white settler colonialism and adventurism, and all of contemporary geopolitics to a struggle against US imperialism. As a way out of this impasse, Midwestern Marx argues for a renewed attention to dialectics. We ask Alex to discuss this further, and its applicability today, especially in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   Finally, we address Shah’s own essay in Class Collective’s January edition, called “Why Death Anxiety is on the Rise.” In this piece, Shah discusses “Liberalism’s fetishization of the present” as a fundamental aspect of globalization’s “brutal flattening and homogenization of the world.” Shah cites Mark Fisher, who argued that political order erodes our past and future, obliging us to dwell in an eternal present, and condemning the working class to what he termed “hedonic depression.” What, for Shah, might we be looking out for, if we want to observe some of the symptoms of this anxiety in ourselves? And what, if anything, can ordinary members of the working class do to attend to this anxiety in themselves?

Bunga party time! Welcome to Episode 2, of Class Unity Transmissions! Our guest for this episode is George Hoare, co-host of the Bungacast (neé Aufebunga Bunga) podcast, and co-author along with Alex Hochuli and Philip Cunliffe, of The End of the End of History (Zero Books, 2021). In this episode, we begin with a discussion of Francis Fukuyama’s concept of the end of history, and how many intellectuals misread it as a ‘triumphalist’ celebration of American victory in the Cold War. The better argument, according to Hoare et al., is that Fukuyama was talking not just about the birth of a new era of liberal freedom, but of the dawning of an epoch of gloom — one which would bring disappointments to many of its more enthusiastic advocates. We also discuss the war in Ukraine. So far, in western media at least, accounts of the causes of this war seem to rest upon simplistic caricatures of Putin’s flawed personality. Yet these accounts are contested, and a well-reasoned minority opinion suggests the deeper issue is NATO expansionism. Given that the West is typically used to getting its own way, to what extent is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a kind of reality check for neoliberal technocracy? While the invasion of Ukraine is illegal and monstrous, can it be understood as marking the return of politics? As the interview progresses, we touch on numerous core concepts from the book, including the anti-political turn — also known as the “return of dissensus.” This turn was perhaps nowhere more clearly on display that in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. For Hoare et al, this moment occasioned the breakout across the United States of what they term ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’ (NOBS). However, argue the Bunga crew, it was not without its historic antecedents. And, in some ways, we can see the effects of NOBS already at play in the politics surrounding Silvio Berlusconi’s rise to power in Italy, in the 1990s. We also push back a little on Hoare in the interview, challenging some of the book’s characterizations of the limits of left-populism. While it is undoubtedly true, as Hoare et al. contend, that left-populism is anti-political in the sense that it has no theory of adequate “authority,” and that left-populist leaders like AOC and Bernie have failed thus far “to key into the agency of their own citizens,” we put it to him that this may be more of a bug than a feature. After all, as Thomas Frank and others have argued in recent times, there is a long and venerable history of left populist success, in the United States. Other topics addressed include the applicability of the book’s arguments to the recent Canadian trucker rally against covid vaccination requirements, and contemporary debates around “techno-populism.” We hope you’ll enjoy this discussion. If you have any feedback, please feel welcome to drop us a line: Website: https://classunity.orgTwitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/ Your hosts for this episode are Nicholas Kiersey, Steph K, and Dave F.

Hello comrades! Welcome to our first ever episode of Transmissions, the official podcast of the Class Unity caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America. In this episode, we bring you first of all an interview segment on DSA’s Childcare for All campaign, with CU member Sarah R. Sarah was heavily involved in the Childcare for All resolution, which passed at the DSA Summer 2021 National Convention. In the second half of the show, we have a panel session on Hal Draper’s 1973 essay, Anatomy of the Micro-Sect. Our guests for this part of the show are Class Unity members Julie S. from Cleveland, Sarah R. from Virginia (making her reprise appearance on the episode!), and Jamal A., from Chicago. We felt the Draper essay would make for an interesting reading for this first episode of a Class Unity podcast. It was written around the same time as the Ehrenreichs’ well-known essays on the professional-managerial class. And, just as with those essays, this piece by Draper seems to anticipate a lot of contemporary debates. The problem Draper was facing in the late 1960s bears some family resemblance to the problems faced by the post-Occupy Wall Street American Left. That is, the problem of a Left which, while it seemed capable of mobilizing large numbers of people for short-term protests in the streets, nevertheless struggled when it came to converting this energy into an effective strategy for the pursuit of long-term political power. For some contemporary Left critics, the problem today is that we conflate performativity with real strategy. For Draper, this tendency finds its origins in the “sect” mindset. Hope you enjoy the episode. Please see below for some links which you can use to stay in touch with Class Unity. Website: https://classunity.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/ Your host for this episode is Nicholas Kiersey. You can follow him on Twitter, at @nicholaskiersey. Our guest for the interview segment, Sarah R., can be reached by email at communicatingcollectivelife@gmail.com. Here are some links to resources mentioned by Sarah, during the interview: Well There’s Your Problem, Episode 72: Schools & Childcare in the New River Valley, https://youtu.be/mkRhKNipOS0. Sarah R., “Working Class Families Need Universal Childcare – Tempest.” Tempest, July 31, 2021. https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/07/working-class-families-need-universal-childcare/.