Robbie Nelson is a member of New York City DSA and a rank-and-file public school teacher. He has been organizing in the Democratic Socialists of America for more than 3 years and in the broader movement for almost a decade, largely focused on labor and political education. He is also a member of the Bread and Roses caucus within DSA.
Leo Panitch died recently of covid complications. A few months ago we discussed two issues which Panitch studied and wrote about for decades. First, whether the pandemic has fundamentally altered the geopolitical balance between the U.S. and other great powers, specifically China. And second, how socialists in the U.S. should approach the November elections. Panitch connected the two issues with his usual depth and historical rigor, qualities not always evident in the left discourse on these questions. He will be deeply missed. Leo Panitch was Professor Emeritus of Politics at York University in Toronto. He was co-editor of the Socialist Register and author of several books, most recently Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn, co-authored with Colin Leys and published by Verso. Bernie Sanders' speech at DNC 2020 Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, "Trumping the Empire," Socialist Register 2019. Leo Panitch, "Class theory for our time," Catalyst 2020. ...
In the first of two special election-related episodes this week, I talk with Vivek Chibber. You may already be familiar with Chibber’s popular pamphlets called ‘The ABCs of capitalism.’ In this episode I asked Chibber to expand on these, taking the “why” of class struggle as a given, but venturing into questions of who, where and how. We also discuss the stakes in the upcoming election. Finally we talk about Chibber’s forthcoming book on “the cultural turn” in Marxism, in particular the idea of ‘whiteness.’ Vivek Chibber is Professor of Sociology at New York University and editor of Catalyst, which is published by Jacobin. He is the author of several books, including two due next fall, which we discuss here. The ABCs of Capitalism https://catalyst-journal.com/vol1/no1/cultural-turn-vivek-chibber ...
Robert Cuffy is an organizer with the People’s Strike Network, the New York City organization of the Fight for our Lives Coalition, confronting one of the most powerful police departments in the U.S. Cuffy is also a member of the Organizing Committee of the New York City Afrosocialist Caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and a co-founder of the Socialist Workers’ Alliance in Guyana. I’ve divided our conversation into two pieces that are more or less self contained, though best absorbed together. First we discuss the current protests in their broader historical context, including the question of why now? ...