Daphna Thier of DSA's National Political Education Committee, and Austin Hayes from Olympia DSA, discuss the how and why of political education in the context of DSA's 2019 resolution to "build and implement a socialist education program." Several chapters of DSA already have robust political education programs of their own, for example Olympia DSA Night School.
Even after Trump, the Republican Party will remain a powerful institutional base for the far right in the U.S. We cannot take on the far right without taking on the Republican Party. How we do this without compromising our independence as socialists will be a defining challenge over the next few years. ...
Rachel Himes is an organizer with NYC-DSA who coordinated the chapter's Bernie campaign, worked on its recent, successful campaigns for state senate and assembly, and is active in the chapter's Defund NYPD campaign. Himes is beginning a PhD program in Columbia's Department of Art History and Archeology. Himes assesses the state of the movement in the city, differences between this summer’s protests against the police and earlier ones, and the role socialists should play in this struggle. https://defundnypd.com/ ...
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 ...