Gindin calls on us to transform America whatever the outcome of the U.S. election. We discuss socialist visions, Syriza, racial solidarity in the U.S., and the need for widespread socialist education.
Sam Gindin has served as director of research for the Canadian Auto Workers union from 1974 to 2000, and Visiting Packer Chair in the political science department at York University. With co-author Leo Panitch, who appears on an earlier episode of this podcast, he has written extensively about the U.S. state’s role in globalizing neoliberalism. Most recently, he co-authored The Socialist Challenge Today: Syriza, Corbyn and Sanders. He is also a contributing editor of the Socialist Register.
The 2020 Presidential election in the U.S. shows that the country’s electoral politics has entered a period of open “regime contention” between the two major political parties. One of these parties is coalescing around a nakedly anti democratic and racist resolve to subvert the electoral process by any means necessary. Neither of them is interested in actually deepening mass political involvement. I discuss these developments with Amel Ahmed, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is author of “Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance” (Cambridge University Press, 2013). In a new book-length project, entitled Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional Sequencing and Regime Stability in Early Democratizers, she examines the long-term impact of institutions on democratic stability. Capitol Siege panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT9D8Z7q0Co Capital Siege footage: https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/a-reporters-footage-from-inside-the-capitol-siege ...
Auto manufacturers in Detroit in the 1960s were among the largest private employers of Black workers. In 1969, black auto workers created the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In this episode, Jerome Scott, a founding member of the LRBW, tells us about its motivations and accomplishments, why it was Black workers who began these revolutionary union movements, and how highly they valued political education and analysis. Jerome Scott is a member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, and a founding director of Project South Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide. He is a founding member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Further reading: https://daily.jstor.org/league-revolutionary-black-workers/ https://daily.jstor.org/the-detroit-rebellion/ https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/458-detroit-i-do-mind-dying ...
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? ...
