Democracy and the Left
Platypus Affiliated Society
9/10/24 NYU
PANELISTS:
Sebastian (RCA): Sebastian is a member of the Revolutionary Communists of America, a group that is trying to build a revolutionary party here in the US and is part of the Revolutionary Communist International that has sections in over 30 countries.
George Shulman: George Shulman was trained as a political theorist at the University of California, Berkeley. His work has been inspired by the abolitionist and anti imperial politics of the long 60s era. His scholarship since the early 1980s has focused on the relationship of race, political culture, and literature in post war American life, though he has also written extensively about various kinds of political theology. He taught at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study of New York University for almost 30 years, and he retired two years ago.
Grayson (ACP): Grayson is a political analyst who has cofounded the Marxist group “Infrared” and the “American Communist Party” (ACP). He has served on the Executive Board of the Emory International Law Review and was elected as Executive Symposium Director, where he planned its 2024 Symposium on Disputed Territories.
Grayson has published articles on Feuerbach’s influence on Marx and on geopolitics, and has a forthcoming publication on the use of social media in the Russian Special Military Operation in Volume 38 of the Emory International Law Review. He has been invited to present his research on Mediterranean traditions of debt cancellation at Northwestern University’s 2024 International Law And Social Sciences conference in September, 2024. He currently serves on the ACP Politburo.
Andy Gittlitz: Andy Gittlitz is the author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism from Pluto Press, co-host of the Antifada Podcast, and a programmer at Woodbine social center in Ridgewood, Queens.
DESCRIPTION:
Prompt:
The 2016 election was understood by many on the Left as a crisis of democracy. In turn, it raised questions about the nature of democracy, society, politics, and their relationship. Eight years later, after a global pandemic and the presidency of Joe Biden, characterized by inertia, inflation, and the emergence of geopolitical tensions, these questions have only persisted while seemingly becoming more obscure. Democracy seems to retain an enigmatic character, always slipping any fixed form and content. People under the dynamic of capital keep demanding, at times, “more” and “real” democracy.
But democracy can be like Janus: itoften expresses both the progressive social and emancipatory demands, but also their defeat, their hijacking by an elected "Bonaparte”. What does recent history tell us about democracy?
Questions for the panelists:
1. Is democracy oppressive, or can it be such? How would you judge Lenin’s formulation that: “…democracy is also a state and that, consequently, democracy will also disappear when the state disappears”?
2. How do you understand the Left’s relationship to democracy historically? Do you consider historical struggles for democracy by workers as the medium by which they were “assimilated” to the system, or the only path to emancipation that they couldn’t avoid trying to take?
3. What is the relationship between democracy and the working class today?
4. Do you consider it necessary to eschew established forms of mass politics in favor of new forms in order to build a democratic movement? Or are current mass forms of politics adequate for a democratic society?
5. How is democracy related to the possibility of overcoming capital?
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The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s-30s), "New" (1960s-70s), and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
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