On April, 5th 2024, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled "Liberal Democracy in Crisis?" as the opening plenary of its 2024 International Convention at UChicago.

Description:
Since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016, many on the Left perceive “liberal democracy” to be in crisis. Trump, Brexit and the rise of new populist parties and authoritarian regimes around the world have been regarded as a global “threat to democracy”. The election of Biden in 2020 was largely felt as a relief or accepted as a lesser evil. However, after three years, many of the discontents with “liberal democracy” remain. With the return of Trump as a strong contender for reelection in the upcoming US presidential race, the Platypus Affiliated Society now asks:

1.) What does "liberal democracy" mean for the Left? How is it useful for understanding the capitalist state? If not, why?

2.) Where does the term “liberal democracy” come from historically?

3.) What did Marx and Engels mean when they said that the working class has to “win the battle of democracy”? Is there still a “battle of democracy” to win?

4.) Is “liberal democracy” in crisis today? If so, how? If not, why? What would it mean for the Left to "defend", or to "oppose", or to "overcome" "liberal democracy"?

5.)How have different generations, the New Left, the Millennial Left and young Leftists today–the so-called “Zoomer Left”–tried to grapple with the problem of liberal democracy? What, if any, are the lessons to learn from previous generations on the Left?

Speakers:

- Howie Hawkins is a retired Teamster in Syracuse, New York who has been active in movements for civil rights, peace, labor, and the environment since the 1960s. A co-founder of the US Green Party in 1984, he was the party’s candidate for US president in 2020.

- Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer based in England. His work has appeared in UnHerd, Sublation Magazine, Areo Magazine, Quillette and elsewhere.

- Matt McManus is a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Michigan and the author of The Political Right and Equality and the forthcoming The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism amongst other books.

- Jordan De Anda is an activist and the Education Chair of For the People (FTP) - Chicago, a revolutionary communist organization whose mission statement is to develop a broad communist movement in America through both material and ideological intervention in local political struggle. FTP's current body of work includes working tenant unions, national liberation organizations, leftist student groups, community-based political action committees, running survival programs, and hopefully in the near future, workers organizations.

- Chris Cutrone is the last Marxist. He teaches Critical Theory at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Institute for Clinical Social Work and completed his PhD on Adorno's Marxism at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years in the Social Sciences Core Curriculum, and is the original lead organizer and chief pedagogue of the Platypus Affiliated Society. He is the author of Marxism in the Age of Trump (2018), The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions 2006–2022 (2023) and Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006–2024 (2024).
_________________________________
Curious to learn more about Platypus? E-mail platypusvirtual@gmail.com to be connected with a chapter in your area.

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.

[ Ссылка ]
_________________________________
Platypus does not endorse any views espoused by panelists. Platypus hosts the conversation among various and conflicting tendencies on the Left.

свернуть