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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/[11.22.13] Democracy and the Left

[11.22.13] Democracy and the Left

6:00 PM, Friday, November 22, 2013
Stuart Hall, Room 101, University of Chicago

Michael GoldfieldĀ (Wayne State University)

August NimtzĀ (University of Minnesota)

Peter StaudenmaierĀ (Marquette University)

A moderated panel discussion at the University of Chicago.

From the financial crisis and the bank bail-outs to the question of ā€œsovereign debtā€; from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street; from the struggle for a unified European-wide policy to the elections in Greece and Egypt that seem to have threatened so much and promised so littleā€”the need to go beyond mere ā€œprotestā€ has asserted itself: political revolution is in the air, again.

At the same time, the elections in US and recently in Germany, by comparison, to be a non-event, despite potentially having far-reaching consequences for teeming issues world-wide. Today, the peopleā€”the demosā€”seem resigned to their political powerlessness, even as they rage against the corruption of politics. Hence, while contemporary demands for democracy to politicize the demos, they are also indicative of social and political regression that asks urgently for recognition and reflection. Demands for democracy ā€œfrom belowā€ end up being expressed ā€œfrom aboveā€: The 99%, in its already obscure and unorganized character, didnā€™t express itself as such in the various recent elections, but was split in various tendencies, many of them very reactionary.

Democracy retains an enigmatic character, since it always slips any fixed form and content, since people under the dynamic of capital keep demanding at time ā€œmoreā€ democracy and ā€œrealā€ democracy. But democracy can be like Janus: it often expresses both the progressive social and emancipatory demands, but also their defeat, their hijacking by an elected ā€œBonaparte.ā€

What is the history informing the demands for greater democracy today, and how does the Left adequately promoteā€”or notā€”the cause of popular empowerment? What are the potential futures for ā€œdemocraticā€ revolution, especially as understood by the Left?

Questions:

  1. What would you consider as ā€œrealā€ democracy, as this has been a primary demand of recent spontaneous forms of discontent (e.g. Arab Spring, Occupy, anti-austerity protests, student strikes)?
  2. What is the relationship between democracy and the working class today? Do you consider historical struggles for democracy by workers as the medium by which they got ā€œassimilatedā€ to the system, or the only path to emancipation that they couldnā€™t avoid trying to take?
  3. Do you consider it as necessary to eschew establishment forms of mass politics in favor of new forms in order to build a democratic movement? Or are current mass form of politics adequate for a democraticĀ society?
  4. Why has democracy emerged as the primary demand of spontaneous forms of discontent? Do you also consider it necessary, or adequate, to deal with the pathologies of our era?
  5. Engels wrote that ā€œA revolution is certainly the most authoritarian things there is.ā€ Do you agree? Can this conception be compatible with the struggle for democracy?
  6. How is democracy related with the issue of possibly overcoming capital?
  7. Is there a difference between the ancient and the modern notion of democracy and, if so, what is the source of that difference? Does ā€œrealā€ democracy share more with the direct democracy of ancient polis?
  8. Is democracy oppressive, or can it be such? How do you judge Leninā€™s formulation that: ā€œdemocracy is also a state and that, consequently, democracy will also disappear with the state disappears.ā€
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