Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
These are posts on culture from the blog Base and Superstructure. Mostly the focus is on American culture. But there might be a few posts on broader, international issues.
In a short Current Affairs article titled “Don’t Expect Art to Save Us,” RS Benedict argues that artistic or cultural expression cannot meaningfully substitute for concrete political action.
It’s not a new claim. Nor, in my view, is it a very controversial claim, though, as with even most accurate claims, it draws its detractors.
However, I think we can learn a few lessons from the very first reason Benedict gives in favor of the claim.
After the first season of Severance, I blogged a couple of times about the issues it raises for having children and organizing in the white-collar world.
As I watched the second season, I had in mind that I might revisit these topics. Does the second season tell us anything new about organizing, for instance?
In some sense, perhaps it does. It provides more detail in how companies divide workers from one another and from their work. In addition, it gets into details about how workers can overcome these things. The four core workers throw off a ton of corporate bullshit and learn how to trust each other.
But I wanted to hit one new topic.
In my 6+ years as a blogger, I’ve never written about one of the more compelling and interesting sources of leftist media: Revolutionary Left Radio (RevLeft Radio). This holds despite the fact that I’m a regular RevLeft listener. And in listening to a recent episode on the political theory of ‘Liberal Socialism,’ I found a chance to rectify my oversight.
RevLeft Radio is hosted by Brecht O’Shea. Politically, Brecht is a bit hard to pin down. But he appears to clock in roughly in the realm of Marxist-Leninist thought. I certainly don’t consider myself a fan of M-L, in general. And I clarify in my FAQ series why I rarely write about the sectarian left.
But Brecht often serves as a happy exception to these problems. On RevLeft radio, he interviews people with a wide range of leftist views. And he excels at drawing out the useful points even the ones he finds wrong. Even when I disagree with Brecht – which happens fairly often! – I find him insightful. I learn from him.
Anyway, readers should check out RevLeft Radio, especially Brecht’s interview with Matt McManus on a view McManus terms ‘liberal socialism.’ A dialogue between a Marxist-Leninist and someone with something similar to Bhaskar Sunkara’s approach to socialism is a thing we should encourage on the left.
We can learn from one another.
For my part, I found myself taking a middle ground between Brecht and McManus. Brecht helpfully points to the key failures of a social democratic route to socialism – its lack of success in the past, its susceptibility to capitalist assault, etc. And McManus serves as a check on the Marxist-Leninist tendency to offer apologia for authoritarian regimes.
Anyway, it’s a great RevLeft episode! And it’s a fine place for listeners to begin.
A few years ago, I had some thoughts on the working class politics of the returned TV show Roseanne. The gist of it is that I thought the show played Roseanne’s title character in a plausible way. Yes, they turned her from a fairly left-leaning working class woman into a Trump supporter. But they did so in a way that rang true to her character and the character’s likely development.
Fast forward a few years. Now I’ve had a chance to watch most of seasons 2 and 3 of The Conners, the updated version of the show after Roseanne herself got booted.
What do I see here?
From time to time, I like to point readers to the podcast Revolutions by Mike Duncan. I most recently did so for lessons about avoiding authoritarianism, even the kind we find in so-called ‘democratic’ forms.
Here’s one more lesson.
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