Socialist Register 2022: Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward

with

Sam Gindin, Adolph Reed, Jr., Toure Reed, Vishwas Satgur, James Schneider and Hilary Wainwright,

VISHWAS SATGUR
Epidemiological Neoliberalism in South Africa
In this presentation, Vishwas Satgar sets out the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa as an example of polarized access to medical services shamelessly piled on top of acute polarizations of income and employment and ecological vandalism. But the ANC government’s neoliberal pandemic response, “has also unleashed a cycle of post-apartheid progressive resistance.”

JAMES SCHNEIDER and HILARY WAINWRIGHT
Finding a Way Forward: Lessons from the Corbyn Project
A discussion of the lessons to be learned from the experience of Momentum as a national campaign organization for the left wing of the UK Labour Party and its achievements (despite ultimate failure to elect a government led by Jeremy Corbyn).  They are optimists in their accounting of the new spaces that are now open for a radical democratic politics in Britain.

ADOLPH REED, JR. and TOURE REED 
“Race” and Racial Justice under Neoliberalism
This presentation links the rise of the hard right in US politics to the marginalization of the progressive pole as “the black political class” became embedded in “the Democratic Party’s commitment to a programme of retrenchment.” Addressing poverty and continuing social inequality in the black community requires building a broader working-class movement.

SAM GINDIN
American Workers and the Left after Trump: Polarized Options
Sam argues that the inherent limits of Democratic Party “Keynesian” reflation still constitutes a difficult terrain for the left in the USA, which needs to take care not to slip into the trap of spending all its energies defending the liberal forces exemplified by Biden as opposed to organizing labor and independent social struggles.

 Summary by series editor GREG ALBO

Vishwas Satgar, associate professor of International Relations, University of Witwatersrand, is principal investigator for Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene. James Schneider, communications director of Progressive International, is a co-founder of Momentum and was a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn; Hilary Wainwright is an editor of Red Pepper magazine and a fellow of the Transnational Institute and Honorary Associate of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University. Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of political science, University of Pennsylvania; Touré F. Reed is a professor of history at Illinois State University. Sam Gindin is former research director of the Canadian Auto Workers and co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire.

Socialist Register #58 is available for $28 including shipping via US Media Mail (this offer is only good for the US and Puerto Rico). In Canada Socialist Register is available from Fernwood Books and in Europe from The Merlin Press.