What Matters Now Fall 2019: Mapping Contemporary Political Power
A New Feature Edited by James Cairns, Senior Editor
Millions of people around the world struck for climate justice in September. The International Women’s Strikes launched each March since 2017 are part of what New School professor Cinzia Arruzza calls a new wave of “feminist class struggle.” Socialism is now a major pole of attraction in US and UK electoral politics. Grassroots anti-fascist coalitions are confronting bigots in the streets of Hamilton, Ontario. There is democratic hope in contemporary struggles for social and ecological justice.
Yet, even as we witness these surges of democracy-from-below, a growing number of political commentators are openly asking whether democracy is possible or desirable in the first place. It’s no longer just your cranky Uncle Fred saying that people are too stupid to vote. Academics are publishing books arguing that ignorant people should be stripped of that right (Jason Brennan, Against Democracy), and ruled by an enlightened “superior” group of unelected administrators (Daniel Bell, The China Model).
This edition of What Matters Now reviews three books engaging with different aspects of the question: Where should political authority rest? Roslyn Fuller’s In Defence of Democracy takes the question head on. My review of Fuller’s book applauds her critique of the new anti-democrats. I’m skeptical, however, of the techno-utopian model of direct democracy Fuller proposes for our future.
Naomi Klein’s On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal is less focused on the theoretical question of popular power, and more on the problem of where power lies in a capitalist liberal democracy. Klein’s book of essays, reviewed by Environment Hamilton’s Ian Borsuk, makes a strong case that climate change requires political-economic system change.
Leslie Kern’s Feminist City: A Field Guide examines how power is organized not only by economics, laws, and groups of people, but also by the physical environments we inhabit. The book is reviewed by Susan Ferguson, a leading theorist of socialist feminism. Ferguson shares Kern’s concern about “oppressions structured into cities,” and asks what transformational struggles would look like.
It’s a question running through each of these reviews: How do we get from here to a place of greater equity, democracy, and ecological sustainability? What are the main obstacles standing in our way, and how do we overcome them?