Benjamin Studebaker on The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy | A Q & A with Class Unity

Benjamin Studebaker talks with Class Unity about his new book, "The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut" (2023).
You can find him here: benjaminstudeb...
And his book here: www.amazon.com...
And you can find Class Unity here: classunity.org
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[@johnmclean8167]

I'm precariously employed in K12 education. I'd like to dispassionately float above the culture war, but I'm finding that the rump professionals in my industry are actively using PMC ideology for labor discipline. Specifically, DEI frameworks are mixed with managerial rights in an odious way.

[@Ahab_123]

Been running into so many of the problems Studebaker is mentioning as I do organizing work. He's a very important thinker to keep an eye on, insightful and we need more like him.

[@AndreyKva]

"You don't have to waste your time and energy on stuff that doesn't work. You don't have to spend your life that way. You are not under any obligation to engage in forms of politics that don't benefit you." It's simple and sounds like a truism, but it's the kind of thing I and probably many other burned out lefties wish we'd have gotten through our heads much sooner than we really did. I think the book as a whole makes a good case for it, and it helped me on a personal level as I started reading it around the time I also started disengaging from leftist groups, on bad terms more often than not. My favorite Max Horkheimer quote has the same tone: "Anybody who can only play at politics, should abstain from it." Highly recommended. Great interview.

[@B_Estes_Undegöetz]

Max Horkheimer was a cynical idealist apologist for the status quo and a little rubbing would have revealed the right-wing capitalist priest of the aristocracy he really was underneath that “critic of totalitarianism”. Criticizing the enlightenment as an overall negative force on the world’s scientific, material, economic and yes … even egalitarian political growth? Utter rubbish; a cynical opportunist, like most of the “post-modernists”. Marxists know their game for what it was and continues to be. Deceptive disengenuous rhetoric to divide the majority … the 95% working class. Return to the fold and adopt Marxism; the real material egalitarianism we ALL can get behind.

[@Panama_lewis]

Platypus represent

[@manuag3886]

Great talk.

[@tricksonafixed]

Can someone relay to this guy that his book is out of stock everywhere I can find and if you want a physical copy it’s like $150+ on eBay. I’m not spending that much or buying a $40 kindle version. Give us a .pdf version if you can’t get the book in print, my god

[@Panama_lewis]

It’s published on an academic imprint and those are always expensive, but should get a wider (cheaper) release in the future.

[@djl8710]

This guy is great!

[@hansfrankfurter2903]

This guy does bring out alot of interesting perspectives, but I think he overlooks why reforms occurred in the first place. 1- relative immiseration and 2- the threat of the USSR and communism. Now we have neither in any meaningful sense. Revolutions don’t occur unless in a time of deep crisis and civil unrest. As long as ppl are still immigrating to the first world, they’ll never be revolutions there. As to the third world, the point isnt whether this or that country offers hope, the point is that the US runs the global system and runs it alone, so no one has a chance unless that grip is loosened. Since the left barely has any unified anti imperialist stance and tends to tail the establishment, that possibility is rendered irrelevant.

[@bbqnice1]

Great episode. I wonder if a workers' (para?)-party could get funding and other political help from property developers who would benefits from efforts to reform land laws that make it hard to build apartments, condos, townhomes in certain places. Public sector unions may also benefit from those reforms via increased property and sales tax takes, so there may be some synergies there Re: ww3 prep it may make sense to do some campist propaganda so as to draw funding from countries like China and Russia, and also one needn't countenance something horrible to prepare for it and even to benefit from it in some local way

[@bbqnice1]

Did he reject Lenin?

[@bbqnice1]

Didn't seem like it

[@Panama_lewis]

No, someone just got triggered.