The Political Party After The Revolution

Transcript Forthcoming at laborwaveradio.com/gianpaolo Laborwave Radio and Opening Space for the Radical Imagination present a podcast mini-series, After The Revolution.  After the Revolution is inspired by the desire to offer more than a diagnosis of what is wrong with today by focusing on what we might be able to bring about instead. Each episode within this series will begin by highlighting the importance of considering one particular feature of society, then imagining what it might look like after the revolution, and finally offering some ideas on how we get to this revolutionary society. Our second episode is The Political Party After the Revolution featuring Gianpaolo Baiocchi, professor of individualized studies and sociology at NYU and director of the Urban Democracy Lab. He is author of We, The Sovereign which explores the possibilities of bringing about a radical utopia of popular self-rule.  “When we look at the history of political parties in the United States they are pretty consistent with their founding mission of representing political elites. Who do we want this party to be autonomous from and who do we want it to be responsive to? We have to be very clear that it's people's struggles, movements, and unions that we want it to be responsive to and that we want it to be autonomous from elite interests and existing bureaucratic formations within movements and non-profits. Everybody feels like we can't have Trump again, but having this kind of life and death thing continues to lead us to greater and greater compromises all the time. What I like about your question about the party after the revolution is might we have the freedom to rethink our structures of political representation in a way that doesn't feel like if we don't sort it out exactly this minute the world will end or the right-wing will win."