Class Unity

Greetings, listeners! Welcome to another episode of Class Unity Transmissions. In this episode I am joined by Class Unity members Heph, Sarah R, Julie S, Daniel B, and Jamal. We have two big and closely interrelated topics on the table in this episode. First up is the December 1, 2022, vote by Congress to impose the “TA” (Tentative Agreement) on US rail workers, essentially prohibiting their right to strike. Following this, we move to the difficult question of whether Class Unity should remain within DSA.  As many listeners will know, ten Republicans, four Democrats, and independent Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) voted against the imposition of the TA. Doing so, they were acting to endorse the decision by rail workers earlier in the year to reject the original TA contract. That deal was voted down by four of the largest rail unions in the country, which together represent approximately 55 percent of the unionized rail labor force. Rail workers rejected the deal because it included no paid sick leave provisions, and made no effort to address rank and file complaints about unpredictable scheduling. As many critics observed at the time, including Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), the deal was patently unfair. Essential employees had maintained their brutal schedule through the Covid-19 global pandemic, without a single paid sick day, while the rail industry recorded a record-breaking $20 billion in annual profits. As Senator Sanders (D) said on November 30, “if you can’t vote for this, don’t tell anybody that you stand with working families.” What was perhaps more shocking was the behavior of the so-called Squad. Speaker Pelosi’s office had issued a separate resolution which called for the addition of seven days of paid sick leave for rail workers. Yet, as many commentators noted, there was absolutely no way the separate resolution was going to pass the Senate. Nevertheless, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, along with numerous other supposedly progressive politicians, endorsed the separate sick leave resolution — likely as an alibi for having supported the TA. Despite the contortions of supposedly leftist journalists like Ryan Grim, who went so far as to point to a number of small rank and file craft union locals that had endorsed the separate approach, the whole affair marks a massive betrayal of workers by progressive policymakers. Under the legislation, rail workers are ineligible even for the minimum seven paid sick leave days that federal contractors are entitled to under President Obama’s 2015 Executive Order 13706.  Now, a number of DSA chapters, caucuses, and individuals have called for the expulsion of these errant members. However, it is unlikely that they will face any form of discipline by DSA at the national level. This in mind, we turn to our second topic of discussion. Namely, what does it mean that elected politicians endorsed by DSA are acting against labor unions? Moreover, how can Class Unity remain active within an organization seemingly incapable of disciplining its endorsed electeds?  One doesn’t have to follow the track record of DSA-endorsed electeds terribly closely to see the pattern. From their early retreat on the $15 minimum wage, to their epic failure to “Force the Vote” over Nancy Pelosi’s speakership, to AOC’s capitulation on the vote to fund Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, the record is one of abysmal failure. Many socialists have been left wondering whether DSA membership is worth it.  NOTE: This episode was recorded on Friday, December 16, 2022. Listeners should note that on Sunday, January 8, 2023, Class Unity issued a statement announcing that it could no longer continue to be part of DSA. This episode stands as a testimony to the calibre of debate that has been taking place within Class Unity about the challenges facing the American left today, and the question of DSA’s failure as a vehicle to advance our struggle. 

In this very special episode of Class Unity Transmissions, we bring you the last interview ever recorded with Danny Fetonte. Danny was a well-known labor organizer in Texas, with over 30 years of experience. He worked at Bethlehem Steel for 4 years, and spent a decade working in a variety of other industrial jobs. He later became a professional organizer, for the Communications Workers of America (CWA), becoming a member of the union’s national staff in 1986. Moving to Texas, he became an important leader of the DSA chapter in his new hometown of Austin, growing the chapter from a state of more or less total dormancy, to over 700 members by 2017.  Sadly, young DSA members will likely remember Danny not for his lifelong commitment to labor organizing but for a Twitter scandal that destroyed his relationship with the DSA, and left his reputation in tatters. At the 2017 DSA National Convention in Chicago, Danny was successfully elected the National Political Committee (NPC) of the DSA. It was his second time to run for the NPC. A well-known figure in labor circles, Fetonte’s record was widely documented in online spaces. However, as the Convention drew to a close, a vocal group of anti-police online leftists began to claim that Fetonte’s campaign statement was a fraud.  What Fetonte had been concealing, his detractors claimed, was his role as an organizer with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), which is a police and corrections officer union, and an affiliate body of Danny’s longtime employer, the CWA.  Now, it was true that Fetonte had not mentioned this fact in his campaign materials. But it was widely available information, and many of the Austin chapter members who were active on the floor in support of him during the Convention were well aware of his resumé. Such facts poured cold water on the idea that Fetonte was somehow hiding his true identity.  Nevertheless, outrage swirled on Twitter, with many saying they would never have voted for him had they known he was involved in police union work. Eventually, on August 10, after days of delay, the DSA’s Interim Steering Committee issued a statement suggesting in no uncertain terms that they were taking a dim view of the matter: “We believe that Fetonte’s omission was uncomradely and out of line with the principles of our organization.” “We believe that Fetonte’s omission was uncomradely and out of line with the principles of our organization.”  The controversy set off a tumultuous debate about the extent to which DSA should be trying to find solidarity with police union organizers, and whether members should make a practice of discriminating against individuals for their career backgrounds.  The Convention closed on August 6. Three weeks later, on August 27, the NPC (absent Danny) voted 8.5 to 7.5 to seat him, because they could not find any basis to remove him for malfeasance. Danny charged that, seeing as he was a duly-elected member of the NPC, a non-profit board, the exclusionary actions of the NPC in the intervening period were both illegal and unethical.  In just a moment, we’ll present our interview with Danny, where he goes into detail on these allegations, as well as detailing the behind-the-scenes involvement of DSA National Director, Maria Svart. Before we hear from Danny, however, it might be useful to take moment to reflect on the legacy and significance of the Fetonte controversy for the contemporary left in America.  Black Lives Matter demonstrations have played an effective role in raising public consciousness. However, as Cedric Johnson noted in a 2019 lecture at ArtCenter College of Design, to achieve real change social movements need real power, and this kind of power cannot be achieved solely through social media debates and dramatic performances at the barricades. Such tactics need to be accompanied by honest, patient, and sustained conversation among activists, victims’ families, and reformist elements within police unions and departments. It is within these spaces, suggests Johnson, that internal dissent can be emboldened, and the ranks of those willing to break the “blue code of silence” can grow.  None of this is to suggest unequivocal support for entrenched police unions. It is clear that some police officers are unfit to work with the public and especially in minority and working-class communities. Yet officers are neither monolithic nor devoid of internal contradictions. As you’ll hear in this interview, Danny Fetonte had an instinct for navigating these complexities in a way that the contemporary left would do well to study.  Danny passed away on October 23, 2022, in Austin, Texas. This interview was recorded on October 9, just two weeks before he died. It was his last media appearance. We want to thank his wife Barbara, and the rest of his family, for their support in making this interview possible. 

Welcome to Class Unity’s Political Education Podcast. This is a new series which we are running on the stream in parallel to other Class Unity programing that you might already be familiar with, such as our “Transmissions” podcast. The goal of our new series is to present material from our Political Education Committee’s ongoing education activity. The Committee organizes events, study groups, and courses to promote popular education on topics such as political economy, Marxian theory, capitalism, and socialism.  Our hope in posting these recordings is to allow listeners to gain some insight into what Class Unity Political Education courses are like. We also hope to build over time a repository of such recordings, to serve as a resource for those who might be reading the material on their own, or simply for those times when someone might be taking a course and be unable to make it to one of the sessions. In our “Introduction to Class Unity” course, members address important aspects of Marx’s explanation of capitalist society in his “Wage Labor and Capital,” along with a number of other important essays.  In this inaugural episode we present a recording of a discussion which took place during one of our recent sessions, focusing on the first two meetings of our “Introduction to Class Unity” syllabus. Joining us for this session are members Thaddeus, Daniel, and Eric S. You’ll also hear from Scott, who is not a member but who is just taking part just because he is interested in the material). If you are interested in joining one of our sessions in the future, we encourage you to follow our Twitter account @ClassUnityDSA. You can also check out the show notes for this episode, where you will find links to a menu of our Education Series offerings, along with a schedule and reading list for the “Introduction to Class Unity” series during which this episode was recorded.  Class Unity Political Education programing is all available for free. So join us to take part in the discussion. All are welcome!  https://classunity.org/2021/08/20/an-introduction-to-class-unity/ https://classunity.org/category/education/

On May Day, we had the great pleasure of interviewing Alex Shah, Co-Founder and Staff Writer with the Toronto-based Class Collective magazine. Class Collective describes itself as “an annual literary magazine that illuminates the class struggle(s) hidden in the shadows of our culture.”   We start the conversation by inviting Shah to reflect on Class Collective’s own recent interview with Class Unity, called “On the Left’s Middle Class Problem.” What exactly is the left’s middle class problem and why is it such an important topic? Focusing specifically on the sometimes thorny question of class politics versus “identity” politics, we were curious to hear what theoretical waypoints Shah might be able to offer to help us orient our own approach.   Staying with the middle class problem, we ask whether the Canadian experience can offer any unique lessons for those interested in workplace organizing, here in the US. What kind of reactions does Shah encounter when he talks to fellow leftists in Canada about Class Collective’s perspective on identity politics? Whereas Class Unity members often discuss the “iron triangle” thesis (namely, the role of middle class institutions such as academia, the media, and NGOs) as a way of addressing the power and function of the urban, college-educated middle class in the US, to what extent is this framework applicable in Canada? And if it is, to what extent does the Canadian left recognize it as a problem?   Changing register, we then discuss Class Collective’s literary sensitivity. With the amount of poetry and prose on offer throughout its pages, the Editors clearly hold literature in high regard. For some, this disposition might suggest too much of an affinity for a kind of kind of middle-class or bourgeois-decadent perspective. Yet, while such scorn is regretfully common on the left, it is often too hasty as, from Dickens to Wilde to Brecht, the left has always had its own literature. We ask Shah for his views about left poetry, working-class poetry, and whether or how he sees any necessary linkages between the two – and whether he has any favorite leftist poets that he would recommend.   Moving to the end of the interview, we discuss Class Collective’s recent engagement with Midwestern Marx, on Building a Socialist America. One of the interesting tensions explored in this intervention is the tension on the left between, on the one hand, a kind of pro-State Department reflex on the part of many leftists, who refuse to critique “the US imperialist cold war against China and Russia” and, on the other, a kind of radical “death to America ‘ultra’” position which reduces America to white settler colonialism and adventurism, and all of contemporary geopolitics to a struggle against US imperialism. As a way out of this impasse, Midwestern Marx argues for a renewed attention to dialectics. We ask Alex to discuss this further, and its applicability today, especially in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.   Finally, we address Shah’s own essay in Class Collective’s January edition, called “Why Death Anxiety is on the Rise.” In this piece, Shah discusses “Liberalism’s fetishization of the present” as a fundamental aspect of globalization’s “brutal flattening and homogenization of the world.” Shah cites Mark Fisher, who argued that political order erodes our past and future, obliging us to dwell in an eternal present, and condemning the working class to what he termed “hedonic depression.” What, for Shah, might we be looking out for, if we want to observe some of the symptoms of this anxiety in ourselves? And what, if anything, can ordinary members of the working class do to attend to this anxiety in themselves?

Bunga party time! Welcome to Episode 2, of Class Unity Transmissions! Our guest for this episode is George Hoare, co-host of the Bungacast (neé Aufebunga Bunga) podcast, and co-author along with Alex Hochuli and Philip Cunliffe, of The End of the End of History (Zero Books, 2021). In this episode, we begin with a discussion of Francis Fukuyama’s concept of the end of history, and how many intellectuals misread it as a ‘triumphalist’ celebration of American victory in the Cold War. The better argument, according to Hoare et al., is that Fukuyama was talking not just about the birth of a new era of liberal freedom, but of the dawning of an epoch of gloom — one which would bring disappointments to many of its more enthusiastic advocates. We also discuss the war in Ukraine. So far, in western media at least, accounts of the causes of this war seem to rest upon simplistic caricatures of Putin’s flawed personality. Yet these accounts are contested, and a well-reasoned minority opinion suggests the deeper issue is NATO expansionism. Given that the West is typically used to getting its own way, to what extent is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a kind of reality check for neoliberal technocracy? While the invasion of Ukraine is illegal and monstrous, can it be understood as marking the return of politics? As the interview progresses, we touch on numerous core concepts from the book, including the anti-political turn — also known as the “return of dissensus.” This turn was perhaps nowhere more clearly on display that in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. For Hoare et al, this moment occasioned the breakout across the United States of what they term ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’ (NOBS). However, argue the Bunga crew, it was not without its historic antecedents. And, in some ways, we can see the effects of NOBS already at play in the politics surrounding Silvio Berlusconi’s rise to power in Italy, in the 1990s. We also push back a little on Hoare in the interview, challenging some of the book’s characterizations of the limits of left-populism. While it is undoubtedly true, as Hoare et al. contend, that left-populism is anti-political in the sense that it has no theory of adequate “authority,” and that left-populist leaders like AOC and Bernie have failed thus far “to key into the agency of their own citizens,” we put it to him that this may be more of a bug than a feature. After all, as Thomas Frank and others have argued in recent times, there is a long and venerable history of left populist success, in the United States. Other topics addressed include the applicability of the book’s arguments to the recent Canadian trucker rally against covid vaccination requirements, and contemporary debates around “techno-populism.” We hope you’ll enjoy this discussion. If you have any feedback, please feel welcome to drop us a line: Website: https://classunity.orgTwitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/ Your hosts for this episode are Nicholas Kiersey, Steph K, and Dave F.

Hello comrades! Welcome to our first ever episode of Transmissions, the official podcast of the Class Unity caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America. In this episode, we bring you first of all an interview segment on DSA’s Childcare for All campaign, with CU member Sarah R. Sarah was heavily involved in the Childcare for All resolution, which passed at the DSA Summer 2021 National Convention. In the second half of the show, we have a panel session on Hal Draper’s 1973 essay, Anatomy of the Micro-Sect. Our guests for this part of the show are Class Unity members Julie S. from Cleveland, Sarah R. from Virginia (making her reprise appearance on the episode!), and Jamal A., from Chicago. We felt the Draper essay would make for an interesting reading for this first episode of a Class Unity podcast. It was written around the same time as the Ehrenreichs’ well-known essays on the professional-managerial class. And, just as with those essays, this piece by Draper seems to anticipate a lot of contemporary debates. The problem Draper was facing in the late 1960s bears some family resemblance to the problems faced by the post-Occupy Wall Street American Left. That is, the problem of a Left which, while it seemed capable of mobilizing large numbers of people for short-term protests in the streets, nevertheless struggled when it came to converting this energy into an effective strategy for the pursuit of long-term political power. For some contemporary Left critics, the problem today is that we conflate performativity with real strategy. For Draper, this tendency finds its origins in the “sect” mindset. Hope you enjoy the episode. Please see below for some links which you can use to stay in touch with Class Unity. Website: https://classunity.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClassUnityDSA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassUnity/ Your host for this episode is Nicholas Kiersey. You can follow him on Twitter, at @nicholaskiersey. Our guest for the interview segment, Sarah R., can be reached by email at communicatingcollectivelife@gmail.com. Here are some links to resources mentioned by Sarah, during the interview: Well There’s Your Problem, Episode 72: Schools & Childcare in the New River Valley, https://youtu.be/mkRhKNipOS0. Sarah R., “Working Class Families Need Universal Childcare – Tempest.” Tempest, July 31, 2021. https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/07/working-class-families-need-universal-childcare/.