Welcome to the twelfth edition of LeftHooked! LeftHooked is a monthly (for now) aggregator and review of the best, or at least most important, writing from major socialist left publications, broadly defined, from the anglophone world, brought to you by the comrades at the Hampton Institute.
As I get started with this new and exciting project, with the great support of Colin Jenkins and the whole Hampton team (who are still largely volunteers [to helps us change that, consider supporting our Patreon, as all of our content remains entirely free to access!]), I’m open to suggestions for improvements to the format, structure, and content, as well as interesting articles, podcast episodes, and even books to review and include in future editions of LeftHooked. For all such input, please email me at: LeftHooked[at]protonmail.com.
As always, for standard submissions to the Hampton Institute, submit at hamptonthink[at]gmail.com.
Beyond your (hopefully ongoing) support for the Hampton Institute and this new project, beyond my deep abiding hope that this project will contribute in some small way to the success of our shared struggle for a truly free, equal, and democratic world, my only request is for your patience as I work to produce and improve LeftHooked over the coming months and (fingers-crossed) years!
-Dr. Bryant William Sculos, Founding Editor & Curator of LeftHooked

LeftHooked #12 (DECEMBER 2020)

Yes, there is still more to say about COVID-19

Want to know how climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are related? Nicholas Loubere’s “There is No Vaccine for Climate Catastrophe” for ROAR is a great place to start.

The Labors of Labor

Responding to Kate Doyle Griffiths’ multi-part critique of his work for Spectre, Kim Moody’s self-reflective and politically-grounded “defense” of the rank-and-file approach is well-worth reading (as, of course, are Griffiths’ critiques). It is also worth noting here the comradely manner that both Griffiths and Moody engaged in this co-sympathetic debate/discussion. It is a valuable model for other leftists—and while the quality of the disagreements between comrades can be more or less extreme and therefore the character of the political debate can and should justifiably vary in proportion—both Moody and Griffiths take heed of their common cause and seem to put that first (but there are still important divergences).

We will without a doubt see more labor actions emerging all over the world related to COVID-19 and all the rest of the list of long-enduring injustices within the capitalist world (dis)order, but India is probably the most important country to be paying attention to, as it was there where we recently (late November 2020) witnessed the single largest strike in human history (and several others that have been huge). For a good primer and some useful resources to get more information and future updates, check out this piece with the Hampton Institute by Arunima Azad.

Peace & Justice?

Ramzy Baroud, writing for Counterpunch, offers a powerful defense of a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, consistent with both international law and basic precepts of justice. While there are plenty on the left who have good reasons to continue to support the perhaps less controversial two-state solution on a socialist basis, what is also clear is that liberal and conservative rhetoric about the two-state solution is the worse kind of horseshit deployed to defend a violent apartheid regime.

Counterpunch also featured two important pieces on US foreign policy, and international norms more broadly, by Patrick Cockburn. The first offers a strong critique of the Trump administration’s abandonment of the Kurds and acquiescence to Turkey’s military expansionism. The second essay explores the increasingly alarming normalization of assassination as an apparently acceptable tool in global affairs.

“Instead of Propping Up a Dying Empire, It’s Time to Finally End US Wars” by Rebecca Gordon writing for TomDispatch and Truthout is an essay whose title (almost) says it all.

Also, check out Part 2 of Devon Bowers’ research on the UN and the long and wide-ranging history of abuses committed by supposed “peacekeepers” for the Hampton Institute.

Beyond Biden and Left Strategy

In New Politics, Thomas Harrison’s “As Biden Restores A Malignant ‘Normalcy’, It’s High Time The Left Declared Its Independence From The Democrats” reemphasizes the left critique of collaboration with the Democratic Party and the need for a clean break—now. It isn’t a new critique per se, but the broader question itself it remains one of the central points of disagreement within the American Left.

Rohini Hensman, writing for New Politics, offers some very interesting thoughts on the US presidential election from an international(ist) perspective.

Across the pond, sort of, December was also an opportunity for Tom Blackburn to write a crucial examination of the short history of Corbynism and the Labour Party in the UK for Jacobin. While I’m sure some may quibble with a few of the details or interpretations of the meaning of a detail here or there, but this is a solid contribution to those kinds of discussions.

From 2020 to 2021

Writing for the Hampton Institute, Steve Lalla provides an extremely useful look back at the year that sucked in so many ways, but did have some bright spots too. Also for the Hampton Institute, Colin Jenkins’ “Capitalist Immiseration, the Biden/Trump Effect, and the Fascist Tide” presents a trenchant examination of where Trump has left us and where Biden will (and won’t) take us. Jenkins takes his reader through the conjuncture and what we can, what we should, and what we shouldn’t try to do about it. Immiseration can push people to the left, but it can also push them to the right. History and the present have shown us both. The Left’s choices, commitments, and critical struggles will play a determinative role in which direction society goes; this is also, as Jenkins argues, the struggle to win class consciousness.

Writing for the Committee for a Workers’ International and the Independent Socialist Group, Tony Saunois provides a straightforward Trotskyist perspective on where the world stands amid a young decade, what we can expect and what the Left must be prepared to struggle for (and against) in the coming years.

The Tempest collective did the Lord’s (Karl Marx’s, obviously) work putting together eight different, perhaps even representative, perspectives from the broadly defined Left on what is in store for 2021. Keeping track of these different perspectives. A materialist analysis, of any kind really, demands that we evaluate our methods, strategies, tactics, and our theories in the cold critical light of day (more or less). The Left needs to be as honest as it can about what the goals are and what is working and what isn’t working. This piece will be a valuable resource in the effort to reflect and improve upon moving forward—which is, hopefully, safe to say something all of these groups agree on (even if they’re not always great or consistent at applying that principle; it isn’t easy to do, and the Left can and should be honest about that too).

In Memoriam

In the last month of 2020 the Left lost a giant in Leo Panitch. Panitch carried the torch of socialist theory and praxis through some extremely lean times through his stewardship of the Socialist Register (which is always worth reading). Since the newest issues are typically paywalled and it is an annual publication, it isn’t regularly featured in LeftHooked, but now all of Panitch’s past SR essays are now freely available and worth studying and engaging with. Here are two of many thoughtful obits for one the late twentieth century’s great Marxists. First, by student and recent collaborator of Panitch’s, Stephen Maher for Jacobin, and second, by long-time Panitch collaborators Sam Gindin and Colin Leys (with additions by Ursula Huws and Patrick Bond) for the Verso Blog.

LeftUnheard

Podcast episodes I haven’t listened to…yet, but you (probably) should! I’m guessing they’ll be good, but the only promise I make here is that these are podcast episodes that are actually on my “to listen” list.

Two podcasts that are worth looking forward to, probably: Marc Lamont Hill and Mychal Denzel Smith talk about Marc’s newest book on the intersection of the pandemic and the summer anti-racist protest movement on his Coffee & Books podcast. While the podcast isn’t exclusively “left,” Marc usually has valuable thoughts that are about as radical as you’ll find anywhere near the mainstream media world (which is in no small part why he was absurdly fired from CNN). And he touches topics and arguments in ways that connect with people who aren’t necessarily used to encountering them—which the organized Left doesn’t always do all that well (in both his speaking appearances and writings). And second, is an episode of A World to Win where Grace Blakeley interviews author and Tribune’s culture editor Owen Hatherley about municipal socialism and UK politics more generally (particularly the current state of the Labour Party).

LeftUnanswered

In each edition of LeftHooked I’ll conclude by posing a question or series of related questions for readers to think about. Some will be ones that have been asked (and ostensibly answered in various ways and to varying degrees) by those on the left before, but also ones that I think have renewed relevance or call for updated consideration, for what, in each instance, will be relatively obvious reasons. Other times, hopefully more often than not, these questions will be novel in some way. At the very least, the LeftUnanswered section will reflect questions that are on my mind and to which I’ve not found current or past conversations satisfying or convincing. My primary hope is that they will resonate.

The final month of 2020 likely won’t really be the last month of 2020. It will be a longer year in so many ways, and the question we’re left with, looking back on the official calendar of 2020 towards the immediate future of the long-2020 is this: what will the events and developments of 2020 teach us for 2021 and 2022 and 2023 and beyond? How do we learn from the renewed wave of Black Lives Matter protests? How do we make sure that the next pandemic, and there will be a next pandemic, doesn’t play out like this one has? There are so many lessons, and 2021 will continue to be a year of struggle and learning through that struggle. As it often the case, we need to ask ourselves how we struggle effectively in the short-term with an eye towards the next struggles of the medium-term, while building the organized people-power than can successfully transform our politics into a more just, egalitarian, and democratic order.

2020 was is also the first sort of full-year of LeftHooked—admittedly with some fits and starts—but new projects are often difficult, especially within capitalist conditions, never mind amid a pandemic, which has had both material and psychological effects on us all. Here’s to hoping—and committing to—a better, more consistent and more radical 2021, whenever it actually starts.

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Thanks for reading. And as my dad used to say before school, be a good human being!