Welcome to the seventh 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 #7 (JULY 2020)

It should go without saying, but sadly it doesn’t: Black Lives Matter! LeftHooked writes and acts in solidarity with those in the streets and otherwise organizing in defense of Black lives, particularly poor and working-class Black lives, and against the structures of capitalism and racism that exploit, oppress, and outright murder them.

LeftHooked #7 was another tough one. The life-strains, both material and psychological, of COVID-19 should not be ignored. We ignore the invisible harms, for which no amount of testing can alleviate (but seriously, more testing would certainly make a fucking difference!). So, while LeftHooked is a labor of love—it is still a labor. I appreciate the continued support and patience of the Hampton Institute and the relatively small but apparently dedicated audience of LeftHooked. Delays in subsequent editions are likely, but dedicated effort will be expended to make sure the delays are less, not more, frequent and lengthy.

Lastly for introductory comments, if I can be indulged some shameless self-promotion, check out my piece in the Summer 2020 issue of New Politics on campism and anti-imperialism. In fact, you should really check out the anti-imperialist symposium this piece ran alongside. In fact, you should actually just check out the whole issue. There are great articles on COVID-19 and more post-Bernie socialist strategy debate. My own contribution notwithstanding, this edition could have featured a Summer 2020 New Politics piece (or more) in every section.

COVID-19

July featured some noteworthy new pieces on COVID-19, while the pandemic continues to ravage the most vulnerable in the US and around the world. While it would be easy to think that it is really just Trump and the GOP (and their far-right ilk around the world) who have made the pandemic as deadly as it has been, but that would be a mistake. In the spirit of thinking bigger and deeper, I recommend Christian Laval’s “Human Solidarity and a Global Health Commons” in ROAR. While I would certainly quibble with the categorization of these countries as socialist (or even non-capitalist), the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research released a sweeping study of how different governments have approached COVID-19 and the vast superiority of so-called socialist countries (and one state) compared to the US and other arch-capitalist governments. So, maybe they aren’t socialist; their way of dealing with COVID-19 has been imperfect but, relatively, excellent.

Theorizing Race & Capitalism

Connecting race and racial (in)justice to COVID-19, the July/August 2020 issue of Monthly Review offers a series of articles renewing attention to Cedric Robinson’s theory of racial capitalism (and its sympathetic critics). Though not specifically about COVID-19 and race, these pieces offer fruitful avenues for understanding ongoing racial injustices that are never merely racial injustices. Charisse Burden-Stelly’s “Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism” is of particular note, as is Bill Fletcher Jr.’s “Race is About More Than Discrimination.” Kim Moody’s contribution in Spectre presents a deep-dive into the class and racial dynamics of policing in the US (hint: they’re racist as fuck). All these pieces are far more instructive and useful than any of the almost comically ironically reductionist class-race reductionist debate “raging” right now (which I have thus far largely ignored—and hope to continue to). In the realm of a different kind of perhaps not so helpful addition (and noteworthy because of it) is Michael Walzer’s at times weird essay in Dissent (responses to his piece will be covered in the August 2020 edition). Lastly here, I want to highlight a primer essay by Tatum Regan in Left Voice about the relationship between abolitionist (police, prisons, etc.) and anti-carceral socialist politics and the demand to “jail killer cops.” The answer here is worthwhile, if still a bit unsatisfying. Hopefully more work will come out sooner rather than later on this crucially important question for socialists (don’t be surprised to see me bring this up in a future LeftUnanswered).

Canceling Cancel Culture?

July 2020 was the wake of the now (in)famous Harper’s letter (linked to in the two articles below) ostensibly criticizing what is commonly referred to as “cancel culture.” Cancel culture as a phrase is a right-wing invention. Cancel culture as a practice of limiting the free speech rights of right-wingers is a right-wing mythology deployed to delegitimize critics. Without duplicating the questions raised below in the LeftUnanswered section, it is important for the Left to think about things realistically. The Left is often the real target of “cancellation.” Thus, in a way, it seems that cancel culture does exists, but the target is reversed; it is what older generations would simply call “censorship.” Interestingly enough, that is actually what the dominant rhetoric of cancel culture does: it functions to silence the exploited and oppressed when they struggle to speak and be heard. Okay, before I say too much more on this, check out Jordy Cumming’s nuanced piece in Spectre connecting discussions of the Harper’s letter to the broader conversation on the Left about anti-wokeness and accidental political-affinities (and sometimes intentional collaboration) with the far-right. On this same subject, but from a slightly different angle, check out Elias Khoury’s essay “The Class Politics of the Harper’s Letter” with the Hampton Institute. Lastly on this subject, for now at least, is Leigh Phillip’s analysis in Jacobin.

The CHAZ (you won’t get me to call it the CHOP…if only for aesthetic reasons)

Sadly, but not unpredictably, the CHAZ is over. Before the debates about whether it was going to be another OWS (Occupy Wall Street) or even, yes, a twenty-first century Paris Commune, before they even took off, it was dismantled. There is more investigative work to be done, voices to be heard, and lessons to be learned in relation the CHAZ. Left Voice put out two useful pieces to continue this necessarily ongoing reflective process, one by Steve Leigh and another by Jade Arquitt. Okay, actually it is three, but Ezra Brain’s piece also in Left Voice gets more into the theoretical resonance (and limitations) of autonomism. While debates about electoral strategy continue to be heated in the lead-up to the presidential election, I hope that more work is done on the legacy of the CHAZ: what it accomplished and what its limitations and failings were. Will this be the death knell of prefigurative political strategy rooted in folk politics (as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams have called this kind of hyper-localized radicalism) or will this anarchist-inflected approach be rejuvenated in the wake of the CHAZ?

A New Cold War and/or Intra-capitalist Competition?

Finally, July featured some solid socialist analyses of China that are, unsurprisingly, bigotry-free and smart as hell—unlike the liberal and far Right hand-wringing and warmongering pervasive in the mainstream media. First is Eli Friedman’s “Why China is Capitalist” for Spectre, and second, though not in quality, is Ashley Smith’s and Kevin Lin’s “China and the United States: A New Cold War” in New Politics. There were others, but these stood out the most.

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.

This month, the broad Left lost a major figure in the podcast world, Michael Brooks, far too soon. Ironically, I’d not actually listened to much of Brooks’ work. I’d heard a few pieces here and there, but I never found the time to follow him closely (plus, in all honesty, his politics always seemed a bit to the right of my own). That said, given the outpouring of sadness and shock at his surprising death, I’m going to recommend that everyone check out his shows, most recently the aptly named Michael Brooks Show (also available as a podcast). There were also several striking obituaries and reflections posted by his friends and comrades; I’m including a couple of those from Jacobin here (as this outlet was the one he was most closely affiliated with), one by Jacobin editor and publisher Bhaskar Sunkara and one by Djene Bajalan. I didn’t know Michael Brooks, and it is always regretful when we come to the realization that we didn’t take the time to read that author or listen to that podcaster before they pass away, but, as all writers and commentators do, Brooks left behind a prolific legacy that will surely be an inspiration into the future.

Also, check out this (I assume) great episode of A Different Lens where Devon interviews Dan Welch about historical narratives and COVID-19.

Finally, I’m killing myself for not having gotten to this podcast yet, but I am really looking forward to doing that soon: checkout Marc Lamont Hill’s (and unofficially, Uncle Bobbies’) new podcast about books called Coffee & Books. And it is Marc Lamont Hill, so I suspect we’ll get a lot of accessible but nonetheless sophisticated and important left cultural, political, social, and economic critique—and a lot of fun. Yes, fun, from what I hear of it at least, is still allowed.

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.

What the hell is the Left supposed to do with this idea, narrative, and perhaps uncomfortably not entirely fictional practice of “cancel culture”? I should start by saying, as with many things, when people say “cancel culture” they mean different things. So, it is important to know what each person using this phrase means before we can evaluate whether the thing itself is a thing—beyond a right-wing mythology. And it is also important to note that this narrative is, into addition to being a conservative invention, an occasional product of not super progressive liberals trying to start viral boycotts (largely on social media) of certain popular figures or academics or thinkers, often for objectively racist, sexist, or otherwise objectionable statements (though there are occasional mobs that overreact, but these are very few and far between). But more often than that, the most common usage comes from the mainstream Right (which is largely identical to the far Right), and for them any criticism of racism, capitalism, imperialism, sexism, cisheterosexism, ableism, and bigotries and heinous views of all kinds is immediately is automatically a call to cancel. Classic case of a persecution complex—and showing their true identities: snowflakes. However, there is also a difficult question about how the Left is affected by all of this, particularly as some well-intentioned people pursue speech codes and deplatforming (which are not themselves identical issues) and the like. Historically speaking, the Left is much much more likely to be the target of these kinds of juridical or even carcerally-inflected bureaucratic pseudo-solutions. Deplatforming can have some more democratic forms that are not necessarily juridical. There are plenty of more recent examples of this though, particularly in higher education, where Left scholars are the first to be silenced (and not always openly or dramatically—exclusion of the Left is more commonplace and mundane).

So, how does the Left deal with what is now called cancel culture, but is barely any different from what they used to call plain-old censorship that is more often used to silence the Left and not the Right (but, and this is the trap, can still sometimes can be leveraged to limit the space given to right-wing perspectives and increase their social consequences for those espousing them)? We should be extremely wary of empowering existing institutions, institutions that we otherwise understand as oppressive, to police the harmful and violent speech of the far Right. In that moment, we are empowering them to police us—and they are and will continue to. These institutions are not on our side, and we should maintain our demands oriented around egalitarian democracy and political accountability that underline much of contemporary Left politics while also crowding out the oxygen available to harmful and dangerous ideologies. We need political solutions—not administrative ones, but the unanswered question here is what the political solutions are that eschew technocratic and legalistic proceduralism? It has to begin with highlighting the truth that the Left is still far more censored (“cancelled”) than the far Right—that this is the cancelling the Left needs to fight against, but we need more specific political approaches beyond this foundational acknowledgement.

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