Sublation Tracks the Left: April 29th-May 6th

Sublation Magazine's weekly round up of the Left

Welcome to the first Sublation Tracks the Left newsletter, in which we round up the themes and topics that we thought were noteworthy to the Left this week, highlight some articles, podcasts or events we significantly like or dislike, and tell you a relevant joke. You’ll hear from us every Monday for your time-saving Left digest.

A brave man sees a child about to be devoured by a lion after straying into the enclosure at the zoo. The man, who wears a MAGA hat, jumps in and throws the child to safety before punching the lion in the face. Afterwards he is interviewed by a nearby journalist and is excited to read about his heroism in the newspaper the next day, only to wake up to the headline: ‘Right-wing fascist extremist punches African immigrant and steals his lunch.’

Topics of the week: The US Elections repeating themselves, Labour’s inevitable and pathetic return to UK government, Israel-Palestine and its (student) activists, and the ongoing wars against/for disinformation.

Articles

The big leftist publications covered a range of topics this week. In Cosmonaut Magazine, the focus was on the elections. Bluebird produced a long piece on Marxist strategies for elections, with a particularly welcome critical approach to some of the tactics of the DSA. Here is a quote we thought captured the major point:

“The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for example, are a separate organization from the Democratic Party, but by frequently endorsing Democratic Party candidates, even when the politics of said candidates do not align with the politics of the DSA, the DSA forfeits all independence, instead making itself a “mere appendage” of the Democratic Party, a Bourgeois party.”

Elsewhere in Cosmonaut, Ayo Ogunremi wrote a long piece on the relationship between theory and practice in socialism. While their list of points that ‘every leftist proposal should be able to account for’ - including its relationship to violence, its treatment of marginalized groups, etc. - might appeal to some, it may miss the point that theory can be its own form of practice without this kind of prescriptive activist moralism.

In Jacobin it was argued that Shawn Fain, the reform caucus leader who is president UAW, poses FDR’s “arsenal of democracy” against enemies abroad and at home as broad political aim of resurgent labor movement. This happened at the recent Labor Notes conference in Chicago, which we thought should be on the Left’s radar.

In Damage Magazine, Huber points to climate goals of utilities, electricity, and other unions as way forward for recent UAW wins in Michigan and Chattanooga, as against PMC “climate left” degrowth. For him, workers and unions in the energy sector advocate an “all of the above strategy” to “deep decarbonization” and have the unique strike weapon, also neutralized by decentralized wind and solar farms. Recently, we’ve featured a critique of this point of view by one of our editors.

In more off-grid Left journalism, Connor O’Keefe wrote an interesting piece in the Orange Country Register on what the critics of the student protests get right, as well as what they get wrong. For O’Keefe:

“To sum up, the students at Columbia and other American universities are right to oppose US support for the war in Gaza. But many are being steered wrong by an emphasis on status-seeking and in-group signaling. If these students are serious about helping the people of Gaza, they should stop speaking only to the converted and try to reach those who are not yet on board.”

In The Platypus Review, Chris Cutrone argued for Trump as an expression of the crisis of capitalist politics and posited the task of the Left as being to understand him in this symptomatic way rather than taking him as the superficial enemy. A useful quote from Cutrone:

“Liberal democracy means — unlike Ancient democracy — recognizing and protecting the rights of minorities against the majority — not least why there are civil rights against the law voted by the majority. And this includes a minority of one. A single person with whom no one agrees nonetheless has rights against everyone else. — Do we still believe it?”

For those interested in the history of the Left, Benjamin Studebaker also offered a thought-provoking critique of the Marxist conception of Bonapartism.

At the leftist pamphlet house, Everyday Analysis, Croatian Philosopher and activist Srećko Horvat was announced as the latest author. He argues that this moment is a crisis point which can lead only to the reinvention of society or to our terminal destruction.

Elsewhere on Substack, Matt Taibbi reported on how Congress funded two wars (in Israel and Ukraine) with a 92 billion dollar aid package. They also reauthorized 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to spy on Americans without a warrant. Since it was Marx’s birthday this week, Ben Burgis announced a new weekly course on Capital.

Podcasts

In the social criticism podcast, The Lack, Nina Power and Benjamin Studebaker produced an episode on Werner Herzog, making for an interesting conversation about addiction and alcohol. On Bungacast, there was a fascinating Patreon episode (part of which is free) in which Alex Gourevitch sat down with the political scientist Peter Gourevtich to discuss their shared personal history. The legendary Blocked and Reported also rebranded this week, so old listeners may want to check out the new updates.

On Gary’s Economics, Gary broke down how and why wealth inequality only leads to greater wealth inequality and how this is the core cause of the cost-of-living crises which is driving us toward Victorian levels of abject poverty. While young people have been waiting for years for house prices to fall because no one will be able to afford them, what we are seeing is that a small group of asset rich individuals keep prices up by continuing to afford multiple properties.

Sublation Highlights

On our own YouTube channel, there was something a little bit different as Doug Lain was in NYC, in person, to interview Sohrab Ahmari - the editor of Compact Magazine and author of Tyranny, Inc. In the Magazine, the article of the week was ‘The Left and Its Meaning’ by our first-time author Josh Currier, who argued that the central contradiction of Marxism represents the Left’s greatest and most practical hope—as well as its harshest critic - which much of the liberal-left fails to acknowledge. On Ashley Frawley’s YouTube, she welcomed Timandra Harkness, a broadcaster, writer and comedian who has a new book is called, "Technology is Not the Problem" out from HarperCollins on the 23rd of May. They talked about the culture of narcissism and digital media today, arguing that those who blame the tech miss the point that is is merely a reflection of our culture’s narcissism.

We leave you with a little clip from Ashley from the week!

Have you seen any interesting content on the Left this week? Let us know in our community page here.

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