«О демократии нужно говорить во множественном числе»

Социолог Григорий Юдин о смыслах, многоликости и проблемах народовластия

Демократия — это не только политический режим, но и способ организации взаимодействия между людьми. В человеческих отношениях всегда есть место власти, и демократия — ответ на вопрос, как устроить отношения так, чтобы власть увеличивала нашу свободу и равенство возможностей.

DOXA поговорила с социологом Григорием Юдиным о том, как избежать власти экспертов, какое значение имеют выборы для Владимира Путина и в чем противоречие демократии и современного капитализма.

https://doxajournal.ru/democracy_issues

Oliver Eagleton - Global Britain?

If the Conservatives’ 2021 Budget demonstrates the limits of their domestic ‘levelling up’ agenda – a modest rise in public spending that fails to repair ten years of austerity – what of the party’s foreign policy? Two years into his tenure, how does Boris Johnson’s promise of a ‘Global Britain’ align with the reality?

To answer, we should first recap the past decades of UK geopolitics. Britain’s international role has long been defined by subservience to Washington, acting as lead attack-dog where regime change has been decreed. This has always been a bipartisan project, but New Labour’s ‘hyper-subalternity’ towards America constituted an extreme, in contrast to the sovereigntist reflexes that sometimes animate the Tory benches. After the abortive militarism of the Blair years, Cameron’s overseas strategy involved a semi-coherent attempt to build a ‘smarter empire’. His government pledged to streamline and modernize the armed forces, with greater emphasis on soft power, trade policy and propaganda – treading a more cautious line than Blair had done in following US diktats. Spending cuts slashed thousands of defence jobs. Troop numbers were depleted and weapons purchases slimmed down – though work went ahead on the pocket-sized aircraft carrier beloved of Blair and Brown as a great-power status symbol.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/global-britain

Henri Lefebvre - Everyday life in the modern world

Basing his discussion on everyday life in France, Lefebvre shows the degree to which our lived-in world and sense of it are shaped by decisions about which we know little and in which we do not participate.

Stephanie Kelton - Describing the deficit

Stephanie Kelton is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University focusing on monetary policy and public finance. In this interview, she explains modern monetary theory (MMT) and clarifies some of the myths surrounding spending deficits, especially concerning the U.S. federal government’s massive debt. MMT is a change in the way the government explains its deficit, Kelton says, and is important for politically justifying big expenditures. When it comes to the health of democracy, Kelton argues, fear of contributing to the deficit means the U.S. has not been able to enact the big policies to help those left behind.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M9J1n4aAjJ4

Rob Shields - Lefebvre, Love and Struggle: Spatial Dialectics

Lefebvre, Love and Struggle provides the only comprehensive guide to Lefebvre's work. It is an accessible introduction to one of the most significant European thinkers of the twentieth century. Rob Shields draws on the full range of Lefebvres writings, including many previously untranslated and unpublished works and correspondence. Topics covered include Lefebvre's early relationship with Marxism, his critique of the rise of fascism, as well as his Critique of Everyday Life and the significant work on urban space for which he is best known today.

Matteo Tiratelli - Nobody Should Look to Tony Blair and New Labour as a Model for Anything

The New Labour years were an opportunity for the Labour Party to break with Margaret Thatcher's disastrous legacy. Instead, Tony Blair and co. left Thatcher's economic architecture in place and locked Britain into a free-market nightmare.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/new-labour-tony-blair-party-revolution-narrative

Алексей Ковалёв - В России RT агрессивно пропагандирует вакцинацию, ведущие канала называют ее противников «имбецилами». Зато на Западе канал стал рупором отрицателей ковида Как это устроено.

Во время нынешней волны ковида российские государственные СМИ объявили войну противникам вакцинации. Журналисты провластных медиа называют их «недоумками-антиваксерами» и «имбецилами-убийцами», а главред RT Маргарита Симоньян заявила, что «после всех уговоров оставшиеся антипрививочники стали вызывать неприязнь и сомнение в их когнитивных способностях». Противники вакцинации в ответ пишут на Симоньян жалобы в Генпрокуратуру и СК. При этом они высоко ценят продукцию, которую ресурсы Маргариты Симоньян создают для зарубежной аудитории. Дело в том, что англоязычная и особенно немецкая версии RT активно распространяют ненаучные сведения о коронавирусе и скептически относятся к самой идее вакцинации. В итоге, как выяснила «Медуза», зарубежные публикации RT становятся материалом, на которые как на «доказательства» ссылаются противники вакцинации в России.

https://meduza.io/feature/2021/11/09/v-rossii-rt-agressivno-propagandiruet-vaktsinatsiyu-veduschie-kanala-nazyvayut-ee-protivnikov-imbetsilami-zato-na-zapade-kanal-stal-ruporom-otritsateley-kovida

Slavoj Zizek on Squid Game, Dune, and James Bond

Slavoj Zizek reviews some recent film and TV offerings, including Squid Game, Denis Villeneuve's Dune remake, and No Time to Die.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8KjFeY1aKbo

Holly Jean Buck - Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough

Ending the fossil fuel industry is our only hope of a liveable climate. Around the world, countries and companies are setting net-zero carbon emissions targets. But net-zero is a term that conveniently obscures multiple futures. There could be a version of net-zero where the fossil fuel industry is still spewing tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and has built a corresponding industry in sucking it back out again. Holly Buck argues that focusing on emissions draws our attention away from where we need to be looking: the point of production. It is time to plan for the end of fossil fuel and the companies that profit from them. Fossil fuels still provide 80% of world energy and ceasing their use before there are ready alternatives brings risks of energy poverty. The fossil fuel industry provides jobs, as well as a source of revenue for some frontline communities. Conventional wisdom says that fossil fuels will be naturally priced out when cheaper, but this raises as many problems as it addresses. Ending Fossil Fuels tackles these problems seriously and also sets out a roadmap that offer opportunities for more liveable, inclusive future.

Пол Хирст - Децизионизм Карла Шмитта

С 1945 года население многих западных стран стало свидетелем резкого снижения многообразия позиций в сфере политической теории и юриспруденции. Фактически большинство политических аргументов в данных областях стало сводиться к незначительным спорам теоретиков внутри единой либерально-демократической парадигмы. Так, даже носители относительно радикальных воззрений предпочли рассматривать представительную демократию в качестве отправной точки собственных идейно-теоретических позиций. Конечно, нельзя сказать, что от подобных ограничений не было совсем никакой пользы. К примеру, такие системы убеждений как фашизм, нацизм или сталинизм уже давно никем всерьёз не воспринимаются. Однако данное обстоятельство нисколько не отменяет существующую гегемонию либерально-демократического мышления, которое целиком и полностью основывается на устаревшей ещё в конце XIX века терминологии.

https://syg.ma/@sierghiei-riebrov/pol-khirst-dietsizionizm-karla-shmitta

Stefano Harney, Fred Moten - All Incomplete

Building on the ideas Harney and Moten developed in The Undercommons, All Incomplete extends the critical investigation of logistics, individuation and sovereignty. It reflects their chances to travel, listen and deepen their commitment to and claim upon partiality. All Incomplete studies the history of a preference for the force and ground and underground of social existence. Engaging a vibrant constellation of thought that includes the work of Amilcar Cabral, Erica Edwards, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Cedric Robinson, Walter Rodney, Hortense Spillers and many others, Harney and Moten seek to share and understand that preference. In so doing, Moten and Harney hope to have forged what Manolo Callahan, echoing Ivan lllich, calls a convivial tool that despite the temptation to improve and demand, develop and govern, separate and grasp helps us renew our habits of assembly.

Irmgard Emmelhainz - Authoritarianism and the Cybernetic Episteme, or the Progressive Disappearance of Everything on Earth

Life and society worldwide have been transformed by digital technology, including the fabrics of emotional relationships. Many believed the internet would be the largest ungoverned space in the world with unlimited emancipatory potential, and trusted Big Tech to make the world a better place. Yet power and capitalism filled that space with surveillance systems, the production of private capital, the monetization of data, and the control of human lives. Social media now shape daily life and many have lost faith in the possibility of a shared consensus reality. We are living in a scenario similar to one imagined by Black Mirror: our belief in digital communication and social media creates narcissistic personalities, selves dissociated and dislocated from their reflections online. Digital communication offers an opaque mirror that delivers egos without bodies, eliding alterity.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/122/430488/authoritarianism-and-the-cybernetic-episteme-or-the-progressive-disappearance-of-everything-on-earth/

Arlie Hochschild - Listening to others

Arlie Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her recent work deals with the rise of the American far-right. Her book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, was built on interviews with Tea Party supporters in Louisiana. For Hochschild, it is important to understand the feelings behind political views, though listening and feeling empathy does not imply agreement. If Americans are to reconcile their differences, she argues, more people must learn how to listen to views they might not agree with.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6hzjzt0Kpkk

Jonah Walters - Ortega’s Synthesis

Now, with pro- and anti-Ortega factions presenting sharply divergent interpretations not only of the 2018 civic rebellion, but also of the political character of his administration, reasoned debate on Nicaragua has become increasingly elusive. Unless the contradictions of the Sandinistas’ programme can be resolved, another period of unrest is likely to erupt during Ortega’s next five-year term. In this context, it is vital for internationalists to clear the fog of the Cold War and look with fresh eyes on the political-economic coordinates of 21st-century sandinismo.

The neoliberal period (1990-2006) left 70% of Nicaraguan workers unabsorbed by the formal labour market, prompting waves of popular protest in which Ortega, as leader of the opposition, played a prominent role. At the same time, by the mid-2000s a new class fragment had taken shape. An ascendant business sector including a number of millionaire investors with revolutionary pedigrees, like Ortega himself now chafed against the thin layer of hyper-wealthy families that had controlled the country’s export economy since the dictatorship era (1936-1979).

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/ortegas-synthesis

Чарльз Тилли - Борьба и демократия в Европе, 1650-2000 гг.

В книге известного американского исторического социолога Чарльза Тилли предлагается всесторонний анализ отношений между демократизацией и политической борьбой. Последовательное сравнение истории Великобритании и Франции показывает, что демократизация в Европе стала результатом борьбы, во время которой лишь немногие участники сознательно стремились создать демократические институты. Поэтому условия демократизации всякий раз оказываются различными и зависят от конкретной исторической ситуации, предшествующих событий, международного окружения, наличествующих форм политической организации и сложившихся общественных отношений.