Marxism and “Woke” Ideology : A Conversation With Radika Desai and Paul Gottfried

Class Unity

Professors Radhika Desai and Paul Gottfried discuss Marxism, “Woke” ideology”, and whether Marxism is “woke”.

Professor Desai teaches political economy and political science at the University of Manitoba. You can find her here: https://radhikadesai.com
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/author/radhika-desai/
https://x.com/raddesai?lang=en

In her recent book, “Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy” (2022), she makes the following statement on the topics of class and left politics today:

“With the conversion of the historic parties of the working class to neoliberalism, all mainstream politics has turned into a politics of neoliberalism. The main parties form a solid cross-party phalanx, a veritable establishment, operating across parties, corporate foundations, think tanks and even countries. Their unified discourse is policed by forms of censorship more effective than any in the most dystopian vision of allegedly totalitarian societies. Operating with the carrots of preferment and pay, and the sticks of being silenced (as Chelsea Manning, Julian
Assange and Edward Snowden most famously have been) or shunned, as with so many critical writers branded ‘conspiracy theorists’ or ‘dangerous’ or simply loony. The neoliberal establishment also equates the politics of a Johnson or Trump with the class politics of left leaders such as Corbyn or Sanders or Maduro as versions of populism, striking at both major forms of challenge to their power. Many sections of the left also act as freelance vigilantes for this establishment, particularly by attacking those questioning this neoliberal consensus, whether they call radical supporters of the rights of Palestinians ant-Semitic or accuse critics of wars of ‘democracy promotion’ of dictator-philia. [/] In this context, action on the political battlefield of the major capitalist countries is largely confined to the right. Biden’s government of the Democratic neoliberal establishment representing big corporate and financial capital was opposed most strenuously by the Trumpist right representing only slightly smaller and even less scrupulous capital with a lower tolerance for regulation, a
higher propensity to squeeze wages and a greater antipathy to taxes. […]
…by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the principal opposition to socially liberal corporate neoliberalism comes not from any left force but from an enrageée hard right.”

Professor Gottfried taught for many years in the humanities at Elizabethtown College, has published many books on politics and the history of political thought, and is the editor of Chronicles. You can find his thoughts on the topic of this discussion here: https://chroniclesmagazine.org/view/marx-was-not-woke/