Jacobin magazine and Bhaskar Sunkara

[jondwhite]

The North Star reprint an article from Jacobin

http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=8580

and offer a critique of Jacobin's "democratic socialism"

http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=8588

 

Quote:

 

Pham Binh April 29, 2013 at 7:15 pm

I agree with this piece except for the claim that Sunkara is a Bernstein-ite or Kautsky-ist. Bernstein’s heresy was to call for the separation of the socialist and worker movements while Kautsky’s crime was his failure to live up to his own political line, a sin Lenin never forgave him for. Sunkara is definitely not in favor of keeping our two movements separate nor does he want the worker-socialist movement to create its own party to run against the two bourgeois parties, so technically he’s to the right of Kautsky.

For a more thorough Marxist, hard left critique of Jacobin and its orientation, check out Ben Campbell’s two pieces:
http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=2995
http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=3033

[jondwhite]

Sunkara is answering questions today herehttps://m.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/5mgusk/bhaskar_sunkaras_ama_saturday_january_7th_2017/

[jondwhite]

One of his answers in that thread

Quote:

I've been a DSA member for almost a decade. At first it was just a kind of default — it had very low requirements on members, I was embraced by some good folks there, and I felt like I would rather be on the left-wing of a broad tent than in a harder cadre organization. Right now though there's a lot of energy and enthusiasm around the organization, it's growing fast and I think the political trajectory of its younger members is a good one. It's also a truly democratic organization, in structure, so its future is wide open for these new people to shape.I would say just talk to people wherever you are, just feel out the local chapters of active socialists organizations. It might be that a different organization is a better choice. I would say that I think it's important that socialists in America be active in organizations, but without having their political and intellectual activity be confined with just a single narrow tradition. You also don't want to spend too much time just within "organizational life," meeting to decide when the next meeting is. I think Jacobin is very good for fostering that cross-pollination (there aren't enough socialists yet to do it any other way).

[jondwhite]

Jacobin radio (actually a podcast) is herehttps://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/jacobin-radio-podcast-daniel-denvir-dig-rl-stephens-suzi-weissman/

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