#55: Bhaskar Sunkara on the Socialist Blueprint

Matt's question put me in mind a little bit of the classic Kautskyite merger formula, you know, in the sense that the way you're describing it, it sounds like you have organic pressures from the mode of production itself that create some kind of discontent, but the specific shape it takes depends on, you know, the state of theory or the state of intellectuals and so on and so forth.

Right.

I don't know.

Maybe it's too much to say that Jacobin sees itself as like, you know, a theoretical vanguard.

But yeah, I'd be curious about how you like understand the relationship that Matt just described in terms of like the traditional theory and practice dichotomy.

Right.

It's like because Matt described as a media ecology.

Right.

And that suggests you guys are commentators.

But like traditionally, the role of the theorist is more to like make the movement conscious of itself and bring it, you know, what have you.

So, yeah, I'd be curious about how you relate to that kind of older conception.

Or maybe that's where the books come in, because if something like Jacobin or some of them are kind of more commentary, the books have more of this maybe focus on a kind of theoretical framework or something, but yeah.

I mean, one way you can look at this, and not necessarily a subscriber this way, but I'm going to put it a little bit so crudely it's going to sound like a soft version of rational choice theory, but...

Resistance to exploitation, to domination are inherent in a human being.

And this is rooted in part in our human nature, right? The fact that as beings, if we don't like being bullied and exploited and oppressed, right? But there's been many great articulations of this in Eric Lohnwright's work and the work of Vivek Chhibber, like Classmatrix and other places.

But the most rational response to this form of exploitation and domination is like an individualized response.

You know, you can't make enough at your job.

You're going to supplement your income with like a certain form of social wage from your kinship networks, from your family, from whatever.

You're going to exit if you don't have enough voice at the workplace because that's the only option a lot of workers have.

So you choose individualized things.

And I think the role of socialists is to make collective action more viable, to actually create the sort of infrastructure of dissent that allows people to fight back.

And in order to create these infrastructures of dissent, you do need... a layer of consciously organized people.

Now, when the left is strong, this layer comes organically from the working class itself.

But in order for them to organize, I think they do need to be armed with some sort of theory that gives them a sense that we're not just talking about individual bad bosses being quote unquote greedy.

We're talking about a system.