Can Class Consciousness Overcome the Culture Wars? - Ash Sarkar

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Ooooo yesss it's another WL x Novara crossover, as Ash Sarkar joins us in the studio! You know there's nothing we love more than a chaotic chat about political theory with a few gags mixed in – you are certainly entitled to question whether any of it is useful beyond a collective intellectual ego massage. We hope it is lol.

Ash joins us following the paperback launch of her latest book 'Minority Rule' which explores how the left is losing the culture wars, and needs to get serious about political organising if it is to resist the surge of the radical right.

In this convo, we drill into the deep fissures in class consciousness and whether there needs to be more than the condition of downward economic mobility to unite a political program that challenges the status quo. It's bleak reading on the current electoral map, where the left looks splintered and is tearing lumps out of itself, and any number of unpredictable outcomes could result from our first past the posts electoral system. So don't expect any prophesies from us...

But what we defend is the important work of getting out into your community, meeting real people and searching for common ground. Getting organised is the only way real change becomes possible - and if the upshot of this conversation is that you open communications with people who think differently, then that is a good thing for our democracy whatever your political stripes.

As always, the one thing we're striving for here is more intellectual curiosity, a willingness to learn and the courage to change your beliefs if challenged with good evidence. None of us claim perfection and we're all on this maddening journey together.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:26 Rating the Political Class

07:07 Selecting Better Candidates on the Left

14:34 Local vs. Global Business

19:57 Ash’s Thesis in ‘Minority Rule’

27:10 Immigration and Identity

31:10 Constitution vs. Capitalism

36:12 Marx and the Middle Class

42:30 Identity Politics and Class Consciousness

49:40 Turning Critique Into Political Organisation

54:40 Cultural Loss in Britain

1:02:20 Reform, Restore and the Politics of Home

1:10:10 Your Party’s Capitulation

1:15:20 Do We Need To Get Offline?

1:19:40 Optimism of the Will