An interview with Richard Gilman-Opalsky co-editor of Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Against Capital in the Twenty-First Century addresses present impasses in imagining a world ungoverned by capital, a world of different possibilities, both desirable and practical. It is a collection of rival visions and heterodox analysis that can be read as an alternative to the whole liberal litany of administered economies, tax policy recommendations, and half-measures. The history of government failures to reverse the most dangerous capitalist tendencies is as old as capitalism itself. We aim to think beyond those failures and dangers. Media outlets interested in a critique of the Left from the farther Left (as opposed to from the Right), should get in touch for media events. 

We chatted with co-editor Richard Gilman-Opalsky about his book.

What was the impetus that prompted you and John to compile this book? You describe it as a “contrary accompaniment” to Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
There were two general impetuses for this book. First, we were (and remain) dumbfounded by a stunning lack of imagination on so much of the Left, which often seems to have accepted a position of acquiescence, especially on the question of capitalism. That positon is perhaps best exemplified in Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty shows that capitalism has generated, does generate, and will continue to generate unacceptable inequality. And yet, he strangely concludes that we must accept that there are no alternatives beyond the same old litany of failed tax initiatives aimed to re-regulate a near-totally liberated capital (Piketty’s refurbished brand of this is the global tax on capital). But we do not accept that we have to accept the unacceptable in perpetuity. So, we wanted a “contrary accompaniment” to Piketty’s book. Since one did not already exist, we created it.

Second, John [Asimakopoulos, co-editor] and I share an interdisciplinary commitment to thinking against sectarian currents which have long divided the radical milieus of Marxism, anarchism, critical social theory, feminism, and other currents. So, we wanted our volume to embody and reflect some of the real diversity of thought that is out there, which we consider necessary to the task of working against capital in the twenty-first century.

What were your criteria in selecting the contributors/contributions for the volume? They seem to both work in concert and create a conversation about critical thinking on capital(ism), anticapitalism, and inequality.
We used three basic criteria in compiling the volume: First, we wanted a diverse range of theorists, activists, and artists who offered a deep—if not total—critique of capitalism. Second, we sought contributions that were not interested in any resuscitation of the top-down politics of Leftist statism, which we both feel (and argue in our introduction) should be left buried in the graveyards of the twentieth century. Third, we wanted to include some of the rich diversity mentioned above, so in addition to contributors from many academic disciplines and practices, we also took care to include contributions from Black radical and feminist writers. Contributions by Frantz Fanon, Raya Dunayevskaya, Silvia Federici, Selma James, CLR James, Alicia Garza, KRS One, Isabelle Stengers, Marina Sitrin, and Angela Mitropoulos are part of that diversity.

Readers will notice that the book is full of philosophical and political disagreement too. We don’t claim to agree with everything in the book ourselves. Our overarching criterion was that everything in this volume should be a critical part of any conversation about how to confront and abolish a world organized by the logic of capital, about how we can bring an end to the reign of a world governed by money. If you’re interested in that conversation, we want this book to participate in it.

There is a diversity in voices and perspectives in the volume. How did you balance the views/ideologies, topics (and contributors)?
One of the many challenges we faced was the blend of the living and the dead. Some of our contributors—such as Cornelius Castoriadis and Félix Guattari— are no longer living, or recently deceased, like James O’Connor. Most of them are still alive and working, and of those some, including Sayres Rudy, Alicia Garza, and Stevphen Shukaitis, are newer creative voices while others have work stretching back decades (Penelope Rosemont, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, John Holloway, Isabelle Stengers, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux). The question for us was to find what we thought essential to the construction of a forward-looking radical theory and practice for the twenty-first century.

The book’s sections are organized around topics we think of as fundamental categories of inquiry. So, while the book is not comprehensive, we insisted on sections dedicated to theory and praxis, class composition, racialization and feminism, critical pedagogy, literature and art, ecology, history, and forms of action.

You focus on how theory is related to and comes out of movements and global uprisings.  Can you explain this?
I published a previous book dedicated to this very subject, Specters of Revolt: On the Intellect of Insurrection and Philosophy from Below, in 2016. This is also a major part of John’s work, which helps us to understand the importance of revolt in a different way. We both agree that contentious social movements and global uprisings (including riot, revolt, and insurrection) are phenomena that make sense within the contexts of their historical occurrence. Yet, global uprisings are frequently discounted as violent, irrational, and ineffective. We claim, to the contrary, that they are the opposite. Revolts are more often responses to violence (and not the violence themselves), their reasons are perfectly legible if only we would take their disaffection seriously (instead of discounting it as incoherent), and they are very effective in changing the lives of their participants in so many ways, changing political conversations, and saying what has to be said about the world in which they break out. So, in addition to ourselves, we included contributors who share our contention that theory is articulated and developed in contestation.

Can you discuss the importance of culture for radical politics?
We have a dedicated section in the book called “Capitalist Culture and Cultural Production.” We also have a section entitled “Language, Literature, and Art” that includes poetry, an excerpt from a story, lyrics, and an interview with a filmmaker. Culture is one of the central contexts in which we learn, think, and interact, and for radical politics, it can be the context in which we develop a critical consciousness.

We chose a quote from Angela Y. Davis to open the book’s section on culture: “It’s true that it’s within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it’s not going to solve the problems” (PBS Interview, 1997). I tend to agree with Davis and think that cultural content can expose people in moving ways to a radical critique of the existing state of affairs often more powerfully than philosophical texts and revolts. Also, people do not just consume culture. People produce a lot of cultural content themselves to communicate their feelings, frustrations, and hopes. All of this cultural content is really important to helping people work though how they feel about themselves, their lives, and the world, and to communicating with one another in affective, transformative ways. Yet, Davis is also correct that epiphanies alone will not solve our problems, so radical politics needs ultimately to move in various ways beyond cultural production and consumption to real confrontations and new modalities of collective action. In fact, the concluding section of our book is entitled “New Modalities of Collective Action.”

Can Vets win more votes? Depends on when and where

This week in North Philly Notes, Jeremy Teigen, author of Why Veterans Run, penned an essay on the recent victory by Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania.

Democrats’ victory in Pennsylvania’s special congressional election last week made great waves in the media for a few reasons. Primarily, news cycles focus on special elections as a barometer of national sentiment, though their ability to predict the future should be viewed with care. Yet, the race between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania grabbed my attention for another reason. Both candidates served in the armed forces.

Saccone, 60, served in U.S. Air Force counterintelligence units. The much younger Lamb was a JAG in the Marine Corps. While neither are combat veterans, both served as officers. Both campaign websites featured the candidates’ military experience on online bios while media accounts of the candidates frequently referred to their service. A typical example: “While Saccone has a compelling biography—like Lamb, he served in the military—the outside groups have found that introducing him to voters …has proven challenging.” Other headlines focused specifically on the fact that two veterans vied for the seat despite declining numbers of veterans in the electorate.

This 2018 special election in Pennsylvania’s 18^th district is not the first time that an off-schedule congressional election attracted national media attention in part because of a candidate’s military service record. In southwestern Ohio near Cincinnati (a city named for a very notable military veteran), a 2005 U.S. House special election featured a Democrat with Iraq War experience who sought to occupy a vacancy. Paul Hackett lost by a whisker, but he outperformed the baseline partisanship of the district substantially. At one point he called President George W. Bush a “chickenhawk” for avoiding Vietnam in the 1960s, which implicitly highlighted his own time as a U.S. Marine in war. Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had only earned about 35% of the district’s presidential votes the year before, but Hackett put some fear in GOP hearts by almost upsetting expectations with over 48% of the vote. Had he won, he would have been the first OIF veteran congressman.

Lamb also outperformed the baseline partisanship of his district last week. Donald Trump exceeded Hillary Clinton’s support by 20% in 2016 in PA-18 while Barack Obama trailed Mitt Romney in 2012 by similar margins. That makes it clear that Lamb was able to persuade independents and perhaps some Republicans to vote for him, in addition to raising far more funds than Saccone. Despite a last-minute campaign assist from President Trump himself, Saccone underperformed in GOP-friendly territory. Trump specifically commended Saccone’s Air Force service on his visit.

Having two veterans run against each other in House contests is not common. In my book, Why Veterans Run: Military Service in American Presidential Elections, 1789-2016, I compiled a decades’ worth of House election data to see if there is a quantifiable advantage that veterans enjoy at the ballot box. Looking only at the 315 contests in 2016 where there was a Republican and a Democrat in the race (omitting California and the other states with “top two” primaries), only 14 featured a general election with two veterans running against each other. But what really matters is where and in which districts parties choose to nominate military veterans.

Democrats won a special election with a veteran in a competitive but GOP-leaning district in the heart of where Trump was able to carve out an Electoral College win in 2016. If Democrats are hoping to retake the House this November, and aiming to do it with veterans, they need to nominate veterans in purple districts rather than in longshot races. While this week’s special election is atypical because it was an open seat, we can look to a normal cycle of House elections and look for military experience patterns among each party’s challengers.

As I wrote last year, Democrats do not have a track record of nominating veterans in places where they can beat incumbent Republicans.  In 2016, Democrats tended to nominate veterans in uphill races. Democratic nonveteran challengers ran in districts where Obama’s votes averaged 42.3%, but in races where Democrats nominated a veteran, Obama’s support was more than three points lower. In contrast, Republicans in 2016 nominated their veteran challengers in friendlier territory.

Signs look good for the Democrats going into the 2018 regularly scheduled midterms. And early signs show that Democratic veterans are emerging in more competitive places compared to two years ago. If challengers such as Mikie Sherrill, a female Naval Academy grad and pilot in the very purple NJ-11 district, represent a new strategy for Democrats, the success they have with veterans will mark a change from the past.

Jeremy M. Teigen, Professor of Political Science at Ramapo College (@ProfTeigen)

Fernando Ortiz Today

This week in North Philly Notes, Robin Moore, editor of Fernando Ortiz on Music, writes about the relevance and influence of Ortiz’s writing on Cuban music, history, and culture

Who is Fernando Ortiz, why should anyone care about what he wrote, and what does he have to offer to readers today? Those are important questions, especially given that Ortiz lived and wrote many years ago; that his writings focus primarily on black music in other countries; and that—as an author trained in late nineteenth-century Europe—he inherited many biases toward Afro-descendant expression. As such, some of his observations sound dated or even racist by the standards of the present day. The relevance of his writings in 2018 may not be immediately apparent to everyone.

I first became acquainted with a few of Ortiz’s books as a graduate student at the University of Texas in the early 1990s. I planned to write a dissertation on Cuban music, and Ortiz loomed large as an individual who undertook the first detailed studies of Afro-Cuban culture in that country, based in large part on ground-breaking ethnographic excursions and interviews. His work was impressive in many respects: he published tremendous amounts of material, many thousands of pages over the course his career, and on a wide array of topics. He read widely in half a dozen languages. His knowledge of Cuban history and access to primary and secondary sources supporting such work were extraordinary. It became clear to me that countless individuals interested in black history, African-influenced languages in the new world, drumming and dance traditions, Afro-descendant religions, the Atlantic slave trade, and other topics had drawn heavily on Ortiz as they pursued academic work in the US, the Caribbean, South America, and elsewhere. Those influenced by his work in the U.S., for example, include the dancer Katherine Dunham; the anthropologist and founder of black studies in the United States, Melville Herskovits; and the art historian Robert Farris Thompson. Simply put, Ortiz was very influential; and if his work had written in English rather than Spanish, I am certain that it would have met an even more enthusiastic reception internationally.

Cuba, along with a few other Latin American/Caribbean countries, has a unique cultural profile because of the large numbers of enslaved Africans brought the island, and the fact that many of them arrived rather late (clandestinely the slave trade continued there well into the 1870s). In broad strokes, Cuba and the United States share a history of European colonization, the decimation of local indigenous populations, and the use of slave labor. Yet the fact that free and enslaved Africans and their descendants have constituted a majority of the island’s population for most of the past two centuries, and that African-derived traditions have been re-created in overt ways there, means that Cuba looks and sounds very different from the United States. I find that the study of Cuban music and history suggests interesting points of comparison for those based in the U.S. It helps us recognize similar Afrodescendant cultural influences in our own country. Cuba’s music and dance traditions that blend influences from West Africa and Europe are quite similar to our own, providing insights into processes of cultural fusion and how Afro-descendant cultures manifest themselves in repertoire such as black gospel. Reading about Cuban and Caribbean history helps us situate US history within a broader framework and makes us realizes that our “unique” cultural forms — from rap to blues to jazz — emerged out of broader processes.

Not only do I find the ethnographic data in Ortiz’s work still broadly relevant, but I consider even his ideological flaws and limitations to be instructive. The post-WWII period, which represents the apex of Ortiz’s career, was one in which leading authors throughout Europe and the Americas began to seriously question racist beliefs about non-European people for the first time. Much of this soul-searching was inspired by the Nazis and their horrendously racist views of non-Arian people, of course, as well as political challenges to colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. Ortiz’s struggles with entrenched Eurocentric points of view, notions of racial and cultural hierarchy, and the “proper place” of Afrodescendant culture within his country represent a corollary to similar debates taking place throughout the Western world and beyond. Including Ortiz in the study of racial debates of the era expands our understanding of such discourse beyond the spheres of U.S. and European academia. It helps “decenter” that literature by underscoring the important contributions and perspectives of those in developing countries. And it helps us better appreciate the true extent of slavery’s impact on politics, culture, and ideology throughout the Western hemisphere.

Books that bloom and flow

This week in North Philly Notes, in honor of the Philadelphia Flower Show, we celebrate our books that bloom and flow, in keeping with the flower show’s theme, “Wonders of Water.”

The Magic of Children’s Gardens: Inspiring Through Creative Design by Lolly Tai

Children’s gardens are magical places where kids can interact with plants, see where food and fibers grow, and experience the role of birds, butterflies, and bees in nature. These gardens do more than just expose youngsters to outdoor environments, they also provide marvelous teaching opportunities for them to visit a small plot, care for vegetables and flowers, and interact in creative spaces designed to stimulate all five senses.

In The Magic of Children’s Gardens, landscape architect Lolly Tai provides the primary goals, concepts and key considerations for designing outdoor spaces that are attractive to and suitable for children especially in urban environments. Tai presents inspiring ideas for creating children’s green spaces by examining nearly twenty case studies, including the Chicago Botanic Gardens and Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA.

The Magic of Children’s Gardens features hundreds of comprehensive drawings and gorgeous photographs of successful children’s outdoor environments, detailed explanations of the design process, and the criteria needed to create attractive and pleasing gardens for children to augment their physical, mental, and emotional development.
Exposing youth to well-planned outdoor environments promotes our next generation of environmental stewards. The Magic of Children’s Gardens offers practitioners a guide to designing these valued spaces.

A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region, text by Adam Levine, photographs by Rob Cardillo

Finally, for every resident and visitor to the region, a comprehensive guide to the gardens of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware. Magnificently illustrated with nearly 200 full color photographs, A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region provides essential information on how to locate and enjoy the finest gardens the area has to offer.

As the horticultural epicenter of the United States, Philadelphia and the surrounding towns, suburbs, and countryside are blessed with more public gardens in a concentrated area than almost any other region in the world. Stretching from Trenton, New Jersey through Philadelphia and down to Newark, Delaware, this area (often called the Delaware Valley) offers more horticultural riches than a visitor can possibly see even in a couple of weeks of hectic garden hopping.

City in a Park: A History of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park System by James McClelland and Lynn Miller

Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of more than one hundred parks, squares, and green spaces totaling approximately 11,000 acres, and is one of the largest landscaped urban park systems in the world. In City in a Park, James McClelland and Lynn Miller provide an affectionate and comprehensive history of this 200-year-old network of parks.

Originated in the nineteenth century as a civic effort to provide a clean water supply to Philadelphia, Fairmount Park also furnished public pleasure grounds for boat races and hiking, among other activities. Millions today travel to the city to view its eighteenth-century villas, attend boat races on the Schuylkill River, hike the Wissahickon Creek, visit the Philadelphia Zoo, hear concerts in summer, stroll the city’s historic squares and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and enjoy its enormous collection of public art. Green initiatives flower today; Philadelphia lives amidst its parks.

Filled with nearly 150 gorgeous full-color photographs, City in a Park chronicles the continuing efforts to create a twenty-first century version of what founder William Penn desired: a “greene countrie town.”

Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River by Beth Kephart

The Schuylkill River — the name in Dutch means “hidden creek” — courses many miles, turning through Philadelphia before it yields to the Delaware. “I am this wide. I am this deep. A tad voluptuous, but only in places,” writes Beth Kephart, capturing the voice of this natural resource in Flow.

An award-winning author, Kephart’s elegant, impressionistic story of the Schuylkill navigates the beating heart of this magnificent water source. Readers are invited to flow through time-from the colonial era and Ben Franklin’s death through episodes of Yellow Fever and the Winter of 1872, when the river froze over-to the present day. Readers will feel the silt of the Schuylkill’s banks, swim with its perch and catfish, and cruise-or scull-downstream, from Reading to Valley Forge to the Water Works outside center city.

Flow‘s lush narrative is peppered with lovely, black and white photographs and illustrations depicting the river’s history, its people, and its gorgeous vistas. Written with wisdom and with awe for one of the oldest friends of all Philadelphians, Flow is a perfect book for reading while the ice melts, and for slipping in your bag for your own visit to the Schuylkill.

Boathouse Row: Waves of Change in the Birthplace of American Rowing by Dotty Brown

The history of Philadelphia’s Boathouse Row is both wide and deep. Dotty Brown, an avid rower and former editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, immersed herself in boathouse archives to provide a comprehensive history of rowing in Philadelphia. She takes readers behind the scenes to recount the era when rowing was the spectator sport of its time-and the subject of Thomas Eakins’ early artwork-through the heyday of the famed Kelly dynasty, and the fight for women to get the right to row. (Yes, it really was a fight, and it

With more than 160 photographs, a third of them in full color, Boathouse Row chronicles the “waves of change” as various groups of different races, classes, and genders fought took generations to win.)for access to water and the sport. Chapters also discuss the architectural one-upmanship that defined Boathouse Row after Frank Furness designed the stunning and eclectic Undine Barge Club, and the regattas that continue to take place today on the Schuylkill River, including the forgotten forces that propelled high school rowing.
Beautifully written and illustrated, Boathouse Row will be a keepsake for rowers and spectators alike.