What is communism’s place in the modern age? That’s the chewy question – one that gets host Isaac all hot under the collar – which People Just Do Something is diving into this week, as our third ‘live’ edition, recorded at the Cube Microplex, welcomes international super comrade, US academic and author Jodi Dean.
Born in the Deep South in the early 1960s, Jodi was by the Reagan era swimming hard against her nation’s political currents, visiting the Soviet Union in 1984. There, she can recall tearing up at a giant welcome poster… before the soldiers turned up to rifle through her baggage.
Later, in the early 2010s, she was involved in the Occupy movement in New York before witnessing it hit its limits amid crackdowns by law enforcement.
With the left now in disarray in mainstream politics on both sides of the Atlantic, this episode Isaac and Priyanka wonder whether it’s time for a new party to be formed… and whether that might be a revolutionary communist one.
But what constitutes a party? And how is one different from a movement? And could people on the left stop it with all the schisms and factionalism for long enough to actually get the ball properly rolling?
These are topics where Jodi Dean is an authority – she’s sadly still not able to give Priyanka a ready answer to how the left in Britain can get its shit together and move forward, but we can’t blame her for that really can we? And thankfully we do get right to the heart of what being a comrade really means – and deep into the debate as to whether using the term is ireddemably cringe.
In short, it’s another unmissable one – enjoy…
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