American voters feel “impotent and hopeless” as they approach an election where the main choices are a “neo-fascist Pied Piper” (Donald Trump) or “the war criminals of the Democratic Party”, argues independent presidential candidate Cornel West.
West, one of the United States’s pre-eminent philosophers and justice activists, tells host Steve Clemons that President Joe Biden is enabling Israeli genocide and that Israel cannot be secure if “precious Jewish security and safety is predicated on the domination of precious Palestinians”.
West argues that recent talk of a two-state solution is “subterfuge – a refusal to deal with the 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank”.
I know that, but the BPP were open Marxist-Leninists in that era. They’re the serious face of American communism after the recuperation of the unions, and they were specifically communists in the communities I most associate Reagan with destroying. I don’t know how he can reconcile being an anticommunist and associating himself with people who understood that the only means of liberation is communism. If someone asks me what I want as a communist it’s just the 10 point programme and if they ask me how I want to achieve it it’s just their organising strategies at their most radical.
In West’s case its money and prestige.
Love to get money and prestige by getting fired for protesting apartheid and getting arrested, publicly condemning Larry summer and Obama, and going into the hugely lucrative business of liberation theology in the USA
What a weird grift… wouldn’t it be easier to just go full
I also don’t know what the fuck that tweet is talking about, but I’d kindly suggest that someone who studied Marxist ethics under Richard Rorty and has consistently critiqued capitalism from a Marxist perspective has a bit more nuance that a single tweet from 13 years ago. It doesn’t excuse it, obviously, but I’m sure he’s laid out his thoughts more about communism elsewhere in his writings or speeches.
But it’s not just one tweet, it’s a very concerning pattern of behavior; the other two examples I gave were much worse than the tweet, and much more recent than 13 years ago.
I did a cursory google to see what he had to say about Marxism himself, and found this:
Cultural issues and their solutions are not mutually exclusive from Marxism, that’s literally a fundamental part of base and superstructure. That’s not to say Marxist analysis of culture doesn’t have room to be further studied and expanded upon, but to say “Marx just didn’t go in that direction” feels like he just doesn’t actually understand Marxism. Kwame Ture explains it best, I think, when he describes scientific socialism not belonging to any one person, including Marx and Engels. West, however, seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater when he accepts the material harm caused by capitalism, but rejects/ignores the superstructure it both influences and is influenced by. And that misunderstanding/ignorance/whatever seems to have led to him saying and doing weird, Western chauvinist shit like cozying up with LaRouchites and giving praise to fascist ghouls like Reagan and Desantis for things they most certainly do not even deserve critical support for.
Open to hearing more if he’s articulated it better elsewhere, but he just strikes me as more of a “compatible leftist” type; one who can talk at length about how harmful capitalism is, but always stops just short of identifying actual material, revolutionary actions that need to be taken to overcome the forces of capitalism. And most concerning, he’s demonstrably been susceptible to red-brown/patsoc association.
Again, with respect, I’d suggest that a Google search and explication from that isn’t enough here. West is a black liberation theologian who married Marxist analysis to black American experience, particularly spirituality. He’s not Gramsci. He is first an foremost a Christian theologian focused on ethics over and above being a communist, a clear fundamental contradiction. He understands this and embraces it. You can read more about his foundational thought in Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. You really need to understand the black church to understand West.
If being a pure Marxist and/or Communist is your minimum, then West isn’t the candidate to back. Simple as. But that standard sure as shit wasn’t the same for Bernie or others in American electoral politics. It’s not applied to Jeremiah Wright when he preaches when folks gobble up those paragraphs.
As far as that article and his political campaigns are concerned, West strives to emphasize every person’s humanity and value and to reach out to everyone, regardless of their beliefs, to educate and create solidarity where it can exist. That’s why he addresses folks as “dear brother/sister/sibling.” Did you read that desantis article you linked? It was a lukewarm take about how the classics were revolutionary and can spur new revolutionary thought, and we should still read them. Like college professor intro class takes. It’s an attempt to reach out to people who like classics, that’s literally all.
West made awful decisions about how we was going to run for president. I don’t know why. I’d guess he got a bunch of conflicting statements and chose poorly each time. I am glad he abandoned the People’s Party after 2 days, and I’m bummed he abandoned the Green Party. He has Stein and Nader’s approval and backing, the latter of whom said he has a perfect platform with no aberrations. His campaign has been absolute dog shit, but he has as good a platform as anyone running today. But again, if being a Marxist is your minimum, he’s not the guy for you. That’s fine.
If you want to read more, there’s an article summarizing his Marxist thoughts here which has links to his works. If you were a fan of Michael Brooks, he discusses Marx on TMBS a few years back (I haven’t seen it, I’m more familiar with Wests academic work)