Ep 131 - On The Ultra Question w/ Kay Gabriel
Added 2021-02-10 11:00:02 +0000 UTCKay Gabriel (@unit01barbie), of DSA Emerge and the #DefundNYPD campaign, stops by to give a counterpoint to some of our previous guests' takes on cutting police budgets as part of the road to abolition. Equal time doctrine, but only for different types of communists!
Sharp-eared observers will note this audio came from The Antifada twitch stream. Follow us at twitch.tv/theantifada to catch all our video content! We stream most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7pm ET.
Visit defundnypd.com to stay updated and/or get involved.
Check out "We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics," edited by Kay Gabriel and Andrea Abi-Karam (some of the poems are about abolishing the police!): https://nightboat.org/book/we-want-it-all/
Intro/Outro: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (vaporwave remix)
Comments
if it’s not anti state it’s not communism imo
Daniel E
2021-02-25 22:46:39 +0000 UTCyeah, this is just a result of the Stalinist's popular frontism. Like if you need to have the bourgeoisie on board, that's exactly where you end up. Ask the KPD how that kind of tactic turned out in the 30s.
Markus Glanzer
2021-02-11 09:18:32 +0000 UTC“Let’s talk about state bay-bee, let’s talk about bourgeois stuff, let’s talk about all the government we want to smash right up, let’s talk about states.” - Sean... this needs to be worked into a theme song. Thank you for this gift.
Tim L
2021-02-11 01:48:40 +0000 UTCWas honestly a little disappointed by this conversation, and especially the lack of pushback from Sean on some of these points.
Sebastian Wittekindt
2021-02-10 23:00:54 +0000 UTCI don't quite follow what Gabi is proposing, as it seems like they're in many ways arguing a kind of ahistorical point here. I listened to the first hour because it seems like the conversation has nothing to do with defund anymore past that. Literally no idea how we get to the conclusion that we should support and form coalitions with soc-dems and left liberals proposing the defund policy? As Jamie rightly pointed out, there can be no abolition as long as the class distinctions of capitalism are preserved, meaning you literally cannot reform your way into abolition. Add to that the historical context of how so many revolution have failed through soc-dem leadership of socialist parties that ultimately betray the revolution to save their cushy class position and you get a very strong argument AGAINST this strategy. The thing the Bolsheviks did that led to the success of their revolution was that they did not compromise, and they did not build coalitions, they stood by their politics, and the events of the revolution brought the working class to them.
Sebastian Wittekindt
2021-02-10 22:56:30 +0000 UTCNailed it. My exact issues with the episode too. It was strange too that her example of the state being effective to use for communists was West Germany, Cuba and China, all of which dramatically different than NYC. De-funding NYPD would not transform the state apparatus in any way.
Gabriel Santa Maria
2021-02-10 21:48:56 +0000 UTCFor all of the talk from the guest about understanding the state materially her grappling with its material functions particularly on the relation of repressive policing to fascism and imperialism was seriously lacking. The complete lack of understanding on the question of the relative autonomy of the state was illustrative there. That is not a question floating high in theory but a practical question on the how the state acts and if we can use it. There is little acknowledgment of the states historic role and an avoidance of acknowledging failures (all ascribed to outside actors) even going as far as claiming that even acknowledging state socialist societies have failed is a right wing position (coming perilously close to just straight up saying she believes that anarchism is right wing propaganda). I very much agree that communists need to understand and analyze the state far better, including this guest. While I will never downplay the reality of the continuation of fascism in west Germany, justifying a repressive state apparatus as anti-fascist is fucking ridiculous especially considering that the East didn’t exactly denazify either, even established a party explicitly for nazis, and cracked down on autonomous anti-fascists consistently. How exactly an “abolitionist” can defend a police state as anti-fascist (in defiance of the material reality of its practice) points to why communists need a consistent critique of the state. There will never be a socialist society that does not face the threats of imperialism and counter revolution, if you defend policing and capitalism because of this you will ultimately always continue to do so. What exactly is a communist who isn’t anti-state btw? Given all this hedging and defense of anti-abolitionist practices as somehow abolitionist it’s hard to take some of the stronger points in defense of defund here as seriously as they might merit. For example the guest claims several times that defund is not a reform because it opens doors to other possibilities but this doesn’t actually make something a reform or not. It may make something a non-reformist reform as critical resistance discusses, however appealing to the state for a budgetary reshuffling it is absolutely a reform. Reforms can lead to new possibilities (and she has a strong point there) or they can for close them. She seems to have a different idea of where the defund reform likely leads than the past guests do, but her claims that it isn’t a reform just feel like avoiding the issue and undermines the point about the developing of consciousness through struggles that don’t themselves point all the way to the communist horizon.
Cole rainey-slavick
2021-02-10 21:01:12 +0000 UTCBring Gabi back more often!
Ben Steen
2021-02-10 18:51:56 +0000 UTCThis talk was dense. Hard to keep.up. Def needs a second go round. A lot of what she sais went completely by me.
enzothebaker88
2021-02-10 15:39:00 +0000 UTCfirst comment
Ian Montague
2021-02-10 12:41:50 +0000 UTC
