The ABCs: Why Do Socialists Care So Much About Workers? with Vivek Chibber

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🗓️ 9 March 2017

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Socialists put the working class at the center of their political vision. But why, exactly?Vivek Chibber, Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, answers this question here, as well as capitalism's inability "to deliver the goods" for workers, who exactly workers are, the precarity of work today, and the problems with the twenty-first century labor movement. Chibber is in discussion with Jason Jacobin's Farbman.This is the first episode of The ABCs of Socialism, a four-part series taking up some of today's common questions asked about socialism.Each of those questions is also a chapter in The ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by Bhaskar Sunkara and the editors of Jacobin, and published by Verso Books. You can buy the book here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2219-the-abcs-of-socialismThe sessions are recorded at the Verso loft in Brooklyn, New York, in front of a live audience.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right.
0:07.0	Good evening everyone. I'm Jason from Jackman magazine. Welcome to the first event in the ABCs of
0:17.5	Socialism series. Each Monday this month we're going to be discussing a common question asked by people who are
0:23.8	newly discovering socialism or a basic that we can return to for those of you who have
0:27.8	been been around a bit longer. Each of these questions is a chapter from the ABCs of Socialism, which was produced by
0:35.1	Baskar Sankara and the editors of Jacobin magazine and published by Verso Books.
0:39.6	So we want to thank Verso for publishing publishing the book but also for opening the
0:43.9	video it's tremendous we have a ton of thanks the ABCs of socialism was
0:49.8	originally produced in the early part of 2016 but but we're having these events now because at Jacobin we've seen an absolute explosion of interest in socialism after Trump's electoral victory, the first months of the presidency, and after liberalism's complete an ability to mount any sort of credible challenge that people are sort of
1:06.9	There's an explosion of interest in the past few months. We've seen 10,000 new subscribers to Jacobin
1:13.2	This book has gone into its second printing
1:14.8	in just a few short months.
1:18.0	And then hundreds have been attending
1:19.2	different reading groups across the country
1:21.0	or events across the country.
1:21.9	And that's just one sort of slice of the pie.
1:25.0	For all the enthusiasm that's out there,
1:28.0	we know that there's actually quite a bit more,
1:29.0	that there's other people who are still discovering
1:31.0	socialism, coming to socialism.
1:33.0	We'll have many more questions,
1:35.0	and we don't pretend to have all of the answers
	...

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