Across the country, many Americans see their nation and world in crisis. Last weekend, Oberlin students, faculty, and distinguished speakers came together to discuss what this crisis actually is, and some possible paths forward.

The conference, titled Capitalist Crisis and Democratic Socialism: A Working Conference, was organized and sponsored by the Politics department and the student organization Oberlin Democratic Socialists. The event also received support from the JD Lewis Memorial Lectureship and Oscar Jászi Lectureship. It brought together panelists from academia, journalism, and labor organizing, who discussed and debated topics from the historical contours of capitalism, to the role of identity politics in leftist organizing, to concrete possibilities for an alternative democratic socialist order. The conference was open to the broader public, although the majority of attendees appeared to be students and faculty. 

“It really was a very unusual group of activists, scholars, journalists,” James Monroe Professor of Politics and of East Asian Studies Marc Blecher, who played a key role in organizing the event, said. “I’ve never seen a conference that had people broadly all facing the same direction, but with different professional approaches to it [and with] enough differences between them where they could debate.” 

Blecher clarified that while the Politics department helped organize the event, the department itself does not endorse any political ideologies discussed in the conference — rather, that the department simply takes the stance that these are legitimate questions that merit attention and analysis.

“I think that it is really important to have the most fundamental questions of politics back on the agenda,” panelist Bhaskar Sunkara, president of The Nation and founder of Jacobin, as well as former vice-chair of Democratic Socialists of America, said. “Who owns what, who gets to make the decisions? I think everyone’s contributions and the conversation was really about those most fundamental questions of power and control.”

Attendee and College third-year Grace Sarafidis felt that the conference brought a much needed conversation to campus. 

“Especially at Oberlin … we talk so much about the importance of identity, but it only really goes into: how can we get people of various identities into positions of power so they can exploit other people?” Sarafidis said. “This just feels very refreshing and very needed, and I hope it’s a step in the right direction for Oberlin. Because I feel like the jig is up when it comes to being like, ‘we’re the woke college.’”

Co-founder and Executive Director of The Labor Institute Les Leopold, OC ’65, echoed sentiments around the importance of this conference. 

“There are not that many spaces where these kinds of conversations go on,” Leopold said. “So I think it’s really good crucible for creating a little energy, a little more hope for people, even directions for their own academic work or their own political work. … If you’re in a left environment, it’s not easy to step outside of it and say, ‘whoa, our stuff may not sell in the rest of the country, why is that?’”

Friday’s panel focused on the diagnosis of the crisis itself, with James Monroe Professor of Politics Emeritus Chris Howell, Northwestern University Professor of Political Science Jeffrey A. Winters, and University of Michigan William H. Sewell  Jr. Professor of History Emeritus and Oberlin College Professor of History Emeritus Ronald Suny delving into historical analyses in order to explain the moment we have arrived in today. 

Although each panelist approached the question from different vantage points, they all emphasized the importance of regrounding the left’s focus in economic and class terms. Howell discussed how capitalism has exhausted viable growth models, leading in part to the direct subordination of the state to capitalist interests as the state is forced to intervene to prop up the growth models. Meanwhile, Winters pointed to a phenomenon that he termed “participatory inequality,” suggesting that today’s extreme levels of inequality can be explained by the ability of our democracy to reliably function in some areas just as it reliably fails in others. Winters argued that this creates a mirage of democracy while redirecting anger away from those in power and ultimately implicating everyone in the upholding of a staggeringly unequal society. Suny, meanwhile, discussed the rise of populist nationalism, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the affective environment created by economic changes and the ways in which anger, resentment, and fear, combined with manufactured ignorance, lead people toward populism.

Saturday’s panel turned to the question of what the organization of an alternative future might look like. 

The panel began with a speech by Sunkara, arguing that the  political left needs to regain a “horizon of possibility.” He stressed the importance of recognizing the systemic failures of capitalism as both unstable and undemocratic, of learning from the limitations and mistakes of past command-economy models of socialism, and of creating both inspiring and attainable blueprints for the future. 

Co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect and Brandeis University Meyer and Ida Kirstein Professor of Social Policy Robert Kuttner, OC ’65, followed, arguing that social democracy (to be distinguished from democratic socialism) is no longer viable. He pointed to the weakness of centering identity rather than class, referencing a call he received from former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon in 2017 in which Bannon declared that, “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Leopold concluded the conference with a discussion of the relationship between mass layoffs and trends in electoral politics, and the argument that the Democratic Party cannot be reformed. He argued that a new working-class party must instead be formed in red states — an argument which prompted some debate among panelists. 

The conference organizers carved out considerable time for engagement from the audience. College third-year Dylan Kim, co-chair of the Oberlin Democratic Socialists and one of the organizers of the conference, reflected on this dialogue between students and the panelists.

“I liked how students were engaged,” Kim said. “There was a lot of dialogue and discourse during the presentations, and I feel that a lot of students did think about things a lot. I think one shortcoming of this conference [was that] a lot of the dialogue wasn’t very directed forward … I feel like we should have talked more about potential alternatives and futures instead of focusing so much on what has happened, because I think a lot of people already do recognize that we don’t live in a very democratic state.”

Blecher said that organizers and panelists will meet soon to discuss possible next steps.