The Promise and Limits of Black Lives Matter – Cedric Johnson

https://vimeo.com/427477787 Does the "Black Lives Matter" framing of the protests undermine the potential for much broader alliances?  It’s not just black people who are being over-policed, it’s all working-class people and in particular, the most dispossessed. Cedric Johnson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. Transcript Paul Jay Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Cedric Johnson is an associate professor of African American Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and editor of the neo-liberal Deluge, Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. We're going to discuss the mass protests in Chicago and across the country with him. But before I welcome him to the show. I want to share the quote from Karl Marx that he has at the bottom of the page of his emails. For those who don't know the context of the quote, the workers of Paris took over the city and established a radical socialist and revolutionary government that ruled Paris from the 18th of March to the 28th of May, 1871. The Commune, as it was known, the Paris Commune, was eventually crushed by the French army during a bloody week in which many of the leaders were executed in Pere LaChaise Cemetery. The song, The Internationale, perhaps the most optimistic lyrics ever written, was created in the days after the fall of the workers' government when the leaders were being executed.      Here's the quote from Marx at the bottom of Cedric's email. The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready made utopias to introduce, 'Decreed de le peuple," which I think means by decree of the people.      They know that in order to work out their own emancipation and, along with it, that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies. They will have to pass through long struggles through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old, collapsing, bourgeois society itself is pregnant."  That's Karl Marx in the book, The Civil War in France, 1871. Now joining us is Cedric Johnson. Thanks for joining us, Cedric. Cedric Johnson Thanks so much for having me. Paul Jay So how does this analysis of Marx from 1871 apply to today? Cedric Johnson      Well, you know what I like about that quote? It just offers sort of a dose of sobriety, right. When we're thinking about trying to transform a society in a much more radical and democratic direction, that it, whatever we do has to alternately be anchored in what peoples' needs are. And I think that there're definitely moments where working as an intellectual and being in conversation with other academics, as well as intellectuals working in different settings, there's a tendency for us to sometime lose sight of that. Right. So I like the fact that Marx reminds us about the ferment of the Commune and how it's very much anchored in peoples' needs and the kinds of struggles they were engaged in. I really enjoy the part where he talks about  the—we’ll have to pass through long struggles and through a series of difficult historical processes, because especially in our own moment. Right. And even with the mass protests we've seen over the last two weeks, I still think many people, at least a lot of the younger people I've talked to, and had conversations with recently, they still imagine that these things happen immediately. Right.