IOP Pritzker Fellow Bhaskar Sunkara on "What Is Working-Class Politics?"

THIS SEMINAR IS OPEN TO CURRENT UCHICAGO STUDENTS ONLY

Monday, February 16

3:30-4:45pm

This seminar will look at the return of “the worker” as a political figure in contemporary American politics. The session begins from a basic question: what does it mean when class returns to politics primarily as a symbol or identity rather than as an organized social force?

Let’s examine this moment in relation to earlier Marxist understandings of working-class identity, which treated class not as a cultural label but as a political relationship produced through institutions, struggle and collective action. The seminar asks whether contemporary invocations of “the worker” reflect a revival of class politics, a rebranding of cultural grievance in class terms, or a new form of identity politics altogether. The goal is not to resolve the question but to clarify what is - and is not - being resurrected when class language reappears in a fragmented political landscape.

Discussion focuses on the two-party system, electoral rules, labor law and racial division, as well as the long New Deal period, when the Democratic Party functioned as an American partial substitute for social democracy without becoming a workers’ party. The seminar asks whether the lack of organizational independence has been a strength, a liability or an unavoidable condition for socialist politics in the United States and what this history suggests about the prospects for building durable working-class power today.

Pritzker Fellows seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only. Seating in the IOP Living Room is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you have any questions about accessibility, please contact Ella Kumano-Maloney (ikmaloney@uchicago.edu).