The Convergence of Social Struggles (with Amna Akbar, Silke van Dyk, Manon Garcia and Romin Khan)

00:00:00 Rahel Jaeggi: The idea behind today's conversation
00:02:45 Robin Celikates: Introduction of the participants
00:05:26 1.Rahel Jaeggi: Is there currently a convergence of social struggles?
00:06:24 1.1. Amna Akbar: Right wing mobilisation and left strategies in the US
00:11:53 1.2. Manon Garcia: The victory of intersectional analysis, fragmentation of the left, and moral panic about wokeism
00:19:51 1.3. Romin Khan: Unions as laboratories for social controversies
00:25:27 1.4. Silke van Dyk: Fights against discrimination have a materialist foundation
00:29:58 2. Robin Celikates: How do you conceive of the structural dimension of power/domination?
00:33:32 2.1. Silke van Dyk: Externalisation as the common basis
00:36:43 2.2. Romin Khan: The main objective is to overcome neoliberalism
00:43:55 2.3. Amna Akbar: Non-reformist reforms and the danger to miss structural causes
00:52:23 2.4. Manon Garcia: The difficulty of individualism and the social reasons for demobilisation
01:00:55 3. Rahel Jaeggi: How are the systems of oppression connected?
01:04:12 3.1. Manon Garcia: Who can fight, is the real question.
01:11:20 3.2. Romin Khan: The need to make the whole range of identities tangible
01:18:28 3.3. Amna Akbar: It's all in the actual practices
01:23:42 3.4. Silke van Dyk: The difficulty to get a structuralist perspective on class back in without letting it dominate
01:29:53 4. Robin Celikates: How to build solidarity across lines of division?
01:31:40 4.1. Romin Khan: Collaboration is the key
01:39:53 4.2. Manon Garcia: Fighting for a just world is better for everyone
01:49:21 4.3. Silke van Dyk: There are struggles within the social movements
01:53:38 4.4. Amna Akbar: It is not in the domain of persuasion that we gonna win these struggles

“In order to preserve or even expand the welfare state, migration must be stopped.” Claims like these accompanied the turn of former leftists to the racist and even völkisch far-right camp in the last decade. Underlying such considerations is a view of society in which the misery of some can only be eliminated, or even alleviated, by exacerbating the misery of others. The counter-thesis is that democratic co-determination—especially in the economic sphere—can only be expanded if co-determination means explicitly standing up for migration and against racism in an internationalist way. This thesis is based on an image of society in which forms of oppression, exploitation and domination are interconnected, so that the struggle against one of these forms must strive to overcome all forms of oppression, exploitation, and domination. Between both theses lies a third option: the search for a central origin of the relations of exploitation, oppression and domination in society. Only those who stab into the heart of the beast—so they claim—can prevent the heads of the Hydra from multiplying endlessly. The concern here is not only that emancipatory movements will become increasingly distracted by the struggle against myriad social injustices. The concern is also that emancipation is degenerating into a variant of radical liberalism, in which all forms of life have the same right to exist as long as they do not break out of the framework that neoliberal diversity management dictates. With our guests, we want to talk about the pros and cons for one or the other option considering practical social conflicts: What actual experiences indicate that social struggles have a common direction? And what dynamics prevent such a convergence?

Silke van Dyk is professor for political sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.

Romin Khan is senior advisor for antiracism and the politics of migration at the trade union “verdi”.

Manon Garcia is an assistant professor for philosophy at Yale University.

Amna Akbar is an associate professor for law at The Ohio State University.

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