In an engaging and genuinely subversive presentation to the closing plenary at this year’s Left Forum in New York City, social critic John Holloway challenged many of the assumptions underlying traditional left strategies in the current economic context. Holloway suggested that today’s popular movements are the real “crisis of capitalism.” We can either aim to help elites restore economic growth and a false sense of normalcy, he argued, or refuse to be subservient and continue to raise challenging questions about social hierarchies and the nature of work.
An interview with social ecologist Brian Tokar about one of his three Left Forum panels this year is also available. Both the leftforum.org and mantlethought.org websites contain extensive documentation of this year’s Forum, which many participants described as the best ever, coinciding with events at nearby Liberty Plaza (a.k.a. Zuccotti Park) to celebrate the 6 month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.
