Transmissions Ep. 13: James A. Smith of The Popular Show

Class Unity

Hello friends! Welcome to another episode of Class Unity ‘Transmissions’!

Our guest for this episode is none other than James A. Smith, co-host with David Slavick of The Popular Show. Smith is also the author of Other People’s Politics: Populism to Corbynism (Zer0 Books, 2019) and coauthor with Mareile Pfannebecker of Work Want Work: Labour and Desire at the end of Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Smith is a defender of the idea that the 2016-2020 “Bernie moment” was a real opportunity to advance the cause of socialism. While it can be tempting today to look back and think that it was doomed from the start, Smith argues that the failure was largely self-inflicted. This means there are lessons that can be learned from the failure. However, he notes, the left today “seems worryingly uncurious about the regressive influence earlier defeated lefts have sometimes inadvertently had.”

Smith believes that the left needs to rethink its approach to political freedom. Following up on our recent episode with Efraim Carlebach on the 10-year anniversary of Mark Fisher’s famous essay, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” we chat with Smith about his recent Sublation essay, “Capitalist Realism All Over Again” (3.17.2023).

As he puts it, the left has “struggled to apply the book’s insights,” all too often succumbing to political correctness and “anti-political moralism.” Meanwhile, as evidenced in the government response to the coronavirus pandemic, capitalist elites are claiming that crises that are “too important to be hazarded to democratic oversight or protest.” When the left abandons this fight, the right will try to fill in the gap, claiming that only it can stop the power grab.

We also ask Smith about some of his recent episodes, including his interview with Matt Taibbi, one of the main journalists behind The Twitter Files. Like Taibbi, Smith believes that capitalist elites today are leveraging state powers to censor social media activity, essentially constituting a strategy of “revenge against both left and right populism.”

We also discuss a number of foreign policy matters, from the west’s war for NATO expansion in Ukraine to the iconoclastic left’s bankrupt analysis of Israel’s war in Gaza. Concerning the latter, many otherwise insightful critics have suggested that Hamas is essentially a bonapartist organization, seeking to create an islamic state. How does Smith respond to these critics? Moreover, given the difficulty of imagining the construction of a working class party in Gaza today, what should be the left position on this terrible war?

Smith can be followed on Twitter/X @thepopularpod. Curious listeners can also follow up on Smith’s work on Jacobin, where he has published numerous articles on the state of the British left:

1. “The Labour Party Is Ignoring Britain’s Muslims. A Judge-Led Inquiry Won’t Change That” (12.12.2023)
2. “Labour’s Left Needs to Regain the Insurgent Spirit That Made Jeremy Corbyn Leader” (07.31.2023)
3. “The Labour Left’s Fatal Contradictions Are Still Unresolved” (11.04.2021)