{"id":57564,"date":"2019-04-18T11:54:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=57564"},"modified":"2019-04-18T14:28:47","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:28:47","slug":"profs-new-book-aims-to-improve-prospects-for-societal-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/04\/profs-new-book-aims-to-improve-prospects-for-societal-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Prof\u2019s new book aims to improve prospects for societal change"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to confront an entrenched capitalist system viewed by some as unjust and illegitimate is a dilemma facing the political left, says Brock Assistant Professor of Labour Studies Paul Gray. <\/span><\/p>\n

In his new book,\u00a0From the Streets to the State: Changing the World by Taking Power<\/span><\/em>, Gray questions whether one must<\/span>\u00a0operate from within a system to change it or if social change be achieved from outside.<\/span><\/p>\n

Edited by Gray, From<\/em><\/span> the Streets to the State\u00a0<\/span><\/i>explores the promises and pitfalls of two prominent strategies the left has employed to achieve societal change.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book attempts to reconcile the more traditional strategy of taking political power to create change with the relatively new strategy of creating change without taking power. Both have been tried with limited success. Gray suggests that for the radical left to have a place in the future, it\u2019s time to examine and learn lessons from both strategies.<\/span><\/p>\n

For much of the 20th century, the left was embodied by the formal politics of communist and social democratic movements. Results of those regime changes often fell short of expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the 1970s, frustrated by the perceived and real failures of state socialism, some leftists turned to a strategy that theorist John Holloway labelled \u201cchanging the world without taking power.\u201d This so-called anti-power politics shuns political parties, electoral politics and winning government office, says Gray, turning instead to social movements, community cooperatives and coalitions to effect social change.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, \u201cby disengaging from the terrain of government,\u201d Gray suggests the radical left may have facilitated the negative effects of neoliberalism and opened the doors to a variety of alternative and sometimes extreme opinions on both sides of the political spectrum.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gray began working on <\/span>From the Streets to the State<\/span><\/i> in 2014, during what he calls \u201ca low period for the left.\u201d At that time, hope was fading that the 2008 financial crisis would spawn a shake-up of the dominant neoliberal worldview.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere did not seem to be emerging many organizational structures that would offer any kind of alternative politics, with the exception of Syriza in Greece. It was the one radical left anti-capitalist party to win governing power since the financial crisis,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the limits of the Holloway strategy become clear, many on the left \u2014 \u201cpeople who participated in and saw the limits of the Occupy movement, for example\u201d \u2014 are returning to ideas of socialism, democratic socialism and political parties, Gray says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe pendulum has shifted toward the idea of making change by taking power through political parties and electoral politics,\u201d he says, pointing to the rise of Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSanders and Corbyn have put the idea of the legitimacy of democratic socialism and the formal organization of political parties back on the agenda in a huge way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While Gray doesn\u2019t believe in changing the world without taking power, his book acknowledges the achievements of the movement as well as the \u201ccomplex and disastrous\u201d results of attempts to do the opposite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Readers may initially be most interested in the first half of <\/span>From the Streets to the State<\/span><\/i> that looks at social movements, political parties and \u201chow to have a genuinely democratic political party.\u201d However, Gray says the second half of the book may be the most important \u201cbecause it speaks about the immense difficulties of egalitarian transformations of governance, administration and broader society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gray gathered case studies from around the globe that, he says, outline \u201cmany of the different obstacles that can arise and mistakes that have been made\u201d and demonstrate the importance of public sector workers in attempts to democratize administration and governance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Far from \u201cnitty-gritty details\u201d that can be put off until power is attained, he stresses these obstacles need to be considered, and strategies developed, before any attempt is made to change the world by taking power.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lessons shared are crucial for \u201cbroader social movements if they\u2019re actually going to try to do something as ambitious as dramatically transform society to something much more equal than it is now,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book, as in his classroom, Gray encourages people to actively seek out and engage with the strongest arguments of people with whom they disagree.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy fear is that people will remain in their silos … and thereby lack much of an explanation of what gives rise to the ideas and practices of those they disagree with. But they also lack the ability to defend their own positions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gray says many of his students feel the current system cannot be reformed but that dramatic change is necessary. \u201cOn the other hand,\u201d he says, \u201cthere\u2019s an immense cynicism about the prospects for change.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

With the lessons learned from the case studies in <\/span>From the Streets to the State<\/span><\/i>, Gray may have improved those prospects.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to confront an entrenched capitalist system viewed by some as unjust and illegitimate is a dilemma facing the political left, says Brock Assistant Professor of Labour Studies Paul Gray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":57565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1,4,38],"tags":[110,522,7828,7229],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57572,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57564\/revisions\/57572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}