Who Owns Democracy, and Our Planet?


Abstract

The US 2024 presidential election is existential, with significant peril for the survival of not only US democracy but the planet itself. Trump and Trumpism are a virulent breed of US politics that aim to undermine democracy while also creating a systemic extinction threat to the entire world. In my 2023 book, Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It, I discuss the “triangle of extinction,’ which links capitalism, climate change and war. All three are causally intertwined and all are fueled by Trumpism. Trump is not only militaristic but a climate denier and a neoliberal oligarch who will unleash the full force of the extinction triangle. Moreover, as he is also an “election-denier,” the extraordinary prospects of an election in which democracy and planetary survival are both at stake have created a US political theatre in which the fate of all peoples in the world hang in the balance. Drawing also on my newest 2024 book, Who Owns Democracy: The Struggle Over Class and Caste In America, I discuss the dynamics of the existential peril and the politics of how to ward off extinction while creating a resilient democracy. 


Speaker's Short Intro.

Professor Derber’s current work focuses on the crises of capitalism, globalization, corporate power, American militarism, the culture of hegemony, the climate crisis, and the new peace and global justice movements. The world is becoming as dominated by business values and power today as America was by the Robber Barons a century ago. Derber is persuaded that the overwhelming economic and cultural power of global corporations, increasingly melded with the political and military hegemonic power of the American government and the crises of global capitalism and global climate change, are together an integrated crisis that is now the pre-eminent social issue of the 21st century, and that we need a new vision and political movement that can offer an alternative. Professor Derber’s research is oriented toward 1) the systemic analysis of the intertwined crises we face and 2) analysis of the transformative potential of social movements arising to create a more democratic and egalitarian order.


Derber’s most recent book is Welcome to the Revolution. It explores the anti-Trump resistance movement and the anti-systemic universalizing movement needed to transform contemporary militarized capitalism. In conjunction with that book, Derber has brought together leaders of unions and many social justice movement, to analyze where we go from here. With Routledge Publishers, Derber is editing a new Universalizing Resistance Book Series where leading critical public intellectuals and activists analyze and flesh out stories of mass anti-systemic resistance that moves beyond the siloes of our current Left and Progressive movements. Derber is also helping direct a series of films and books about and with Noam Chomsky, funded by the Wallace Action Fund.


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Email: +886-2-3789-7222

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