NO POLITICS BUT CLASS POLITICS: Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed, Jr.

Please join Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed, Jr. in conversation at 7 PM on Thursday September 28th as they discuss their new book No Politics but Class Politics with the distinguished historian Barbara J. Fields. Sponsored by the Institute of Radical Imagination in collaboration with ERIS, the event will be held at the People's Forum on 320 West 37th Street.

No Politics but Class Politics collects several major essays by two of the most incisive analysts of the politics of race and class currently at work in the United States. Michaels and Reed’s writings demonstrate with unrivalled clarity the central role played in American life by economic inequality.

The subjects of the essays range from the political economy of higher education to the depiction of slavery in contemporary cinema. At the core of the book is a simple but powerful claim: that the liberal fixation with racial disparities, and associated efforts to distribute wealth and power more evenly among racial groups, ultimately serve to keep the fundamental injustices of capitalism intact. Michaels and Reed make the case instead for a genuinely radical politics: a politics that aspires not to the establishment of a demographically representative social elite, but instead to economic justice for everyone.

Michaels and Reed will be discussing their work live with Barbara J. Fields (co-author of the widely acclaimed Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life) and engaging the audience in conversation. Admission to the event is free, and guests are encouraged to reserve tickets in advance via Eventbrite to ensure a seat at the table. The discussion will begin promptly at 7 PM; we recommend a 6.30 PM arrival.

Praise for No Politics but Class Politics:

“Adolph Reed, Jr. and Walter Benn Michaels have been among the clearest voices critiquing the dominant race reductionism in American intellectual life and proposing a real egalitarian alternative.” —Bhaskar Sunkara

“Wokelords and anti-racist liberals will be frustrated, enraged, and defeated. This book pushes us closer towards the uncompromising, bare-knuckled anti-capitalist movement we so desperately need.” —Cedric Johnson

“Anyone interested in the politics of race and class must push aside the dogma of identity and grapple with what Reed, Jr. and Michaels have been arguing for decades.” —Jodi Dean

“These essays tell the story of the last seven decades, charting the decline of the left and American politics. The result is as rich as it is rare: a long view that is pressing and immediate.” —Corey Robin

“Reed, Jr. and Michaels take a hammer to common ways of thinking about race, class, inequality and identity, revealing ugly truths, and challenging us out of our comfort zones.” —Kenan Malik

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Walter Benn Michaels is Professor of English at the University of Illinois Chicago. His political writings have appeared in publications including The American Prospect and the London Review of Books, and his most recent books are The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality and The Beauty of a Social Problem: Photography, Autonomy, Economy.

Adolph Reed, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. A veteran activist and political commentator, his books include Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene and the recently published The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives. His essays have appeared in The Nation, Harper's and Jacobin, among other publications.

Barbara J. Fields is William R. Shephard Professor of History at Columbia University and an influential scholar of nineteenth-century American history. She is the author or co-author of several books, including Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century and (with Karen E. Fields) Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life.

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The People’s Forum is a movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. It is an accessible educational and cultural space that nurtures the next generation of visionaries and organizers who believe that through collective action a new world is possible.