How radical is radical enough? That is the nature of their dispute. I wrote a long series of posts last summer bemoaning the death of classical conservatism from Burke through Oakeshott, and, um... I'm white as whiteness is currently defined, although the changes over time in that definition demonstrate the stupidity of racism better than anything else I can write. What do I have to say about racism, then?
Instead of reading Coates or West, read Nora K. Jemisin. (Her name is written as "N.K. Jemisin" on her books because women have a long tradition of doing that in genre literature. Sexism. The audience for genre stuff is mostly male, and the double-initial thing disguises the author's gender. D.C. Fontana wrote a lot of the original Star Trek episodes, and she had to disguise that her first name was Dorothy. Same thing.) In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a big fan of sci-fi. Some of the references are more buried than others (title of the blog!!!), but I like the genre, and few are better than Jemisin. Here Broken Earth trilogy is about to be turned into a tv series, supposedly, and the first two books have already won Hugo awards. Yeah, she's good.
I'll try not to spoil anything that won't be obvious, but if you plan to read or watch, and don't like spoilers, don't read this post.
The basic set-up is a seismically unstable world, periodically plagued by a "fifth season." Some super-volcano goes off somewhere, releases a bunch of ash and toxic gasses, blocks out the sun for a few years, and life gets really hard for a while. There are people called "orogenes," who have the power to control seismic activity. They also redirect heat and kinetic energy. If they don't have full control of their powers, they accidentally kill lots of people, either by causing seismic events, or just redirecting heat away from places and freezing everything. Non-orogenes ("stills," as orogenes call them) are scared shitless of orogenes, and refer to orogenes as "roggas." In Jemisin's world, this is basically the n-word. Orogenes are either killed when discovered, or sent off to The Fulcrum, and controlled as slaves with varying degrees of privilege and status. Their breeding is controlled, the slave-masters (Guardians) are creepy-as-fuck, and stepping out of line leads to even worse horrors.
The first book starts with a character named Alabaster-- the most powerful orogene in the world-- creating a seismic event of world-destroying scale. The point-of-view character, Essun, has tried to go along with the system, first within The Fulcrum, then just by hiding in a small "comm," but Alabaster always tried to show her how wrong she was to do so. Within The Fulcrum, Alabaster was a "10-ringer," meaning that he could do things nobody else could do. As such, he was given status and privilege, but still controlled as a slave, and he refused to see himself as anything other than that. As long as The Fulcrum existed, and as long as the system that created The Fulcrum existed, he was basically just a slave, regardless of how well-kept. Tearing everything down, then, was a price he was willing to pay for... reasons.
Essun never wanted to be a revolutionary. She just wanted to be safe and content. The system of The Fulcrum and the world around it never let her be, though. As a character, then, when she lashed out, it was less directed than Alabaster. (And wow, does she lash out!)
The supercontinent-- The Stillness (note both the irony and the commonality with the name for non-orogenes)-- was perpetually in this state of conflict. The precursors to the orogenes were subject to the same basic conditions in one of the "deadcivs," and they basically destroyed the world in their revolution. Whether it gained them a measure of freedom or not...
Within The Stillness, orogenes face the Burkean question. How bad does the system have to be before tearing it down and facing the consequences becomes worth it? For Edmund Burke... never. He was a rich white dude, so, of course. Alabaster, Essun, (Hoa...!), they have to ask a more careful question. How bad is the system now (or then!), and what would replace it? The system they faced was pretty fuckin' bad. It was slavery. Straight-up. Lynch-mobs, controlled breeding, broken families, the illusion of freedom and status creating conflict among the slaves... What comes after, though? The warlords and fiefdoms that preceded the Sanzed Empire, we never see, but even the Sanzed Empire is awful, and that is the result of... an earlier revolution. What Alabaster does? He brings down a bad system, but holy shit he kills a lot of people. I'm not going to spoil the ending, but that alone has to raise some questions.
And now we circle back to Coates and West. West wants to tear the whole system down. The idea that calling Coates a "neoliberal" is some kind of slur... basically, West is taking the position that he is Alabaster, and Coates is Essun back at the Fulcrum, when she went by "Syenite," and was just trying to keep her head down and not cause trouble. Either you want to tear the whole system down, or you are complicit.
Neoliberalism. This is a weakly-defined term, and West isn't an economist, so I'm not entirely sure what West thinks it means, but West is kind of a Marxist, and Coates isn't. West wrote a book called, The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought.
It was published after communism fell.
[facepalm...]
This is not to say I am the biggest fan of Coates, but I'm not going to get into that. If you read this blog, though, you could already figure out what I would say about the Marxist revolutionary.
That is separate from the very real question of how to deal with racism. Racism is very real. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow are very real. This stuff is knowable and measurable. Is the better response to tear the system down and try to build some sort of Marxist system, or to try to combat racism within the existing system? Answering that question requires thinking about what happens, post-revolution. That's the Burkean question.
And... we actually know what happens, post-Marxist revolution, and it ain't pretty.
We also know, though, what life is for African-Americans in the current system, and for the most part, that ain't pretty either.
Revolution itself has costs, though, and Cornel West doesn't think about those costs. Alabaster did, and was willing to pay them because of the nature of the system he faced. This is the nature of revolution. What happens next?
Marx called for violent revolution. He was an idiotic fuckin' psychopath. Read what he wrote sometime. He wasn't a high-minded idealist. He was a bloodthirsty nutjob. West doesn't call for violent revolution. I have never heard him call for violence at all. He calls everyone, "brother." He seems like a nice guy, to me. I'd love to talk about Jemisin with him, and I can pretty much guarantee he's read the trilogy and has way deeper thoughts on it than I do.
What happens after you overthrow the system, though? Is there a right way to do it? Does the existence of bigotry mean that we are doomed anyway?
A panel discussion between Coates, West and Nora K. Jemisin... I'd pay money to listen to that. I'd kind of want Coates and West to shut up and listen to Jemisin, though. She's way more interesting and nuanced in her thoughts.
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