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On May 24, 2010, The Center for Values and Ethics (CVE) will be hosting the CVE Roundtable, inviting Professor Carl E. Boggs from National University of Los Angeles. Professor Carl Boggs will deliver a presentation on the topic of “Empire and Social movements”. In this roundtable, the presenter will discuss about the term “democracy” which has collapsed into something of a rhetorical flourish when viewed against the realities of a highly-institutionalized state-capitalist system, with its concentrated forms of corporate, government, and military power. Moreover, a model of “actually-existing democracy” for the real world, different from “phantom democracy” will be analyzed.

Title

Empire and Social movements

Presenter

Carl E. Boggs (National University in Los Angeles) 

Participants

Jun-Hyeok Kwak (Director of EAI CVE, Korea University)

Na-Young Lee (Chung-Ang University)

Sangchin Chun (Sogang University)

Paul Chang (Underwood International College, Yonsei University)

Jiyeoun Song (Department of Political Science, University of Oklahoma)

Abstract

When viewed against the realities of a highly-institutionalized state-capitalist system, with its concentrated forms of corporate, government, and military power, the term “democracy” has collapsed into something of a rhetorical flourish, ritualized language that tells us less and less about living social and authority relations in a complex industrial society. Close investigation of the constituent elements of a thriving democratic polity nowadays seems almost taboo among politicians, the media, even academics who usually balk at taking labels at face value. Even some of the harshest critics of American politics are often inclined, with few second thoughts, to accept existing signposts of “democracy” - consent of the governed, will of the people, popular sovereignty, self-governance - that are weak on empirical substance. Such facile references have grown largely stale and meaningless, emptied of content - if in fact they ever had much resonance across so much of U.S. history. The same is true of familiar contentions equating democratic politics with the presence of a constitution, open elections, “pluralism”, a capitalist economy, or certain legally-protected rights and freedoms. None of these conditions is sufficient to establish or maintain a dynamic system of democratic governance.

About the author

Professor Carl E. Boggs is a professor of social sciences at National University in Los Angeles. After receiving his Ph.D. in political science at U.C., Berkeley, he taught at Washington University in St. Louis, UCLA, USC, UC, Irvine, and Carleton University in Ottawa. He is also the author of numerous books in the fields of contemporary social and political theory, European politics, American politics, U.S. foreign and military policy, and film studies, including The Impasse of European Communism (1982), The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism (1984), Social Movements and Political Power (1986), Intellectuals and the Crisis of Modernity (1993), The Socialist Tradition (1996), and The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the Decline of the Public Sphere (2000). With Tom Pollard, he authored a book titled A World in Chaos: Social Crisis and the Rise of Postmodern Cinema, in 2003. He edited an anthology, Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in an Era of American Empire (2003). More recently, he wrote Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War (2005), The Hollywood War Machine: Militarism and American Popular Culture (co-authored with Tom Pollard, 2006) and his latest books is The Crimes of Empire: Rogue Superpower, World Domination (2010). He is on the editorial board of journals, Theory and Society and New Political Science. From 1999 to 2000 he was Chair of the Caucus for a New Political Science within the American Political Science Association. In 2007 he was recipient of the Charles McCoy Career Achievement Award from the APSA.