Archive of David I. Backer

When a Philadelphia public high school teacher discovered dangerously high levels of CO₂ in her classroom, it kicked off a fight about inequality, capitalism and the power of socialist organizing in America's crumbling public school system.

The past year has seen the continuation of the debates in the DSA around questions of class, identity and strategy. In this article, David I. Backer argues against a class separatism which would reduce questions of identity to those of class, and argues for a new perspective which is attentive to both the structures and the experience of capitalist society. 

What is the relation between race and class? and what do people mean when they say "class reductionism"? Questions of organising strategies relating to race and class have dominated leftist discourse in recent years. In this article, David I. Backer argues that we have to shift the focus of the debate about race and class reductionism to the the role of the relations of production.