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cars, chemicals, and machine tools aren't high-tech? American ruling class didn't send industry to nuclear power with 4x population that had been to war with all of its powerful neighbors in the last half-century?

This guy does bring out alot of interesting perspectives, but I think he overlooks why reforms occurred in the first place. 1- relative immiseration and 2- the threat of the USSR and communism. Now we have neither in any meaningful sense. Revolutions don’t occur unless in a time of deep crisis and civil unrest. As long as ppl are still immigrating to the first world, they’ll never be revolutions there. As to the third world, the point isnt whether this or that country offers hope, the point is that the US runs the global system and runs it alone, so no one has a chance unless that grip is loosened. Since the left barely has any unified anti imperialist stance and tends to tail the establishment, that possibility is rendered irrelevant.

To the man who asked the question re an anti-woke left, George galloway’s workers party GB are exactly that and won 200,000 votes at the uk general election

the OCGFC love the woke cult - they give cover to the darkness of the empire & that’s where the $$ is - we saw 71% of the economy vote for Biden proving the point that woke advertising & woke PR & woke movies it’s created a homogeneous idiocy that gives us the opposite of what the NATO libs are at their core - they managed to make synonymous wokeness & the left turning people away from the old school left which we spent decades decimating across the globe & certainly at home where it’s now a ridiculous circus we can’t cure the disease focusing on every symptom but that’s what the libs do & being the more “educated” they have far more allegiance to the establishment & trust the privatised Govt & state dept & media

I thought wokeness was coopted from black folks

Good topic. Wokeness began in universities with feminism, which sought to blame working class men for the oppression of women. They fed women the line that their freedom involved economic independence, which was a con of course, but it worked. They expanded it into every area to ensure we blame each other for our oppression rather than those with real power.

Great conversation, I love the cohesive historical view. One thing, the region wouldn't collapse, they're quite integrated in two or more camps plus Israel

Did he reject Lenin?

Great episode. I wonder if a workers' (para?)-party could get funding and other political help from property developers who would benefits from efforts to reform land laws that make it hard to build apartments, condos, townhomes in certain places. Public sector unions may also benefit from those reforms via increased property and sales tax takes, so there may be some synergies there Re: ww3 prep it may make sense to do some campist propaganda so as to draw funding from countries like China and Russia, and also one needn't countenance something horrible to prepare for it and even to benefit from it in some local way

Been running into so many of the problems Studebaker is mentioning as I do organizing work. He's a very important thinker to keep an eye on, insightful and we need more like him.

This guy is great!

British: Divide and conquer India: Multiply and conquer

1. What is capitalism? The Marxist definition of capitalism seems inscrutable. It's spoken about, but never clearly defined. 2. Why does capitalism require imperialism? Why does capitalism require financialization? 3. How does Israel further America's imperial interests? How does Israel enable American hegemony in the ME? In reality, Israel undermines American hegemony in the ME by making enemies with all its neighbors. How is Israel a "loyal ally" of the US? What has Israel ever done for America? 4. Lastly, there seems to be too much "try hard" to fit geopolitical facts into the Marxist paradigm. Desai and the other speakers make it appear inevitable that America must be in Ukraine and Israel, and apparently, nowhere else. But there's clearly reasons why we're in Ukraine, not Mongolia. And why we're in Israel, not Zimbabwe. But as Mearsheimer explains, America's involvement in these regions do not redound to America's interests, national or imperial. So why are we there? Profits for the MIC cannot explain it because the MIC can make profits in other ways.

I'm baffled why "neoliberalism" is viewed by the left as synonymous with "free markets". As a person who espouses "free markets", I've always understood neoliberalism as the rise of the state and the deliberate alliance of corporate and state power. From a free market perspective, neoliberalism is anathema to free markets. Neoliberalism is free markets gone awry. It's a cancer. ... Okay, I see that Ms. Desai does recognize that in neoliberalism the government's hyper focus is on "corporate welfare" as opposed to the welfare of the general public and the common. I agree.

To say and come to the conclusion that USD becoming world currency isn't advantageous to majority of americans is a absolutely braindead and reetarded statement to make. What can you expect from marxist afterall

Subscribed!

She can never explain how Stalin and Stalinism helped destroy the Left. Just the level of killing off the revolutionary leadership before wwii. The constant betrayals is Socialism in One Country .

Absolutely fire

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💕💕💕♥️♥️♥️🌟🌟🌟

"You don't have to waste your time and energy on stuff that doesn't work. You don't have to spend your life that way. You are not under any obligation to engage in forms of politics that don't benefit you." It's simple and sounds like a truism, but it's the kind of thing I and probably many other burned out lefties wish we'd have gotten through our heads much sooner than we really did. I think the book as a whole makes a good case for it, and it helped me on a personal level as I started reading it around the time I also started disengaging from leftist groups, on bad terms more often than not. My favorite Max Horkheimer quote has the same tone: "Anybody who can only play at politics, should abstain from it." Highly recommended. Great interview.

what about voting independent, such as, for Dennis Kucinich? although, he would still be inside of the larger system

I'm precariously employed in K12 education. I'd like to dispassionately float above the culture war, but I'm finding that the rump professionals in my industry are actively using PMC ideology for labor discipline. Specifically, DEI frameworks are mixed with managerial rights in an odious way.

I would disagree slightly with the host's characterization of the DSA as having lost its focus on class. In recent years there have been chapters of the DSA that have returned to a stronger focus on class and which do engage in both organizing, ballot initiatives relating to political economy, and electoral politics. You need to look at the specific chapter in question. While it is true that these groups operate in traditional liberal strongholds like New York and California and have not fully adapted to an ideological orientation required for being successful elsewhere, many of them at least do recognize the mistakes of the past and can play a role in broader organization efforts taking place in their area. It is true that, as Vivek has said, the DSA will likely not be the vehicle for significant labor organization in the future even as it may be the place that some of the leaders of such efforts may start out. But since Vivek has basically said that we cannot reliably determine how effective and in what direction various efforts by the current scattered groups of leftists will lead, I do not think we can be so dismissive of some DSA chapters.

Woke liberals.

I dont think Heinrich said there's a positivist theory. There's a critique of the foundations of economics and state and anyone doing empirical work can decide how much of the theoretical critique they want to bring to bear. Ultimately Marx was attempting a scientific paradigm change. The people here who are still demanding rhat Marx offer them some kind of predictive theory that they can take into their bourgeois academic siloes, so that they can gain clout by saying my Marxist methodology more accurately predicted rent rises! Are like those who hung on to the humoral theory of the body as the spatiotemporal paradigm came in. He wasnt trying to give you tools to beat the bourgeois at their own game, on their own terms. He was aiming to explode the game. A positive theory may still be necessary, some kind of social or human science of production and distribution, but it requires a whole rethink of bourgeois disciplinary divisions and assumptions about the adequacy of inductice natural scientific methods for what is ultimately a human object and a political problem

Working class today? Not identity, try this: If your income is from wages, benefits, pension - not from what you own, know or are - and you *can not convert that income into capital ownership* - you are “working class”. Capital is _not_ money. It’s money converted into _ownership_ of something (also intangibles) that “makes money” as an asset created & protected by law. A negative pile of money (dept owed to you) is _way more powerful_ for influencing politics, than a pile of it from the proverbial lottery ticket. It makes you a millionaire a short while, but NOT a capitalist… 😅

I amazed that you got him to do an interview with you.

I enjoyed Mattick recieving a wonderful lecture from the team!

So there is not a positive theory? Marxist politics should be based on a critique of 18th century political economists? Man that seems thin. Since various "worldview Marxist" regimes have taken state power and achieved high literacy, low maternal mortality, low infant mortality, low hunger etc before/without successful industrialization, it seems like egalitarian modernist pro-development pro-science anti-deprivation anti-slavery ideology is marvelously useful, and that therefore we should appreciate a "worldview Marxist" insistence on fighting for independence of CCP-like parties from Congress Party of India - like parties and a suspicion of policies that strengthen the political position of class enemies who can't help but oppose the zealous prioritization of egalitarian modernist pro-development pro-science anti-poverty human capacity development policy. If that's not authentically Marxist, well the old dog will have to forgive us. We got to see some history that he didn't get to see

Am I hearing the beginnings of a LaborPAC??

I’m seriously talking about MAGAcommunism

At around 1:46:00 on, he seems to be invoking Larry Goodwin's concept of 'ideological patience' as indispensable for building mass movements. Thomas Frank also talks about it in a bit more depth here: th-cam.com/video/qxouFZLLMdA/w-d-xo.html It's the only hope for working class solidarity and casts the kinds of 'ideological impatience' that condemns workers as we find them/as we are as the enemy of mass movements as such. Postmodernism is the avowed enemy of mass movements and the ideological product of neoliberalism.

Immigration control only makes sense if the US hasn't militarily invaded, destabilised economically and politically over 170 country government in the Global South and Eastern Europe, is even now actively orchestrating multiple genocides and ruined the climate such that it is virtually uninhabitable for vast swathes of humanity. That's what's driving immigration. This was very disappointing to hear from a child of immigrants from the Global South

really shocking that the PMC left cancelled Angela Nagle, (and by cancelled I mean no longer buying her vanity-published books with Tumblr wiki footnotes) herself a PMC immigrant from a high-GDP OCED country, for saying employers using E-Verify is good and that "the left" needs to be more like the American Federation of Labor cheer-leading the Chinese Exclusion Act and Cesar Chavez organizing border patrol militias to beat up w*****s. These are the sort of taboo ideas that attract real salt-of-the-earth workers who also have similarly brilliant thought-taboo shattering ideas worth engaging with, such as that evolution should be banned from schools, teachers who don't bully gay children are cultural Marxist terrorists, and constitutional sheriffs should be allowed to l***h black kids for vaping on a school bus. Once we win over a minority of geriatric workers who hate communism and unions, victory is assured.

I really admire Christian Parenti's insights. He is an academic, who works in acadenia, but very much sympathizes with the working class, and isnt afraid to side with working people from attacks from both the left and the right. He also seems to think for himself and isnt concerned about any sort if social cache' amoung intellectuals or liberals, nor conservatives of course. He also is really intelligent and uses his intelligence to help the class struggle in his own way.

psyched for this

A leftist with historical literacy and not captured by big pharma and simping for war in Ukraine?! MADNESS!! Love the guest, love the interview. Good work.

eh, what about all the lefty countries that had covid restrictions.. the natural immunity thing in Europe (many countries in there bub) is also a huge generalization and not accurate. Cuba (whose vaccine is homegrown was great) had vaccine restrictions.. Could keep going on but lockdowns during a pandemic isn't anti-left. Not saying it's all perfect and have had my reservations about dealing with in neo-lib USA but some weird takes with that in here at least with that. I even get why people dont vaxx with skepticism that's valid but didn't really like how it was framed (especially internationally that it was all nuts) - agree with shit otherwise

No War but Class War! Raise class consciousness, comrades, not culture wars!