Vijay Prashad - What is the Meaning of the Left?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ย. 2018
- Vijay Prashad delivers the lecture, What is the Meaning of the Left?" a keynote at the conference Global Radicalism: Solidarity, Internationalism, and Feminist Futures held on September 22, 2018 at The People's Forum in NYC.
Learn more at bcrw.barnard.edu/event/global-...
Man this speech has everything. He rips on the lengthy intro, he's fired up the whole time, and he talks about theory AND action. He's like everything Chomsky leaves me wanting. I love this man! Time for a second listen.
I HIGHLY recommend checking out some of his other lectures, they won't disappoint. He is an amazing speaker and comrade.
^The simple-minded, emotional response of a Indian-national "neocon" in response to valid criticism from a fellow citizen.
@Shyla S Tell that to Albert Einstein, a communist and defender of communist Russia.
chumpsky is just a liberal
@@misanthropyunhinged Chomsky is an anarchist. At least he doesn't defend dictatorships, like that guy.
Vijay is just one of the greatest intellectuals of our time, period. Not only of the marxists.
Some others are?
@@athenashah-scarborough858 Ok, Firestone and Bostrom are new to me, thanks. Will check them out.
@@ColtraneTaylor Parenti
@@Harry-zc8rg I think taimur rahman is a better Marxist than Vijay tbh. I don’t think he’s very good on sex trade issues
He is a typical intellectual. Loves to live in countries that he despises. This is how he makes his money to live a good life.
My father cried when hearing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. I grew up reading volumes of classic Russian and Soviet literature as well as French, German, English, American, Indian, Chinese, etc. I could say the Soviet legacy is contradictorily beautiful and eternal, despite the West tries to erase it.
Reassuring Marxist ideology and practice Vijay Prasad untiringly Speaks for building the world of the future standing in the middle of desperate set-backs Keeping high the revolutionery spirit. There is no doubt that only left imagination can provide a reasonable alternative for an egalitarian Society.
If the Tsar had been kept in power he would have changed his country for the benefit of the people. Evil people took advantage of his family's personal tragedy to remove him from the world, genecide!!!
@@lauramcconney9367 Do you know many times the star dissolved Duma, the democratic arm that represented people, before the people went mad and supported the bolsheviks? Did you read about serfdom and Russian peasants? There were causes for the revolution. Russia at that time was one of the most backward countries in Europe.
The overthrow of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, because of what it meant for the near future of humanity. We are still trying to recover from it.
@@SameerGuptacatchymango nobody overthrow soviet it’s got dissolved or forced to get dissolved by the west after Chernobyl!
Vijay is amazing. I am trying to track down and watch all his lectures.
@Kevin Tewey Good idea
VIJAY YOU MAKE US PROUD. 👍❤️🙏❤️👍
Alright I love love love this person. He is a great critical thinker. And most of all just 29 minutes in he has taught me more about critical ways of thinking. Than all of my nearly 50 years combined. It was to my shame. To think I was well on my way to crucial thinking and the spirituality I was coming to think I understood. But I was so wrong. I have light years to go. But I can admit to my flaws and need to invest more and grow. But Vijay is demonstrating 1 truth I have almost fully internalized. That truth MUST be brutal with yourself and others. We are toddlers playing at being grown ups. I refuse to be a child looking for comfort and security of the illusion that we call LIFE! We exist only and drive ourselves backward. We put ourselves into bondage by our unwillingless to be honest. We then pass this onto the new generations. Putting the invisible shackles of bondage on them. I have no children, but I strive to break that indentured generational invisible bondage. To the truely innocent, generations. We commit sins and crimes onto them. Forcing them to struggle and witness and act in that unwanted imposed bondage.
"Than all of my nearly 50 years combined. "
I think that says a lot about these complex, scholarly books where authors seem uninterested in making their point understood. Unlike Prashad I would say intellectuals need a good kicking because they are most interested in staying elite.
"and the spirituality I was coming to think I understood"
I found this interesting, what did you mean? By chance, have you read any J. Krishnamurti?
Vijay's speech begins at 5:42
This man is a true hero of the people. An intellectual giant and a legend! ✊💜
When did you become the property of the state?
Is that what you want to be?
I’ve returned to this presentation a few times over the past couple of years.
It's nice to have an Indian person up there who unlike many British and American academic doesn't beat around the bush and get all prose like.
Case in point, the woman around the 55 minute mark. She was busy rambling in the most mentally centered way possible, no clarity and I was left wondering just what her real question was. It just drains me of energy in a matter of seconds to listen to such people.
@@ColtraneTaylor I just learned the phrase "illocutionary act" the other day. Shit drives me nuts, too!
@@fun_ghoul Thanks! So there's a concept there and I'm not surprised from the definition that it's such a Euro thing. Essentially telling in the guise of asking. Ok, there must be more but I've only glanced so far.
„The responsibility is to build a movement here.“ Great idea!
"The responsibility is to respond." Beautiful, powerful stuff.
I'm in India now, and I got asked a question " are you socialist?" In a pejorative way. I say yes, but aske them if they can buy property for a reasonable amount, whatever job they may hold, if they can get to medicine, and if they will have a pention, or disability insurance. Nobody can say no to that.
I'm not socialist but mixed. How great is Cuba or Russia today? China is not a socialist country unless one is competely dishonest.
@Kevin Tewey " are you interested in not acting like you're under 18 "
Like this: "you're hurting children you have been doing it for centuries"
Who is you? I'm not western. And I asked you not only about Cuba but to name ONE thriving true communist country. And of course you are so extreme that for you there is only capitalist and communist.
@Kevin Tewey A truly pyschotic post. I'm a Nazi? You're a fake communist like many who supports China who benefitted from the most generous trade policy with the US. China is one of the biggest capitalist societies. Privileged and snotty is what you are. Don't talk about the poor, you only care about yourself and your ideology.
@@ColtraneTaylor Nah. Kevin is right. You're a Nazi. Too obvious!
My Analysis -
If we were living in a socialist society
maybe we were not broke as we are now
maybe we were happier
maybe we were less demanding of resources (ultimately good for the planet)
may be world economy grow slowly but we would have achieved this feat 10 years later.
Refernce to Past Experience -
Boris Yeltsin during his 1st visit to the US said don't show us your buildings, cities, highways and technology we also have this thing. He said he wants to see American store and he then seen American supermarket he was amazed how capitalism provides a variety of things where everyone can come buy stuff and customers don't have to think who will refill the stocks
Actually, US growth showed a communist country leader that his country may be equal in terms of defence, influence, education and other things whereas citizen in the US has more choice in every domain.
Ultimately next leader didn't stop protests like earlier leaders of USSR and ultimately we have seen fall of USSR .
Everyone knows only capitalism made us reach here faster
Capitalism society is profit-motivated which tend us to innovate faster
Although we are not good we made this world better for our future generations.
Awesome! Thank you for posting! Vijay is like no one else I've listened to on TH-cam ever!
2 points - 1.) What happened to the Left here, in the US, takes an understanding of history. It was more than just a bourgeois attack and McCarthyism, which officially ended by the mid-1950s, but it was also a co-opting of the Left, which was the official policy of the CIA by the mid-1950s. We have to understand the role of the CIA's "Congress For Cultural Freedom" program, and the promotion of an openly anti-Soviet faction of the Left that many of us are starting to refer to as the "Synthetic Left" or "State Department Socialists."
2.) Although many of them are far-gone, the fact that such a large portion of the US working class has voted for and now blindly follows Donald Trump not only illustrates the failings of the Left, in the US, but it also creates a genuine opportunity for us. Many of these people are genuinely upset with the bourgeois establishment in this country, although their critiques are often far off. But this is not totally their fault, they have been misled and have had decades of propaganda shoved down their throats. The saddest part of this is that there is no strong Communist Party there to listen to their grievances, hear them out, and ride alongside them, showing them the way with practice and theory. We have to listen to these people and ask them what they envision in a better tomorrow. We have to be patient, and able to bear any comments they make that might be perceived as racist, misogynistic etc. We have to show them that we want to better their lives and unite them with an overall strong and defiant working-class popular front. But as Vijay said, this is going to take some humility on our part and a far better understanding, and development, of theory.
I find Vijay's commentaries on vital issues most enlightening & inspiring. The only other one who similarly inspires is Chris Hedges
I've just become acquainted with Vijay. I am thrilled to have been. I can thank seeing his interview with Roger Waters. I am grateful and looking forward to watching Peoples Dispatch and all that it offers.
33:00 absolute 🔥🔥🔥🔥 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Excellent speech!
Brilliant speech! Eye opener for anyone!
I didn't find anything great in it. His whole speach is full of holes.
Cultural politics advice:
Just because somebody looks like you doesn't mean they are your friend. Just because somebody has had your marginal problems, doesn't mean they will stand up to the bourgeois. Look BENEATH the surface and judge the VALUES of a person.
I can't tell you how much I love this man! He is so brilliant and articulate I could listen to him all day!
Mr Vijay please do African university tours 🙏🏾 we would appreciate your knowledge impartation . 💫
Brilliant lecture!
good talk of course but also beautiful and tremendously well written and delivered intro by his former colleague, Christina Heatherton.
audio so low 😪
I love this man
Still relevant, still true: and there's his recent book, Washington Bullets.
Revelation comes from the Latin “Revelatio,” which in turn translates the Greek “Apokalypsis”-which means, literally, “unveiling” of a New World - the giving way of the Old World of predicated upon violence and oppression and cruelty and so on, and the "unveiling" of a New World of true love
... contrary to common perception, this "giving way of the Old World of predicated upon violence and oppression and cruelty and so on, and the "unveiling" of a New World of true love," is the end/objective and meaning of the true Left.
One salute for his knowledge.🇮🇳
I already know this is one i’ll come back to again and again
30 years after the event
Unbiased analysis.
great talk
When tik tok brought me here.
Legendary efforts back up sir 🙏
Man, you are so good. world needs guys like you more and more.
as per normal........straight/no chaser!!!!
this guy's like the smartest person I've ever heard lol
How did YT know I needed this fire right now?! Loving it!
Inspiring!
German Chancellor Mercal was educated in East Germany. She is one who brought the best Diplomacy from the East to the West and the world!!! She was a great leader!!! We need more like her!!!
ew
Any comrades still listening to this amazing masterpiece, 2023! 🤚
2024
Vijay is such a good speaker. thank you for this upload!
Vijay, if you are reading this, I have a question, in a nutshell: is it possible to be on the left, to be a "self-described" leftist as it were, and not be anti-imperialist? It seems to me that nowadays there are many s-d leftists who are not anti-imperialists, who never mention imperialism, who avoid the i-word like a plague, and even some who are in total denial of the importance, the relevance, and even the existence of imperialism today. My mentors were Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, Samir Amin, and now you, who I know are an anti-imperialist. And yet, in this video, during almost one hour, the i-word was not mentioned even once, if I'm not mistaken, and that in the context of a discussion of the left, and of Communism, throughout the world and throughout history. Does today's "victory" of the right, and of actually existing McCarthyism, include the removal of the concept and reality of imperialism (which is now more aggressive and polarizing than ever in its history) from left-wing discourse? And thank you for a fascinating talk. I really and truly enjoyed it. Un abrazo.
William, if you want you can ask the question directly. email vijay@thetricontinental.org
No, seems like you answered your own question though. Not sure what video you were watching where he didn't talk about Anti-imperialism. Your comment in many ways mirrors his talk.
I would like to ask Vijay: "What does a movement do about 'progressive' politicians who rally people with the 'right words', are voted in, but, when elected, immediately give their support to the corporations/establishment?' (It seems the 'wolf in sheep's clothing' or controlled opposition is the rule.)
I haven't watched the video yet, but if homeboy tells you to vote in bourgeois elections, he's wrong. You can't stop a drone strike with a ballot!
And yes, it's all "controlled opposition". They don't let any party form without infiltrating, discrediting, compromising or assassinating. Social democrats are the worst because they talk a good talk but, as you alluded to, they plunge the knife in your back all the same! At least with fash SOBs, you know what's coming because they brag about it months before...
Overthrow your election system and use voting as a means instead of the end.
Vijay Prashad = LEGEND 👏👏👏
5:42 lecture starts
Such an important perspective and a badly needed shake up for our various "realities".
Your various “realities.”
Holy shit this is great
"The left in the America died in 1991" Woah. That's a fuckin thing to chew on! Amazing speech.
Awesome. Awesomeawesomeawesome. Fuck the 90’s! I was there… it was awful! And these so called scholars - oy! The worst! Just like the speaker says: We were disarmed. We critiqued and one-upped and back-bit until we were twisted and toothless. Good riddance to bad rubbish and French anything! 🤣
Thank you for this.
27:00 Spontaneity vs building
11:00 Didn't Lenin endorse the new economic policy? He at least wrote on it as I recall and talked about certain workers working along side the capitalists and learning from them. I'm a new Marxist, so much to learn. Just asking in case there were some later NEPs that I don't know about.
Marxism Leninism Prashadism
Maoist-Fascism fully embodied.
I have essays, I write them vatos frequently
Who is the person he mentions at 50:20 he mentioned his name before as well but i cannot find him on the net
Aleksii Antedilluvianovich
@@comradehoney5655 thanks!
He is the other half of the sway to make it swing
I want a t-shirt like Vijay's except instead of Lenin it will say Prashad in many colors.
A debate between Jordan Peterson and Vijay Prashad would be very interesting....Let's push for it....
Peterson don't want none of that smoke.
@@elephantman2112 That is absolutely contrary to Peterson's personality....
“If religion was the opium of the masses, then communism is the methamphetamine of the masses.”
-Jordan Peterson
28' - 1968
Vijay is fantastic
Question. What's progressive left?
I love Vijay, and this might be nitpicking ... but here goes. He's 100% right that the left sectarianism is a problem and that we spend too much time maligning each other. But he is saying that 15 minutes after uncharitably maligning Mouffe and Laclau, who are, whether one likes them or not, to the left of 90% of self-identifying left Americans. It's fine to critique Mouffe & Laclau from a Marxist-Leninist-Luxemburgian perspective, but if nothing else they're trying to think though how to build insurgent, counter-hegemonic politics -- an ultimate aim that Prashad no doubt shares with them. I understand the critique of vulgar social movement theory and spontaneity fetishism, but the tone of his critique is exactly how not to build an inclusive movement politics.
Building an inclusive movement doesn't mean add confusion, and this is exactly what Laclau does. I hold more contempt than Vijay for these opportunists, making academic careers out of their incoherence word salad, and adding nothing to the conversation. How left and right they are, at this point become meaningless. They serve nothing, add nothing, explain nothing.
The Soviet Union and had to be destroyed, the idea was too revolutionary for the time and would not have survived. At least I can see it that way from inside the Ukraine/Russia. Not all the pieces of the puzzle were put together before. But now we have considerably more of these puzzle pieces. We are ready to try again. I think the next revolution could be either in India or in America.
Everyone look at me! Im gonna talk for 10 minutes about nothing.
Great man
audio is messed up
it's 2023, folks. think some new thoughts.
When we could grow our own food and industries we won’t need to make arms
why did she say "unenviable task"?
She's trying to say that it's a massive task (with a lot of pressure) to introduce such an accomplished person.
In that lecture Prashad says “what do the Trotskyites always say? ‘State capitalism degenerated’”. Trotsky and the ICFI have never called the USSR “state capitalist”. Only those who broke from the Fourth International did. Trotskyite is also the term of the Stalinists, used during the Great Terror. Prashad is silent on the position of Trotsky.
He also talks of “intellectual defeat after 1991” but he speaks for himself. Only Trotsky and the Fourth International warned that Stalinism would seek to restore capitalism. The exposure of all those tendencies that had illusions Stalinism could be pressured to the left wasn’t a “defeat” but the collision of reality with their idealism.
Prashad covers for the counter-revolutionary history of Stalinism by suggesting those states mentioned be described as “experiments”.
He talks of the need for “a theory” is bizarre because he never offers a theory of his own. The implication of his citation of Tony Kushner’s is that any theory will do. It was Plekhanov who first said “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movements”. Prashad cites neither Plekhanov nor Lenin's more famous use of the phrase. But Plekhanov and Lenin backed up their abstract description of social development with a theory for the working class. Both were wrong initially. Lenin corrected his theory in April 1917 to accept Trotsky's permanent revolution. (Just as Trotsky adjusted his theory to accept the correctness of Lenin’s theory of the party.) Plekhanov's two stage theory remained wrong.
16:24
1:02:29
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️👍👍👍👍👍
Interesting question. We don't have unChinese or uncommunist.
Volume too low
At he time of clinton it appeared as if there was one party
Persuasion
He never utter the brutal acts of Muslims on Indian People.
25:24 Prashad's anti-Blackness on parade
Leftism is inevitable ❤
What is the meaning. Simple those who LEFT their brain before coming on to the earth.
I truly, truly hate this introductions, we don’t need that.
He is not intellectual
but normal average Indian crawled through hindu sanatan culture
yet to catch up fully through western lens
But his placement out of India is a prism for India
The viral guy
Sad , the normal course -
The elephant in the room then was communism -
So Bernie Sanders just disappear into sleep joe arms? What a shame.
It took 5 minutes to introduce him....NOT GOOD !
What is this? Lol 😂😂😂
I bet these lectures lose 80% of listeners during the intro. 🤢
Haha I'm being shadow banned. Nice goin
?
How can you defend dictatorship in GDR? And even call i9t socialist?
Like he is saying, if you can defend the US and the west in general, look at it with nuance, given its utterly grotesque history, why should the GDR not be defended, not looked at with the same nuance? I have seen this sort of reasoning in a lot of right wingers. By dictatorship you mean the GDR did bad things to its own people. Let me grant you that the US, for example, does not do bad things to its own people (which itself is false. For, just a cursory look at what the blacks and the native Americans continue to endure in the US shows us otherwise). But let me grant you the US is milk and honey to all its citizens. But look at the depredations the US has heaped on other countries: their utter destruction of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Central America. But since the US is doing bad things to citizens of countries, the children of a lesser god, it is all fine and dandy. If the GDR had gone and invaded other non-white countries, massacred women and children there like the US has done, while being good to its own white citizens, you would be fine with it. It would then not be called a dictatorship. Dictating the destruction of “lesser” nations through military brutality, while paying lip-service to “democracy” at home is fine. Dictating socialist experiments on one’s people while leaving the rest of the world alone is an unforgivable crime. There is a term for this: Imperialist propaganda premised on outright racism.
@@arunanantheeswaran Thanks for your lengthy reply. To clarify: I am rather left leaning and I'm a German. What I don't like about your reply: I did not talk about the US or "The West". A dictatorship is a dictatorship. Period. The GDR had to build a wall around the country for their own people not to leave. That wall killed more than 160 people. Anybody who even applied to leave legally had to put up with enormous pressure (can't study anymore; get lower jobs; jail time; pressure on the whole family; etc.).
So my question again: Why defend dictatorship? Or wasn't it dictatorship in your eyes?
@@peterschwart5159 Ja, Ich verstehe was du sagst. Und ja, du hast Recht. Ich denke nicht dass DDR einfach ein Diktatur war. Das ist eine gewaltige Verleumdung. Die Situation in der DDR war kompliziert. Wir brachen diese Situation zu verstehen. This is what Prashad is defending. I am using America as an example because of the easy exceptionalism that sees it as a beacon of freedom. Try telling the blacks in the deep south that the US is a beacon of freedom. For the blacks America was a tyranny. Look at the reconstruction of FRG. Look at the destruction of the left in West Germany post second world war, the rehabilitation of the Nazis, the propping up of the Christian Democrats by the US in rigged elections, the iron grip they held on the popular culture in West Germany. I will not fall for US propaganda and say the West Germany was a democracy. It was a US dictatorship.
@@arunanantheeswaran that's called whataboutism... If you're are looking for a better society, look elsewhere. Are you seriously saying the "western democracies" are just as bad?
@@peterschwart5159 I am saying they are even worse. But your entire premiss of castigating DDR is based on the whataboutery you say I am committing. Prashad is talking about the imperialist crimes of the "democratic" US along with its vassal states in Europe like the FRG, which are the most heinous crimes committed, millions killed, lives utterly destroyed in the third world, how they are masked by its propaganda apparatus of slandering other non-imperialist nations and erasing their history and all you do shout amd finger wag, "No, no, but but, those other non-imperialist nations like the DDR, which were minding their own business and going about their socialist experiments under the most extreme pressure from their powerful western adversaries, are dictatorships. Tell me they are dictatorships." How do you call yourself a leftist?
What's with the endless lame introductions
In his Book of Wealth of Nations the great thinker Adam Smith contemplated on the possibility of applying natural law in economic matters, and therefore he considers everyone responsible for his behavior, that is, the best who governs his interests and that there is a hidden hand leads everyone and guides the market, and that everyone if left Free will seek to maximize his wealth.
Despite my early contempt for preaching of imperialism and its brutally exploited regimes for poor nations, I considered from an early age that the system of state capitalism holds the seeds of its doom. Interest and profit are the effective motive for creative action and if man is prevented from achieving his interests, he is frustrated.
Stalin realized that people did not want to work under the system of socialism, which prevents the development of individual wealth resorted to violent coercion and terrorism, the Soviet Union has achieved growth rates much more than twice every year during his presidency, the country has made great progress in industrialization and development, but the price is high and terrible.
In the disbanded Soviet Union, students were sent to volunteer groups and workers to assist in harvesting on large collective farms. In one season the crop was cabbage, and the harvest was badly mishandled. Much of it was destroyed on farms. What was delivered was transported to railway freight vehicles waiting for the vehicles to fill up. And the locomotives came to drag it. Nearly two-thirds of the crop was damaged in the fields and rotted in the wagons because the locomotives did not arrive in time. When asked a young Russian worker about the secret of their inaction and indifference, he said simply: The state does not give us wages as it should, but pretends to do so, and we pretend to work. This was under Andropov reign..
You believe a lot of nonsense. Stop that, k?
th-cam.com/video/HwYr1JGG0UI/w-d-xo.html
In one word: Envy. Just as much as the right can be described by: fear.
^Big Brain Centrist(tm)
Envy of what? Here is a prescription for centrists. Read a book not named Harry Potter
Is the snake-bitten man envious of the snake that bites him?
Resentful.
@@view1st It's true. Victims of thieves resent thieves.
Stalinist with a PhD.
What a shame