You might need to change some of your rhetoric for westernized normies: "consciousness" for Marx is "knowledge of" or "awareness of", this is _not_ what normal common people mean by the word "consciousness" in English. The closest in English is "conscience." With "consciousness" we instead mean something more metaphysical, like "being" or "soul" (and no one has any clue about what this noumenon is, just that it is). But this is utterly distinct from "awareness of". So what a good Marxist, operating in the anglosphere west should do is talk to ordinary working people about "awareness of" class conditions &c. There is no need for any more obscure jargon and academic pomp. You lose the majority of workers if you go down that academese road, which I assume defeats your whole purpose. I am telling you this as a dirtbag lefty and working class pleeb. Do not condescend to us by talking in academic bullsh*tspeak about very simple things, because when you do so you ignore us. We want to use our language, not yours. Why? Because we are f---king hard at work all day producing stuff that you consume on your bullsh*t job academic salary, and we cannot waste the time to de-code your philosophical nonsense, but we can understand the conditions of the working class and our exploitation. Plus, Marx did not understand monetary systems, and to this day most Marxists still employ commodity money analysis, which is inapplicable. State currency is a tax credit, and that is _all_ it is. Money can be swapped for commodities (allowing the seller to extinguish their tax liabilities, and save the rest), but the dollar is not a commodity, it is a numeraire --- governments have an infinite supply of them too, because a currency numeraire is just scorekeeping, the scorekeeper cannot run out of points, which means there is no such thing as falling rate of _monetary_ profit, unless you want to appear like a dodo.
"A dollar is not a commodity, it is a *numeraire.*" Sure it is, says the same guy who insists that the poor baby working class won't understand the word "consciousness" 😂. And what is the fundamental difference between a "numeraire" and every other commodity?
I agree with his point on the primacy of modes of production in historical materialism. Marx was perfectly clear about it in ItCoPE. I think Engels' Origins.. shoows that totality and the nature of the base incredibly clearly. Fuedalism and the asiatic modes were neither cosmologies nor economies. They were political economies, class structures where a ruling class oppressed and exploiting laboring classes. The ideologies were part of the system. Capitalism economises consciousness, but that critique doesn't exhaust the scope of historical materialism
At 2 min Cutrone speaks about his working class family and their attitudes to Sanders. As a guy who is the opposite in terms of class, ie middle class family living in near poverty, I say the left have no interest in the working class except to manage them into there pathetic campaigns and even then not often.
The working class are wage laborers in general (including middle class professionals who "don't own the means of production") but proletariats are the ones who produce value, it's a very different position in the accumulation process and they have conflicting class interests. Professionals just receive a share of the value extracted from the proletariat. Marxism is not the politics of the workers in general, but of the proletariat
The reason Bernie lost is because he started with a PMC/petty-bourgeois individualist approach. He never cared to build an organization. The DSA is middle class in the sense that they expected not to be working class. The mid-late 20th boom created a de-classed layer of bureaucratic middle class thats became proletarian. That's the economic basis of the moment we're living in. It's the basis of Cutrones career and platypus. This conversation would not have existed in the past 2-3 generations. Nonetheless, I think we need to studying the post 1945 Trotskyist traditions closely because they seemed to get it and have enormous experience connecting the ideas of Marxism to the advanced working class. We see the greatest shortcoming of them to be attachment to Universities and the absorption of alien class ideas of the post modernism. The middle class prior explained turned pessimistic and reactionary. The life of Ted Grant alone is a story of bringing Trotsky's ideas to the workers. The entrist tactic was based on the lenin and Trotsky's Revolutionary tactics, but in a period of class struggle ebb became a life raft of a set of ideas. Read about the 4th International. Read what their perspectives and writings on strategy. Read their writings on the Stalinist states around the world.
Dennis brings in a refreshing proletarian materialist politics. I'm not sure his conception wouldn't fall into workerism in practice. I think everything he says is correct. Except, without building a Marxist cadre steeled in Marxist theory first, building a workers movement would take on its own aims. There have been many examples of Marxists building workers movements without adequate attention to Revolutionary theory in which the movement takes over, and the ideas of Marxism are pushed aside by the prejudices of workers existing in class society. The 2nd international can be understood this way. The American Trotskyist movement, likewise. The Militant in Britain in the 1980s. What is needed is Marxist theory embodied in a party of tens of thousands of cadres in who are able to absorb millions of workers without losing its guide to action: Marxist theory. The idea that workers struggle simply need to be pushed into action and will then take Revolutionary conclusions and all will be good is simplistic romanticism. I think he probably does really believe that's all that's necessary. What we need is a party which studies and discussed Marxist theory, the history of working class struggle, especially Revolutionary moments, and is able to connect these ideas with the working class through a transitional program. I am personally very skeptical of the need for critical theory. It seems to me to a project of "explaining" why workers have "failed" them, instead of seeing that they are failing the workers. Their concepts of conscious seem to be utterly static and abstract. Trotsky had an infinitely greater understanding of class consciousness, even if he never systematized it into an overall theory.
I think it's really disappointing that Adorno refused to critique the SPD in public... His critique of the student movement should have been accompanied by a discussion of the adoption of social liberalism and ordoliberalism by the SPD, as those phenomena are clearly related... Also, it would be interesting to discuss late Horkheimer, who is often talked about as a schopenhaurian conservative but was actually still a Marxist. It opens a new perspective in face of the much glossed Adorno x Marcuse dispute. I think all three of them express in different ways the growing contradiction between Marxism and Socialism: Marcuse remained a socialist and gave up marxism; Horkheimer became actively anti-socialist and remained marxist; Adorno remained marxist and silenced about socialism.
What conception of Marxism do you have? Seemingly nothing with Marx's project. He dedicated his life to the Revolutionary victory of the working class, ie Socialism.
@@theriversexitsense yes but he was also always critiquing socialism more broadly, Proudhon, Lassalle, the left hegelians, Bakunin etc. More ortodox Marxists became increasingly marginalized within the workers movement after the high point of Marxist influence from the crisis of the Second International to the crisis of the Third International. Trotskism for instance was a Marxist tendency with very little practical political relevance, given that socialism had shifted drastically away from Marxism under Stalin
Chris knows certain Marxist theory, which he interprets in ok ways, and makes some valuable historical points, but he’s a very clumsy thinker of the present, everything gets lumped into some Matt Tahibi-like blob.
@@theriversexitsense learning from the past is OK, but when is the time to have the conclusion, that we learnt from it? The best way to learn is to use the continuous improvement process. Cip is basis for successful companies. Why shouldn't we use such basis methods to be successful as well?
Introduction 00:00; Dennis 4:10; Doug 14:27; Douglas 23:42; Chris 35:00; Responses 50:12; Q&A 1:12:45
1:22:30 serious smackdown
Chris went for the jugular
Very glad that Cutrone pointed out that Adorno was worried about fascism in democracy.
Chris “in other words, which is to say” Cutrone, he is certainly a very interesting thinker.
what a great ending made by chris
You might need to change some of your rhetoric for westernized normies: "consciousness" for Marx is "knowledge of" or "awareness of", this is _not_ what normal common people mean by the word "consciousness" in English. The closest in English is "conscience." With "consciousness" we instead mean something more metaphysical, like "being" or "soul" (and no one has any clue about what this noumenon is, just that it is). But this is utterly distinct from "awareness of". So what a good Marxist, operating in the anglosphere west should do is talk to ordinary working people about "awareness of" class conditions &c. There is no need for any more obscure jargon and academic pomp. You lose the majority of workers if you go down that academese road, which I assume defeats your whole purpose.
I am telling you this as a dirtbag lefty and working class pleeb. Do not condescend to us by talking in academic bullsh*tspeak about very simple things, because when you do so you ignore us. We want to use our language, not yours. Why? Because we are f---king hard at work all day producing stuff that you consume on your bullsh*t job academic salary, and we cannot waste the time to de-code your philosophical nonsense, but we can understand the conditions of the working class and our exploitation.
Plus, Marx did not understand monetary systems, and to this day most Marxists still employ commodity money analysis, which is inapplicable. State currency is a tax credit, and that is _all_ it is. Money can be swapped for commodities (allowing the seller to extinguish their tax liabilities, and save the rest), but the dollar is not a commodity, it is a numeraire --- governments have an infinite supply of them too, because a currency numeraire is just scorekeeping, the scorekeeper cannot run out of points, which means there is no such thing as falling rate of _monetary_ profit, unless you want to appear like a dodo.
"A dollar is not a commodity, it is a *numeraire.*"
Sure it is, says the same guy who insists that the poor baby working class won't understand the word "consciousness" 😂.
And what is the fundamental difference between a "numeraire" and every other commodity?
1:34:17
Marxism in a nutshell
Dennis: let's forget dialectical materialism.
Any decent Marxist: oh fuck.
I agree with his point on the primacy of modes of production in historical materialism. Marx was perfectly clear about it in ItCoPE. I think Engels' Origins.. shoows that totality and the nature of the base incredibly clearly.
Fuedalism and the asiatic modes were neither cosmologies nor economies. They were political economies, class structures where a ruling class oppressed and exploiting laboring classes. The ideologies were part of the system.
Capitalism economises consciousness, but that critique doesn't exhaust the scope of historical materialism
The role of Labor in Human Ecolution by Engles is absolutely clarifying in the connection between DiaMat and hismat
At 2 min Cutrone speaks about his working class family and their attitudes to Sanders. As a guy who is the opposite in terms of class, ie middle class family living in near poverty, I say the left have no interest in the working class except to manage them into there pathetic campaigns and even then not often.
The working class are wage laborers in general (including middle class professionals who "don't own the means of production") but proletariats are the ones who produce value, it's a very different position in the accumulation process and they have conflicting class interests. Professionals just receive a share of the value extracted from the proletariat. Marxism is not the politics of the workers in general, but of the proletariat
isn't value a concept of capitalism.
?
No it's the other way around, proletarians are defined by their lack of property, the workers are defined by the production of surplus value
Doctors e.g. don't produce value?
The reason Bernie lost is because he started with a PMC/petty-bourgeois individualist approach. He never cared to build an organization.
The DSA is middle class in the sense that they expected not to be working class. The mid-late 20th boom created a de-classed layer of bureaucratic middle class thats became proletarian. That's the economic basis of the moment we're living in. It's the basis of Cutrones career and platypus. This conversation would not have existed in the past 2-3 generations. Nonetheless, I think we need to studying the post 1945 Trotskyist traditions closely because they seemed to get it and have enormous experience connecting the ideas of Marxism to the advanced working class. We see the greatest shortcoming of them to be attachment to Universities and the absorption of alien class ideas of the post modernism. The middle class prior explained turned pessimistic and reactionary. The life of Ted Grant alone is a story of bringing Trotsky's ideas to the workers. The entrist tactic was based on the lenin and Trotsky's Revolutionary tactics, but in a period of class struggle ebb became a life raft of a set of ideas. Read about the 4th International. Read what their perspectives and writings on strategy. Read their writings on the Stalinist states around the world.
Dennis brings in a refreshing proletarian materialist politics. I'm not sure his conception wouldn't fall into workerism in practice. I think everything he says is correct. Except, without building a Marxist cadre steeled in Marxist theory first, building a workers movement would take on its own aims. There have been many examples of Marxists building workers movements without adequate attention to Revolutionary theory in which the movement takes over, and the ideas of Marxism are pushed aside by the prejudices of workers existing in class society.
The 2nd international can be understood this way. The American Trotskyist movement, likewise. The Militant in Britain in the 1980s. What is needed is Marxist theory embodied in a party of tens of thousands of cadres in who are able to absorb millions of workers without losing its guide to action: Marxist theory. The idea that workers struggle simply need to be pushed into action and will then take Revolutionary conclusions and all will be good is simplistic romanticism. I think he probably does really believe that's all that's necessary.
What we need is a party which studies and discussed Marxist theory, the history of working class struggle, especially Revolutionary moments, and is able to connect these ideas with the working class through a transitional program.
I am personally very skeptical of the need for critical theory. It seems to me to a project of "explaining" why workers have "failed" them, instead of seeing that they are failing the workers.
Their concepts of conscious seem to be utterly static and abstract. Trotsky had an infinitely greater understanding of class consciousness, even if he never systematized it into an overall theory.
I think it's really disappointing that Adorno refused to critique the SPD in public... His critique of the student movement should have been accompanied by a discussion of the adoption of social liberalism and ordoliberalism by the SPD, as those phenomena are clearly related... Also, it would be interesting to discuss late Horkheimer, who is often talked about as a schopenhaurian conservative but was actually still a Marxist. It opens a new perspective in face of the much glossed Adorno x Marcuse dispute. I think all three of them express in different ways the growing contradiction between Marxism and Socialism: Marcuse remained a socialist and gave up marxism; Horkheimer became actively anti-socialist and remained marxist; Adorno remained marxist and silenced about socialism.
For me sosialism as a viable project needs Marx . He wasn't a marxist !
What conception of Marxism do you have? Seemingly nothing with Marx's project. He dedicated his life to the Revolutionary victory of the working class, ie Socialism.
@@theriversexitsense yes but he was also always critiquing socialism more broadly, Proudhon, Lassalle, the left hegelians, Bakunin etc. More ortodox Marxists became increasingly marginalized within the workers movement after the high point of Marxist influence from the crisis of the Second International to the crisis of the Third International. Trotskism for instance was a Marxist tendency with very little practical political relevance, given that socialism had shifted drastically away from Marxism under Stalin
Marcuse was a liberal
Lenin was a liberal
@@HahaDamn Marx was a liberal
@@juanf.8062 liberal was a liberal
Chris knows certain Marxist theory, which he interprets in ok ways, and makes some valuable historical points, but he’s a very clumsy thinker of the present, everything gets lumped into some Matt Tahibi-like blob.
We dont need history lessons. we need a start up mentality for doing revolutions.
We will fail as Revolutionaries if we haven't learned the lessons on the past Revolutionaries
@@theriversexitsense learning from the past is OK, but when is the time to have the conclusion, that we learnt from it?
The best way to learn is to use the continuous improvement process.
Cip is basis for successful companies. Why shouldn't we use such basis methods to be successful as well?
What tedium.