Saludos Camarada Tutt. Thanks for this presentation. I've been listening to Gabriel Rockhill for a while now, he's a lighthouse clearing the way to an anti-imperial politics today.
Amazing discussion! Very useful in helping to find words for so many things that I don’t like about the western left. “The Western Marxism criticises socialism in its infancy for not being an adult form of socialism” (in regard to Soviet/Asian socialist experience).
Maybe a more apt analogy is that so-called western marxism is criticizing the child abuse committed by Stalinism and Maoism who positioned themselves as metaphorical parents against the developing 'child' of masses striving for socialism. The abuse of power by those in the Stalinist / M-L bureaucratic tradition stunted the development toward socialism and traumatized the world.
Was previously skeptical of what I’d seen from Rockhill in his critique of Zizek, but this was an enlightening convo. Very informative from Rockhill & great interview from Daniel. Thank you guys
I don't know about that. I think he lives a pretty comfortable, soft life as a professional academic. Let's see this guy scrubbing toilets five days a week, and still find the time to fight the power, and dismantle the the phony intellectual left or whatever his critique is, and then I'll be ready to prop him.
@@Joeyjojoshabbadooas someone who has spent years of my life literally scrubbing toilets for a living, I'm glad we have Rockhill's years of study and interpretation to draw upon.
@@hotcakesism Well alright then, I bet you he'd feel validated by that. I still think he should be cleaning toilets. He can join you, for better pay and benefits of course. I might even join you. Somebody's gotta clean 'em. Maybe this Losurdo academic person cleaned a few toilets in his day too, thus emboldening him to become an eminent marxist scholar.
Great talk! Any chance for a Rockhill and Cutrone discussion, especially since he advocates learning everything possible from a wide variety of lenses? Thanks!
interesting interview. it is too late for this comment to go noticed by anyone i am sure, but I have a few thoughts - (1) one cannot conclude that left critiques of the soviet union are anticommunist because they oppose really existing socialism is question begging. it presupposes that the critics were wrong to dismiss the "really existing socialist" states as socialist without engaging with why they didnt think those governments were truly socialist (2) Rockhill acknowledges that the USSR was a lower stage of socialism, but the progression to the higher stage occurs through both practical and theoretical efforts. the kinds of efforts of "western marxists"! so it's incoherent to defend it from criticism by saying "well its just the lower stage of communism, of course its imperfect, it will get better!" (3) the critiques of western marxists were the outcome in part of actions by the Eastern Bloc that damaged their legitimacy among the workers as well as PB, even in the West, such as GDR in '53, Hungary in '56, and Czechoslovakia in '68. The Soviet political system inhibited internal change and critique, and this is part of what ruined the legitimacy of the system and caused institutional rot that delegitimized the whole political order and led to the collapse in the late 80s. If Rockhill was right, the workers would have come out to stop the collapse in the GDR, etc, but they didn't - why didn't they? Surely it wasnt because Adorno took CIA dollars or whatever (4) the fact groups like the FFS took money from western institutions is worth critique, but does not in itself prove that their critiques of the Soviet model were wrong. the fact that they could be weaponized by the CIA is not proof enough of their inaccuracy - on the contrary, the fact that they were useful weapons for the CIA suggests that there may have been use for them (5) Rockhill centers much of his argument on the fact that the Eastern Bloc states were authentic in their advocacy for national liberation, which the FFS thinkers and western marxists dismiss or overlook. yet the Soviet bloc states were always inconsistent on national liberation at best. See the fate of the Tatars, Kalmyks, and Chechens in the USSR or various national minorities in the PRC or Hmong in Vietnam. I would say that the USSR was better than the US on this point, but that's a low bar! (6) it is strange to appeal to a criticism of the Cultural Revolution in China when the excesses of the CR were so disruptive to living standards and stability in China that Mao nixed the project and Deng did a 180. (7) the dominance of a certain form of leninism in the 3rd world is in part a product of sheer power politics, not ideological or theoretical superiority. Groups like Trots and others were violently liquidated to sustain the monopoly of a certain theoretical approach on the left. It just seems like Rockhill ends up overcorrecting for the mistakes of Western Marxists by reverting to Stalinism, but surely we need to go beyond the petty 20th century divisions between Stalinists, Social Democrats, Trotskyists, Left Communists, Capitalist Roaders, and whoever else.
Stalinism isn't a thing. Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist. 'Stalinism' is a term created by Khrushchev to drag Stalin's name through the mud. You can read Domenico Losurdo's book on it, which is the material being referenced here. When you refer to Stalinism you're talking about Marxism-Leninism. Reading Stalin's books alone should make that clear.
I'm stuck on capitalist realism. Fisher's incoherent pathetic ramblings about "Market Stalinism" made me FUME, and the two next chapters just made me unfathomably sad.
@@StalinsWeakestWarrior Let me help you feel better: look who published it and how it was published, and who Fisher "hung out" with. He was a propagandist for the dour and society-loathing side of counter culture, he simply used capitalism as a personal fetish for his clique's reactionary esoteric journal.
Is there really a new political economy theory about state capitalism articulated in the Frankfurt School, or is there simply a theoretical response to the total liquidation of European socialism? Or, perhaps that's not a worthy object of reflection? Of course, Horkheimer thinks that the age of state capitalism is a continuation of the capitalist epoch, which is why he illustrates it initially with reference to one of the most widely circulated texts of Classical Marxism, Engels's "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." He therefore thinks the project is the overthrow of capitalism in its core, a project utterly abandoned by the likes of Losurdo. As for Lenin's so-called political economic "analysis" in "Imperialism," you are both missing the point of that work, which is not to do economics but to do dialectics, specifically a dialectical critique of theories of imperialism (Hobson and Hilferding, above all). Nevermind the fact that there's little indication in this discussion of what Lenin means by "imperialism," which is by no means equivalent to overseas domination, whether direct (colonial) or indirect (neocolonial). Lenin doesn't think that the German kaiserreich becomes imperialist when it acquires some territories in Africa or that Louis Napoleon's regime is imperialist because of Algeria. Finally, the notion that "anti-imperialism" understood as "a struggle between nations" is completely anti-Marxist and conservative, not least for the people in formerly colonized countries where it can only mean subordination of the working class to nationalist political forces, a Stalinist strategy that led to catastrophe over and over again in the 20th century, from China in the 20s through India in the 30s and 40s, to Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, etc., etc. in subsequent decades. Are we really meant to consign this disgraceful history to the memory hole just because some academics discovered what was always plainly manifest, namely that the likes of Foucault and Deleuze aren't really leftists? These guys are victims of the theory industry they decry, and embracing a history they are not familiar with isn't going to help them out.
I really enjoyed this, though something tells me there will be a C. Derick Varn postmortem, and some pushback on the CIA stuff being too overemphasized and not entirely fair in the case of multiple FS thinkers? (Forgive me if you read this comment and it pisses you off CDV.)
Referring to Lenin while taking Neo-Kautskyan stance is a funny thing. We are having two capitalist/imperialist camps confronting, one is old as it was British Empire during ww1, another is new, as it was German camp. Lenin stood for international struggle of working class, against social-chauvinistic move in support of one or another.
Given the LGBTQ+ movement is its own form of social chauvinism it's important to keep in mind that merely taking an antagonistic stance there does not inherently put you in a position of social chauvinism. But yes it should be avoided to pick camps based on social chauvinistic tendencies even as you more or less have to play to people's sensibilities.
@@danielseagate6340 Not saying all social chauvinism is equally constructed or has the same significance btw. Some aspects are better some may be worse.
Žižek actually commented on Gabriel Rockhill (its funny, cuz he was so frustrated about it) in one of the episode on theory underground (here on youtube)... btw. This realization that philosophical marxist like Žižek don't have a clue about macro econimics or political economy is so so obvious...
This was a petit bourgeois radical self-criticism session. Losurdo and Rockhill are schlock. Trivial. It's Stalinism, plain and simple - nothing more, nothing less. Rockhill: “The so-called American Revolution . . . this was not a revolution.” Lenin 1918: “The history of modern, civilised America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars.” 1912: “Freedom in the U.S.A. is most complete.” Adorno to Marcuse 1969: “because of what is occurring in Vietnam or Biafra. If that really is your reaction, then you should not only protest against the horror of napalm bombs but also against the unspeakable Chinese-style tortures that the Vietcong carry out permanently. If you do not take that on board too, then the protest against the Americans takes on an ideological character.”
it sounds like you are an American born into a paranoid atmosphere of anti-Russian sentiment from the last century; while your country is rotting away, completely uneducated; where education is for the elite; where education is propaganda; there you find the enemy in Stalinism. You didn't get the point of the conversation.
30:14 the irony of rockhill's analysis of the petite bourgeois category as equal to PMC with an emphasis on professors while Tutt conspicuously sports the Gaza poster which champions a movement has next to zero overt communist content. 32:33 Tutt with his Gaza poster over shoulder mentions the PB radicals' inadequate confrontation with the bourgeoisie. Cant help but wonder if has any public criticism of Hamas. 35:50 hypocritically defines imperialism as the principle contradiction of capitalism bc of political economy underdevelopment of the colonial world. In fact imperialism has a track record of exporting capital to develop production in sites outside the 'imperialist core' and escape those expensive labor aristocrats at home. Capital dragged African slaves to US and then pulled blacks into factories where for about 30 years the black worker was the vanguard of the global proletariat until neoliberal globalization shipped those jobs to the periphery. How does that jive with Rockhill's simplistic schematic of 'imperialism'?
Hey Chris can you explain to me how the Palestinians are supposed to form labor unions with Zionists to stop themselves from being genocided? Or maybe you could explain to us how they are "not like us" because they lack the oh so important bourgeois subjectively?
@ccutrone Still better than the strategies of petite bourgeois cunning of chauvinist reason cope. That was kinda the point, autistic dogmatic non dialectical imperialists in the imperialist bloc.
@ccutrone It's also hilarious you post the worst explicit statements of Adorno(in his letters to Marcuse where he rightfully chastises him over Vietnam) in his favor- truly an infantile disorder, to quote Lenin, since your fixations with quotes and decontextualized , non dialectical autistic quotations to satisfy some father worship superego prevails. The forerunners of useful idiot "both sides" moronic monsters, though thye have the delusions to think they're highbrow. No wonder the monstrous commentary on 21st century holocausts. Self indulgent utopian useful idiotism for imperialism, or poetry after Gaza, is barbarism too, mate.
If Rockhill cares so much about "Actually Existing Socialism," then he must condemn Stalin's Soviet Union for denouncing Nasser. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1952: "On the night of July 23, 1952, power in Cairo was seized by a reactionary officers’ group connected with the USA." It is only later, after Nasser seeks weapons from the West and Baghdad Pact is signed that the USSR made the Czech deal after the Fedayeen raids. It was just an attempt to use nationalism to counter another camp. But politics is a who-whom question, as Rockhill should be familiar if he keeps mentioning Lenin: When Shepilov then visited during Khruschev's tenure and was asked about Nasser locking up communists, he said "it's an Egyptian affair." He used the Communists in the name of anti-imperialism. The letter (not an article as Rockhill wrongly says in his 2022 article) was more a critique with the UN's infinite deferral to legality, which is usually a common socialist argument! Especially when this had happened in the lead up to WW2! Let alone the earlier predecessor of Hamas (Mujama al-Islamiya) used to refer to Nasser as the "new Pharaoh" in Gaza because of his persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is one of the reasons Sheikh Yassin pursued Islamic education up until the 1st Intifada because he was shook by the persecution of Nasser's Egypt.
So your criticism of Rockhill's "actually existing socialism" over pure theoretical socialism is that he isn't holding "actually existing socialism" to pure theory standards?
@@ramboz494 My apologies I presumed that when you quoted "Actually Existing Socialism" you were comparing it to something else not just throwing the phrase away.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Rockhill uses the phrase "Actually Existing Socialism" and says that the problem with Adorno/Horkheimer is their denunciation of Nasser (in a letter) in the lead-up to the Suez War. His point is to say that they are insufficiently anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist (or he says "anti anti imperialist" even in this). In both this interview and others (as well as his 2022 article), he accuses Adorno/Horkheimer of not paying attention to debates in the Soviet Union. So I was bringing up the policy of the Soviet Union towards Nasser (as well as Nasser towards the world). I am not even comparing it - I am saying he is inconsistent. One could be for socialism, "pure theoretical" (?) or "actually existing" or "anti-socialist" and make the same point.
@@ramboz494 Oh I see, thanks for clarifying. While I find your apparent lack of understanding that "pure theoretical socialism" as a concept a bit tedious I do appreciate your clarification.
This is laughably off. Cutrone and I represent an anti-partyist attitude? We're perhaps most responsible in this generation for posing the party question. Rockhill just joins a sect of a few hundred (if that) and believes he's solved the problem.
@@阳明子 -- What would be truly "lol" (if it weren't so miserably right-wing) is the idea that actual communism shouldn't be spoken of as anything but something reserved for "the very, very distant future."
@阳明子 Run of the mill boring idiot ultralefts with delusions of grandeur. They're also not very well read outside of the tendencies that push them towards their utopian useful idiotism for World Imperialism. The CIA really loves free cultural worker- rabble like them (although to what extent careerist uplift is itself structural and unconscious to themselves, kinda like for the "oppressed' petite bourgeois hustlers in the academy of the more recent type, the types who talk of degrowth and privilege, etc, is an interesting question).
This is all very interesting but I’d like to know what these deep thinkers recommend in terms of practical action. All theory and no praxis makes a dull revolutionary!
I hate this whole false dichotomy between "western" and "eastern" Marxism. Petrograd is in Western Europe. Moscow is on the western European continent. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were German westerners. Soviet Socialism and Soviet Marxism are every bit as much a part of the tradition of "western" Marxism as capitalist-controlled Trotskyism.
You must realize that "Western Marxism" is used a symbol for a theoretical school, prevalent in the West, that abhors actual action toward socialism while "Eastern Marxism" is a symbol for the style of Marxism that emphasizes action combined with theory?
Dr. Rockhill advocates for a variegated hermeneutic but in his analysis of the American Revolution seems to dismiss this method. Rockhill follows the Garveyite analysis of Gerald Horne on the American Revolution (which contains intellectual fraud with Horne woefully misrepresenting some of the sources cited) and dismisses the analysis of people like Lenin and Ho Chi Minh.
Hey, I appreciate your interesting and challenging comment. Respectfully, I want to ask, where has Horne misrepresented those sources, to what degree do you think that was intentional, and what are the particular consequences for his analysis?
@@hotcakesism I would refer you to Marius Trotter's article for the misrepresented sources and Tom Mackaman's article on the WSWS for a general critique. They lay out the case better than I'd be able to on a youtube comment. If you google 'Marius Trotter gerald horne' and 'Tom Mackaman gerald horne counter revolution' they will be the first results.
While I can see a kind of petit-bourgeois radicalism in the tendency towards social democracy (in variation), I don't think the deviations in petit-bourgeois ideology are emphasized in the context of a divided ruling class where in shoring up up the interests of domestic capital after periods of financialization and crisis there's a turn towards a anti-elite business nationalism and bourgeois anti-imperialism against "globalism." In other words, I would consider forms of Peleo-Conservativism and the "Post-Liberal Communitarianism" just as much petit-bourgeois radicalism as the US Green Party.
wow it took me a day but I remembered my quip about engles; before we say the family isn't holy, who is to say we were ever really secular? : and its my perhaps my response to for my idea of loserdo's hegel too perhaps; just wait until I find how it folds in on itself.
@exlauslegale8534 Plenty of Michel Deleudeds on the train of Kamala and Jeff and their own production of reactionary tendencies and careerism as moral and radical.
honestly i know rockhill is talking about me without mentioning me, which is why I am making #gorgonwars mythology lol these guys will never cite me. "carrying over the burdens of trace" Can't wait for his book to shit on my chest.
I have 3000 books in my library, I never heard of this book. I also have been reading my entire life. I'm Marxist. I do not like the Frankfurters BC they do not analyse the political economy and that had me always in doubt what were these guys doing and why are they so influential, their basic thesis was that Marx and Engels wrote that if there is a big war, such as the First world war, the workers from all countries will unite and will demolish the capitalists and will establish workers states and what happened with the Second international and taking national positions in that war, gave the basis of Adorno, Horkhimer, Markuse etc. to say that, there are other forces at play here and that is the culture, that the workers have internalised and which is bourgeoisic and that's why they moved the theory into cultural critical studies. It's true that the workers did not had their own culture, however, if you properly follow the FS you can easily read the liberal framework in their books. Than were culture wars and what became later the cultural Marxism as referenced from the rightwingers. Than the postmodernists which I also have been reading BC everybody was reading them, what was I supposed to do. However, I rejected Foucault a long time ago as well as Judith Butler and than I started dismissing them all, Derrida, Deleuse with Guatary etc. I think we have lost 70 years with the critical theory and postmodernists. We need to bring our weapon back in the game and that is we need political analysis and political economy Books. aaaaarg.fail I think has losurdos books, we should all put them there so everyone can access them
Saludos Camarada Tutt. Thanks for this presentation. I've been listening to Gabriel Rockhill for a while now, he's a lighthouse clearing the way to an anti-imperial politics today.
Amazing discussion! Very useful in helping to find words for so many things that I don’t like about the western left. “The Western Marxism criticises socialism in its infancy for not being an adult form of socialism” (in regard to Soviet/Asian socialist experience).
Maybe a more apt analogy is that so-called western marxism is criticizing the child abuse committed by Stalinism and Maoism who positioned themselves as metaphorical parents against the developing 'child' of masses striving for socialism. The abuse of power by those in the Stalinist / M-L bureaucratic tradition stunted the development toward socialism and traumatized the world.
Can’t take criticism? Politics isn’t for you i guess.
Was previously skeptical of what I’d seen from Rockhill in his critique of Zizek, but this was an enlightening convo. Very informative from Rockhill & great interview from Daniel. Thank you guys
Another outstanding dialog. Solidarity Comrades
thanks guys!
Give the man credit. He walks it like he talks it. Included the Haitian Revolution in his discussion
I don't know about that. I think he lives a pretty comfortable, soft life as a professional academic. Let's see this guy scrubbing toilets five days a week, and still find the time to fight the power, and dismantle the the phony intellectual left or whatever his critique is, and then I'll be ready to prop him.
@@Joeyjojoshabbadooas someone who has spent years of my life literally scrubbing toilets for a living, I'm glad we have Rockhill's years of study and interpretation to draw upon.
@@hotcakesism Well alright then, I bet you he'd feel validated by that. I still think he should be cleaning toilets. He can join you, for better pay and benefits of course. I might even join you. Somebody's gotta clean 'em. Maybe this Losurdo academic person cleaned a few toilets in his day too, thus emboldening him to become an eminent marxist scholar.
Great talk! Any chance for a Rockhill and Cutrone discussion, especially since he advocates learning everything possible from a wide variety of lenses? Thanks!
theres a spicy comment by cutrone on this video ...
Great book! I'm so glad i discovered Rockhill
Interesting discussion. But how would you respond to Foucault's interest and support of the Iranian Revolution? At least initially?
Excellent loved it
Greatly enlightening conversation, gentlemen.
interesting interview. it is too late for this comment to go noticed by anyone i am sure, but I have a few thoughts -
(1) one cannot conclude that left critiques of the soviet union are anticommunist because they oppose really existing socialism is question begging. it presupposes that the critics were wrong to dismiss the "really existing socialist" states as socialist without engaging with why they didnt think those governments were truly socialist
(2) Rockhill acknowledges that the USSR was a lower stage of socialism, but the progression to the higher stage occurs through both practical and theoretical efforts. the kinds of efforts of "western marxists"! so it's incoherent to defend it from criticism by saying "well its just the lower stage of communism, of course its imperfect, it will get better!"
(3) the critiques of western marxists were the outcome in part of actions by the Eastern Bloc that damaged their legitimacy among the workers as well as PB, even in the West, such as GDR in '53, Hungary in '56, and Czechoslovakia in '68. The Soviet political system inhibited internal change and critique, and this is part of what ruined the legitimacy of the system and caused institutional rot that delegitimized the whole political order and led to the collapse in the late 80s. If Rockhill was right, the workers would have come out to stop the collapse in the GDR, etc, but they didn't - why didn't they? Surely it wasnt because Adorno took CIA dollars or whatever
(4) the fact groups like the FFS took money from western institutions is worth critique, but does not in itself prove that their critiques of the Soviet model were wrong. the fact that they could be weaponized by the CIA is not proof enough of their inaccuracy - on the contrary, the fact that they were useful weapons for the CIA suggests that there may have been use for them
(5) Rockhill centers much of his argument on the fact that the Eastern Bloc states were authentic in their advocacy for national liberation, which the FFS thinkers and western marxists dismiss or overlook. yet the Soviet bloc states were always inconsistent on national liberation at best. See the fate of the Tatars, Kalmyks, and Chechens in the USSR or various national minorities in the PRC or Hmong in Vietnam. I would say that the USSR was better than the US on this point, but that's a low bar!
(6) it is strange to appeal to a criticism of the Cultural Revolution in China when the excesses of the CR were so disruptive to living standards and stability in China that Mao nixed the project and Deng did a 180.
(7) the dominance of a certain form of leninism in the 3rd world is in part a product of sheer power politics, not ideological or theoretical superiority. Groups like Trots and others were violently liquidated to sustain the monopoly of a certain theoretical approach on the left.
It just seems like Rockhill ends up overcorrecting for the mistakes of Western Marxists by reverting to Stalinism, but surely we need to go beyond the petty 20th century divisions between Stalinists, Social Democrats, Trotskyists, Left Communists, Capitalist Roaders, and whoever else.
Stalinism isn't a thing. Stalin was a Marxist-Leninist. 'Stalinism' is a term created by Khrushchev to drag Stalin's name through the mud. You can read Domenico Losurdo's book on it, which is the material being referenced here. When you refer to Stalinism you're talking about Marxism-Leninism. Reading Stalin's books alone should make that clear.
Great interview
Thank you for such an excellent conversation.
Great discussion!
Great book! What Gabriel Rockhill makes from the book is also great.
Dear Dr. Rockhill. How do you read so many books and stay so fit? Thank you.
OK Incel.
@@martinjanecek4950Projection
@@martinjanecek4950 OK bubak
@@danielseagate6340 get vaccinated
@@N0tEnuffMana He lifts books
Losurdo is the antidote to the despair of Mark Fisher's "Capitalist Realism"
I'm stuck on capitalist realism. Fisher's incoherent pathetic ramblings about "Market Stalinism" made me FUME, and the two next chapters just made me unfathomably sad.
@@StalinsWeakestWarrior Let me help you feel better: look who published it and how it was published, and who Fisher "hung out" with. He was a propagandist for the dour and society-loathing side of counter culture, he simply used capitalism as a personal fetish for his clique's reactionary esoteric journal.
Excellent
Is there really a new political economy theory about state capitalism articulated in the Frankfurt School, or is there simply a theoretical response to the total liquidation of European socialism? Or, perhaps that's not a worthy object of reflection? Of course, Horkheimer thinks that the age of state capitalism is a continuation of the capitalist epoch, which is why he illustrates it initially with reference to one of the most widely circulated texts of Classical Marxism, Engels's "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." He therefore thinks the project is the overthrow of capitalism in its core, a project utterly abandoned by the likes of Losurdo.
As for Lenin's so-called political economic "analysis" in "Imperialism," you are both missing the point of that work, which is not to do economics but to do dialectics, specifically a dialectical critique of theories of imperialism (Hobson and Hilferding, above all). Nevermind the fact that there's little indication in this discussion of what Lenin means by "imperialism," which is by no means equivalent to overseas domination, whether direct (colonial) or indirect (neocolonial). Lenin doesn't think that the German kaiserreich becomes imperialist when it acquires some territories in Africa or that Louis Napoleon's regime is imperialist because of Algeria.
Finally, the notion that "anti-imperialism" understood as "a struggle between nations" is completely anti-Marxist and conservative, not least for the people in formerly colonized countries where it can only mean subordination of the working class to nationalist political forces, a Stalinist strategy that led to catastrophe over and over again in the 20th century, from China in the 20s through India in the 30s and 40s, to Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, etc., etc. in subsequent decades. Are we really meant to consign this disgraceful history to the memory hole just because some academics discovered what was always plainly manifest, namely that the likes of Foucault and Deleuze aren't really leftists? These guys are victims of the theory industry they decry, and embracing a history they are not familiar with isn't going to help them out.
you try to use a lot of smart words but you reveal yourself as totally ignorant and disconnected from reality
I really enjoyed this, though something tells me there will be a C. Derick Varn postmortem, and some pushback on the CIA stuff being too overemphasized and not entirely fair in the case of multiple FS thinkers? (Forgive me if you read this comment and it pisses you off CDV.)
Epic!! ❤
Referring to Lenin while taking Neo-Kautskyan stance is a funny thing. We are having two capitalist/imperialist camps confronting, one is old as it was British Empire during ww1, another is new, as it was German camp. Lenin stood for international struggle of working class, against social-chauvinistic move in support of one or another.
Given the LGBTQ+ movement is its own form of social chauvinism it's important to keep in mind that merely taking an antagonistic stance there does not inherently put you in a position of social chauvinism. But yes it should be avoided to pick camps based on social chauvinistic tendencies even as you more or less have to play to people's sensibilities.
@@curiousfella4076Fuckin weirdo
@@danielseagate6340 Representation for its own sake is precisely social chauvinism.
@@danielseagate6340 And remember what is the emotional component to the cover story for going to sanction (or worse) half the world?
@@danielseagate6340 Not saying all social chauvinism is equally constructed or has the same significance btw. Some aspects are better some may be worse.
What you are saying is so information and intellectually rich, a whole new vein of thought, brilliant
lol its good that you two are meeting y'all.
Žižek actually commented on Gabriel Rockhill (its funny, cuz he was so frustrated about it) in one of the episode on theory underground (here on youtube)... btw. This realization that philosophical marxist like Žižek don't have a clue about macro econimics or political economy is so so obvious...
i might have to get on the losurdo train but I'm reading so much shit right now lol
😂
rip david graeber and Losurdo and Bernard Stiegler
👍👍👍👍💥💥💥💥👏👏👏👏!!
This was a petit bourgeois radical self-criticism session.
Losurdo and Rockhill are schlock. Trivial.
It's Stalinism, plain and simple - nothing more, nothing less.
Rockhill: “The so-called American Revolution . . . this was not a revolution.”
Lenin 1918: “The history of modern, civilised America opened with one of those great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars.” 1912: “Freedom in the U.S.A. is most complete.”
Adorno to Marcuse 1969: “because of what is occurring in Vietnam or Biafra. If that really is your reaction, then you should not only protest against the horror of napalm bombs but also against the unspeakable Chinese-style tortures that the Vietcong carry out permanently. If you do not take that on board too, then the protest against the Americans takes on an ideological character.”
it sounds like you are an American born into a paranoid atmosphere of anti-Russian sentiment from the last century; while your country is rotting away, completely uneducated; where education is for the elite; where education is propaganda; there you find the enemy in Stalinism. You didn't get the point of the conversation.
30:14 the irony of rockhill's analysis of the petite bourgeois category as equal to PMC with an emphasis on professors while Tutt conspicuously sports the Gaza poster which champions a movement has next to zero overt communist content. 32:33 Tutt with his Gaza poster over shoulder mentions the PB radicals' inadequate confrontation with the bourgeoisie. Cant help but wonder if has any public criticism of Hamas. 35:50 hypocritically defines imperialism as the principle contradiction of capitalism bc of political economy underdevelopment of the colonial world. In fact imperialism has a track record of exporting capital to develop production in sites outside the 'imperialist core' and escape those expensive labor aristocrats at home. Capital dragged African slaves to US and then pulled blacks into factories where for about 30 years the black worker was the vanguard of the global proletariat until neoliberal globalization shipped those jobs to the periphery. How does that jive with Rockhill's simplistic schematic of 'imperialism'?
Hey Chris can you explain to me how the Palestinians are supposed to form labor unions with Zionists to stop themselves from being genocided? Or maybe you could explain to us how they are "not like us" because they lack the oh so important bourgeois subjectively?
@ccutrone Still better than the strategies of petite bourgeois cunning of chauvinist reason cope.
That was kinda the point, autistic dogmatic non dialectical imperialists in the imperialist bloc.
@ccutrone It's also hilarious you post the worst explicit statements of Adorno(in his letters to Marcuse where he rightfully chastises him over Vietnam) in his favor- truly an infantile disorder, to quote Lenin, since your fixations with quotes and decontextualized , non dialectical autistic quotations to satisfy some father worship superego prevails.
The forerunners of useful idiot "both sides" moronic monsters, though thye have the delusions to think they're highbrow.
No wonder the monstrous commentary on 21st century holocausts.
Self indulgent utopian useful idiotism for imperialism, or poetry after Gaza, is barbarism too, mate.
i like how you both have libraries behind you. have me in this I also have a library behind me too
If Rockhill cares so much about "Actually Existing Socialism," then he must condemn Stalin's Soviet Union for denouncing Nasser. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1952: "On the night of July 23, 1952, power in Cairo was seized by a reactionary officers’ group connected with the USA."
It is only later, after Nasser seeks weapons from the West and Baghdad Pact is signed that the USSR made the Czech deal after the Fedayeen raids. It was just an attempt to use nationalism to counter another camp. But politics is a who-whom question, as Rockhill should be familiar if he keeps mentioning Lenin: When Shepilov then visited during Khruschev's tenure and was asked about Nasser locking up communists, he said "it's an Egyptian affair." He used the Communists in the name of anti-imperialism.
The letter (not an article as Rockhill wrongly says in his 2022 article) was more a critique with the UN's infinite deferral to legality, which is usually a common socialist argument! Especially when this had happened in the lead up to WW2!
Let alone the earlier predecessor of Hamas (Mujama al-Islamiya) used to refer to Nasser as the "new Pharaoh" in Gaza because of his persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is one of the reasons Sheikh Yassin pursued Islamic education up until the 1st Intifada because he was shook by the persecution of Nasser's Egypt.
So your criticism of Rockhill's "actually existing socialism" over pure theoretical socialism is that he isn't holding "actually existing socialism" to pure theory standards?
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 What is "pure theoretical socialism" (which is not a phrase I said at all but that you are bringing in)?
@@ramboz494 My apologies I presumed that when you quoted "Actually Existing Socialism" you were comparing it to something else not just throwing the phrase away.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 Rockhill uses the phrase "Actually Existing Socialism" and says that the problem with Adorno/Horkheimer is their denunciation of Nasser (in a letter) in the lead-up to the Suez War.
His point is to say that they are insufficiently anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist (or he says "anti anti imperialist" even in this).
In both this interview and others (as well as his 2022 article), he accuses Adorno/Horkheimer of not paying attention to debates in the Soviet Union. So I was bringing up the policy of the Soviet Union towards Nasser (as well as Nasser towards the world).
I am not even comparing it - I am saying he is inconsistent. One could be for socialism, "pure theoretical" (?) or "actually existing" or "anti-socialist" and make the same point.
@@ramboz494 Oh I see, thanks for clarifying. While I find your apparent lack of understanding that "pure theoretical socialism" as a concept a bit tedious I do appreciate your clarification.
Hit nail on head
28:25 Dr. Rockhill perfectly describes the cutrone/leonard tendency here
This is laughably off. Cutrone and I represent an anti-partyist attitude? We're perhaps most responsible in this generation for posing the party question. Rockhill just joins a sect of a few hundred (if that) and believes he's solved the problem.
@@saleonar >We're perhaps most responsible in this generation for posing the party question
lol
@@阳明子 -- What would be truly "lol" (if it weren't so miserably right-wing) is the idea that actual communism shouldn't be spoken of as anything but something reserved for "the very, very distant future."
@阳明子 Run of the mill boring idiot ultralefts with delusions of grandeur. They're also not very well read outside of the tendencies that push them towards their utopian useful idiotism for World Imperialism. The CIA really loves free cultural worker- rabble like them (although to what extent careerist uplift is itself structural and unconscious to themselves, kinda like for the "oppressed' petite bourgeois hustlers in the academy of the more recent type, the types who talk of degrowth and privilege, etc, is an interesting question).
"Dr. Rockhill perfectly describes the cutrone/leonard tendency here"
whine
There is no perfect ideological ground, therefore it is the whole social framework of knowledge that must be considered
I am primordially anti-Foucault
Beautiful conversation.
This is all very interesting but I’d like to know what these deep thinkers recommend in terms of practical action. All theory and no praxis makes a dull revolutionary!
I hate this whole false dichotomy between "western" and "eastern" Marxism. Petrograd is in Western Europe. Moscow is on the western European continent. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were German westerners. Soviet Socialism and Soviet Marxism are every bit as much a part of the tradition of "western" Marxism as capitalist-controlled Trotskyism.
Not exactly an identity based on geography but a form of thought elevated over and above a different kind.
China is surely eastern
that's partly true. In today's context West and "global south", but this is more of a political term..
You must realize that "Western Marxism" is used a symbol for a theoretical school, prevalent in the West, that abhors actual action toward socialism while "Eastern Marxism" is a symbol for the style of Marxism that emphasizes action combined with theory?
Dr. Rockhill advocates for a variegated hermeneutic but in his analysis of the American Revolution seems to dismiss this method. Rockhill follows the Garveyite analysis of Gerald Horne on the American Revolution (which contains intellectual fraud with Horne woefully misrepresenting some of the sources cited) and dismisses the analysis of people like Lenin and Ho Chi Minh.
Hey, I appreciate your interesting and challenging comment. Respectfully, I want to ask, where has Horne misrepresented those sources, to what degree do you think that was intentional, and what are the particular consequences for his analysis?
@@hotcakesism I would refer you to Marius Trotter's article for the misrepresented sources and Tom Mackaman's article on the WSWS for a general critique. They lay out the case better than I'd be able to on a youtube comment.
If you google 'Marius Trotter gerald horne' and 'Tom Mackaman gerald horne counter revolution' they will be the first results.
While I can see a kind of petit-bourgeois radicalism in the tendency towards social democracy (in variation), I don't think the deviations in petit-bourgeois ideology are emphasized in the context of a divided ruling class where in shoring up up the interests of domestic capital after periods of financialization and crisis there's a turn towards a anti-elite business nationalism and bourgeois anti-imperialism against "globalism." In other words, I would consider forms of Peleo-Conservativism and the "Post-Liberal Communitarianism" just as much petit-bourgeois radicalism as the US Green Party.
Would love to hear comment on Agamben and Lacan :)
wow it took me a day but I remembered my quip about engles; before we say the family isn't holy, who is to say we were ever really secular?
: and its my perhaps my response to for my idea of loserdo's hegel too perhaps; just wait until I find how it folds in on itself.
This is one of the most inept and misleading discussion of Alain Badiou I’ve ever heard.
😊what you are attempting to get at, feels like the next step in the evolution of the human psyche, if we are to develop
This is of such import
For these two Losurdo-absurdo Tamil Tigers of the West, dead Gilles and Michael are greater enemy than living Donald, Elon, Camala or Jeff...
@exlauslegale8534 Plenty of Michel Deleudeds on the train of Kamala and Jeff and their own production of reactionary tendencies and careerism as moral and radical.
Nodding, nodding, nodding, noddy
The premonition of Rockhill 's poor education. ILMAO
honestly i know rockhill is talking about me without mentioning me, which is why I am making #gorgonwars mythology lol these guys will never cite me.
"carrying over the burdens of trace"
Can't wait for his book to shit on my chest.
Are you sure he even knows you exist?
I have 3000 books in my library, I never heard of this book. I also have been reading my entire life. I'm Marxist. I do not like the Frankfurters BC they do not analyse the political economy and that had me always in doubt what were these guys doing and why are they so influential, their basic thesis was that Marx and Engels wrote that if there is a big war, such as the First world war, the workers from all countries will unite and will demolish the capitalists and will establish workers states and what happened with the Second international and taking national positions in that war, gave the basis of Adorno, Horkhimer, Markuse etc. to say that, there are other forces at play here and that is the culture, that the workers have internalised and which is bourgeoisic and that's why they moved the theory into cultural critical studies. It's true that the workers did not had their own culture, however, if you properly follow the FS you can easily read the liberal framework in their books. Than were culture wars and what became later the cultural Marxism as referenced from the rightwingers.
Than the postmodernists which I also have been reading BC everybody was reading them, what was I supposed to do. However, I rejected Foucault a long time ago as well as Judith Butler and than I started dismissing them all, Derrida, Deleuse with Guatary etc.
I think we have lost 70 years with the critical theory and postmodernists. We need to bring our weapon back in the game and that is we need political analysis and political economy Books.
aaaaarg.fail I think has losurdos books, we should all put them there so everyone can access them
Not watching the video but I can almost assure you it doesn't matter.
I trust the messianic over engles
watch my "defence of spivak" video as a counter to rockhill's simplification of arendtian conflation of TOTALism
Revisionist
i disagree with rockhills #hivemindidioms which is the classic sign of the imperial core.
Finally Dan 😁
(There are many in the crowd that need to confront Rockhill more seriously).