Just an observation: as a 55 year old wage-worker without a university degree, I've noticed that most of my coworkers - for decades in the US and now in Ireland - seem to have internalised the moral and ethical 'rightness' of the *authoritative* property relations in capitalism. We're liberal market subjects, I guess. I have tried to chip away at that belief when corporate employers have sold our place of work (happened to me 5 times between '97 and 2015) and either changed all of the circumstances without our consent or simply closed the doors, resulting in a layoff. It seems that the very notion of private property is not well-understood as an active authoritarian social relationship, which, in capitalism, can be bought and sold, alienated, estranged, transferred, etc. It's really disturbing that we don’t frame it that way. Instead, the language of private property emphasises the relatively static type of personal possessions rather than the dynamic type of property, which commands private authority enforceable by the state or local governments. For instance, Robert Nozick uses the term "Holdings" which is very static and passive and does not accurately describe the dynamic power of capital. I asked a "Libertarian" guy how he justified political authority, and he gave me a cut-and-paste cliché about "the consent of the governed," which really doesn’t legitimise the authority he thinks is appropriate in capitalism. These are the regular people we need to convert or convince in the working class, but I fail every time. Shouldn't we really be popularising the problem of buying and selling authority over people's lives? It strikes at the most destructive aspects of markets as the central political organising principle. Just my two cents.
Here here. Especially your point regarding authoritative property. As a yank who has been lucky enough to live abroad in various countries/continents, one thing which really enlightened me was how universally warped the notion of "private property" is in the US.
It is understood well enough, just not applied consistently. Workers understand the unfairness of losing a job because the business went bankrupt, rent etc. But if they don't see any concrete way to overcome those social relations they're not going to go around shouting slogans.
Not to mention the whole "consent of the governed" notion is a complete fabrication. Where in reality is anyone asked if they consent to being ruled over or private property? It's a force relation that the state imposes and it's never up for some abstract decision of the ruled-over subjects. That's the first thing. Secondly, libertarians always stop at the surface with simple exchange. They don't really get into how harmful it is to have private ownership of the means of production. They simply have faith that it all works out for the best without any conscious thought.
The Libertarian guy didn't give a very good answer. There is nothing authoritarian in the relationship because you as a worker have a choice, you can work for employer A or employer B, or (if you really want independence), start your own business. It is my right as the owner/founder of a business to do with it as I please. If you want a say in that buy shares, otherwise you have put nothing of your own into the business other than coming to work every day. Did you have the idea for the business? Did you put up your own capital? Did you file the paperwork? And now you want a say in it? I agree, that politicians should not have authority other than to protect your rights as an individual.
I’ve been reading Losurdo’s book for the last month, but I don’t have a grounding in many of the authors he writes about though I’m familiar with them. I look forward to listening to this discussion as I finish reading the book.
The group references a few essays or articles shared with the reading group. Is there any way to share those in the description box? One about Western Marxism in general, another mentioned was about Lukacs. I understand if the one essay is special for Patreon members, but if any other supplemental materials are simply links to free to read pieces online I'd greatly appreciate if you could share them.
I love that you recognize just how much Arendt is valorized by liberals and even leftists in comparison to the reality of her extreme racist and reactionary personal beliefs. It's a real eye-opener to the kinds of people the academic establishment often promotes so long as they serve as defenders of capitalism.
which race is she racist against? i am doing the readings of arendt and attending the reading group zoom done at the arendt center at bard college; i wanted to ask them since the group is today; i haven't heard of this ...thanks
ps... did Losurdo believe that israel is a colonialist state and therefore shouldn't exist? maybe thats why he saw arendt who was a zionist jew, as perhaps, an imperialist? thats important to know, in getting context on his view.... i saw that je had a theory of the self-hating jew, but... in my opinion, arendt was NOT a self hating jew, and ... the question of israel being a colonialist settlement ... is that his view?
The best thing about this discussion is Spencer Leonard who pretty much represented what Losurdo criticized as Western Marxist stance. He started mumbling some trivial historical account- "Lenin was part of Second International' ok what does it mean! But we all know he splitted and build a new line of revolutionary practice. If he had remained as the Second internationalist, he would have never interfered transitional government of so called February revolution. Then he goes and describes Lenin as "intellectual" to justify his position of 'proud academic' , but forgot to mention Lenin's all intellectual work was well structured toward organizing effective revolutionary party and "lesson learning process" from the past. He spent months to study Paris Commune not for mere intellectual interest but understanding revolutionary practice for the future. Finally he spills out his real position when he brings gulags, state capitalism, anti Stalinism on the table, these are typical arguments of many libertarian academic Marxists who doesn't have any idea about how the revolution looks like and even further they don't really want any revolution except some messianic utopia. Two important concepts in Losurdo's work nobody mentioned. The first one is the issue of "recognition" for oppressed class, race and gender which are three types of class struggles (plural). The second one is colonized east doesn't have time to waste for "pure fetishized" revolution but at the point of life-death to build a fully functioning new social relationship. Finally, I think there are too much theory but not praxis toward revolution, I strongly believe that the only one who really wants to go through, contradictory, uncertainty and messy, sacrificial, sometimes brutal process of revolution can do the work, the rest is intellectual masturbations.
Spencer's approach is better than yours because it doesn't depend on very narrow empirical claims that could be simply wrong, but have to be right to not drive you wider project off the rails.
"He started mumbling some trivial historical account- "Lenin was part of Second International' ok what does it mean" - It means to make sense of what Lenin's contribution actually was. After Lenin's death, the Stalinization of Lenin ('Foundations of Leninism") completely buried what had become and produced this myth of Lenin being foundationally different. This turned a concrete, historical process into something abstract. It also then confused much of the Left for decades to come (if not a century). There became a false sense of progress. You continue by saying "But we all know he splitted and build a new line of revolutionary practice." - But the question was why? It was not something that could have made sense prior to August 4th, 1914. The whole reason Kautsky is a "renegade" is because he reneges on his own program. So this is what had to be explained and as Lenin puts it in 1915 "It would be unscientific, absurd and ridiculous to reduce the question to personalities, to refer to Kautsky, Guesde, Plekhanov (and say: “even” such persons!). That would be a wretched subterfuge. Any serious explanation calls, in the first place, for an economic analysis of the significance of present-day politics, then for an analysis of their fundamental ideas, and, finally, for a study of the historic trends within socialism." The founding of the Third International doesn't happen until AFTER the October Revolution. And it wouldn't matter, because plenty of Bolsheviks (Kamenev, Stalin) were willing to be nothing more than loyal opposition under Prince Lvov. Yes, Lenin was an intellectual. That's just straightforward. Spencer's point is actually why can't there be a Lenin today? What is blocking a an intellectual from actually being so today? Why could Lenin be a Lenin? That's why he says there is a crisis of intellectualism today. He is very clear and straightforward. Gulags and show trials are a product of the failure of the revolution. Literally! They are collapse of the organization of society, that they fall back on trying to bureaucratically solve problems (something Lenin was criticizing in the last few years of his life). Class, race and gender are not "three types of class struggle." What's worse is that class has now been reduced to the fight of one group against another group, completely falling below Marx's *critique of the class struggle.* It only *appears* as if it is two groups but the question is the claims that they make on society are actually identical - it is literally a contradiction. This is why classes are "character-masks" as Marx put it. We should naturalize the crisis of society. Yes, the colonized East, in partaking in decolonization, produced more capitalism. It is a tragedy that the Left bares a great deal of responsibility for misleading people fighting against their colonial oppression.
@@ramboz494 "Class, race and gender are not "three types of class struggle." What's worse is that class has now been reduced to the fight of one group against another group, completely falling below Marx's critique of the class struggle. It only appears as if it is two groups but the question is the claims that they make on society are actually identical - it is literally a contradiction." Thank you, it needed to be said -but also it's sad, because it shouldn't need to be said. On colonialism, it's hard to see how anti-colonialism is better. It's important to say when taking on Rockhill : in fact in many cases, colonialism was better. The point should be that both miss the 3rd, novel, option generated by the collision of 2 societies. And that miss is basically fated to happen because socialists failed to make an international order that could 've provided the support for development and peace that colonizers at least often partially did..
Classes are inventions of Marxism. I have a choice to work for someone else, or to work for myself and have done both. We aren't fixed in classes. Sure, in totalitarian societies like the Incas you might be, but they are long gone.
Colonialism wasn’t better. Y’all haven’t bothered to study colonialism, and you’re also mistaken if you think the capitalism around the world is due to, or attributable to the “western left” as opposed to other institutions or the development and implementation of the state form around the world, which of course is built with many functions that make it amenable to and useful for capitalism and the entrenchment of capitalism in society through crushing other forms of social organization. Another mistake is taking gender etc. and class to be distinct rather than looking at how they feedback into each other/conrextualize and play a part in identifying the relations of production. As for rockhill, what’s useful and telling is how much the “western left” read Adorno and the other guy, but isnt reading Walter Rodney/doesn’t know much about the rest of the world, or even their neighboring countries intimately. That there’s the reading of that rather than a widespread focus or understanding of basic things like the party form. And on my part, no broader curiosity that’s serious regarding things like global political economy, the conditions of workers around the world, theories of the state, a sobering understanding of global history even since ww2 and so on.
1:57:30 Why do academics like Spencer Leonard get so bent out of shape when facts are clearly stated about the USSR's capitulation to transatlantic imperialism following Barbarossa - & the USSR's eventual betrayal of nascent revolutionary communism in the West? One of the US's primary methods of repressing internationalism within the imperial core had been to maintain clear & strictly enforced statutes for how labor unions, political parties, & intellectual workers communicate with governments abroad. The AFL-CIO & Marcuse are both invaluable to American workers so it seems like folly to ignore where their compromises wound up shackling them to a security complex that has eroded solidarity. Seems like Leonard would be more than willing to criticize the AFL-CIO but not Marcuse. I think this might be an instance where personal affinity among intellectuals winds up serving very anti-intellectual ends.
Western Marxism begins with Marx and Engels who (together with Lenin) remain untouchables in contemporary Western "Marxist-Leninists"' critique of academic Western Marxism as practiced by all shades of the (ultra-)Imperialist Left academia. This is scandalous and begs for a modicum of self-criticism. How about exploring the imperialist ideology and politics in the Moor and the General? How about brushing Lenin against the grain and in the light of the Soviet Catastrophe?
Platypus Trotskyism in another name should be passe- laughable that Lenin is posed as not having a foundational difference with the second international. If there wasnt a petite bourgeois politics there , cemented in a nonsensical defense of professors. It's a debate between intellectuals, not professors. The latter cant see it, because they dont understand ideology as material, but the former shouldnt need more proof. With respect to Daniel who is a remarkable exception (though he is not a "professor", which for obvious reasons is not a preferred term in the tradition of orthodox marxism- Marx, Engels, Lenin- and is obvious the more these sub cosncious- and sub literates- speak). For that same vein it would be better if Daniel takes more space and commentary, perhaps anticipating differing views too, but the trot/petite bourgeois philosophical ideological positions, which then ally with the CIA(what coincidence!) - thats how ideology works, materially and objectively if u were- not necessary. Thanka for all you do Dan regardless.
Nothing could be plainer than that Lenin and the Bolsheviks are part of the international revolutionary tendency within the Second International, the same tendency that produced the split within the SPD and, eventually, the KPD. The notion that Lenin would suggest otherwise, that he would suggest that the Third International represents anything other than the preservation and realization of the best of the Second, is what is laughable in its puerility.
I seriously don’t care about this stupid debate between “Trotskyism” and “Stalinism”. Maybe Trotsky was right and Stalin was wrong, or maybe Stalin was right and Trotsky wrong, or maybe they were both wrong - maybe Bukharin was correct! I don’t know and I don’t care. What I actually DO care about is imperialism versus anti-imperialism. And I would say that especially since 1945 the main contradiction has been between imperialism and anti-imperialism, including within Marxism. I don’t think Trotskyism is inherently imperialist, but unfortunately for obvious historical reasons it has become more palatable for the imperialists than Stalinism because it hasn’t been able to hold state power anywhere and has been critical of the Stalinist governments around the world. So I would identify as a staunch anti-imperialist and “tankie”, but not as a Stalinist, Marxist-Leninist, Maoist etc. So I would advocate a kind of non-sectarian anti-imperialist tankie ideology, maybe a bit similar to the MAGA Communists but without the Stalinist sectarianism (or the transphobia or the anti-porn and anti-sexwork positions). There’s an enormous struggle going on in the world today between the forces of imperialism and the forces of anti-imperialism, and I think that Marxists have to support the anti-imperialist side even if it’s not Marxist, socialist or even left-wing at all. Even right wing anti-imperialist forces need to be supported by Marxists; I don’t buy any of this nonsense about “inter-imperialist competition”. No, there is only one form of imperialism in the world today, and that’s Western imperialism - there are no such things as Russian or Chinese imperialism; those are just ridiculous concepts with no connection to reality.
Lmao now hes bringing up war time positioning.. lol talk about historital amnesia, u forgot ur boy Truman and the pivot. How dumb are these guys? Marxism isnt the moral horizon of a wing of the petite bourgeois- it fight function as one but its not, really. He should remember Adorno calling Ho Chi Min fascist(which credit due to Marcuse was quite a mistake, prbly cuz of its explicit nature). Imperialist core compabitlist professoriate. And quite illiterate on it.
Just an observation:
as a 55 year old wage-worker without a university degree, I've noticed that most of my coworkers - for decades in the US and now in Ireland - seem to have internalised the moral and ethical 'rightness' of the *authoritative* property relations in capitalism. We're liberal market subjects, I guess.
I have tried to chip away at that belief when corporate employers have sold our place of work (happened to me 5 times between '97 and 2015) and either changed all of the circumstances without our consent or simply closed the doors, resulting in a layoff.
It seems that the very notion of private property is not well-understood as an active authoritarian social relationship, which, in capitalism, can be bought and sold, alienated, estranged, transferred, etc. It's really disturbing that we don’t frame it that way. Instead, the language of private property emphasises the relatively static type of personal possessions rather than the dynamic type of property, which commands private authority enforceable by the state or local governments. For instance, Robert Nozick uses the term "Holdings" which is very static and passive and does not accurately describe the dynamic power of capital.
I asked a "Libertarian" guy how he justified political authority, and he gave me a cut-and-paste cliché about "the consent of the governed," which really doesn’t legitimise the authority he thinks is appropriate in capitalism. These are the regular people we need to convert or convince in the working class, but I fail every time.
Shouldn't we really be popularising the problem of buying and selling authority over people's lives? It strikes at the most destructive aspects of markets as the central political organising principle.
Just my two cents.
Here here. Especially your point regarding authoritative property. As a yank who has been lucky enough to live abroad in various countries/continents, one thing which really enlightened me was how universally warped the notion of "private property" is in the US.
It is understood well enough, just not applied consistently. Workers understand the unfairness of losing a job because the business went bankrupt, rent etc. But if they don't see any concrete way to overcome those social relations they're not going to go around shouting slogans.
False consciousness is a helluva drug.
Not to mention the whole "consent of the governed" notion is a complete fabrication. Where in reality is anyone asked if they consent to being ruled over or private property? It's a force relation that the state imposes and it's never up for some abstract decision of the ruled-over subjects.
That's the first thing. Secondly, libertarians always stop at the surface with simple exchange. They don't really get into how harmful it is to have private ownership of the means of production. They simply have faith that it all works out for the best without any conscious thought.
The Libertarian guy didn't give a very good answer. There is nothing authoritarian in the relationship because you as a worker have a choice, you can work for employer A or employer B, or (if you really want independence), start your own business. It is my right as the owner/founder of a business to do with it as I please. If you want a say in that buy shares, otherwise you have put nothing of your own into the business other than coming to work every day. Did you have the idea for the business? Did you put up your own capital? Did you file the paperwork? And now you want a say in it? I agree, that politicians should not have authority other than to protect your rights as an individual.
I'm reading Losurdo right now, so thank you for initiating this discussion group. Super interesting!
I’ve been reading Losurdo’s book for the last month, but I don’t have a grounding in many of the authors he writes about though I’m familiar with them. I look forward to listening to this discussion as I finish reading the book.
What an intelligent meditation. Thank you for shedding light on this dark genius.
Cool group & discussion here - I appreciate the productive, critical appraisal of lukacs.
Glad I found this. Losurdo for the win
The group references a few essays or articles shared with the reading group. Is there any way to share those in the description box? One about Western Marxism in general, another mentioned was about Lukacs. I understand if the one essay is special for Patreon members, but if any other supplemental materials are simply links to free to read pieces online I'd greatly appreciate if you could share them.
I love that you recognize just how much Arendt is valorized by liberals and even leftists in comparison to the reality of her extreme racist and reactionary personal beliefs. It's a real eye-opener to the kinds of people the academic establishment often promotes so long as they serve as defenders of capitalism.
I want to see a Daniel Tutt compilation!
which race is she racist against? i am doing the readings of arendt and attending the reading group zoom done at the arendt center at bard college; i wanted to ask them since the group is today; i haven't heard of this ...thanks
are you saying that she is actually anti-jewish or something
ps... did Losurdo believe that israel is a colonialist state and therefore shouldn't exist? maybe thats why he saw arendt who was a zionist jew, as perhaps, an imperialist? thats important to know, in getting context on his view.... i saw that je had a theory of the self-hating jew, but... in my opinion, arendt was NOT a self hating jew, and ... the question of israel being a colonialist settlement ... is that his view?
@@mandys1505 Black people. Look up her views on segregation. Also her romantic partner was an unrepentant nazi in heidegger
Great find. Subbed
Great discussion!
I just found this page. Outstanding I would like to participate in the reading group. I plan on attending the UPenn book launch on 9/20
subscribed
Thank god for Spencer!
The best thing about this discussion is Spencer Leonard who pretty much represented what Losurdo criticized as Western Marxist stance. He started mumbling some trivial historical account- "Lenin was part of Second International' ok what does it mean! But we all know he splitted and build a new line of revolutionary practice. If he had remained as the Second internationalist, he would have never interfered transitional government of so called February revolution. Then he goes and describes Lenin as "intellectual" to justify his position of 'proud academic' , but forgot to mention Lenin's all intellectual work was well structured toward organizing effective revolutionary party and "lesson learning process" from the past. He spent months to study Paris Commune not for mere intellectual interest but understanding revolutionary practice for the future.
Finally he spills out his real position when he brings gulags, state capitalism, anti Stalinism on the table, these are typical arguments of many libertarian academic Marxists who doesn't have any idea about how the revolution looks like and even further they don't really want any revolution except some messianic utopia.
Two important concepts in Losurdo's work nobody mentioned. The first one is the issue of "recognition" for oppressed class, race and gender which are three types of class struggles (plural). The second one is colonized east doesn't have time to waste for "pure fetishized" revolution but at the point of life-death to build a fully functioning new social relationship. Finally, I think there are too much theory but not praxis toward revolution, I strongly believe that the only one who really wants to go through, contradictory, uncertainty and messy, sacrificial, sometimes brutal process of revolution can do the work, the rest is intellectual masturbations.
Spencer's approach is better than yours because it doesn't depend on very narrow empirical claims that could be simply wrong, but have to be right to not drive you wider project off the rails.
"He started mumbling some trivial historical account- "Lenin was part of Second International' ok what does it mean"
- It means to make sense of what Lenin's contribution actually was. After Lenin's death, the Stalinization of Lenin ('Foundations of Leninism") completely buried what had become and produced this myth of Lenin being foundationally different. This turned a concrete, historical process into something abstract. It also then confused much of the Left for decades to come (if not a century). There became a false sense of progress.
You continue by saying "But we all know he splitted and build a new line of revolutionary practice."
- But the question was why? It was not something that could have made sense prior to August 4th, 1914. The whole reason Kautsky is a "renegade" is because he reneges on his own program. So this is what had to be explained and as Lenin puts it in 1915 "It would be unscientific, absurd and ridiculous to reduce the question to personalities, to refer to Kautsky, Guesde, Plekhanov (and say: “even” such persons!). That would be a wretched subterfuge. Any serious explanation calls, in the first place, for an economic analysis of the significance of present-day politics, then for an analysis of their fundamental ideas, and, finally, for a study of the historic trends within socialism."
The founding of the Third International doesn't happen until AFTER the October Revolution. And it wouldn't matter, because plenty of Bolsheviks (Kamenev, Stalin) were willing to be nothing more than loyal opposition under Prince Lvov.
Yes, Lenin was an intellectual. That's just straightforward. Spencer's point is actually why can't there be a Lenin today? What is blocking a an intellectual from actually being so today? Why could Lenin be a Lenin? That's why he says there is a crisis of intellectualism today. He is very clear and straightforward.
Gulags and show trials are a product of the failure of the revolution. Literally! They are collapse of the organization of society, that they fall back on trying to bureaucratically solve problems (something Lenin was criticizing in the last few years of his life).
Class, race and gender are not "three types of class struggle." What's worse is that class has now been reduced to the fight of one group against another group, completely falling below Marx's *critique of the class struggle.* It only *appears* as if it is two groups but the question is the claims that they make on society are actually identical - it is literally a contradiction.
This is why classes are "character-masks" as Marx put it. We should naturalize the crisis of society.
Yes, the colonized East, in partaking in decolonization, produced more capitalism. It is a tragedy that the Left bares a great deal of responsibility for misleading people fighting against their colonial oppression.
@@ramboz494 "Class, race and gender are not "three types of class struggle." What's worse is that class has now been reduced to the fight of one group against another group, completely falling below Marx's critique of the class struggle. It only appears as if it is two groups but the question is the claims that they make on society are actually identical - it is literally a contradiction."
Thank you, it needed to be said -but also it's sad, because it shouldn't need to be said.
On colonialism, it's hard to see how anti-colonialism is better. It's important to say when taking on Rockhill : in fact in many cases, colonialism was better. The point should be that both miss the 3rd, novel, option generated by the collision of 2 societies. And that miss is basically fated to happen because socialists failed to make an international order that could 've provided the support for development and peace that colonizers at least often partially did..
Classes are inventions of Marxism. I have a choice to work for someone else, or to work for myself and have done both. We aren't fixed in classes. Sure, in totalitarian societies like the Incas you might be, but they are long gone.
Colonialism wasn’t better. Y’all haven’t bothered to study colonialism, and you’re also mistaken if you think the capitalism around the world is due to, or attributable to the “western left” as opposed to other institutions or the development and implementation of the state form around the world, which of course is built with many functions that make it amenable to and useful for capitalism and the entrenchment of capitalism in society through crushing other forms of social organization.
Another mistake is taking gender etc. and class to be distinct rather than looking at how they feedback into each other/conrextualize and play a part in identifying the relations of production.
As for rockhill, what’s useful and telling is how much the “western left” read Adorno and the other guy, but isnt reading Walter Rodney/doesn’t know much about the rest of the world, or even their neighboring countries intimately. That there’s the reading of that rather than a widespread focus or understanding of basic things like the party form. And on my part, no broader curiosity that’s serious regarding things like global political economy, the conditions of workers around the world, theories of the state, a sobering understanding of global history even since ww2 and so on.
Comrade Ivan 🙌👏
hell yeah
milly esther is so funny lol
1:57:30 Why do academics like Spencer Leonard get so bent out of shape when facts are clearly stated about the USSR's capitulation to transatlantic imperialism following Barbarossa - & the USSR's eventual betrayal of nascent revolutionary communism in the West? One of the US's primary methods of repressing internationalism within the imperial core had been to maintain clear & strictly enforced statutes for how labor unions, political parties, & intellectual workers communicate with governments abroad. The AFL-CIO & Marcuse are both invaluable to American workers so it seems like folly to ignore where their compromises wound up shackling them to a security complex that has eroded solidarity.
Seems like Leonard would be more than willing to criticize the AFL-CIO but not Marcuse. I think this might be an instance where personal affinity among intellectuals winds up serving very anti-intellectual ends.
The AFL-CIA
Deepika Mira says it 💯
Me to Daniel and Gabriel in a dm: “I fucks wit you heavy”
Spencer Leonard thoroughly imbued with the historical nihilism Losurdo is outlining.
Spencer Leonard is sketchy af
i agree
like he's a spook?
He’s a Platypus guy like Chris Cutrone.
I’m pretty Dengist actually. And I think I’m more sympathetic towards so-called “MAGA Communism” than most people here…
Western Marxism begins with Marx and Engels who (together with Lenin) remain untouchables in contemporary Western "Marxist-Leninists"' critique of academic Western Marxism as practiced by all shades of the (ultra-)Imperialist Left academia. This is scandalous and begs for a modicum of self-criticism. How about exploring the imperialist ideology and politics in the Moor and the General? How about brushing Lenin against the grain and in the light of the Soviet Catastrophe?
Platypus Trotskyism in another name should be passe- laughable that Lenin is posed as not having a foundational difference with the second international.
If there wasnt a petite bourgeois politics there , cemented in a nonsensical defense of professors. It's a debate between intellectuals, not professors. The latter cant see it, because they dont understand ideology as material, but the former shouldnt need more proof. With respect to Daniel who is a remarkable exception (though he is not a "professor", which for obvious reasons is not a preferred term in the tradition of orthodox marxism- Marx, Engels, Lenin- and is obvious the more these sub cosncious- and sub literates- speak).
For that same vein it would be better if Daniel takes more space and commentary, perhaps anticipating differing views too, but the trot/petite bourgeois philosophical ideological positions, which then ally with the CIA(what coincidence!) - thats how ideology works, materially and objectively if u were- not necessary.
Thanka for all you do Dan regardless.
Nothing could be plainer than that Lenin and the Bolsheviks are part of the international revolutionary tendency within the Second International, the same tendency that produced the split within the SPD and, eventually, the KPD. The notion that Lenin would suggest otherwise, that he would suggest that the Third International represents anything other than the preservation and realization of the best of the Second, is what is laughable in its puerility.
I seriously don’t care about this stupid debate between “Trotskyism” and “Stalinism”. Maybe Trotsky was right and Stalin was wrong, or maybe Stalin was right and Trotsky wrong, or maybe they were both wrong - maybe Bukharin was correct! I don’t know and I don’t care. What I actually DO care about is imperialism versus anti-imperialism. And I would say that especially since 1945 the main contradiction has been between imperialism and anti-imperialism, including within Marxism. I don’t think Trotskyism is inherently imperialist, but unfortunately for obvious historical reasons it has become more palatable for the imperialists than Stalinism because it hasn’t been able to hold state power anywhere and has been critical of the Stalinist governments around the world. So I would identify as a staunch anti-imperialist and “tankie”, but not as a Stalinist, Marxist-Leninist, Maoist etc. So I would advocate a kind of non-sectarian anti-imperialist tankie ideology, maybe a bit similar to the MAGA Communists but without the Stalinist sectarianism (or the transphobia or the anti-porn and anti-sexwork positions). There’s an enormous struggle going on in the world today between the forces of imperialism and the forces of anti-imperialism, and I think that Marxists have to support the anti-imperialist side even if it’s not Marxist, socialist or even left-wing at all. Even right wing anti-imperialist forces need to be supported by Marxists; I don’t buy any of this nonsense about “inter-imperialist competition”. No, there is only one form of imperialism in the world today, and that’s Western imperialism - there are no such things as Russian or Chinese imperialism; those are just ridiculous concepts with no connection to reality.
Lmao now hes bringing up war time positioning.. lol talk about historital amnesia, u forgot ur boy Truman and the pivot.
How dumb are these guys?
Marxism isnt the moral horizon of a wing of the petite bourgeois- it fight function as one but its not, really.
He should remember Adorno calling Ho Chi Min fascist(which credit due to Marcuse was quite a mistake, prbly cuz of its explicit nature). Imperialist core compabitlist professoriate. And quite illiterate on it.
What would make one a fascist?