This was a really clarifying talk, thanks doug & chris. Chris is like the summer school teacher that you expected to hate but then end up learning more in a 3 week class than over the course of the school year.
The Robin De Angelo being part of Revaluation Co Counseling comment is so sweet, in an ironically humorous way. I know RC well and it's a bonkers psuedo left wing therapy cult. You explained so much to me with that simple throw away comment. There is some truth in RC, ie that moving through things, changing our situations and ideas can be intensely emotional as anyone who has been part of a relationship that ends, divorce, death etc, knows and that friends supporting us can ease those transitions but the RC ideology is bonkers.
Well the trucker convoy was largely white from being there on the first day, not sure that changes much. The Canadian Truckers Alliance had a large majority of its members vote to have common sense health and safety measures regarding COVID same rate as nationally no matter how dystopian some of the laws ended up being. The discontents were more with a large minority like 15-20% rather than being specific to truckers.
44:00 *The vanguard party and Marxist idea of sublation of 19th century* “The party’s not actually supposed to be the vanguard-it’s supposed to be the party that the vanguard needs. So the idea is that the vanguard is the working class. The working class is the vanguard of democracy and of social democracy and democratic revolution, democratic aspirations of the people-the workers are in the leading edge of that struggle and they need a party of their own. So it’s a party _of_ the vanguard, not the party itself being the vanguard. However as it turns out, once that party is established then the party does take on a vanguard role […] it’s civil/social organizing. And again that’s where it’s kind of like, well it starts to look like-‘oh don’t you mean a party dictatorship then?’ And it’s like-but it’s not really meant to be that either, it’s supposed to aufhebung (sublate) all these things that came up in the 19th century [the mass democratic movement party _and_ the social-action mutual aid society _and_ the military-like takeover of the capitalist state for working class] […] Marxism is meant to sublate (take up) all those things that appear to be alternatives, but their idea is that they’re all expressing aspects of this necessity, this task. Alright that there are different levels, different aspects, different dimensions of this common task of what kind of a political and social revolution is necessary to get out of capitalism. […] So they basically feel that the 19th century is the time when the working class is learning through all these experiments, all the different things it has to do to be able to overcome capitalism. The 20th century is the unraveling of that and the division-so you’re either like a party vanguard type person or you’re like a Paris commune radical democracy person or you’re a radical syndicalist, right.”
I tried to join the electrical union after separating from the military, there was a wait list of a year or more to get a job. Good pay and benefits even before becoming licensed but they wouldn't recognize my experience as an enlisted electrician at all.
I listened to all of this, especially about Cutrone's ideas on "The Party," its history, purpose, development and I thought, "well thats a bit bleedin obvious," as opposed to quite a lot of his writing where I think, "whats he bleedin on about?" Maybe I have hung around Platypus media so long, read books on non violent revolutionary strategy (which will not be too different from violent revolutionary strategy in ots strategic aims) trade union and community organising for so long it all falls into place in my head? I found this one strangely reasuring, as I type my comment in my corner of poverty in my council bedsit wondering when the left will actually give a toss about how we live round here? The partial history of how left wing parties degenerated into vanguard cults, I'd like to hear more about that, and how civil society was decimated in the civil war in Russia were also illuminating. Thanks for this one.
@@David-os5fx Cool, David. America is so uptight and has been my entire life. People here always seem like they are proud and have something to prove. It makes me afraid to go out of my house sometimes. No one here is a person. Everyone here feels they are something to be proud of. Ugh.
Bakunin (who was a Hegelian, BTW and the 1st translator of Das Kapital into Russian) gets misunderstood way too much (he wasn't mainly a writer or theorist so that's easy to get away with), but he was not a promoter of invisible dictatorship, and he called himself a socialist and supported the paris commune. "We must realize, too, that the majority of the members of the Commune were not socialists, properly speaking. If they appeared to be, it was because they were drawn in this direction by the irresistible course of events, the nature of the situation, the necessities of their position" 1871. A lot of the theory beef between bakunin and marx is actually organizational and personal rivalry at a time when they were not even bothering to learn each others' positions, and were responding to 2nd hand information. So, much of Marx's take on Bakunin is more a critique of Proudhon on one hand and Nechaev on the other, than it is of Bakunin's positions -- and much of his attacks on Marx's ideas are really on what he thinks Marx thinks, but are Lasalle's and others' ideas mixed up with Marx's terms. This is happening when they haven't seen each other for years. Malatesta was a generation later anarchist, who considered Bakunin's collectivism (this is where Marx vs Gothe Program comes in), IE Workers ownership of production and social governance without yet the abolition of value, as a needed transitional stage to anarcho-communism. You would be paid for how much you worked. His group used the term collectivism for this, which they though inferior to what they called communism. They didn't use the term DOTP to describe this, he said (right after 1917) there were 2 ways to see the DOTP. "perhaps the truth is simply this, that our Bolshevized friends intend with the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat” merely the revolutionary act of the workers in taking possession of the land and of the instruments of labor and trying to constitute a society for organizing a mode of life in which there would be no place for a class that exploited and oppressed the producers. Understood so, the dictatorship of the proletariat would be the effective power of all the workers intent on breaking down capitalist society, and it would become anarchy immediately upon the cessation of reactionary resistance, and no one would attempt by force to make the masses obey him and work for him. And then our dissent would have to do only with words. Dictatorship of the proletariat should signify dictatorship of all which certainly does not mean dictatorship, as a government of all is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historic, practical sense of the word." The other is, the political centralisation needed for defense of the russian revolution from external enemies, which he thought was doomed. "Lenin, Trotsky and their companions are certainly sincere revolutionaries-as they understand the revolution, and they will not betray it; but they prepare the governmental cadres that will serve those that will come, who will profit from the revolution and kill it. They will be the first victims of their method, and with them, I fear, will fall the revolution."
Being contrarian to the point you talk yourself into believing that the petty bourgeoisie who own their own means of production and are able to take a month off work to be annoying in public using those very same means of production are the real working class.
Well it's a good job that nobody made a comparison like that then isn't it. Instead I was pointing out that performaning a multi-week long capital strike by ceasing to use $100,000ish pieces of machinery to reproduce themselves and instead using them to be annoying in public would be a capital heavy act and somewhat outside the realms of that which is possible for a the average pizza delivery driver. But you know, I'm open to being persuaded that the social base is fascism is the new proletariat, so please, do expand on your argument.
These conversations are always quite rich so I struggle to focus on any specific point. I will share some of my thoughts. My understanding of Marx’s attitude towards the Paris Commune, in fact you can see this time and again with him, is that he was not afraid of potentially undermining the current state of a movement in the face of fresh developments. Indeed he was criticised by other some other socialists for saddling the movement with it. This should be a lesson to us all. I wonder what Chris makes of Korsch’ ‘Marxism and Psychology’. Typical of Korsch to write an interesting essay and plaster it with dead-ends and insanity. Referring to the political education of the working class: “This would be even worse than the old well-known social democratic illusion that the social revolution presupposes the revolutionary man who can only be the outcome of a long process of mass education.” Referring to the institutions and organisations developed by the labour movement: “However, the real social function of this revolutionary education and its practical achievements became apparent in Hitler’s Kraft durch Freude.” The latter is more plausible than the former in so far as bonpartism/fascism represents the failure/defeat of a socialist revolution but to posit it as inevitably leading to concentration camps is delirious to me. The patreon section was fantastic. The final thought was poignant and I am reminded of what Lenin allegedly said to his wife about the Lafargues taking their own lives: "If you can't do any more work for the Party you must be able to face the truth and die like the Lafargues." I’m certainly not advocating for anyone to take their own life but it does demonstrate how central the party was to people. I don’t think we 21st century people really understand or feel this strongly about anything.
Thanks! About that later Korsch essay after he had turned against Lenin and Marxism more generally, it adopts a decidedly undialectical view of psychology such that he proposes "revolutionary kindergartens" etc. as the solution to capitalist authoritarianism. I am a follower rather of the Frankfurt School with Adorno and Marcuse's pursuit of a Marxist critique of Freudianism as a symptom of capitalism, taking up the phenomenon Freud described of a self-contradictory psychology as the manifestation in the individual of the societal contradiction historically between bourgeois values/ideals and industrial realities in capitalism leading to contradictory tendencies of adaptation between individualism vs collectivism, freedom vs adaptation etc. I wrote about this in a couple of essays in my forthcoming Sublation book, including one titled "Adorno and Freud."
I'm still working my way through the reading recommendations you provided a few months ago re: Frankfurt School and i very much look forward to reading your next book. However, I am a little confused here. It's been a while since I've properly read Korsch' essay but my understanding was that he is critical of Reich/Sex-Pol precisely because he saw it as continuation of the Social Democratic politicisation of private life i.e. socialist social clubs. In one of the quotes i provided above, the prior sentence is "If, therefore, the dissipation of ideologies in the masses must be a condition for the overthrow of society, the logical conclusion would be that we must first reform the family or, in other words, that we must revolutionize the kindergarten to effect a social revolution. This would be even worse than the old well-known social democratic illusion..." I read this as him saying psychoanalysis is not up to the task either and it is taken as given that of course revolutionary kindergartens are a silly idea. Am I misreading this or does Korsch famously change his mind (again)? @@ccutrone
Viruses don't see race/class; cops do. It made little sense for truckers to pull the "as a worker"-card and inject class-based identity politics into a medical issue. One trade stepped out of line while most everybody else remained fairly rational, e.g. retail workers directly exposed to strangers vs. truckers getting out of their cabins at loading docks. The George Floyd protests were big-tent discontent, and race was the pertinent issue with lower-class people being more heavily policed
...should i not be sympathetic to them because they are right wing workers... its a very important question ... should be discussed even more i think / surely that protest freaked the hell out of the media and the establishment 😮 whoa... i stopped attending right wing working class gatherings because i started to notice the confederate flags.... while before that, i saw them as fellow people... and connected on many real levels... but once the sheer politics came to the fore... i felt like i was attending a kkk rally. now... how much of that was me projecting that? is a good question. but once i saw them only in those terms, it was impossible to see past it. maybe this was an error.... its very difficult... maybe some are racist...i just don't know...how many of them... are or aren't... what do you think. the whole thing was so horrible...because until then... it was more of a working class solidarity. there's a lot of assumptions on both sides....
to my mind...you cant be more working class than being a trucker...but.. i guess there is tye definition of...? the labor relations to capital? um. i have no clue. they seem as working class as it gets
The rhetoric of the title is hyperbolic and click-baity, like most of this channel's videos. But my basic response would be that the fact that someone "ruling" me is a "worker" makes no principle difference, and I have no more reason to accept the whimsy of a random "worker" over anyone else. The concept of switching which group "rules" just isn't a solution to the problem of politics at all. Cutrone just seems like a contrarian who leads himself to take bad positions in the name of what he thinks being a true Marxist means. Doug just jerks him off along the way.
Trucker convoy is just a single issue protest movement? Thats just silly. It was kind of wierd that bit where you argued against the silly hamas supporting leftist that imagined that hamas was actually progressive and woke. I almost think you would get it but it just ended with "but the trucker protests are just totally different". I literally cringed.
This was a really clarifying talk, thanks doug & chris.
Chris is like the summer school teacher that you expected to hate but then end up learning more in a 3 week class than over the course of the school year.
The Robin De Angelo being part of Revaluation Co Counseling comment is so sweet, in an ironically humorous way. I know RC well and it's a bonkers psuedo left wing therapy cult. You explained so much to me with that simple throw away comment. There is some truth in RC, ie that moving through things, changing our situations and ideas can be intensely emotional as anyone who has been part of a relationship that ends, divorce, death etc, knows and that friends supporting us can ease those transitions but the RC ideology is bonkers.
Well the trucker convoy was largely white from being there on the first day, not sure that changes much. The Canadian Truckers Alliance had a large majority of its members vote to have common sense health and safety measures regarding COVID same rate as nationally no matter how dystopian some of the laws ended up being. The discontents were more with a large minority like 15-20% rather than being specific to truckers.
44:00 *The vanguard party and Marxist idea of sublation of 19th century*
“The party’s not actually supposed to be the vanguard-it’s supposed to be the party that the vanguard needs. So the idea is that the vanguard is the working class. The working class is the vanguard of democracy and of social democracy and democratic revolution, democratic aspirations of the people-the workers are in the leading edge of that struggle and they need a party of their own. So it’s a party _of_ the vanguard, not the party itself being the vanguard.
However as it turns out, once that party is established then the party does take on a vanguard role […] it’s civil/social organizing. And again that’s where it’s kind of like, well it starts to look like-‘oh don’t you mean a party dictatorship then?’ And it’s like-but it’s not really meant to be that either, it’s supposed to aufhebung (sublate) all these things that came up in the 19th century [the mass democratic movement party _and_ the social-action mutual aid society _and_ the military-like takeover of the capitalist state for working class]
[…] Marxism is meant to sublate (take up) all those things that appear to be alternatives, but their idea is that they’re all expressing aspects of this necessity, this task. Alright that there are different levels, different aspects, different dimensions of this common task of what kind of a political and social revolution is necessary to get out of capitalism.
[…] So they basically feel that the 19th century is the time when the working class is learning through all these experiments, all the different things it has to do to be able to overcome capitalism. The 20th century is the unraveling of that and the division-so you’re either like a party vanguard type person or you’re like a Paris commune radical democracy person or you’re a radical syndicalist, right.”
"The deplorables" tend to be non-college educated but somewhat higher than average income.
I tried to join the electrical union after separating from the military, there was a wait list of a year or more to get a job. Good pay and benefits even before becoming licensed but they wouldn't recognize my experience as an enlisted electrician at all.
I listened to all of this, especially about Cutrone's ideas on "The Party," its history, purpose, development and I thought, "well thats a bit bleedin obvious," as opposed to quite a lot of his writing where I think, "whats he bleedin on about?" Maybe I have hung around Platypus media so long, read books on non violent revolutionary strategy (which will not be too different from violent revolutionary strategy in ots strategic aims) trade union and community organising for so long it all falls into place in my head? I found this one strangely reasuring, as I type my comment in my corner of poverty in my council bedsit wondering when the left will actually give a toss about how we live round here?
The partial history of how left wing parties degenerated into vanguard cults, I'd like to hear more about that, and how civil society was decimated in the civil war in Russia were also illuminating.
Thanks for this one.
Your comment is one of the most interesting comments I've read in ages. Can't exactly say why. I wish you lived next door to me.
I live in nyc, and share much of that sentiment,haha@peternyc
@@David-os5fx Cool, David. America is so uptight and has been my entire life. People here always seem like they are proud and have something to prove. It makes me afraid to go out of my house sometimes. No one here is a person. Everyone here feels they are something to be proud of. Ugh.
I'd like that too but unfortunately O live in England
Bakunin (who was a Hegelian, BTW and the 1st translator of Das Kapital into Russian) gets misunderstood way too much (he wasn't mainly a writer or theorist so that's easy to get away with), but he was not a promoter of invisible dictatorship, and he called himself a socialist and supported the paris commune. "We must realize, too, that the majority of the members of the Commune were not socialists, properly speaking. If they appeared to be, it was because they were drawn in this direction by the irresistible course of events, the nature of the situation, the necessities of their position" 1871.
A lot of the theory beef between bakunin and marx is actually organizational and personal rivalry at a time when they were not even bothering to learn each others' positions, and were responding to 2nd hand information. So, much of Marx's take on Bakunin is more a critique of Proudhon on one hand and Nechaev on the other, than it is of Bakunin's positions -- and much of his attacks on Marx's ideas are really on what he thinks Marx thinks, but are Lasalle's and others' ideas mixed up with Marx's terms. This is happening when they haven't seen each other for years.
Malatesta was a generation later anarchist, who considered Bakunin's collectivism (this is where Marx vs Gothe Program comes in), IE Workers ownership of production and social governance without yet the abolition of value, as a needed transitional stage to anarcho-communism. You would be paid for how much you worked. His group used the term collectivism for this, which they though inferior to what they called communism. They didn't use the term DOTP to describe this, he said (right after 1917) there were 2 ways to see the DOTP.
"perhaps the truth is simply this, that our Bolshevized friends intend with the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat” merely the revolutionary act of the workers in taking possession of the land and of the instruments of labor and trying to constitute a society for organizing a mode of life in which there would be no place for a class that exploited and oppressed the producers. Understood so, the dictatorship of the proletariat would be the effective power of all the workers intent on breaking down capitalist society, and it would become anarchy immediately upon the cessation of reactionary resistance, and no one would attempt by force to make the masses obey him and work for him. And then our dissent would have to do only with words. Dictatorship of the proletariat should signify dictatorship of all which certainly does not mean dictatorship, as a government of all is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historic, practical sense of the word."
The other is, the political centralisation needed for defense of the russian revolution from external enemies, which he thought was doomed. "Lenin, Trotsky and their companions are certainly sincere revolutionaries-as they understand the revolution, and they will not betray it; but they prepare the governmental cadres that will serve those that will come, who will profit from the revolution and kill it. They will be the first victims of their method, and with them, I fear, will fall the revolution."
All the comments you make on the Bakunin and Marx situation are correct
Being contrarian to the point you talk yourself into believing that the petty bourgeoisie who own their own means of production and are able to take a month off work to be annoying in public using those very same means of production are the real working class.
Calling a pizza delivery guy petty bouge because he owns his car and calling that car 'his own means of production' would be powerfully stupid.
Well it's a good job that nobody made a comparison like that then isn't it. Instead I was pointing out that performaning a multi-week long capital strike by ceasing to use $100,000ish pieces of machinery to reproduce themselves and instead using them to be annoying in public would be a capital heavy act and somewhat outside the realms of that which is possible for a the average pizza delivery driver. But you know, I'm open to being persuaded that the social base is fascism is the new proletariat, so please, do expand on your argument.
Lumpenproletariahoopywhooptydooismschismocracratic rule is inevitable. Socialism or barbarism.
Also, they were not truckers. The Canadian Trucking Alliance, the PSAC and others condemned the convoy.
Good artists are inspired but great artists steal.
18:28 what a weird hyperbolic "explanation" of what he thinks other think a revolution is like
It is what people think a revolution is.
@@sublationmedia could you point me to where this view of the revolution is propounded on by 'people"? why be vague like that?
These conversations are always quite rich so I struggle to focus on any specific point. I will share some of my thoughts.
My understanding of Marx’s attitude towards the Paris Commune, in fact you can see this time and again with him, is that he was not afraid of potentially undermining the current state of a movement in the face of fresh developments. Indeed he was criticised by other some other socialists for saddling the movement with it. This should be a lesson to us all.
I wonder what Chris makes of Korsch’ ‘Marxism and Psychology’. Typical of Korsch to write an interesting essay and plaster it with dead-ends and insanity. Referring to the political education of the working class: “This would be even worse than the old well-known social democratic illusion that the social revolution presupposes the revolutionary man who can only be the outcome of a long process of mass education.” Referring to the institutions and organisations developed by the labour movement: “However, the real social function of this revolutionary education and its practical achievements became apparent in Hitler’s Kraft durch Freude.” The latter is more plausible than the former in so far as bonpartism/fascism represents the failure/defeat of a socialist revolution but to posit it as inevitably leading to concentration camps is delirious to me.
The patreon section was fantastic. The final thought was poignant and I am reminded of what Lenin allegedly said to his wife about the Lafargues taking their own lives: "If you can't do any more work for the Party you must be able to face the truth and die like the Lafargues." I’m certainly not advocating for anyone to take their own life but it does demonstrate how central the party was to people. I don’t think we 21st century people really understand or feel this strongly about anything.
Thanks! About that later Korsch essay after he had turned against Lenin and Marxism more generally, it adopts a decidedly undialectical view of psychology such that he proposes "revolutionary kindergartens" etc. as the solution to capitalist authoritarianism. I am a follower rather of the Frankfurt School with Adorno and Marcuse's pursuit of a Marxist critique of Freudianism as a symptom of capitalism, taking up the phenomenon Freud described of a self-contradictory psychology as the manifestation in the individual of the societal contradiction historically between bourgeois values/ideals and industrial realities in capitalism leading to contradictory tendencies of adaptation between individualism vs collectivism, freedom vs adaptation etc. I wrote about this in a couple of essays in my forthcoming Sublation book, including one titled "Adorno and Freud."
I'm still working my way through the reading recommendations you provided a few months ago re: Frankfurt School and i very much look forward to reading your next book. However, I am a little confused here. It's been a while since I've properly read Korsch' essay but my understanding was that he is critical of Reich/Sex-Pol precisely because he saw it as continuation of the Social Democratic politicisation of private life i.e. socialist social clubs. In one of the quotes i provided above, the prior sentence is "If, therefore, the dissipation of ideologies in the masses must be a condition for the overthrow of society, the logical conclusion would be that we must first reform the family or, in other words, that we must revolutionize the kindergarten to effect a social revolution. This would be even worse than the old well-known social democratic illusion..." I read this as him saying psychoanalysis is not up to the task either and it is taken as given that of course revolutionary kindergartens are a silly idea. Am I misreading this or does Korsch famously change his mind (again)? @@ccutrone
You’re right: I somehow misremembered that essay by Korsch and will reread it!
Viruses don't see race/class; cops do. It made little sense for truckers to pull the "as a worker"-card and inject class-based identity politics into a medical issue. One trade stepped out of line while most everybody else remained fairly rational, e.g. retail workers directly exposed to strangers vs. truckers getting out of their cabins at loading docks. The George Floyd protests were big-tent discontent, and race was the pertinent issue with lower-class people being more heavily policed
...should i not be sympathetic to them because they are right wing workers... its a very important question ... should be discussed even more i think / surely that protest freaked the hell out of the media and the establishment 😮 whoa... i stopped attending right wing working class gatherings because i started to notice the confederate flags.... while before that, i saw them as fellow people... and connected on many real levels... but once the sheer politics came to the fore... i felt like i was attending a kkk rally. now... how much of that was me projecting that? is a good question. but once i saw them only in those terms, it was impossible to see past it. maybe this was an error.... its very difficult... maybe some are racist...i just don't know...how many of them... are or aren't... what do you think. the whole thing was so horrible...because until then... it was more of a working class solidarity. there's a lot of assumptions on both sides....
and as far as petite boug... to me..thats kinda the same as working class.. isnt it? omg
aparrently i have a lot to learn.
to my mind...you cant be more working class than being a trucker...but.. i guess there is tye definition of...? the labor relations to capital? um. i have no clue. they seem as working class as it gets
The rhetoric of the title is hyperbolic and click-baity, like most of this channel's videos. But my basic response would be that the fact that someone "ruling" me is a "worker" makes no principle difference, and I have no more reason to accept the whimsy of a random "worker" over anyone else. The concept of switching which group "rules" just isn't a solution to the problem of politics at all. Cutrone just seems like a contrarian who leads himself to take bad positions in the name of what he thinks being a true Marxist means. Doug just jerks him off along the way.
Trucker convoy is just a single issue protest movement? Thats just silly. It was kind of wierd that bit where you argued against the silly hamas supporting leftist that imagined that hamas was actually progressive and woke. I almost think you would get it but it just ended with "but the trucker protests are just totally different". I literally cringed.