“Don't forget, as busy as you may be, to quickly raise your head and cast a glance at those great silver clouds and that silent blue ocean in which they are swimming...take notice of the resplendence and glory that overlie this day...because this day will never, ever come again! This day is a gift to you like a rose in full bloom, lying at your feet, waiting for you to pick it up and press it to your lips.” ― Rosa Luxemburg
I am finding the historical overview starting around 19 minutes in to be very helpful in my quest to understand the distinctions between Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Kruschevites, and on and on. Not to mention the -- what's the word, even? -- academics? intellectuals? theorists? -- people like the Bernsteins, the Postones, the Adornos, the DeBords. I know it's on me to do the work of reading but I appreciate having some milestones and context for understanding how things have played out so far, from 1848 till today. At minute 41 or so the discussion is digging into the details of 1968 France and I feel myself getting lost and overwhelmed again.
Would love to see Cutrone interviewed by someone tougher. Doug is great at giving him setups but just doesnt have the affect to really push him on some of his historicization and ideologizing which he often presents as settled gospel.
Cutrone's statement about convincing intellectuals and the ideology is very revealing. Because it shows precisely the kind of defect that MLM is a good treatment for. MLM overcomes the traditional problems of the "What is to be done?"-Leninist form of framing of the problem of the Party, or rather the traditional problems in how people receive it. It is clear in Lenin -and good non-communist readers of Lenin, like Zizek actually appreciate this- that the point is not the opposition that Kautsky-Bernstein social democracy puts between the intellectuals of the Party, who have the "science", that have to meet the masses of the proletariat and "fuse" with them for revolution. Lenin actually argues for the opposition of bourgeois and proletarian ideology, for ideological struggle, inside of the proletariat. And that is what the Party is for: to be the keeper of that ideology, in order to be able to be the organ of the proletariat for revolution (good communist readers of Lenin like Bordiga would synthesize it thusly). That is the fusion of the masses with the vanguard. Now, Lenin already knew something else: he knew that what the Party is the link -and only the link- between the vanguard and the masses. (The Committee for the Reconstitution in Spain, a postMLM organization, argues very convincly on this). The vanguard, the most clear theoretically of the working class, the most courageous in struggle, is to approach the masses to move them forward. And viceversa, sometimes the masses are the ones pushing, with their spontaneity, the Party forward, reaching an overcoming of the existing vanguard. Without a Party to concentrate all of this, revolution will not be possible. And the discussions will be between intellectuals.
A rather unique political animal in relation to your discussion is The Situationists' teacher Henri Lefebvre. He left or was expelled (it's a bit unclear) from the PCF in 1956 because of the Algerian question. But he had been an anti-Stalinist ever since he became a party member in the 1920s, and he wrote a pretty cocky critical response to Stalin's Historical and Dialectical Materialism in the 1930s named simply Dialectical Materialism. During the 1960s he focused his research and activities on the urban question and the New Left, but always remained a communist, a humanist (emphasising the importance of the subject and intentionality) and a Marxist-Leninist. In the 1970s he once more came closer to the PCF, but without ever compromising his critical standpoints.
-ite: follower of a person, i.e., in a factional dispute with no regard to differences in philosophy; -ist: follower of a school of thought. Trotsky’s critique of Stalinism goes beyond factionalism, and thus it’s fairer to use the term ‘Trotskyism/Trotskyists’ rather than ‘Trotskyites’. Even Trotskyists use the term ‘Stalinism’, recognizing that there was a deep philosophical difference, not merely a factional one. Both Stalinists and liberals tend to use ‘Trotskyite’. The former to dismiss Trotsky and his co-thinkers as factional ‘wreckers’ and to not engage with the philosophical critique; and the latter to argue that there is no real philosophical distinction between Trotskyism and Stalinism; it’s all perfidious communism.
-In Germany, you lack blood In 1918 because it is a bourgeois process of political actualization of bourgeois rule. You have blood in 1919 because it was part of the proletarian revolution. -In 1917 (the 2 times) there is little blood -but certainly there was- because Czarism was the weakest link in the imperialist chain. But then you have the Civil War, and then there is a huge spill of blood. The insurrection of 1917 -"October"- is not the Revolution in Russia, but just a point. It starts in 1905, arguably, attains power in 1917, vies for that power until 1922, and then the counterrevolutionary tendency starts being imposed between 1924 and 1927, becoming definitely dominant and liquidating the revolution in 1936.
I find Marxists talk about the cultural revolution as some theoretical basis of an ideology that is really nothing more than a cult of personality that even Mao in his time, was trying to cultivate. Historically, the cultural revolution was a response to the growing factions within the CCP and state apparatus and to Mao's own increasing paranoia about the democratization of the CCP. It wasn't really a "response to bureaucratization," it was primarily a way for Mao to clean house and to centralize power around him by unleashing the peasant masses against his enemies.
@@obrotherwhereartliam I'm not gonna get too wordy in a RUclips comment, but I think Mao had philosophical and ideological reasons for the CR that were rooted in his interpretation of dialectical materialism.
Yeah, this is by far her most opportunist saying. She even decided not to publish her first critique of the Russian Revolution since she understood it was politically unsavvy.
@@felooosailing957 “Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.” ― Rosa Luxemburg
@@dada.int.unlmtd again, you know very well how she refrained to publish this text because it is basically a liberal's complaint to the concrete reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Her important observations are on the peasant and land question, and about proletarian internationalism and pushing the revolution forward... Which of course you know because the text both opens and closes with praise and solidarity for the Russian Revolution, and is clear that, if anyone is to blame for the difficulties of the Russian Revolution according to Luxemburg, it is first and foremost the Second International, and especially its leading force the German socialdemocracy, that had been unable to carry revolution forward. We all know later what happened: who hers and the proletariat's real enemies were.
@@dada.int.unlmtd democracy is the form of rule of the bourgeoisie by excellence. All democracies have been, ever since their oligarchic prehistory in Greece, or their primal forms like cantonal Switzerland, and finally it's current iteration as parliamentary, is an exercise in class struggle on behalf of the ruling class, through the State, both to regulate their own competition, and for their imposition unto the oppressed classes. There is no "pure", or rather abstract, democracy, to be realized in communism. Democracy -as everything else- is historical and concrete. (The writings of Bordiga, Vercesi and other of the internationalist communist Left have a very compelling, systematic argument on the matter). When socialdemocracy adopted that name, they ended up being right: since despite their stark theoretical differences, both Kautsky's and Bernstein's practice pointed to an exercise the control of social capital through democracy -i.e. parliamentarism, and mass action, but only through the proper institutional channels, and with the approved methods- in order to regulate it's transformation unto communism, which is of course impossible -due to the critique of political economy-, and therefore "reformist", i.e. fetishizing reforms as such -as per Luxemburg's reasoning-, in that it is behaving like the left hand of Capital. This is why the Lenin argument just before and at the beginning of the October Revolution is, in the end, right. The dictatorship of the proletariat has to be authoritarian, has to be an exercise of revolutionary violence, so that "democracy" -by which he means now only proper mass action and spontaneity- can properly take place in the self-transformation of the proletariat and other oppressed classes. PS: since we commemorate the life of Luxemburg this very day, let's be honest with her and understand that she was murdered at the behest of socialdemocracy, in order to exercise the mandates of capital. It is imprecise to argue that Noske "personified" the bourgeoisie: capitalists "personify" capital in the mode of production; the State as such "personifies" capital in all capitalist social formations; socialdemocracy personified capital by occupying the State.
I love Chris but I feel like he’s always trying to be that wojak meme with the glasses who’s like “oh you thought this? Well this was actually that was this:_____ what do you think about that?” always trying to be oppositional to whatever he’s talking about (which I kind of respect). But a lot of time he’s actually right and we do need people that are non dogmatists even if sometimes they have insane takes. You should have him back on to talk about understanding western Maoism
He was a shit theorist, used to be a femboy/twink (which is actually based), didn’t lead the revolution, and didn’t die before the end of the civil war
I love Chris but I feel like he’s always trying to be that wojak meme with the glasses who’s like “oh you thought this? Well this was actually that was this:_____ what do you think about that?” always trying to be oppositional to whatever he’s talking about (which I kind of respect). But a lot of time he’s actually right and we do need people that are non dogmatists even if sometimes they have insane takes.
Idk I think it’s really 1939 that we are living in the shadow of - there’s a massive qualitative change that occurs in the power of the Capitalist state (going from 1-5% of GDP to ~50% of GDP). I suppose it’s a continuation of the same crisis of 1848 literally, but the Stalinist crisis hasn’t ended.
This two are talking about a diagram that had been proven both wrong and murderous and trying to insist it as if it works! 😂😂 the very definition of insanity!
Wow! This was baffling. No distinction between Mao Tse Tung thought and Maoism? No mention of the black panthers, Amiri Baraka, Noel Ignatiev, Theodore Allen, J. Sakai, and Domenico Losurdo. --- let's talk about the anti socialist Frankfurt Theory and pretend Maoists were more about the critique of bureaucracy, instead of a critique of the white working class and looking for other proletariats. Deeply myopic from a trot frankfurter world view.... Don't waste your time on this discussion, if you want to learn about western maoists. Only one lame brief mention of Badiou and Avakian....
Actually the conversation was pretty clear about the distinction - that's why the PCF was discussed as well as Khruschev, Sino-Soviet Split, etc. I don't know that one can reduce Maoism to "Hard Crackers," (this is US centric, you Westerner) let alone pretend like the critique of the bureaucracy wasn't a concern You don't have any response except they didn't mention your favorite people - that's what cowards do. They don't deal with what is mentioned and selfishly have the world revolve around them.
I am proud to be a coward. I have been called one since protesting Vietnam. Focusing on the content. They did not engage western Maoists. One sentence that mentioned Badiou and Avakian. They talked about Adorno repeatedly, not a Maoist. The largest grouping of Maoists in the USA were the Black Panthers. Not group that discussed bureaucracy much except in dual power terms.
"anti socialist Frankfurt Theory" so the Frankfurt school is anti-socialist, but your Ignatiev's, Allen's, and Sakai's, with their white-skin privilege theories, are Marxists? I know people try to treat Maoism as a genuine outgrowth of real historical conditions, struggles, etc., maybe this approach is more generous and dialectical (maybe), but its hard to steel man an ideological tradition whose standing "thought-leaders" are so unapologetically retarded, blood-thirsty (ala Peru), self-hating, or some combination of the three. Seriously, how does a single ideological tradition capture (let alone maintain over decades) such pure, undistilled stupidity as Maoism? Is it the third-grade level English of its translations? The vacuous sloganeering made for peasants and maladjusted high schoolers? Is it the cultish obedience fostered by its organizations? Idk. idk. Its honestly incredible that Doug and Chris were able to extract anything worth talking about from the tradition, which says more about their intellectual talents than anything of the writers you mentioned (with exceptions, perhaps, for Losurdo and Badiou).
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
“Don't forget, as busy as you may be, to quickly raise your head and cast a glance at those great silver clouds and that silent blue ocean in which they are swimming...take notice of the resplendence and glory that overlie this day...because this day will never, ever come again! This day is a gift to you like a rose in full bloom, lying at your feet, waiting for you to pick it up and press it to your lips.”
― Rosa Luxemburg
@44:00 on putting the cart before the horse… THANK YOU! This is why I sometimes find myself not giving a shit about the anarchist-marxist debates.
I am finding the historical overview starting around 19 minutes in to be very helpful in my quest to understand the distinctions between Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, Kruschevites, and on and on. Not to mention the -- what's the word, even? -- academics? intellectuals? theorists? -- people like the Bernsteins, the Postones, the Adornos, the DeBords. I know it's on me to do the work of reading but I appreciate having some milestones and context for understanding how things have played out so far, from 1848 till today. At minute 41 or so the discussion is digging into the details of 1968 France and I feel myself getting lost and overwhelmed again.
It's hard, maybe even impossible, to read all the theory! Good summaries are critical I think.
Would love to see Cutrone interviewed by someone tougher. Doug is great at giving him setups but just doesnt have the affect to really push him on some of his historicization and ideologizing which he often presents as settled gospel.
Fantastic stuff. Well done both Chris and Doug. Really thoughtful. Breath of fresh air. So, so knowledgeable.
Cutrone's statement about convincing intellectuals and the ideology is very revealing. Because it shows precisely the kind of defect that MLM is a good treatment for. MLM overcomes the traditional problems of the "What is to be done?"-Leninist form of framing of the problem of the Party, or rather the traditional problems in how people receive it.
It is clear in Lenin -and good non-communist readers of Lenin, like Zizek actually appreciate this- that the point is not the opposition that Kautsky-Bernstein social democracy puts between the intellectuals of the Party, who have the "science", that have to meet the masses of the proletariat and "fuse" with them for revolution. Lenin actually argues for the opposition of bourgeois and proletarian ideology, for ideological struggle, inside of the proletariat. And that is what the Party is for: to be the keeper of that ideology, in order to be able to be the organ of the proletariat for revolution (good communist readers of Lenin like Bordiga would synthesize it thusly). That is the fusion of the masses with the vanguard.
Now, Lenin already knew something else: he knew that what the Party is the link -and only the link- between the vanguard and the masses. (The Committee for the Reconstitution in Spain, a postMLM organization, argues very convincly on this). The vanguard, the most clear theoretically of the working class, the most courageous in struggle, is to approach the masses to move them forward. And viceversa, sometimes the masses are the ones pushing, with their spontaneity, the Party forward, reaching an overcoming of the existing vanguard.
Without a Party to concentrate all of this, revolution will not be possible. And the discussions will be between intellectuals.
Do we need to go behind the paywall to get the critique of western maoism?
A rather unique political animal in relation to your discussion is The Situationists' teacher Henri Lefebvre. He left or was expelled (it's a bit unclear) from the PCF in 1956 because of the Algerian question. But he had been an anti-Stalinist ever since he became a party member in the 1920s, and he wrote a pretty cocky critical response to Stalin's Historical and Dialectical Materialism in the 1930s named simply Dialectical Materialism. During the 1960s he focused his research and activities on the urban question and the New Left, but always remained a communist, a humanist (emphasising the importance of the subject and intentionality) and a Marxist-Leninist. In the 1970s he once more came closer to the PCF, but without ever compromising his critical standpoints.
I'm aware of Lefebvre but need to return to his work. I have his Dialectical Materialism book.
When is Cutrone's new book coming out? I think I need to read it to understand his critique of stalinism.
Forthcoming in the next few months!
-ite: follower of a person, i.e., in a factional dispute with no regard to differences in philosophy;
-ist: follower of a school of thought.
Trotsky’s critique of Stalinism goes beyond factionalism, and thus it’s fairer to use the term ‘Trotskyism/Trotskyists’ rather than ‘Trotskyites’. Even Trotskyists use the term ‘Stalinism’, recognizing that there was a deep philosophical difference, not merely a factional one. Both Stalinists and liberals tend to use ‘Trotskyite’. The former to dismiss Trotsky and his co-thinkers as factional ‘wreckers’ and to not engage with the philosophical critique; and the latter to argue that there is no real philosophical distinction between Trotskyism and Stalinism; it’s all perfidious communism.
-In Germany, you lack blood In 1918 because it is a bourgeois process of political actualization of bourgeois rule. You have blood in 1919 because it was part of the proletarian revolution.
-In 1917 (the 2 times) there is little blood -but certainly there was- because Czarism was the weakest link in the imperialist chain. But then you have the Civil War, and then there is a huge spill of blood. The insurrection of 1917 -"October"- is not the Revolution in Russia, but just a point. It starts in 1905, arguably, attains power in 1917, vies for that power until 1922, and then the counterrevolutionary tendency starts being imposed between 1924 and 1927, becoming definitely dominant and liquidating the revolution in 1936.
And this is about Maoism?
I find Marxists talk about the cultural revolution as some theoretical basis of an ideology that is really nothing more than a cult of personality that even Mao in his time, was trying to cultivate. Historically, the cultural revolution was a response to the growing factions within the CCP and state apparatus and to Mao's own increasing paranoia about the democratization of the CCP. It wasn't really a "response to bureaucratization," it was primarily a way for Mao to clean house and to centralize power around him by unleashing the peasant masses against his enemies.
I think you're greatly underestimating Mao's dialectical thinking by describing the cultural revolution this way
@ what do you mean by dialectical?
@@obrotherwhereartliam I'm not gonna get too wordy in a RUclips comment, but I think Mao had philosophical and ideological reasons for the CR that were rooted in his interpretation of dialectical materialism.
@@obrotherwhereartliam there's also the context of the Soviet union and what was developing there that mao seemingly wanted to avoid
“Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter (Freheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden)”
― Rosa Luxemburg
Yeah, this is by far her most opportunist saying. She even decided not to publish her first critique of the Russian Revolution since she understood it was politically unsavvy.
@@felooosailing957
“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.”
― Rosa Luxemburg
@@dada.int.unlmtd again, you know very well how she refrained to publish this text because it is basically a liberal's complaint to the concrete reality of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Her important observations are on the peasant and land question, and about proletarian internationalism and pushing the revolution forward... Which of course you know because the text both opens and closes with praise and solidarity for the Russian Revolution, and is clear that, if anyone is to blame for the difficulties of the Russian Revolution according to Luxemburg, it is first and foremost the Second International, and especially its leading force the German socialdemocracy, that had been unable to carry revolution forward. We all know later what happened: who hers and the proletariat's real enemies were.
@@felooosailing957 Well. It wasn't democracy as such, but the bourgeoisie personified by Noske and his Freikorps, wasn't it?
@@dada.int.unlmtd democracy is the form of rule of the bourgeoisie by excellence. All democracies have been, ever since their oligarchic prehistory in Greece, or their primal forms like cantonal Switzerland, and finally it's current iteration as parliamentary, is an exercise in class struggle on behalf of the ruling class, through the State, both to regulate their own competition, and for their imposition unto the oppressed classes. There is no "pure", or rather abstract, democracy, to be realized in communism. Democracy -as everything else- is historical and concrete. (The writings of Bordiga, Vercesi and other of the internationalist communist Left have a very compelling, systematic argument on the matter). When socialdemocracy adopted that name, they ended up being right: since despite their stark theoretical differences, both Kautsky's and Bernstein's practice pointed to an exercise the control of social capital through democracy -i.e. parliamentarism, and mass action, but only through the proper institutional channels, and with the approved methods- in order to regulate it's transformation unto communism, which is of course impossible -due to the critique of political economy-, and therefore "reformist", i.e. fetishizing reforms as such -as per Luxemburg's reasoning-, in that it is behaving like the left hand of Capital. This is why the Lenin argument just before and at the beginning of the October Revolution is, in the end, right. The dictatorship of the proletariat has to be authoritarian, has to be an exercise of revolutionary violence, so that "democracy" -by which he means now only proper mass action and spontaneity- can properly take place in the self-transformation of the proletariat and other oppressed classes. PS: since we commemorate the life of Luxemburg this very day, let's be honest with her and understand that she was murdered at the behest of socialdemocracy, in order to exercise the mandates of capital. It is imprecise to argue that Noske "personified" the bourgeoisie: capitalists "personify" capital in the mode of production; the State as such "personifies" capital in all capitalist social formations; socialdemocracy personified capital by occupying the State.
I love Chris but I feel like he’s always trying to be that wojak meme with the glasses who’s like “oh you thought this? Well this was actually that was this:_____ what do you think about that?” always trying to be oppositional to whatever he’s talking about (which I kind of respect). But a lot of time he’s actually right and we do need people that are non dogmatists even if sometimes they have insane takes. You should have him back on to talk about understanding western Maoism
What makes a Stalin a dictator and not Lenin?
Lenin started the Cheka
Lenin was a dictator, he just died earlier.
He was a shit theorist, used to be a femboy/twink (which is actually based), didn’t lead the revolution, and didn’t die before the end of the civil war
I love Chris but I feel like he’s always trying to be that wojak meme with the glasses who’s like “oh you thought this? Well this was actually that was this:_____ what do you think about that?” always trying to be oppositional to whatever he’s talking about (which I kind of respect). But a lot of time he’s actually right and we do need people that are non dogmatists even if sometimes they have insane takes.
Cutrone is right in that we are still in the wake of the conclusions of 1848. But to defend the PCF's criticism of May 68 is just wrong.
Idk I think it’s really 1939 that we are living in the shadow of - there’s a massive qualitative change that occurs in the power of the Capitalist state (going from 1-5% of GDP to ~50% of GDP). I suppose it’s a continuation of the same crisis of 1848 literally, but the Stalinist crisis hasn’t ended.
This two are talking about a diagram that had been proven both wrong and murderous and trying to insist it as if it works! 😂😂
Marx was a critic of socialism and capitalism, and didn't create blueprints for a future society.
This two are talking about a diagram that had been proven both wrong and murderous and trying to insist it as if it works! 😂😂 the very definition of insanity!
I agree, “Stalinism is a liquidation of Marxism”, and moreover, Leninism is a liquidation of Anarchism, Socialism and Communism.
Wow! This was baffling. No distinction between Mao Tse Tung thought and Maoism? No mention of the black panthers, Amiri Baraka, Noel Ignatiev, Theodore Allen, J. Sakai, and Domenico Losurdo. --- let's talk about the anti socialist Frankfurt Theory and pretend Maoists were more about the critique of bureaucracy, instead of a critique of the white working class and looking for other proletariats. Deeply myopic from a trot frankfurter world view....
Don't waste your time on this discussion, if you want to learn about western maoists.
Only one lame brief mention of Badiou and Avakian....
Do you have any videos or readings that better cover this topic? I'd definitely be interested in learning more about Maoists you listed.
Actually the conversation was pretty clear about the distinction - that's why the PCF was discussed as well as Khruschev, Sino-Soviet Split, etc.
I don't know that one can reduce Maoism to "Hard Crackers," (this is US centric, you Westerner) let alone pretend like the critique of the bureaucracy wasn't a concern
You don't have any response except they didn't mention your favorite people - that's what cowards do. They don't deal with what is mentioned and selfishly have the world revolve around them.
Baffling indeed! And the Frankfurt School was anti socialist because Adorno called the cops on protests? Are you for real, batlash?
I am proud to be a coward. I have been called one since protesting Vietnam.
Focusing on the content. They did not engage western Maoists. One sentence that mentioned Badiou and Avakian. They talked about Adorno repeatedly, not a Maoist.
The largest grouping of Maoists in the USA were the Black Panthers. Not group that discussed bureaucracy much except in dual power terms.
"anti socialist Frankfurt Theory" so the Frankfurt school is anti-socialist, but your Ignatiev's, Allen's, and Sakai's, with their white-skin privilege theories, are Marxists? I know people try to treat Maoism as a genuine outgrowth of real historical conditions, struggles, etc., maybe this approach is more generous and dialectical (maybe), but its hard to steel man an ideological tradition whose standing "thought-leaders" are so unapologetically retarded, blood-thirsty (ala Peru), self-hating, or some combination of the three.
Seriously, how does a single ideological tradition capture (let alone maintain over decades) such pure, undistilled stupidity as Maoism? Is it the third-grade level English of its translations? The vacuous sloganeering made for peasants and maladjusted high schoolers? Is it the cultish obedience fostered by its organizations? Idk. idk. Its honestly incredible that Doug and Chris were able to extract anything worth talking about from the tradition, which says more about their intellectual talents than anything of the writers you mentioned (with exceptions, perhaps, for Losurdo and Badiou).
Still a Trotskyist. Yawn