These conversations are so profound, so sensitive, so brutal, unflinching, rational and yet relatable and clearly communicated: these conversations between you two have very few equals recorded anywhere, let alone RUclips. Thanks to you both and all those working to put these here. YOU: DOUGLAS LAIN, CHRIS CUTRONE.
“Remember when Americans were afraid of Japan”. I recently read Mike Davis’ city of quartz. And even he was tut-tutting the rise of Japanese capital in Californian cities! This guy is supposed to be one of our *profound* intellectuals. Made me highly embarrassed of our left
Fanon's thought is often distorted and tokenized in the service of a politics that pretends that the emotional catharsis of armed struggle is in itself a political program that all those who are against colonialism should endorse unconditionally without any critical examination of the strategies and ideologies of the groups carrying it out, the specific context under which it happens, etc. This to me is an expression of a condescendingly simplistic understanding of colonized societies.
Aristotelan vs. modern freedom. Aristotelan doesn't sound like freedom at all. It would mean that because you are not starving or a slave, then you are free to grow up to become an Athenian, for instance. They couldn't imagine wanting to be anything other than the locally desireable epitome.
Genesis 2:10-14 (WEB) "A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there. The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. "
my understanding of the left and marxism has grown so much since being your student at SAIC and i finally feel i understand your and platypus’s program to an adequate level now
Depends on whose ego we’re talking. Some want a satisfaction for a fetishized vision, some want a better situation than the one before. Some want both.
My language of “game” was with respect to the political actors, Netanyahu and Hamas, i.e. what game are they playing? They are neither ethical nor military but political actors.
Doug, with all due respect you were very heavy handed with the interruptions on this one. I get it, RUclips demands a dynamic discussion but you must at least allow your guest to begin a response let alone letting them finish one! For example, I think you squandered an opportunity to explore the subject of the socialist movement in France prior to World War One. France was associated with the anti-parliamentarian, anti-party, anti-intellectual syndicalist movement or ‘le socialisme ouvrier’. But Jaures was not that and not even a revolutionary so it would have been useful to know what is redeeming about the French Socialist Party and his invocation of Marx. And on the other hand you have an antagonistic figure like Sorel, arguably the first antileftist marxist. How much this split between reform/theory/organisation and revolution/practice/spontaneity was conditioned by the Dreyfus affair, I don’t know. Labriola, a kind of parallel figure was also mentioned on another occasion before it could be expanded upon. I can’t help but feel that you sidestep these subjects because you subconsciously dread facing the reality that the millennial moment is well and truly over! The so-called left’s last hurrah is just that, finishing where they began: condemned to big useless protest demos forever until the sun burns out. Throw it all out!
Ok Chris, your a Star Wars fan. Let me ask you this; is the Emperor justified in using the Death Star against worlds that are suspected to have Rebel Alliance bases?
Réal politique way-yes. There are people fucking up with the empire, the empire needs to be secured to maintain its function. The state of Israel does owe it to the people of Israel for them not to be murdered and/or kidnapped. It’s not an ethical justification, it’s a political one. The claim to the state which is not secured by you is a tenuous one. Which is why you referred to Hamas as “rebels” despite being a pretty oppressive state in themselves. That doesn’t justify ethically or practically for shit the carpet bombing Israel does, it’s an explanation for why the hell do they react like that. Their duty is not for humanity or universal ethics, their duty is for the people they represent. And to save face, they answer the grief and rage of their people with grief and rage for the people of their attackers. Ethical? Nah that’s an infinite circle of violence. Satisfying hurt people enough so they’d vote for you again come next election? Maybe. It got the right winger fuckos this far. It’s more or less the only trick they got.
Although removing electoral politics doesn’t solve that equation. The other side of the coin is the same situation from the Hamas perspective. This isn’t the first Gazan rodeo, Hamas knows Israel is a rampaging elephant in a china shop collateral-wise. They still chosen to gamble with this attack which experience taught again and again would lead to such horrifying results. The decisions the ruling classes make in the current paradigm don’t see human lives, their own people’s or the civilians of their enemies, as much to bother about in itself. Appealing to morality here is just detached from how either actor chooses their actions
I’ve been repeatedly saying that I don’t think Israeli actions are justified, nor do I support or sympathize with them. I am discussing why it is happening for specific political reasons not moral depravity e.g. “genocide” etc. if there is one takeaway I want my audience to have it is the great difference between morality and politics, both in capitalism and in the struggle for socialism: terrorism is not the way socialism can possibly be achieved politically from a Marxist perspective because it disempowers and divides the working class along communitarian e.g. nationalist lines.
Why is Socialism morally preferable to you than Capitalism then? Why bother talking about any of this? You seem to be saying that what makes someone a terrorist or not is whether they successfully achieve Socialism via their political actions. The Rebel alliance didn’t achieve Socialism when they blew up the Death Star, so were they just terrorists, and deserve the full wrath of the Imperial crackdown that inevitably ensued? What about after they defeated the Empire, were they still terrorists then, or were they revolutionary’s now?
"Suggests"? "Settler-Colonialism" means all are settlers and therefore all are living on and benefiting from occupied land and hence guilty by default - including evidently immigrant workers and even Palestinian solidarity activists who were killed by Hamas. It's the same "logic" as the Israeli side towards the supposed "willing human shields for Hamas." But whereas Israel has to at least officially pretend to care about civilian casualties, the "pro-Palestinian Left" (they are to my mind neither Left nor actually pro-Palestinian) does not. But I realize that everything is about rhetoric, so . . . ?
I thonk Socialists distrust Democrats on censorship but the Republican efforts are easier to see. I understand that we should oppose both. But Republicans censorship is easier yo see.
It doesn't matter which committee of capitalist managers is more "visible", they're both enemies and any argument about which is better according to aesthetic is a complete waste of time. Any argument about which is better regarding "harm reduction" is an exercise in denying reality: working with them in any capacity is harmful, end of line, to the complete and total existence of a human future on this planet. We don't have time anymore, they're literally killing us all and getting away with it because of the slight gap in visible cause and effect on the climate.
I like Chris and he's great on the position and history of the Left, but man, on Palestine I just don't know where he's coming from. Seems like being contrarian for the sake of it. Israel has a right to defend itself? What are you saying! It's intellectual somersaults. Maybe the Left needs a wake-up call about Hamas and I take the broad point of "genocide or slavery," but unwillingness to call it a genocide (for reasons not quite clear to me from just this) seems willfully cocksure. I thing he's taken the inverse of the Stalinist position to such a degree he's lost sight of the immediate character of the conflict and its historical causes. Lenin advocates for supporting anti-colonial struggles, even when not proletarian-lead, very clearly in his theses on the colonial question, not because we think we can make them win, but to show national minorities that we're not in league with their enemies or callous to their suffering. Lenin writes that the European proletariat must convince the colonial peoples that internationalism is not a dead letter. Now, he also says don't support pan-Islamism. Point taken. But Chris seems to want to blame Hamas for *everything*, which is hardly the dialectical-historical approach to cause and effect. I'm sure he would deny this, but framing matters. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jun/05.htm
@@ccutrone I get that. Nor did I think you were! But sometimes I think we overthink the situation. War crimes are being committed, but there really is no functional international law any longer, if there ever was.
These conversations are so profound, so sensitive, so brutal, unflinching, rational and yet relatable and clearly communicated: these conversations between you two have very few equals recorded anywhere, let alone RUclips. Thanks to you both and all those working to put these here. YOU: DOUGLAS LAIN, CHRIS CUTRONE.
Lots of things like: capitalization 😉have a meaning, no!?
Thank you!
brilliantly summarized Doug! "to preclude socialism from our future, you are already presuming the idea of being rather than becoming"
“Remember when Americans were afraid of Japan”. I recently read Mike Davis’ city of quartz. And even he was tut-tutting the rise of Japanese capital in Californian cities! This guy is supposed to be one of our *profound* intellectuals. Made me highly embarrassed of our left
There's a difference though between saying you don't care if the Irish die out and someone or some government deliberately trying to make that happen.
Fanon's thought is often distorted and tokenized in the service of a politics that pretends that the emotional catharsis of armed struggle is in itself a political program that all those who are against colonialism should endorse unconditionally without any critical examination of the strategies and ideologies of the groups carrying it out, the specific context under which it happens, etc. This to me is an expression of a condescendingly simplistic understanding of colonized societies.
Aristotelan vs. modern freedom. Aristotelan doesn't sound like freedom at all. It would mean that because you are not starving or a slave, then you are free to grow up to become an Athenian, for instance. They couldn't imagine wanting to be anything other than the locally desireable epitome.
Genesis 2:10-14 (WEB) "A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was parted, and became the source of four rivers.
The name of the first is Pishon: it flows through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are also there.
The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the same river that flows through the whole land of Cush.
The name of the third river is Hiddekel. This is the one which flows in front of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. "
@1:12:45 Correction: I was wrong about Chris Christie: it was Jeb Bush who called Trump the "chaos candidate" in 2016.
my understanding of the left and marxism has grown so much since being your student at SAIC and i finally feel i understand your and platypus’s program to an adequate level now
Thanks Mike!
this video had so many funny hypotheticals, keep it up. the
chris is such an interesting thinker; and I don't even agree with all his views
Is that what war is essentially a game where the imperative is victory? I thought war has always been about the spoils.
Depends on whose ego we’re talking. Some want a satisfaction for a fetishized vision, some want a better situation than the one before. Some want both.
My language of “game” was with respect to the political actors, Netanyahu and Hamas, i.e. what game are they playing? They are neither ethical nor military but political actors.
To the victor
Have Conrad on again to debate his Heideggerian post modernism
Doug, with all due respect you were very heavy handed with the interruptions on this one. I get it, RUclips demands a dynamic discussion but you must at least allow your guest to begin a response let alone letting them finish one!
For example, I think you squandered an opportunity to explore the subject of the socialist movement in France prior to World War One. France was associated with the anti-parliamentarian, anti-party, anti-intellectual syndicalist movement or ‘le socialisme ouvrier’. But Jaures was not that and not even a revolutionary so it would have been useful to know what is redeeming about the French Socialist Party and his invocation of Marx. And on the other hand you have an antagonistic figure like Sorel, arguably the first antileftist marxist. How much this split between reform/theory/organisation and revolution/practice/spontaneity was conditioned by the Dreyfus affair, I don’t know. Labriola, a kind of parallel figure was also mentioned on another occasion before it could be expanded upon.
I can’t help but feel that you sidestep these subjects because you subconsciously dread facing the reality that the millennial moment is well and truly over! The so-called left’s last hurrah is just that, finishing where they began: condemned to big useless protest demos forever until the sun burns out. Throw it all out!
Ok Chris, your a Star Wars fan. Let me ask you this;
is the Emperor justified in using the Death Star against worlds that are suspected to have Rebel Alliance bases?
That is, based on your own personal moral axioms - if you have any?
Réal politique way-yes. There are people fucking up with the empire, the empire needs to be secured to maintain its function. The state of Israel does owe it to the people of Israel for them not to be murdered and/or kidnapped. It’s not an ethical justification, it’s a political one. The claim to the state which is not secured by you is a tenuous one. Which is why you referred to Hamas as “rebels” despite being a pretty oppressive state in themselves. That doesn’t justify ethically or practically for shit the carpet bombing Israel does, it’s an explanation for why the hell do they react like that. Their duty is not for humanity or universal ethics, their duty is for the people they represent. And to save face, they answer the grief and rage of their people with grief and rage for the people of their attackers. Ethical? Nah that’s an infinite circle of violence. Satisfying hurt people enough so they’d vote for you again come next election? Maybe. It got the right winger fuckos this far. It’s more or less the only trick they got.
Although removing electoral politics doesn’t solve that equation. The other side of the coin is the same situation from the Hamas perspective. This isn’t the first Gazan rodeo, Hamas knows Israel is a rampaging elephant in a china shop collateral-wise. They still chosen to gamble with this attack which experience taught again and again would lead to such horrifying results. The decisions the ruling classes make in the current paradigm don’t see human lives, their own people’s or the civilians of their enemies, as much to bother about in itself. Appealing to morality here is just detached from how either actor chooses their actions
I’ve been repeatedly saying that I don’t think Israeli actions are justified, nor do I support or sympathize with them. I am discussing why it is happening for specific political reasons not moral depravity e.g. “genocide” etc. if there is one takeaway I want my audience to have it is the great difference between morality and politics, both in capitalism and in the struggle for socialism: terrorism is not the way socialism can possibly be achieved politically from a Marxist perspective because it disempowers and divides the working class along communitarian e.g. nationalist lines.
Why is Socialism morally preferable to you than Capitalism then? Why bother talking about any of this? You seem to be saying that what makes someone a terrorist or not is whether they successfully achieve Socialism via their political actions. The Rebel alliance didn’t achieve Socialism when they blew up the Death Star, so were they just terrorists, and deserve the full wrath of the Imperial crackdown that inevitably ensued? What about after they defeated the Empire, were they still terrorists then, or were they revolutionary’s now?
I think the Garden of Eden was in Iraq between the two rivers...but it didn't use to be a desert.
Where does Butler say that about Palestinians?
Many times in many venues, in written articles and video appearances. (Links not allowed on RUclips!)
@@ccutrone in the Piers show exactly which statements made you think that the Left thinks that there are no innocent Israelis.?
There are many expressions of this sentiment from a variety of figures and tendencies.
@@ccutrone " Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets" In Huffpost..
"Suggests"?
"Settler-Colonialism" means all are settlers and therefore all are living on and benefiting from occupied land and hence guilty by default - including evidently immigrant workers and even Palestinian solidarity activists who were killed by Hamas.
It's the same "logic" as the Israeli side towards the supposed "willing human shields for Hamas."
But whereas Israel has to at least officially pretend to care about civilian casualties, the "pro-Palestinian Left" (they are to my mind neither Left nor actually pro-Palestinian) does not.
But I realize that everything is about rhetoric, so . . . ?
Hamas *is* one type of ideological manifestation of oppression though it could have manifested in some other way.
Chris do you remember 9/11?
I thonk Socialists distrust Democrats on censorship but the Republican efforts are easier to see. I understand that we should oppose both. But Republicans censorship is easier yo see.
It doesn't matter which committee of capitalist managers is more "visible", they're both enemies and any argument about which is better according to aesthetic is a complete waste of time. Any argument about which is better regarding "harm reduction" is an exercise in denying reality: working with them in any capacity is harmful, end of line, to the complete and total existence of a human future on this planet. We don't have time anymore, they're literally killing us all and getting away with it because of the slight gap in visible cause and effect on the climate.
I like Chris and he's great on the position and history of the Left, but man, on Palestine I just don't know where he's coming from. Seems like being contrarian for the sake of it. Israel has a right to defend itself? What are you saying! It's intellectual somersaults. Maybe the Left needs a wake-up call about Hamas and I take the broad point of "genocide or slavery," but unwillingness to call it a genocide (for reasons not quite clear to me from just this) seems willfully cocksure. I thing he's taken the inverse of the Stalinist position to such a degree he's lost sight of the immediate character of the conflict and its historical causes. Lenin advocates for supporting anti-colonial struggles, even when not proletarian-lead, very clearly in his theses on the colonial question, not because we think we can make them win, but to show national minorities that we're not in league with their enemies or callous to their suffering. Lenin writes that the European proletariat must convince the colonial peoples that internationalism is not a dead letter. Now, he also says don't support pan-Islamism. Point taken. But Chris seems to want to blame Hamas for *everything*, which is hardly the dialectical-historical approach to cause and effect. I'm sure he would deny this, but framing matters. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jun/05.htm
The world was created in Mississippi...🤣
The UPS analogy is inane, Chris. Both law and morality dictate a dimension of proportionality. It’s a stupid analogy.
I’m not justifying it.
@@ccutrone I get that. Nor did I think you were! But sometimes I think we overthink the situation. War crimes are being committed, but there really is no functional international law any longer, if there ever was.
32:35 yes, we are machines, and agency is an illusion. Deal with it.