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Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Doug Greene on the Stalin and the Dialectics of Saturn
Doug Greene is an independent communist historian from the Boston area. He has written biographies of the communist insurgent Louis Auguste Blanqui and DSA founder Michael Harrington. Stalinism has left a complex and controversial legacy throughout history. How have interpretations of Stalinism been shaped by debates between anti-communists, Soviet defensists, and various figures of Western Marxism? Join us for an in-depth conversation with our guest, Doug Green, as we navigate the tangled history of Stalinism and its influence on Trotskyist and Maoist movements, as well as the resurgence of interest in socialism today.
We'll unpack the intricate web of anti-communist sentiment that has shaped interpretations of Stalinism in Soviet history, from the contributions of Trotsky's biography of Stalin and Marx's 18th Brumaire to the right-wing anti-communist arguments that don't hold up to current scholarship. Doug offers invaluable insights into the Sino-Soviet split, the role Stalin played in it, and the Maoist critiques of Stalin, which often lack historical details. We also explore the fascinating figure of Arthur Koestler and his seminal work Darkness at Noon, analyzing how his views on historical necessity evolved over time.
Finally, we delve into the trajectories of controversial figures such as Victor Serge, David Horowitz, Tony Cliff, and Sydney Hook, discussing how their interpretations of Stalinism have been influenced by anti-communist sentiment. We'll examine the various interpretations of Neo Kowskyism, Lars Lee Leninism, Mike McNair's Marxian Republicanism, and Eric LeBlanc's Social Democracy, among others, to assess the potential for a revived Marxist approach to the Soviet Union and Maoist China. This episode will leave you with a deeper understanding of the many facets of the complex legacy of Stalinism and its ongoing impact on contemporary politics.
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Hello, welcome to Varmuag. And today I'm here with Friends of the Show, doug Green, and we are talking about your book, stalin and the Dialectics of Saturn, which has an intriguing name actually. So let's go and start out. Why another Stalin book?
Speaker 2:Well, why another Stalin book is I don't think anyone tried the approach that I did, which goes into the title and the setup. So the Dialectics of Saturn is actually it comes from originally the French Revolution, where revolutions are like Saturn they devour their children. Conservatives said that, revolutionists like Danton said that. So there's constant comparisons of like the French and Russian revolutions as having the same fate. And also I use Marx's 18th Brumair to kind of structure the book, where in one of the prefaces Marx says they were like very broadly three approaches to the rise of Brumair.
Speaker 2:One is like people who hated Louis Bonaparte and saw him as like this bolt from the blue, this kind of demon who just appeared from history, like Victor Hugo and others like Perdon, who kind of celebrated him as like this act of historical necessity. And Marx differentiated himself from that by looking at, you know, the class struggle, the material basis that allowed someone like Bonaparte to rise. And obviously you know there's a long history of comparing, you know, stalin and Bonaparte. So I kind of did that and just looked at Stalinism in the same way.
Speaker 2:So I looked very closely at anti-communists from across, you know very reactionary ones, from Hitler, churchill, kessler, the people who made up the Black Book of Communism and I also, in terms of historical necessity. These are people who see Stalinism as like the way to reach communism. So it's partly looking at the debates between Kessler and Merleau-Ponty, the various figures of Western Marxism, lukash, gramsci, althusser, dorneau, warkeimer, markusa, etc. It's kind of interesting to situate all these people in those debates. And you know, of course I'm looking also at people like Trotsky, isaac Deuser, Victor Serge, etc. So I don't think anyone has tried to do that approach.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, one of the things I can say is, unfortunately, a lot of historiographic readings of Stalin I say historiographic and I just history here, because it's a whole school of interpretation is very rooted in either anti-communism or, like left opposition that were not Soviet defensists, like a lot of.
Speaker 1:For example, a lot of people today will go after Trotsky as a whole, as if Trotskyism was not, in general, soviet defensists off of the actions of non-defensists, trotskyist groups, and these are the ones who get a lot of play in academia and whatnot, for kind of obvious reasons, until 1992 kind of opens everything up and people can be more honest. Yet it also seems like right now I guess one of the reasons I was going to ask you about this is like if you'd told me in 2009, when I was approaching the Socialist Party of America, the United States of America, the SPUSA, that we would be having debates about Stalin again in 2023, I would be very shocked. Why do you think? What about the anti-communist reading of Stalin and Stalinism leads to this inversion, where people actually take an uncritical Grover fur, inspire you and I can go back and misread real scholars like Fitzpatrick or Gettys or whatnot, who are used as proof texts. What do you think is driving that?
Speaker 2:In the current moment. There has been a resurgence in the last 10 plus years of interest in socialism, very broadly defined, very diffuse, and that brings up everything from Sweden to the Soviet Union, to various forms of anarchism. In that mix Stalinism comes up and people who are interested in alternatives are going to look at that. If you look at the anti-communists, the people who made up the black book of communism Soltanitsyn, richard Pipes, all of them if you actually read them they're really not materialists. It's very moralistic, it's very almost religious at times, if not outright anti-Semitic, depending on who we're talking about. If you're willing to challenge that, then you're going to look for alternatives and, yeah, can lead people to just go whole hog and say you know what? They're all completely lying to us about this and they are.
Speaker 2:Let's be clear, let's just embrace this Grover fur type style approach which segments of the left have done. It's an understandable but wrong approach to things. We shouldn't ever do something like that. I think both the positions of the kind of both from the blue and the historical necessity approach to Stalinism. They share the same kind of fatalistic teleology that Stalinism is inevitable result of communism. In the case of the anti-communist, they think it's horrible. It leads to hell and godlessness and the Grover fur. The neo-Stalinists think it's great we were lied to. It's actually a good thing.
Speaker 1:There is actually a certain unity of opposites, to quote Mao, on that, one of the things I think is interesting about the current moment when we talk about this and we can turn around about some of the specifics that come up in your book, but I do find it interesting that this is happening when both traditional Maoism and I'm going to actually define traditional Maoism I mean either Mao Zedong thought are Marxist-Leninist Maoism, which are different traditions. They're both really born out of the late 1970s, early 1980s, but the reason why I call them traditional is like they had a really hard time with both China as it currently exists and the USSR because of the Sino-Soviet split, and they had critiques of Stalin while also trying to maintain anti-revisions, which was a very kind of weird position to be in. I remember reading Kasama Project back in the day, you may remember, when those guys were still around in the early Ottens, and a lot of those guys were like, well, we do have a critique of Stalin and Stalinism, but we can't go with the Trotskyist because we're anti-revisionist and we have to support the historical USSR, and then we're just not going to talk about the Sino-Soviet split, which I think should never happen. I feel like our, that Khrushchev was all wrong or whatever. What do you think?
Speaker 1:I think it's interesting because that style of Maoism is pretty much gone and concurrently, Trotskyism is also pretty much gone. I mean, there are still Trotskyists. Arguably and I'm going to argue this on another episode the entirety of the current American sectarian left is actually descendants of Trotskyist groups, even the ones that are anti-revision Stalinists. But with the exception of the CPUSA, that's literally it, Because if you consider the Shackman split and the SPA also to be a result of a weird Trotsky move, then everybody comes out of Trotskyist stuff. Do you think that those traditions have lost in this response to anti-communism since anti-anti-communism? Because it does seem like, in general, Trotskyism's organizational capacity and non-Dungus Maoism's organizational capacity has just been wiped out.
Speaker 2:I mean it's kind of interesting in terms of Maoism or Maoist-idon thought is obviously they were very dominant on the far left in the 70s and even outside the.
Speaker 2:US. They're actually still pretty prominent right now in places like the Philippines or India. But in terms and it's interesting because Mao is not quite like Hoxha Hoxha actually says at one point Stalin does nothing wrong, and it's clear if you actually read Mao he's like there's this 70% of Stalin he upholds and then there's this 30% that he doesn't. So on the one hand, it's like they condemn the purges for going too far and say Stalin wasn't that great with the Chinese Revolution, which is kind of an understatement there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, understatement. People think that the Sino-Soviet split starts with with Khrushchev. The Sino-Soviet split starts with Stalin sending marrying to the Kwamendon. He goes all the way back.
Speaker 2:I would never criticize Stalin while he was alive, but even after he died he did say that stuff in the 20s was a really bad mistake. But the thing is, you know, the Maoist critique of Stalin it really doesn't get into like the nitty gritty, the historical details, at least not from Mao and the Chinese, and it's really people abroad who try and like fill in the gaps. So you see, like various efforts, like in the US you have like the RCP's red papers that tries to explain like how capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union, but it ends up largely defending, like you know, the Stalin-Eller purge trials. You have a more serious effort in France with people like Charles Bettelheim, I think, who really does try and actually analyze the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of it's wrong but I actually think it's a very serious effort. And there's people obviously, like Samira Min etc. But they never seem to be quite the dominant strain in either Maoism or Mao Zedong. Thought it ends up. You know, if you describe to, you know we're going to get a little obscure. You know the revolutionary internationalist movement. They basically just take Mao Holhog and there's really not super much. You know that they add to it. It's still their verdicts on, like the Soviet purges could you know, been reprinted from the 30s etc. So I don't really think they deal with a lot of the historiography.
Speaker 2:And in terms of you know, the Trotskyists left, I think a lot of Trotskyists do themselves a disservice by not looking at a lot of the scholarship, because I don't think Trotsky I mean I agree Trotsky is for critical defense of the Soviet Union. He is, you know, that's why, that's why the split with Shackman happens. You know pretty much. And there is all this valuable historical literature you know from from Getty, from Fitzpatrick and you know other people, and it's worth checking out because if you're like in that sectarian mindset, you really are kind of cutting yourself off from, like a lot of valuable scholarship and it's to our detriment. Is Marxist to do that basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that I can say is my opinions on Stalin have nuance quite a bit, but nuance does not mean like I know exactly what you mean recuperation and I've been somewhat.
Speaker 1:You know I have some smarter friends on the left who have been more sympathetic to Stalin, apollosha, and what I actually tend to get from them is like, well, we can't lose the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1:And then I'm like, but the secret speech is from the Soviet Union, like you're actually even arguing against Soviet doctrine in some cases, I guess because you side with the Chinese and the Sino-Soviet split. But I actually don't think most people actually have thought that out, nor is it a live question today. So it's this tendency confuses me and the best I could come up with is basically the gaslighting of years of right-wing anti-communism had just left people very open to like any argument that seemed like it was kind of fair and overturning Richard Pipes historiography which you're right, is like. I remember thinking, for example, for years when I was educated on the Soviet Union and I was a right-wing year back then and this was over 20 years ago but I was almost taught that Kiroff was basically murdered by Stalin, which is just not true. There's not that much evidence to support anything like that, like.
Speaker 2:When you look at Stalin as like this is what the anti-communist is doing. He's a demon, he's this all basically all-knowing totalitarian leader who kills Kiroff, who does this, who makes a famine in the Ukraine and I don't wanna defend Stalin's actions in the Ukraine or in the purges, but it's not true that he like caused a famine. I think like a lot of the whole little more like discourse is basically from these right-wing Ukrainian emigres and it's not supported by current scholarship. If you look at the revisionist school on Soviet historiography, all of them reject, like the Robert Conquest school. And you're right. There is no proof that Stalin orchestrated the purges as some kind of master plan. The best evidence we have it was just kind of some random act that he took advantage of and there was some ad hoc stuff going on, but it wasn't part of some master plan. That's part of the problem with the anti-communist. They think like history is so well controlled that there can be no accidents and Stalin is this grand puppet master, which just isn't true.
Speaker 1:Right and they also like equate the whatever tragedies you think in the Great Leap Forward happened and any excesses of the cultural revolution to Stalinism. And, as I've pointed out like, yeah, nobody was actually in charge of the cultural revolution. Like I mean, you know there were forces unleashed by that that no one could control. I think that's also kind of true with the purges. However, we do have plenty of evidence that the consolidation against the old Bolsheviks and all that was more than just a purging of bureaucracy or a purging of fifth columnists. There's no way that was true. Like and the other argument that I often hear is one of the weirder ones about like, for example, the purging of Bukharin is Stalin knew that they were gonna have to fight the Nazis real fast. The head industrialized real fast, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:There's a scholar, there is some scholarship, that uses this kind of to justify ending the NEP and decoologization, even though I think decoologization is a result of the way the NEP is ended and I've always find it very interesting to just go. You know, like we have to have a much more complicated view on what happened. It's not just a matter of like oh, if somebody else would have been in here, all this would not have happened. I don't think that's the case in Ukraine. I don't think that's the case with collectivization.
Speaker 1:But I'm also not gonna defend Yusof Sheena and Beria ever, like that's not a defensible position. You know I'm not gonna pretend like the cotton masquer didn't happen. You know, like it's just and the only arguments I've ever seen from it, even from someone like Grobofer. There are arguments from like holes in the records, like they're not even positive arguments. They're like well, since we don't have this record of how much this happened and we were missing this record, this just didn't happen at all. You know we can make a positive case from that, by from a lack of evidence, which is, you know, this bad thinking. I mean it is a good stalling of the gaps.
Speaker 1:That's a great phrase Argument, but I do think one of the things I'm liking about your approach here is like we do have to deal with the influence of right-wing anti-communism and our inability to grapple with this Like that has to be dialectically considered. So one of the things that's interesting I mean you mentioned the right-wing anti-communists. Kessler is an interesting figure for me because I'm never quite sure if I put him on the right or not. I'm always like looking at him and going argh.
Speaker 2:He is. I mean, he is a fascinating figure you know, in the German Communist Party splits over the Spanish Civil War and the Purges and he writes his famous book Darkness at Noon, which kind of I actually kind of make the centerpiece when I'm dealing with actually the Western Marxist and Stalinism is. He makes probably one of the better arguments for historical necessity when you know, and obviously the plot of darkness is when he's an old Bolshevik, he's in prison and he comes around to confess for the good of the party, for the good of the revolution, even if it destroys his reputation, because it's for the necessity of history to reach communism and even though Kessler rejects he thinks that leads to totalitarianism and everything, but he makes a very compelling case for that and he kind of shifts, you know, from initially when he joins, like the common term, he believes in that historical necessity and accepts Stalinism by 1950, he's accepted historical necessity. He just thinks it's on the side of the United States and the CIA because he's one of the people behind the Congress of Cultural Freedom, et cetera. And later on in life he ends up going in a very bizarre direction. He actually drops out of a lot of these active anti-communist he ends up getting involved in weird stuff with like ESB and race science et cetera, but he's actually a very fascinating figure and I actually you know whatever else I can say about his politics like darkness at noon was actually like an excellent book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things I find interesting, actually, when you part about this necessity school, is they actually what they do? That is so interesting to me is that they basically how do I say this? Take the smarter Stalinist argument or Marxist-Leninist, because I don't like being called what they are Smarter Marxist-Leninist arguments and like invert them, like oh yeah, it is historically necessity.
Speaker 1:It was always gonna end badly. Like you're right, you had to do what you had to do. Because I remember when I used to, way back when I was first encountering this, and I'd be like, well, why did this happen? Like well, it wasn't, we had to do it. Like collectivization had to be this way, we had to beat the Nazis. And I was like, well, what explains the Molotov-Ribbentrop pack? We had to stall and I'm like, uh-huh, then why weren't you, why were you flat-footed with an invasion of Stalin? And so I'm glad I really seemed to surprise Stalin. You know like I'm not actually I'm not one of the people who I've heard arguments on both Stalin as a good war leader by serious scholars and Stalin as a tellable war leader by also serious scholars.
Speaker 1:You know like, for example, donald Parkinson over at Cosmonaut is on Team Stalin Bab, but he was actually a good war leader. I actually can't. I've looked at both sides of the evidence and I'm like I don't know. This is really close, but I just do not believe that he and there's no documentary evidence that he had like a plan to build up forces the way he did to fight Hitler, while also siding with Hitler and Stalin and, I guess, laying Stalingrad out as a? I don't. I just said I can't actually make that work in my head.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think Stalin was a great war leader. And you know it's complicated because the fact is the Soviet Union wins the war and Stalin's name is connected with that. So you kind of have to deal with that. I mean, the fact is, you know, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pack does not actually buy the Soviet Union much time, and partly, you know, because Hitler wins so quickly against France and the Western European powers. But also the fact that Stalin willfully ignores intelligence, has troops out of position and had purged some of the best commanders before the war and you know they're lucky that they and survived some of those initial engagements. And what I think Stalin does do is over. He kind of loosens up enough that he lets his generals have a bit more influence and say, and this is something you can find in American historians of the Red Army- people like David.
Speaker 2:Glantz, whereas as the war goes on, it actually it's kind of like Hitler and Stalin kind of shift roles, where Hitler becomes much more of a micromanager and like really stymies the generals, whereas Stalin, you know, kind of steps back and learns enough to like let people like Zoukoff do their jobs, but I don't think he was this great war commander.
Speaker 2:And you're right, there is kind of some division on that. People like Jeffrey Roberts or Isaac Doyscher are actually very praiseworthy of Stalin's military acumen, but others are not quite so much like Dmitry Bolgenov, and there are others as well. But I'm kind of not on the team of Stalin as a war leader because it does undermine this whole historical necessity approach. Because if it was all necessary, why were you purging your best commanders? Why were you, you know, kind of appeasing the Nazis, also giving them so much raw material that allowed them to invade the Soviet Union? If you actually look at those figures, you know the Nazis made up very well from the trade deals between 1939 and 1941. And I think it really undermines the historical necessitarian approach. But you know, all this is to say, you know, I may be glad the Soviet Union, I am glad the Soviet Union won the war, but I think Stalin's leadership made it much difficult, much more difficult than it should have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I think that's actually a key thing to to actually kind of parse is why is it that there's been a hard time constructing a narrative that wasn't cartoonish on Stalin? I mean, because one of the things I get very frustrated with and I say this like I am not neither one of us are particularly Stalin apologetic I'm also pretty critical of historical Maoism. I think the sign of Soviet's books I'm forgivable. I don't completely buy the arguments that they're like the deaths in the greatly affordable, as low, as someone like Handong Ping says, but I also don't buy the upper end number because the status just don't seem to bear that out either. But the Stalin Apologia is interesting to me because one of the things that I've noticed is there's also this inability now for people to understand Stalin's positions in different period. Like you have people who are quoting to me the 19, what 51 text about the new economic problems in the Soviet Union, but also maintaining 1934, third periodism, and I'm like these aren't even like. I know it doesn't seem obvious, but these are not positions that you can hold at the same time Like and so one of the things about anti-Stalinism because it makes it all about a man and unfortunately, I think anti-revisionism does too Like, because what's at stake in anti-revisionism is the reputation of a figure. So when you have that happening it becomes very hard to point out like these positions shift. Stalin's positions radically shift between 1939 and 1951. Like, and they're not just about his personality or his evil machinations or whatever.
Speaker 1:And I will say, the books that made me really understand this are not even written by somebody who's, like, particularly pro-Stalin. I mean, joel Kotkin is really good, but two of the three volumes of which we have of Stalin's biography, that make it pretty clear this is a much more complicated scenario, but that the Bonapartist reading by Trotsky is not really off right. Like that. This actually has a certain character to it and this character is like the incoherence of the class arrangement of the Soviet Union post 19. I mean, probably actually goes all the way back to the Civil War, but post that time period which you know, lenin and early Stalin actually managed to push off.
Speaker 1:But so what's your take on that Like? Is that just anti-communism? Is it anti-revisionism, is it? You can't reduce it to one or the other Like. Why can't we not have this like dialogue about Stalin as a Bonapartist figure but not Stalin as like evil Maconator, who doesn't really believe in it, or as totally historically necessary, and either A it had to happen because communism, which I also think is a hard argument to make post 1992, or B it had to happen because communism, but communism bad, like you know. So how do we get out of that? A couple of times, I mean, I think part of it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, one thing that was interesting to me doing the research is when I read, I reread, Trotsky's biography of Stalin and one thing he actually says in that at one point is that if Stalin in the 1920s had seen where his fight with the opposition would lead, in 10 years he would have been horrified. So pretty much even Trotsky, who had pretty good reason to not like Stalin, is saying listen, this is not some kind of diabolical figure, but it's actually someone who really didn't have like the breadth of vision to understand like where things would lead. He thought he was genuinely doing the right thing for the revolution. It's obviously as Marxist, we know what you say is not necessarily what happens. What you do and I think looking at Stalin as this kind of cartoonish figure you could say the same about Mao as well really doesn't actually help us understand things. If you were to read a book like Mao the Unknown Story, it's a cartoon villain basically there, and that's like a lot of what the discussion of Stalin is, and it doesn't help us understand anything. It just views these people as just demons et cetera. But if you, you know, if you clear away all that kind of anti-communist rubbish, which it does take a lot of work, and you kind of look at materially the class struggle, all these wider factors you know they're like the imperialists in circle mint, et cetera. You can kind of see the environment in which these people move and they make decisions and the structures they have to operate in. So one thing my book is not is a biography of Stalin and it's trying to look more at the ism as opposed to the man, although obviously the man is important as well.
Speaker 2:And I have a lot of issues with Kotkin's work on Stalin. I think especially the first volume is very anti-communist but he does do an interesting job in the second of like, you know, looking at like things like the purges and a lot of the geopolitics et cetera, which I thought was kind of interesting. And if you know, if we're serious about developing a Marxist approach to, you know, the Soviet Union or Maoist China or what have you, it does mean looking at not just the environment in which these people move et cetera. But the fact is at least in the Soviet Union there were alternatives. It wasn't like historically necessary that Stalin was going to, you know, come out on top.
Speaker 2:Trotsky had his program and it's not just you know Trotsky, you had Stalin bad. There's a whole slew of proposals that he has on everything from industrialization, to the Soviets, to collective farms, et cetera. And you know, if you want to go that route you could argue. The current, but I think also looking at the various concrete alternatives that did exist, kind of shows you listen these, there were alternative paths which, for whatever reason, did not get chosen. And you could say the same about China you know, there were various attempts.
Speaker 2:you know, at one point, I think, after the Great Leap Forward, mao was kind of forced to go in the background and maybe Lu Xiaoshi would have been better, who knows. But there were alternatives on hand. And it's kind of, you know, looking at both the material circumstances, you know, trying to scrape away all the anti-communist rubbish that we hear about all this and then looking at, you know, the alternatives that were offered and et cetera. For whatever reason, they may not have been chosen, but they did exist and it does us a disservice as historians and Marxists to kind of ignore those alternatives. And that's kind of what the book is also kind of arguing. It's like this is not necessarily inevitable with socialism. There are alternatives. Stalinism is not the historical destiny and we should understand that future socialism doesn't have to be Stalinist.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean even early on, like Chin Zhu Zhu and Li Duzhou. I mean there's options. There's options in the Chinese Communist Party. There are less options in the Bolsheviks, pre-lenin.
Speaker 1:I guess arguably you could argue about Bug-Donoff, but now that I don't like and respect Bug-Donoff, but that's I don't know that he would have been the same kind of leader, but there are multiple ways. I mean there's not even just one left and right opposition to Stalin. That's another thing that I was like. I don't like Xenovivism but it was a possibility. I mean, one of the things you have to deal with with the laws of the old Bolsheviks is basically like you had the eradication of most of the possibilities because you eradicated most of the thinkers. And I don't argue that like all the purges of bed just because it took out the old Bolsheviks, because that has a very like myopic view of the Russian people and the Soviet peoples. But it does seem like there was a strategic elimination of alternate views. And you know, I am of the opinion personally, for example and this you can't lay on Stalin but the faction ban after 1921 being maintained after the end of the war was a fundamental mistake. You know, I know that's somewhat controversial amongst all Marx's witness, but I just I do see it as setting up this all or nothing criteria in which you know whichever faction was going to win was probably going to be the faction that was willing to play the hardest, and by hardest I mean nastiest. So yeah, I'm going to take with that what you will. But yeah, there's multiple like there's multiple possibilities.
Speaker 1:One of the things when it comes to China, there's multiple Mao's. That's one of the interesting things about like Maoism in particular, when I meet a Maoist either Mao Zedong thoughtist or an MLM or an MLM Third Worldist I'm like what period Mao will pull in from here? Because like there's radically different ideas at different periods and like Mao was pretty open about changing his mind. Actually is what I think they kind of respect about it.
Speaker 1:You know, going like this did not work and, like I said, there's this is kind of true in Stalin, but not to the same extent like Stas. Like that's why it's so hard to even figure out what Stalinism is Like. Is it? Is it pro market concessions or anti market concessions? Is it value abolitionist or value eternally Like? I bring those up because just in economic questions, those are questions in which Stalin takes opposing views in his lifetime. Only the only thing he's fairly consistent on even this he's not totally consistent on is his answer to the national question. And that kind of makes sense because that was what he was a specialist on before he became a major party leader. But anyway, it is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:I mean the purges. You know they do wipe out, you know any. I don't argue. The purges are so much against the old Bolsheviks as opposed to more potential opposition, which obviously there's a lot of overlap with the old Bolsheviks, but there are some who survived. People like Molotov is an old Bolshevik and he lives to 1986.
Speaker 2:And Deutcher actually makes the argument because of the purges. The only way you could have destalinization in the Soviet Union was not from below, it had to happen from above, it had to happen from in the party and it fell to someone like Khrushchev. And you know he obviously did kind of a very half-hearted, tepid way to do that as well. And you're right. You know, in terms of Stalinism, whether it's pro-market or, you know, ultra-plant economy, even within, like the, really the people who really defend Stalin, like Domenico Vasserta, who's part of the appendix of the book, he actually is very pro-market, he's more a dangus than a Stalinist, I argue. But he likes the rule of law, he likes markets etc. Grover Fur, who was friends with Luserto, he is abolished markets right away, just go straight to communism etc. So this is very they're both very pro-Stalin. Purges are good, but one is pro-market, one is very anti-market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've actually heard people point out that, like, from a classical Marxist-Leninist perspective, grover Fur would almost be considered an ultra-leftist. So it's, which is funny, but and the history of his, of the organization he's in, is actually very odd. It's an odd man outgroup even for pro-Stalin groups like it's a pretty strange one.
Speaker 2:Right, I think he's either in or close to P progressive labor, which I've heard them describe as like Trotskis, with a lobotomy which is kind of funny.
Speaker 1:Well, this does bring us to another weird thing of our period in specific, which is American Marciism becoming anti-revisionism to the point that, like it literally adopts Soviet curriculum from the 1930s as part of his training program and hides its own origins. Even though they still claim Sam Marci, they hide that Sam Marci considers himself a Trotskyist the entirety of his life. So like that's wild to me, but that's where it is. One of the interesting things about the United States is, like you have a I guess you have an hojahs party that's actually really new, started in 2008. The American what is it? The American Labor Party?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then there's like the progressive labor party and they're hard to pin down. And then there's the RCP, of a basics, fame above a vacuum fame, although people don't tend to forget. He did not actually find that party. And then there's the CPUSA, which is a historical Marxist-Leninist party of the United States. It's been pulling the popular front even after the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. But whatever, that's its orientation. Interestingly, a lot of the anti-revisions parties now do not have any historical tie to any Marxist-Leninist group, which is kind of strange. What do you?
Speaker 2:think that's about. I mean, I think it's partly just because there's very little to like for them to latch on to. When there was the Soviet Union, whether good or bad, you kind of like had to make a decision like where you stand on it and if you're going to ally with it. It's like Marcy obviously kind of broke away from the SWP when there was still a Soviet Union over Hungary and he just adopted the position let's just defend it. The class struggle is basically got to assume to the struggle between the different blocks and that got transformed after the USSR fell to anyone who was anti-American.
Speaker 2:Basically, and it's just interesting, even among the various Marxist-Leninists, a lot of the Hojus I know, for instance, are not pro-Russia. They do not defend the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they consider Russia imperialist. But I know others who consider, who are Marxist-Leninists, some of the Marciites who they think Russia is some kind of progressive anti-imperialist force. As far as I know, the RCP doesn't defend the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whatever else, and I don't even think the CPC USA does either. So even within them there's a very interesting diversity and I think it's partly just them reacting. There's really no state that they can just kind of look to? I mean, some obviously do look to China, but China, even less than the USSR, doesn't really do anything like in terms of promoting internationalism anymore.
Speaker 1:I think this is interesting because there's been this increasing drip of multi-polarity talk which I would love to believe people got from English geopolitical strategy from the early 20th century but are even freed Sakaria. But I don't really believe that. I also think that there's been a touting of multi-polarity as a good in and of itself. Now I actually don't have a strong opinion on multi-polarity anymore than I have a strong opinion on thunderstorms. This seems to be a development of capitalist polities that's beyond any one power's control even, and it would be good for rising power such as China to leverage that. But somehow that's become a talking point as if that is the same as having even a socialist transitionary government, which is a very weird thing, and it's not the kind of thing actually that Marxist-Leninist would have upheld in the past. So I think there's something to the fact that it's the Stalin, ironically, right now is like an empty face.
Speaker 1:I actually don't know someone's politics by the fact that they tell me they're Marxist-Leninist. Not on any real geopolitical or even economic situation at the moment, Since there's no Soviet Union anymore, there's no. The CPC doesn't really do Other than generally pro-China as the president of the United States. The president of the United States kind of stays out of these questions. I had some friends who are paranoid Do you think some of this rebirth in Stalinism actually is tied to China? But I don't see any evidence for that.
Speaker 2:No, I honestly don't. I mean, if you look at it like this, the Soviet Union, until close to the very end, was still pumping out Marxist literature like those textbooks you're talking about. I have additions of that from 1988, 1989. Aside from maybe G's works, does China mass produce Marxist literature?
Speaker 1:No, you can still find regular progress press stuff from 87, 88, 89, 90. Interesting collection. I think I have some in here actually of stuff that was printed in my lifetime. That was when the Soviet Union was not doing well but they were still getting stuff into the United States as adjunct proper. Whatever Foreign language press is the Chinese equivalent of that, it doesn't do anything like that kind of keeping stuff in print. I think they do some, but not to the same level at all. It's usually about Mao.
Speaker 2:Interesting. This is a side remark, but there is a current day Maoist publisher of the same name who's retaken that. I think it's kind of a snub to the Chinese. And they're putting out all this anti-revisionist literature and republishing the Marxist classics. I actually think they do a good job in their production value. I order from them quite frequently.
Speaker 2:I was also going to say in terms of multi-polarity to me I've joked before it's like Palpatine on the phone and robot chicken. What the hell is multi-polarity? It just seems like this empty signifier. It seems like discount geopolitics. I guess if you're the leader of some developing country, yeah, you might want that. But it's not a socialist project to me to want to have Russia to become a full-blown imperialist power on par with the United States or something. I don't think that's really a good thing. Even when the various Communist parties were making some horrendous compromises back in the 60s or the 70s in various third world countries is because those countries were aligned to the Soviet Union or potentially could be. It wasn't for its own sake to have some nebulous concept like multi-polarity. I also just think whenever I've seen the multi-polarity stuff it just tends to be tied to some kind of apologetic for Putin and Russia and does not very well define to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there doesn't to be some of it tied to actually Chinese interests. I think Ben Norton's pretty clearly on the China side of things. But that language was not ubiquitous on the left until the Russia-Ukraine war. That language primarily was associated with either Friitsikaria in the United States or it was associated with Alexander Dugan, actually his using British polar theory from the early 20th century and international relations as some kind of more meaningful shift. I find it interesting because as a descriptor of what happens when one hegemon becomes a regional hegemon from being a world hegemon, it's fair enough.
Speaker 1:But that doesn't say anything to me about socialism. It doesn't even say anything about capitalist imperialism. It just says something about who's in charge of it. That is a completely different sort of framework and for people that picked it up kind of opportunistically, without realizing its origins I mean we'll get back to your book because I do want to talk about the anti-communist stuff and some of the misleading things I think we both are betraying that my two favorite writers on Stalin who are properly speaking Marxist and not just scholars my favorite writer on Stalin who's a scholar is Fitzpatrick but tend to be a Deutsche and to a lesser grit. Hello Tickton, although Tickton I think takes too much of a moralistic view of Stalin.
Speaker 1:That's not here or there, but I do want to deal with the fact that when we approach Stalinism now, like I said, he feels empty because what I see in quote Marxist-Leninist. We can't predict what someone's stances are going to be If the pro-market or anti-market is their pro-Russia or anti-Russia. Our third campus, I'm sure there's all those positions within Marxist-Leninist organizations now, whether or not they're popular frontists or abstentionists, I can't predict off of it anymore. It's actually quite funny. A lot of people I know who call themselves ML's actually take a united frontist position, which I find kind of hilarious. It seems like an empty gesture in a lot of ways, because so many people pull from so many different other ideologies to make it have a whole lot to say. Today we can take a big divide is what you might call woke Marxist-Leninism versus socially conservative Marxist-Leninism or even MAGA communism, which also claims to be Marxist-Leninism. Patriotic socialism is what you call them patsies, that's my name for them.
Speaker 1:What about? This figure is so hollowed out that it's not predictive of anyone's politics anymore? On the one hand, I do think there's Stalin.
Speaker 2:For a lot of people who are on the left, who are not Trotskyist or anarchist, etc. He's seen as someone who defended the Soviet Union, who defeated the Nazis. They uphold that. Then they just want to fill it in with all kinds of weird stuff to latch it on to what they do. You can see, I see Maoists who if you're elected to office and you're a communist, you're actually no longer a communist. I think even Stalin defended running communists in elections when they ran during the popular front period and other times.
Speaker 2:The thing is depending on the period of Stalin you're talking about. There was that early period of the Fitzpatrick talks about the cultural revolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the 20s, where it's very radical and there's these assaults on privilege. There's a lot of experimentation in terms of literature, there's working class mobilization etc. You see the quote unquote woke Marxist Leninists maybe picking up on that for their progressivism by the late 40s. You see the anti-cosmopolitan campaign which, let's be clear, that's pretty anti-Semitic and very great Russian nationalists. This is bringing the culmination of stuff that had been going on since the 30s, of the reinstitution of the patriarchal family and all the authority structures, the socially conservative, marxist, leninists, the Paxies they all pick up on that, which I think makes sense, because a lot of them are also very anti-Semitic. In certain ways, they're picking up on the aspects of Stalin that they want and they're maybe not looking at the wider totality of Stalin or Stalinism, which is understandable. But maybe it's just a bit one-sided how some of these people do it.
Speaker 1:This is going to be controversial in our circles. Luckily I'm not a monetized YouTuber. This will get pulled down. There's also a tendency on the far right, during the lead up to what we now call the alt-right, for Stalin recuperationism. On the far right Kerry Bolton, francis Schaakey, before him.
Speaker 1:I find it interesting a kind of resurgence in national Bolshevism, particularly in Russia. Actually, edward Liminov, alexander Dugan again. What I find interesting is some of those are obviously ridiculous people who get all weepied about the doctor's plot. For those who don't know about what that is, you should look it up. What I've noticed is there is a certain amount of Stalinists who would consider themselves like post-left communists or something like that, or maybe even just communists who actually have the same rhetoric as national Bolsheviks do on this stuff. I remember and I'm not going to say who told me this because I don't think they would want it, except this was about 10 years ago I remember a friend of mine who was a Maoist, like a die-hard old-school Maoist he was like.
Speaker 1:One of the problems that I have with quote Maoism and anti-revisionism is that it has a tendency to become national Bolshevism, sometimes national Bolshevism of color, but in general national Bolshevism. When that happens, it takes on a reactionary character. I find that interesting, because that was a Maoist telling me this. It was not like some trot. You can't say it's just a trot. Trotsky is smearing us again. Do you think that's part of the appeal?
Speaker 2:I think it is. If you actually go all the way back to Winston Churchill, he actually praised Stalin and the Purge is saying it's the reassertion of nationalism of Russians over these internationalists Jews. You see that in a lot of people because it may not be in the theory of socialism in one country, but it's definitely in the practice, this privileging of the nation Russia or the Soviet Union above the world revolution. By the end of Stalin's life. It becomes incredibly chauvinistic and nationalist, even if there is still Marxist, leninist trappings there. I think if you take that just a few steps further, you get national Bolshevism. You did see this particularly in the late Soviet period. People who were condemning Gorbachev some of them were adopting a lot of this national Bolshevik rhetoric. They wanted to defend Stalin not as a Marxist per se, but as this great Russian leader and nationalist who brought us glory and international fame.
Speaker 2:It's obviously continued after the Soviet Union because for a lot of people of a certain age in Russia the Stalin era is like there was order, there was stability, or at least that's what they believe. There was the boss and everything and we won the war. There wasn't all this radical experimentation after 1936. There's this very socially conservative part of that. Again, you take that farther and you just shorn it out to a lot of the Marxist trappings. It's national Bolshevism. You can see even Kotkin. It's interesting. He almost praises Stalin's dictatorship as a work like Picasso, like a great work of art. Is this weird kind of worship of power? That's also, I think, part of the appeal of Stalin to right-wingers. It's this very powerful person. Even if it's not, I would reject the idea of totalitarianism. But Stalin is certainly this authoritarian figure. That is something like right-wingers like that. Some of them are willing to look past the fact that he was a self-described Marxist and to adopt all of that.
Speaker 1:I think we clearly see that in, say, putin's speech where he's condemning women for the Ukraine situation and yet takes a pretty soft line on Stalin for the Great Patriotic War. I think you still see that in undeniably right-wing Russian nationalism. I do find that interesting, particularly given Stalin's a Georgian and his relationship to Russian nationalism is opportunistic. He also suppressed it at earlier times Around the purges it indefinitely at the end of the war. It's just undeniable that he's playing it up. I tend to have a soft spot on my heart for Khrushchev, but Khrushchev had also occasionally played it up.
Speaker 1:It was a constant problem in the USSR, this kind of tension between great Russian nationalism, even within the party, and the internationalism of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. That was always a tension. It's less of a tension early on, something that I've seen Stalin as a misted tribute to Trotsky. It'd been cool if Trotsky said it, but he didn't. It was that element of this that led someone like Bordega to oppose Stalin. Bordega actually went up and Stalin's face during the common turn when he was still the leader of the Communist Party of Italy, because of Stalin's over-focus on the Warsaw Pact at the expense of Communists making moves in the West. This is an undeniable. I think people who know the history of of Marxist-Leninist parties with official ties to the Soviet Union around the world is they actually tend to often be more conservative on their international and domestic politics, on statecraft issues, and then even the socialist parties tended to be I mean they're like in Chile often Iyende socialist outflanked the communists on economic issues.
Speaker 2:Which they also had like dual membership in the mere Marxist groups. So yeah, Iyende was on the right of the socialist party because he wanted a coalition with the communists.
Speaker 1:Right, which I think is something that people today just have a hard time understanding. To get back to your book, though, when the dialect is ascending how did this right-wing, anti-communism effect of left-wing interpretations of the Soviet Union that, let's say, are serious? So, like you mentioned the Frankfurt School, and what do you think the effect that it had, like the effect of this right-wing anti-communism had on, like Frankfurt School thought, I mean partly is the fact they have to decide.
Speaker 2:The Frankfurt School is in a very interesting position and it's kind of like that with Western Marxism in general they don't quite adopt they're not Stalinists, or at least not all of them, but they're not quite in opposition. So on the one hand they want to have a place within, like Western society. So they do adopt a lot of the language of totalitarianism, the destructive power of reason et cetera that comes from a lot of anti-communists. And you see that, like in people like Adorno and Horkheimer and there is, but again for them they're also, depending on who we're talking about, they may be trying to adapt to trying to offer some kind of level of support. So it's interesting, for, like Adorno and Horkheimer, they are privately, for instance, very like.
Speaker 2:They're horrified at the Soviet purges. They are like, I think, like at one point Adorno gets really mad at Ernst Bloch who is defending, like the purging of the current, but in public they just defend the Soviet Union. So they think it's like their duty to remain silent about their actual criticisms. You have someone like Ernst Bloch who is this great writer on utopia, on religion et cetera, but he wants to write affidavits for the Moscow trials to like prove like that Trotsky is like a Nazi. As far as I know, the Soviet Union did not take him up on that offer. But the anti-communist stuff really gets solidified after World War II into a solid theory of totalitarianism. Before World War II it's kind of like this everyone is kind of using it. The Frankfurt School are using it, trotsky's using it, mussolini's using it, franz Newman, all these different people but as with yeah, it's reading how a dropper threw the word around in 1947, he doesn't later.
Speaker 1:but like I was reading how a dropper essay where he's like he talks about totalitarianism, for a minute I was like what? Like that's weird, go ahead.
Speaker 2:But pretty much when you have totalitarianism kind of gets solidified after World War II into like an ideological weapon, I don't think it's ever useful to explain anything in the Soviet Union or elsewhere but it gets solidified and I don't think we quite understand.
Speaker 2:like there really wasn't such a thing as Soviet studies in the United States before 1945. After 1945, you suddenly have the government and businesses funding all these research institutions, purging academia of anyone remotely critical. I mean, stephen Cohen goes into this in one of his books and it's just kind of incredible and if you were to read like the level of discussion on Marxism that come from like prominent academics and like the 50s and early 60s, it's really bad. People like Adam Mulan I'm like anyone who's actually read Marx would know he's full of crap but he's at Harvard and he can do that because he's getting all the funding. People like Robert Conquest, richard Pipes, so the people like the Frankfurt School are pretty much this beleaguered minority and for one after World War II, a lot of the or actually before World War II, a lot of them are in the West and they actually have to. In some cases they adapt some of like the language about totalitarianism.
Speaker 1:Creeple theory was also a code word for Marxism. Like that's why they used it. Yeah, you couldn't say but yeah, yeah, they adopted language of totalitarianism. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's okay. And so again they're like just beleaguered and trying to survive and you kind of see, like by like the 60s you have like they've really survived so much that they've just lost any pretense of being an opposition. Like Adorno refuses to support the students against Vietnam, and I know Alcuzza calls them out on that and a Hortimer goes even further and he's supporting the Vietnam War, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, they make comp, they're willing to make compromises and you know it may be understandable, but they you know a lot of them do succumb to like a lot of anti-communist nudes on this. It also doesn't help that especially Adorno and Hortimer just refuse to like get involved in any political action at all, even when things lighten up enough that that is conceivable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an interesting complication of this that I often think a lot about. I mean, markuzza's relationship to Stalinism is actually unclear to me and I don't say that because I haven't studied him. Studying him makes it more unclear. And you have someone like Henry Grossman, or in addition to Block well, where Grossman decides after. It's actually kind of weird. Grossman decides to be supportive of the Soviet Union after 1936. Like, and then you know I always point out he goes to West Germany and immediately dies there. I mean not West Germany, east Germany. He's the only Frankfurt school member who goes to the East after the war and, from what I understand, he immediately regrets it but and he didn't dies but.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's interesting about Grossman is he's one of the very unique people in the Frankfurt school. He had a long history of activism. Before World War I he was in, like the Polish social democracy, the Boon groups.
Speaker 1:Yeah he had ties to that Austria and Marxism too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he was in. I think he was a founding member of the Polish Communist Party. I think the only reason he wasn't active because he moved to Germany at one point, it was just like kind of a condition for him staying. But he kind of always maintained that pro Soviet position and I know it eventually got, like him, into hot water with Adorno and Borkheimer because you know, I think he was eventually kicked out of the Frankfurt school over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was caught. Well, it's not explicitly over that. The letter actually just caused him a positivist, but they call him a positivist pretty much for that reason. So but I mean, I wanna think about the Frankfurt school and this is one of my arguments against people who sees the whole thing as a conspiracy, despite also often having the timeline wrong. But there was overlap between the US State Department and intelligence agencies in the Frankfurt school, Absolutely, and three of them, although not Horkheimer or Adorno, explicitly did work for the OSS. However, they worked for the OSS under anti-Nazi grounds.
Speaker 2:So Mark Housa Newman, I forget who else.
Speaker 1:Newman, and there's a third one whose name is. I don't know who I have me to, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Mark Housa was unapologetic about that. I actually talk a little about an interview he gives in like the 60s. He's like, yeah, it was because of World War II, but he actually continues working for like both the OSS and the State Department into the 50s and he actually doesn't get purged over McCarthyism.
Speaker 2:He just goes back to the university and it was just kind of interesting about that. And Newman's wrote that wonderful book called Bohemath which is one of my favorite books on the third right. But I think that was pretty much written for the OSS and it was certainly praised in like mainstream journals when it was released.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I find it interesting also to try, I think, a lot of the stuff about the Frankfurt School and the OSS, which is very real. We also have to remember the United States was technically allied with the Soviet Union when it happened. Does that mean there wasn't an anti-communist stuff going on? Of course not, there was, but it's a very complicated situation and I think you're actually all right that Mark Housa's not getting purged during this.
Speaker 1:You know, doing whoack and whatnot is actually kind of interesting and, I guess, probably the birthplace of a lot of conspiracy theories, some of which might not be totally illegitimate, but I do think we have to look at that. And I also have to think we have to look at people like Sidney Hook and people who were like Trotskyist defectors who you know James Burnham, you know like you know, james Burnham, who's a managerial class, is like thesis, is basically right wing bureaucratic collectivism like the thesis, and people miss this. But if you actually read him, his argument is if we can't beat him, just join him and have the managerial class come out of the military.
Speaker 2:Also interesting is it's very influential on George Orwell's development of 1984. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I remember when I read the managerial class, what's interesting about Orwell? Okay, cause Orwell's a figure that like plagues me. Orwell writes a bunch of critiques of Burnham in the 30s and 40s, but by the time you get to 1984, goldstein, who was clearly supposed to be Trotsky, is spouting Burnham not Trotskyist understandings of the Soviet Union. And that's wild to me, because if you read the new Machiavellians you realize that Burnham just thinks the only way to beat Nazi managers is to have better American managers, who are pretty much the same thing. Like it's just a wild bit, but you're right, it's all over 1984. And it's given our feelings about who Trotsky turned over to the British intelligence services. I think Deutsche was one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he gave a lot of names and the thing is I've heard that defended. Well, they were all known, but it's like let's say that's true.
Speaker 1:It's like what does it say?
Speaker 2:if someone's willing to give names over the police.
Speaker 2:And Orwell's explicit in some of his letters that if war came between Russia and the US he was on the side of the US People who's trying to make him out to be this kind of principle revolutionary or socialist, I think are kind of missing the mark about where this guy was. I think there was this brief period after the Spanish Civil War where he was trying to be some kind of revolutionary leftist not a Marxist, but still some kind of revolutionary. By World War II that's pretty much gone. He's had some idiosyncratic ideas on his own patriotic socialism, I might add, if we read the line in the unicorn, which is, if it's artwork, yeah, the line in the unicorn are his, actually his second refutation the Burnham is basically Burnham's.
Speaker 1:One of his arguments against James Burnham and the managerial class is like, literally, burnham doesn't understand a good working class like the English working class. And I'm like that's your answer. Wow, like you know, just like. Oh, so you think that the English working class isn't capable of being politically retrograde because they're English, okay or well, like yeah, I think you're absolutely correct. I do admire Orwell of the 30s to some degree, even though I think he's a Deletante. But but the the Orwell of the 40s is, I Think if he had lived he would have been a James Burnham. And if you know where James Burnham ends up like, I mean, burnham is one of the people who co-found the Congress of cultural freedom, but he's also Like, if you read his post New Machiavellian's work, he's a reactionary by the end of his life, even by the standards of the people in the OSS.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's defending apartheid, south Africa. I don't think he thought the Soviet sign, of Soviet split was real. He was a co-founder of National Review, right? No, I agree about Orwell there and it's actually one of the points in my book is Orwell's kind of is very good at describing things like Situations like if you read like road to Wigan Pier or like Homage to Catalonia is very good on like a lot of descriptions, it's very good to read, but if you're looking like something deeper, like how it works, really doesn't do that for me. He really doesn't, and he's actually very disdainful of any kind of revolutionary theories like you know they kind of just know it, but he never kind of gets.
Speaker 2:You know, but he still thinks we need a party and all of this. He just thinks like people cut. You know, it's just justice in the common decency and all this. You don't need dialectics or any of that.
Speaker 1:No, in fact. I mean he openly mocks a lot of that. Yes, what? So? You know Orwell's and one of these figures that would cost their coastal is interesting because, you know, like I told you, I said I I end up putting him on the right, but barely and it was a real hard call if I had that.
Speaker 1:Like he's a. He's a, he's a mixed figure, unlike someone like Whitaker Chambers. Chambers is clearly a right wing figure, however, interestingly, in my opinion, he could have been prevented. But I don't want to get too much into that, because I Actually have a whole thing that I call the Whitaker Chambers problem, which is where someone out something legitimate, a legitimate criticism of something on the left, and then they get mocked and then they double down and start making shit up and run to the right, which I think is what happened with Chambers, and I always caught a problem because I see it as a dialectical problem when both sides are contributing to the situation. So so what other like left, semi semi-anti-communist figures do you find interesting? I Do. It's interesting to me because I Remember when I was in a certain society they used to call him Stalinophilic, as opposed to Tony Cliff, who they called Stalinophobic, and I was like is do it, you're Stalinophilic. I just think he's trying to be fair, I mean.
Speaker 2:I. Are you that part of the like, the last part of the book is that from Trotsky's, and you have like two kind of deviations. One is what I called like the Eastern reconciliation, which is Deutcher. On the one hand he is like a very good scholar on Trotsky, on Stalin, on Soviet studies etc. But it's very clear he is looking for like reform of like the Eastern block and he has like a soft spot for Mao in like the 50s and until the Cultural Revolution. So he kind of gives up on you know, what Trotsky was arguing for in terms of, like you know, the political revolution. He's looking more for like bureaucratic reform. In that sense he is. But it's like and there is a line from him to someone like Marcy and like these really kind of Stalinoid figures. But he's not quite the same because at the same time he is defending like a lot of Eastern block dissidents at times.
Speaker 1:He doesn't defend the.
Speaker 2:Hungarian Revolution, but he defends, like a lot of these Polish Marxists who are in opposition.
Speaker 2:So in that sense yeah, he is kind of and he does kind of see Stalin is like historically necessity, necessary, but he is, he thinks like Stalinism has played its part in modernizing Russia, therefore we should reform it and finally have socialist democracy. And you know that obviously in there would like a whole school of like Deutcher, like people like you know the new Left Review kind of came out of that David Horowitz, when he actually had a working brain Was, was a student of Deutcher and you know and a Maoist and yeah, and a mouse.
Speaker 1:Which is, yeah, where Horowitz is one of the people I bring up because, oh, it's all the Trotsky's to become neoconservatives, like Horowitz was a Maoist. Just want to point that out. Like it's not just Trotsky's, also France. Go look at France. Oh yeah, it's like. Go see how many like the new philosophers.
Speaker 2:There's something else, someone else I did find interesting. It was what I called the Western retreat and there were obviously there's obviously figures like you know, shackman and Burnham, who were former trots, who go to like the far right. The person I was looking at he doesn't quite go that full distance but it's clear that's his trajectory by the end of his life is Victor Serge.
Speaker 1:Who was a?
Speaker 2:you know, was a former anarchist, bolshevik and left oppositionist, but after Trotsky died he's pretty much a left-wing social Democrat Because he's can you know he is adopting a lot of these pure like a lot of the Burnham's ideas on the managerial society. He's very offensive about the move of the Red Army into Eastern Europe and the various partisan movements in Western Europe and he's he condemns Mao, tito, ho Chi Minh, all these figures as like agents of Soviet totalitarianism and he's even coming up for de Gaulle shortly before he died. So his transition is not complete and it's also kind of he has a lifelong Nostalgia for the Bolshevik Revolution because he writes like a 30-year retrospective about two weeks before he dies about that this. You know how great the Bolsheviks were and in that sense he's kind of like you know, christopher Hitchens, who always had a soft spot for Trotsky but was defending the Iraq board, things like that.
Speaker 2:So Serge is kind of like that figure who's moving towards the West. He isn't quite there yet, but I think if you look at his like late notebooks and stuff, he's clearly on that trajectory. But he's kind of interesting in like how he's trying to articulate all that and he's kind of like an unfinished Project and that's kind of like by. I find him interesting, unlike Shackman who just kind of it's a much slower process and he doesn't. He tries to make himself more Coherent, like in terms of his ideas on like bureaucratic collectivism than I think actually existed. Serge is also just a talented writer, you know, who can actually like lyrically express like his ideas, and that's also true of Deutcher's as well. But those two figures are very interesting to me, just like how they ended up as like these two trajectories from Trotsky's Ideas in different directions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, deutcher and Shackman, and in the British and the British context Actually I don't know the the reconciliation is in the British context. I also think it's. Maybe Deutcher, but, like Tony Cliff is, clearly has a similar trajectory to Shackman, doesn't end up going as far, right. But but Shaq and Shackman's right weakness is, you know, towards the end of his life is actually something of a debate. But I Tend to side with you. He goes pretty like. He's not quite a neo conservative, but he. It's the reason why a lot of people associated with him didn't take that long to get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean he's endorsing Nixon before he dies. That's yeah, that's pretty bad. And you know you brought up Sydney hook and he's interesting because he kind of broke from Like the Revolutionary left before.
Speaker 1:World.
Speaker 2:War two he booked in 38. Yeah like, and I don't think he was technically a Trotsky's, but he was certainly in that orbit. He was a. I know he's part of the workers party.
Speaker 1:Right, he's part of the workers party etc.
Speaker 2:We're part of, but he kind of left like organized, like Marxist politics after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was mostly a theorist and I mean it's a shame, as I commented to you on Facebook once, his pre 1938 Marx Scholarship is actually really good.
Speaker 2:I'm actually a huge fan of his book from Hegel to Marx.
Speaker 1:I've read it twice.
Speaker 2:I really like it, but he's actually. He had got a lot of his barksism from Lukash and Korsh, which is kind of really unique among Americans at that point.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, one of the things that's interesting about him, though, is like so we talk about the Congress of Cultural Freedom and that, like With their successor organization that was all over Europe and war in the 50s I can't remember their name, but, yeah, encounter, they have a budget. Now there was an organization. They were like holding conferences. I mean, one of the things was like Christopher lash. One of the good things he did was out that.
Speaker 1:That's some of my favorite writings of his yeah, I mean, he just like in World of Nations, he's just like, yeah, these guys are probably working for the CIA, like that's not confirmed until the 80s, like um, but but yeah, I mean, but hook is interesting because he's basically the left, the liberal left. Thanks to that, because Burnham becomes more, more reactionary, the hook kind of stays a good Liberal Democrat with some couple of socialistic ish ideas, and I Think that's. I think that's like how they captured that whole milieu, because you, if you're not a neo conservative but you're still connected to that post partisan review milieu With encounter and commentary and all that McDonald and Trilling and those guys are also anti-communist but they don't have the whiff of reaction about them. So it's, I think that's an interesting problem and hooks kind of their prototypical model, like yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:Hook is interesting in the sense like, as far as I know, he still described himself as a Revisionist Marxist anyway until he died. I think he was still part of social Democrats USA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe he like he was. He considered himself like a Bernsteinist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because actually my addition of one of my additions of evolutionary socialism has like a forward by him in it and if I also think he was, he considered himself an atheist, which a lot of these people like returned to religion of some sort and you know he was a non-believer and etc. Although he didn't allow his earlier Marxist you know Like from the 30s work, at least towards the understanding of Karl Marx, to be reprinted. As far as I know like from Hague, ultimarks was still in print even after he turned and I know he did an anthology in like the 60s, like Marx and the Marxist, which has this kind of like crappy commentary but it still Puts a lot of you know Marxian thinkers out there.
Speaker 1:So I guess what are the other interesting left-wing anti-Stalinist to flirt with this anti-communist agenda?
Speaker 2:I mean there's one figure, at least in part of his Life, who was kind of doing this was friends wa foray, because he was originally in the French Communist Party and after he left he actually for about ten years Was in various kind of like left socialist movements in France.
Speaker 2:I think he's part of the PSU, the unified socialist party, and Obviously part of his big break with Marxism is like his whole critique of the French Revolution and like the revisionist school and he's like really challenging like a lot of like the what I call the Jacobin Marxist orthodoxy on it that is defended by the French Communist Party.
Speaker 2:So in that sense he is, you know, you know someone who comes out of like the organized Communist Party, at least for a few years, tries to maintain some kind of Independent leftist position but moves over to becoming one of the dizzians of like anti-communism and he was very influential on the new philosophers because they were obviously arguing that they're, you know, the gulag is the end result of Bolshevism and he's saying well, you know, revolutions always end in slaughter. Just look at the French Revolution, look at my work, and he you know up and he just makes it like, basically, the Jacobins killed people just for the sake of killing people, just like the Bolsheviks, just like Paul pot and all of this. And you know that was like music to a lot of years of Of a lot of these former Maoists. You know I actually just finished reading Bernard in full, bernard Henry Levy's book Barbarism with a new face, which Okay definitely the worst book I've read this year.
Speaker 2:It's a lot, it's very facile, it's very superficial, but you know it's you know bringing up a lot of like, you know the Isaiah Berlin, karl Popper, etc. But you know it's he's part of that milieu that was listening to people like for a and Solzhenitsyn, and it's interesting. Actually, at one point Solzhenitsyn was at least in the 30s and part of the 40s he considered himself a Marxist and a socialist, albeit an anti-communist or an anti-stalinist one. You know he actually was doing independent reading of like Hegel and Marx during the purges. Yeah, obviously he had a return to religion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean he was a right wing for a Russian Orthodox reaction, obviously, you know, and anti-Semite you know. People should get that.
Speaker 2:He really liked the whites and everything I mean I remember Talking about, like I mean, his anti-Semitism is interesting, interesting in the sense that it wasn't racial.
Speaker 1:But but Richard pipes says I'm not quite convinced that that's the case. But yeah, Well, I don't just get from Richard pipes.
Speaker 2:I mean, I get it from his own writing.
Speaker 1:But To me that's irrelevant. I mean I think that's a good point, but To me that's irrelevant, like Mussolini's anti-Semitism was also not racist, was also not racial, so and he was a big pusher of Judea Bolshevik talk towards the end of his life. I mean that's, you know, like one of his big pieces is like, well, you know, if the Jews remain good Jews, that they'd be okay, but they didn't remain good Jews and they became communists and see what happened. And you know, I'm like, oh yeah, judea Bolshevik talk, which I don't think people People know about it now from Breitbart. But I used to be on the right Like, and I remember being shocked when I was even as a right winger, discovering that that was common in the late 90s and early odds. And the paleo conservative right was like Joe Soburn was still writing Articles about Judea Bolshevik conspiracy stuff, like you know, in in 2004. So it had an influence. But yeah, I remember reading about social nation being kind of an independence. So it makes me wonder about people like Kolikowski, that's another one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's also kind of like Farray because he joined the Polish Communist Party for not career advancement, he generally believed in it and he was excited by the 56 reform movement. But by like the late 60s, you know, it kind of had fizzled and there have been like these kind of vicious anti-Semitic campaigns of Poland. He abandoned Marxism and he writes like his, you know his magnum opus, the main currents of Marxism, which I think is actually very Catholic and religious in a lot of its understanding of Marxism. You know he calls it like the greatest, one of the greatest fantasies of the 20th century, and you know, he traces it all the back like people forget this, but he starts the main currents of Marxism with Platinus.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he goes all the way back.
Speaker 1:Like, like it's like, oh, so, so, like you're basically saying communism is a noxious conspiracy, I mean, although interestingly, what I find interesting about that is when he wrote that theoretically he was still actually a Marxist. So I mean, so I find our communists not just a Marxist, so I find that quite fascinating. But I also remember him, you know, trying to be like Sidney Hook and trying to have his cake and eat it too, towards the end of his life, on his positions, on all sorts of stuff, like oh, I'm a socialist but I'm not a communist and I'm a nationalist but I'm not an activist, and I was like there's some stuff from like 8990. That's kind of ridiculous. And then his debates with EP Thompson are, you know, thompson spanks him.
Speaker 1:Yes he does. But yeah, I find this very, very interesting to me and I also find like how the left opposition is characterized in the United States. It is favored in a way that it's actually weirdly anti-communist like. And I think that that is part of you know, we were talking about earlier my kind of despair about the rebirth of a particularly hollow form of Marxist anti communism. I mean, I think part of it comes from that and the fact that so much of this material, even when it was Soviet defense or had very complicated views on the Soviet Union, has been recoup, has been recuperated for anti-communism through most of the second half of the 20th century. So you know, and it is also true, you have figures like like Horkheimer and Serge, who it's very hard to tell, you know where they're actually at politically but it seems increasingly, you know, towards anti-communism. Yes, so anything else you'd like to talk about, like specifically about, about, you know, your book that we haven't touched on.
Speaker 2:The last. The one thing I would touch on is the. Originally the book was supposed to be like an expose on Dominico Lusardo's Stalin book, which ended up just being the appendix, because he's obviously comes out of a Western Marxist tradition. He's also was part of like organized like Italian communist movements as well. I think he's done a lot of valuable scholarship, his Stalin stuff not so much. It's quite bad and I tried to go through his various writings, particularly this, the Stalin history and critique of a black legend, where it's you know Grover Furies and you know his views on like the purges.
Speaker 1:He's more to me. I have read a bootleg translation of the book.
Speaker 2:That's the one I read, too, probably.
Speaker 1:And I was like it's Grover Furies, but it's also weirdly not in my. It's more sophisticated than that. It's way more sophisticated than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know he does this. He like. Both of them praise each other, but you know the thing is like again. I find a lot of Lusardo's other scholarship very valuable, but his Stalin stuff. If we're doing a balance sheet, that is definitely on the negative side.
Speaker 1:I don't like his, his Hegel and philosophy right book either.
Speaker 2:But I haven't read that one. I did actually enjoy the freedom of the modernist book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I'm more mixed with you and his book on Nietzsche.
Speaker 2:But we'll say that for another time.
Speaker 1:That's a whole different debate.
Speaker 2:But also part of the reason I included the Lusardo appendix is he's actually the one who coined the specific phrase dialectic of Saturn in the Stalin book, so kind of made sense to actually talk about him per se.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you read? At one point I saw what probably came. The appendix has an article somewhere, because I remember you did you doing a a review of not just the errors but the errors other Italian scholars had called out in that book, the you know Stalin and the black legend book. I remember they look a whole lot of like like scholars in Italy had called out how sloppy that scholarship was. It wasn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't read too much of the Italian stuff. There was some French stuff I did read that was translated. I think it was like John Murray someone, and but I think mine is, you know, at least in English I think it's like the only extensive, like look at the sort of Stalin.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad you published it.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I think it's. I mean, I don't want the critique of Stalinism and to and the understanding of Stalin to be left to me to like simple anti communist or even, frankly, like partisan. Trotsky is from the 60s, like. I do think we have to do better than that and I do think we also have to try to understand him and and like, like I told you organizing this room for mayor, I have always understood Stalin as the, as a Bonaparte's figure and I've also accepted the kind of do we sure take that Trotsky may not have been of a as brutal of a Bonaparte's figure, but had he been had hit up one the political battle, he probably would have been a Bonaparte figure. And I think it's Deutcher where I got the, the attribution that the Trotsky actually even admitted to that at the end of his life. So that you know that's sort of my reading, and I do sort of think that the, the, the Trotsky is malice hostility, because the some of that I think has to do the fact that they were competing forms of alternative Marxist Leninism. I know that Trotsky is wouldn't say they were Marxist Leninist. They call themselves Leninist but like they, they were competing forms of like.
Speaker 1:When, in this understanding of the of the USSR, particularly in time, and left us in general, and have particularly great or even strong interest in political economy.
Speaker 1:Weirdly, the 60s and 70s led them to be hostile to each other, for both historical reasons.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, I mentioned Chen Chen Dujie, who, who was, you know, pretty much written out of the history by Mao because of his quote Trotsky is among quote but there's also the fact that they were like the new communist movement, for example, was divided amongst tons of Trotskyist and malice groups over really tiny splits, and I do think that also is a historical tragedy because it means that there was no robust, large scale grouping that could have had these debates with each other within and a standpoint of like, having a unified political project, and part of that was obscured by the fact that they were also attached to actually existing states, are opposing those actually existing states.
Speaker 1:But but it is sort of a real kind of historical missed opportunity that I think plays out through the rest of the 20th century and into now as a as a missed opportunity. I don't know how you feel about that, but it does feel, it does seem that way to me, like there are things that Trotskyist and malice could have learned from each other and their mutual critiques of elements of the Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin. That would have allowed for a whole lot of other developments to happen. And between sectarian hostilities and then the Sino-Soviet split, that is simply impossible.
Speaker 2:I mean I, I that's an interesting point to make. I think there was this kind of I mentioned people like Bettelheim earlier. There was this interesting point even though Mao and the Sino-Soviet split was taking up the defense of Stalin, there was this attempt, at least among the more sophisticated ones, to try and develop a more robust Maoist critique of the Soviet Union and what had gone wrong. And, on the one hand, I do think the Maoist probably could have learned a bit from Trotsky, etc. I also think you know, and I've, I do like I've had Maoists say this, like a lot of Trotskyist don't read Mao and you know understand, like the dynamics of the Chinese Revolution etc. And I think, yeah, it's actually you're going to actually criticize Mao or you know, defend what you want. It's actually important to read and understand these people and, yeah, I always think more reading is good and certainly having comradely dialogue, although a lot of, like the Maoist groups of that period were very viscerally anti Trotskyist and very dogmatic, not to say a lot of the Trotskyist groups weren't very dogmatic themselves.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, for my big things, for example, is like there's a lot of stuff that Trotskyist historically wanted, that the great proletarian social evolution actually did Like, and then Maoist themselves like now don't really play that up, but it's. It is actually an interesting dilemma to try to look at.
Speaker 2:That I actually like things like the Shanghai commune, like the Shangguan and some of like the other more radical regards. I'd actually agree with you on that. Those are actually like, I think in some level. You know, in Trotskyist language is like in separate political revolution, if you want to put it like that.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, um, yeah. Last question you might be invited on a panel about this, just to tell you in the future, because I'm running a bunch of them. I'm running, I know, I'm running one on on the on the legacy and seeming demise of Western Trotskyism, and I would like your input as a Trotsky sympathetic person. I don't but, and I might, I might try to do on on the on the demise of, of cultural revolution, maoism, and in the West too, but that's a harder. It's harder to get people to talk about that, I know some people you might want to talk to.
Speaker 2:Actually about that. I don't know if you're friends with Drew Smith on Twitter. I'm not but I could be someone I would look up. He is originally from Georgia, he's a Maoist historian, he's a good friend of mine and he's currently teaching at China, but I think he would definitely be interested. He runs like his own cultural revolution podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a. I was at one time interested in the Matt Rothwell the guy who does the people's history of ideas, which is basically, I think, a really good and historically responsible like, like intellectual defense and actually an imminent critique of Maoism and its development, and I've I've learned a ton from it. I reached out to him and we tried to actually have a to do an episode, like he agreed to it and then it got sculled and we haven't had a chance to reschedule it.
Speaker 2:But because I asked him what he thought about China after 1978, he was like, really like, yeah, you know as far as I know, drew still considers himself an Orthodox Maoist, but he he's fine talking to me, so I think he would be, and you know he's. He's fairly honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I might be reaching out to that because I want people to to be able to talk about it and I don't want anyone to get in trouble with their sectarian organization for doing it. So you know it's it's just, it's a thing that's also kind of been a problem with the with the Trotskyist debate. I figured I'm over representing former ISO people because, because they just a, there's so many of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and be like they don't have an org they have to answer to anymore, I mean, unless it's one of the caucuses in the DSA. But so yeah, but I this will probably offer to you. But on that note though, just in quick, why do you think, why do you think, just in like five minutes, trotskyism has been so flat footed in in response to this current situation? Do you think it's just too many of them hit dragon with the social democrats, or what?
Speaker 2:I really think there was like a hitching to the social democrats. I actually said on my Facebook at one point like 2016 and 2020 were basically American Trotskyism, jesse Jackson moment, you know, which is like what led to the decline of American Maoism, was like all these mouse groups going to like this, like reformist campaign and the Democratic Party, and a lot of them just refused to develop a revolutionary perspective or abandon one to kind of get involved in this, and some of them, like the ISO, I think was very opportunistic and it really didn't take much of a leap for a lot of those people to join DSA and become pretty much the far right of DSA and again, I think part of that is DSA kind of like suck the air out of the room. A lot of these groups wanted and they just wanted to hitch onto that and they were willing to shed things on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of feel the same. You know who's felt, who's felt more and more prophetic on this, even though I don't know what his current politics are. But Charlie post, like warning about a popular front, even if led by social democrats, will probably so end up being the same thing. So, and and, and it does seem like a whole lot of trotskyists were willing to drop the United Front thing for the popular front thing in the DSA. Um, yeah, and yeah, I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't think I can explain all of it, because the decline has been somewhat grow global and I do occasionally have my whole like Mike McNair. You know there's a little, there's a little bit of that, that paragraph and revolutionary strategy, when he goes like all the trotsky organizations predicted a way that the Soviet Union might change or die and all of them are wrong, and I was like, oh God, yeah, that does kind of hurt, but they didn't kill trotskyism. Actually it's this most recent stuff that did so. It's. It's something I think a lot about. Yeah, I might have you, just so you know, I might invite you to a panel on that topic because I know you care about it and I would like to give your opinion, and I think you you've given me a good bit of it. Social democracy, you know that's. That's another thing, doug is. I also can't always tell social democrats from Marxist, lindenist anymore other than aesthetically.
Speaker 2:You know that that was true back in the popular front and it's true kind of today. Really, what was the difference between the Communist Party of the USA and like 1937, and social democrats, beyond maybe the lingering rhetoric? And it's kind of true today because a lot of you know I don't like using a lot of the hell draperisms, but there is that kind of socialism from above and a lot of the social democrats are looking for electoral reforms and savior politicians and the Marxist Lindenist are looking for like the strong man, and there you can kind of see the overlap. There they may put like different rhetoric and aesthetics on it but yeah, it's not a lot of faith in the working class at the same.
Speaker 1:I think, I think we also be interested in talk to you someday about how draper, because draper is the only shackman like I shackman, I like, I like aspects of him is a lot of his Marx scholarship I really love, but a lot of his other politics I'm not a big fan of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but to his credit he did a post shackman on Cuban. I actually give him a lot of credit for that.
Speaker 1:And kind of people's politics are often quite, quite strange. I mean, one of the one of the other weird weirdo collaborations of the 20th century was problematic, the Council Communist being good friends with and a promoter of Heinrich Grossman.
Speaker 2:Well, they had similar views on Marxian economics.
Speaker 1:I'd say they did both of them for the same reason? Yeah, they did. They had opposed views on Stalin and trade.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:Although, again, maddox took a good stance on Cuba.
Speaker 2:He did, and you know I really like Maddox. I recently read his work Marx and Keynes. I was like very impressed with that.
Speaker 1:That's a great book. I've been trying to get people's like I'm like don't let the Keynesians fool you.
Speaker 2:I want to give that to all my monthly review friends. This is pretty good.
Speaker 1:I always forget that monthly review somehow involved hell draper.
Speaker 2:One of the ones who published the Marx series was kind of there's a funny thing like Paul Sweeney writes a blurb on the back of the first volume praising it. But if you actually read draper's two souls of socialism he pretty much calls out like Sweeney as a Stalinist. So I think it's actually just Sweeney's credit that he kind of overlooked that. And just like you know what draper, he did the good scholarship up. I'm just going to go the rest of that.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the places in the 70s and 80s where there was interchange between Marxist and I mean between Trotskyist, other Marxist and Maoist was actually the monthly review. That's true, not true anymore, but it was definitely true in the 70s and 80s.
Speaker 2:I mean even when they're right, when they're publishing you all the stuff on the Cultural Revolution. They're publishing Ernst Mendel etc.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, the person Ernst Mendel the work with, like Ellen Merckenswood was an editor, I believe, like. So, like you know, post Trotsky, I think do we consider political Marxist, trotskyist Some of them.
Speaker 2:All right, some of them at least, would consider themselves Trotskyist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I remember the Neil Davidson versus versus Ellen Merckenswood's debates and I'm like wait, who was Trotskyist? They both were Trotskyist, I don't remember.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Wood considered himself a Trotskyist. Davidson definitely did at least of like the Tony Cliff type school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was, although he's far more Orthodox than most of the Cliffites. But anyway, we're getting into Trotskyist's Tariana, which I get into too much, and if you're not a real Marx nerd, you don't care. So we're going to end this here. I would strongly suggest people check out your book, not to out you, because I want your book to be a good seller, but it is from an academic press so it's expensive.
Speaker 2:I would just suggest people ask your library to order it, review it and write nice letters to the publisher asking for a paperback to make that a possibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's, let's ask for, for one of those who published it, roman Littlefield. Oh yeah, we're not as likely to get like, breville has that cool deal with hey market where they'll, like you know, put all the historical materialism stuff on the only kind of expensive side of things, as opposed to the oh my God, only a library can buy this side of things. But, yeah, ask for it from your library, because it's that's really what the audience are aiming for and that would help dug out and it would also get you to read the book. Thank you. So thank you so much for coming on anything else?
Speaker 1:you'd like to plug?
Speaker 2:I just completed a book on Kautzkyism, so hopefully, ooh you picking a fight?
Speaker 1:Yeah, why not? Just I'm just going hog on all this stuff.
Speaker 1:You picked a fight with a heron tonight and picked a fight with the Stalinist, and now you're going to pick a fight with the. I'm actually going to ask you this question, as you're now writing a book on Kautzkyism. I don't know what neocauskism is anymore, because some neocauskism is like Lars Lee Leninism, with some might make near thrown in, and some some stuff about with Quentin Skinner and like socialist republicanism or something. Some of it is what I like to call the Bashkarsankara, esoteric osteomarxism, exoteric social democracy, and some of it is whatever Eric LeBlanc is doing, yeah, and and our like Stefan Hamel, who I really like but has some strange opinions on Lenin. So like what even is it?
Speaker 2:It's an interest I like to start with. Lars Lee is he's just kind of like opening the door for, like this revival, and I don't think he really has any nefarious agenda because he's just an academic. That's not to condemn him, it's just what he is. And he basically makes Lenin into a Kautzky and I have a lot of problems with that interpretation. I'll just stop there. But I think you know that the big, you know, like Blanc, is one of the big ones and he's definitely trying this right kind of neocauskism, but it's very amorphous what he's proposing and it ultimately is just back Joe Biden.
Speaker 2:I think Mike McNair is trying for a more left version, but I think he is kind of reproducing a lot of like the same gradualism, even if there's like a more emphasis on like Marxian republicanism or etc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, this was, this was my feeling, because I was like, ok, blanc has read revolutionary strategy about my there, as has Bashkarsankara, and did they ignore all the parts about not siding with the Socialists? Right, like are like the right Right, it's just have to ignore it. But then when I look at the strategy by like the Lenin Kautzky hybrid people, like large parts of the Combinat magazine, for example, and I this is not to shit on Cosmonaut I like a lot of them too.
Speaker 1:And I like a lot of them personally, yeah, but I'm like, so, you're, you're, you're, what you're trying to do is take over the same thing, run by this, by this, you know, these Blanc is to better word and I think it's a kind of like a very arts and carist style social democrats, but you're, you still actually ultimately don't have, and I'm actually that interested in reviving working class institutions to do it. In fact, they, you know, they kind of like get kind of get mad about that when you like, you know, just point out like, well, you know, the USA is a left institution and what are you going to merge with? Like how does this merger formula work when there's nothing to merge with? I don't know. I think you know it's an interesting debate to have. My opinion of them probably won't make you happy, but I kind of feel like they're inventing, they're reinventing some of the elements of, say, like, third campus, trotsky, ism, but without the virtues of Trotsky.
Speaker 2:Interesting take. I thought they were definitely more like the Mike McNair side, because they've seen a lot of talk among them on like republicanism. I think they're proposing some DSA resolution on like having a democratic constitution for the US or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they find it very interesting and I don't. I don't mean this to be to be cruel to my friends, but like you can't win a full revision of the DSA's Constitution, but you're having a plank to rewrite the United States is one.
Speaker 2:That's a good point.
Speaker 1:Like I don't know, man. I mean maybe, maybe as an adjutant prop, I guess.
Speaker 2:but I also have a hard time seeing like most of the DSA signing on to that. I don't know, like what that would actually involve. I mean they're saying like the US has never been like a democratic republic. Ok, I mean, we know it's like a bourgeois democracy, you know it's very curtailed, but I don't know, I just don't find the argument like to fight for that very convincing.
Speaker 1:It just also feels like if you're going to overthrow the Constitution, you might as well just say what you are. Yeah, it's just like like we're going to democratically rewrite the entire, the entirety of US law. Ok, anyway, this is off topic and a dangerously close to throwing shade, but amongst comrades we do have to talk about they think somewhat honestly and that's an interesting one. And, on that note, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for giving me two hours of your time, and people should definitely write your library so that they get, so they buy the book and it's available to the public.
Speaker 2:Thank, you so much.
Speaker 1:All right.
