Radical Engagements: "Didn't See the Same Movie" by Loren Goldner

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to radical engagements and I am interrupting both our series on the Engles B bakunin debate and our series on bordiga for a tribute to Lauren goldner I'm going to read goldner's discussion of a book that I like but actually find goldner's critique quite interesting the book is Max El bombs Revolutions in the air a book that I tell people to read to understand the failure of the new communist movement um which came after the new left now gner died I believe on April 12th of this year he's been suffering uh a long decline um for those of you who don't know who Lauren gner was he was one of the editors of insurgent notes back in the day um he also wrote several books uh the most recent one was Revolution defeat and theoretical underdevelopment Russia turkey Spain and Bolivia in 1917 for hey Market I mean 1917 in 2017 for hey Market he ain't that old um but he also wrote uh several other books including uh ubu saved from drowning worker Insurgency and Status containment in Portugal and Spain 1974 to 1977 and 2000 the Vanguard of retrogression postmodern fiction says ideology in an era of fictitious Capital 2001 and Herman mville between Charlemagne and the anti- mooic cosmic man race class in crisis of bugea ideology in the American razon writer 2006 so we saw gner have a diverse set of literary and political concerns um kidnap uh the maintainer of um bop secrets and a lot of the information uh about the situationist spoke highly of gner um and goldner's website break their hearty power will be in the link for you um n's perspective is generally left communist often considered uh ultral leftist but with a huge cultural awareness um and an awareness of things like the situationist classical communism Etc now Max El bombs breakdown the new communist movement I think is interesting for a variety of reasons because it's kind of a talks about the way in which these things unfold and collapse but gner has some things to say about it and a lot of what gner has to say actually also interesting so we're going to read this article um which was a review of revolution of the air radicals turn to linen M and CH from Verso 2002 now I I I bring this up because the revolution of the air book I have suggested 10 years after it came out and 20 years after it came out uh I suggested it to people as a negative example of what not to do after occupy you know this burgeoning uh new new new left uh which was moving from its alter globalization artistic Anarchist phase into its populist and Social Democratic Democratic Socialist phase um and has liquidated into a kind of party lless are uh sectarians without a sect um phase of aot's soft and Confused Marxist leninism and again that actually fits what happened to the 60s radicals in a lot of ways so we're going to go into gouldner's review of albom's book gulner is probably harsher to the book than I would have been but I still think it's very useful you can find this on libcom and I will share links to both guler's piece here um and his website also be looking out for uh an episode uh on his legacy with some friends of mine goldner's Legacy I mean all right let's get on to it Lauren gner reviews Max albom's Revolutions in the air and in the process critically examines the mauth in third world's politics didn't see the same movie a review of Max bomb revolution in the air 60s radicals turned to Lena maen Verso 2002 the sleep of dialectical reason will engender monsters without exactly setting out to do so max Albom and his book Revolutions of the air has managed to demonstrate the existence of progress in human history namely in the decline and disappearance of the grotesque stalinist malist third world Marxist and Marxist leninist groups and ideologist he presents under the rubric the new communist movement as creations of pretty much the best and brightest coming out of the American 1960s astris gner would uh not be happy to see that all these movements have basically come back in a kind of parody form of their already parody form of the new communist movement in the 1960s and 70s quote who controls the past Oral say controls the future read at a certain level elon's book describing a mental universe that many respects out or Wells or Wells aims through the extended self criticism the jettison 99% of what the third world Marxist third world Marxism stood for in its 70s Heyday in order to Savage the 1% of the further M muddled Progressive politics for the future particularly where the Democratic party and unions are concerned preparing Progressive forces to paint a new face on the capital system after neoliberal phase has shot its bolt you know where we were in the last 10 years my friends in many ways people didn't learn elb's lessons and they definitely didn't learn goomer's lessons about El bom's politics I lived through the 1960s too in Berkeley of all places him how Draper a lot of people I was in the anti-stalinist Revolutionary muu then called The Independent socialist clubs which by the late 1970s had spawned eight different offshoots uh the infant socialist clubs have a relationship to H rer actually U the author identifies with a eurocentric Marxism we argued that every state in the world from the Soviet Union to China the Cuba to north to North Vietnam and North Korea by way of Albania was a class society and should be overthrown by working class Revolution we said the same thing about all third world National Liberation movements and States resulting from them such as Algeria and those in the then Portuguese colonies Angola mosm Beek guine BAU we were dead right and Max elm's third world Marxist who cheerlead for the most or all of them were dead wrong this is now clear as day for all eyes to see well it apparently wasn't gner because people still uh res resurrected you know shortly about 10 years after this book came out um a lot of those point of views I mean it it is not of any surprise that jasak Kai's settlers was written out of this 70s new communist movement's failure and Sakai actually wrote the most extreme form of it um and it was revived as a kind of Shadow Self of Social Democratic politics in other words the end of the alter globalization movement actually kind of saw the new Left emerge in reverse and then back again from the sectarian milu that have been left by the new left and the new communist movement emerging after the alter globalization movement seemingly stalled out on its refusal to make demands and capitulations to a popular front with the Democratic party to social Democrats emerging to do the same thing but at a national executive level the Shadow Self of this was that to pretend that no good politics would ever come out of the developed world because everyone was equally guilty and some person far away could somehow bring this revolution to the Forefront by nature of them being far away and highly [Music] oppressed we based our perspective on realities that did and do not to this day exist for Albama and his friends the question of rather the Russian Revolution died in 1921 kstat or 1927 the defeat of the West opposition and El muu the choice was between 1953 the death of Stalin and 1956 crev speech to the 20th party Congress eurocentric that we were we took notes of Stalin's treacherous and disastrous China policy in 1927 which Mala dong at the time had criticized from the right of Stalin's treacherous and disastrous third period policy and its results in Germany above all but also throughout the colonial World IG in the 1930s communes in Vietnam and China Rec critique Stalin's treacherous and disastrous popular front policy which led to a mutual defense pact with France reigning in of the fren mass strike of the May June of 1936 and above all the crushing of the anarchist and trus and with them the Spanish Revolution as a whole in Barcelona in May 1937 it also led to the emand of anti-colonial agitation by the Vietnamese and Algerian communist parties in the name of anti-fascism we were disturbed by the Moscow trials whereby 105 110 members of Lenin's 1917 Central Committee were assassinated and by the Hitler Stalin pcta through which Hitler handed over to the gapo dissonant factions of the German Communist Party who had sought refuge in the Soviet Union something often missed when Marxist lists talk about the molent trro ribon talk pact that there were prisoner exchanges of good communist to fascist we read about El bomb's onetime hero hoi Min who engineered the massacre of thousands of Vietnamese chus in 1945 when they advocated with a real working-class base armed resistance to the return of the English and French troops after World War II ho received them warmly under the offices of the yta agreement wherein Uncle Joe had consented to further French rule in Indochina just remember that Stalin was capitulating to a lot of this it's not Stalin's only capitulation to the West wasn't just you know uh only weird thing that we do with now wasn't just his creation of Israel my friend his support of the creation of Israel exceeding that of the United States at the time except that um Truman forced the state department to go further stal had done the same for Greece where again trus were slaughtered while pushing for Revolution and in Western Europe where French and Italian Resistance movements were disarmed and home by their respective communist parties we studied the workers uprisings in East berant in 19 4 53 and the Hungarian Revolution and the Polish worker on R of 1956 we distributed the brilliant open letter to the Polish Workers Party in 1965 of coron and me melusi we were heartened by the Polish workers uprising of goddon and gidea in December 1970 which arguably heralded through its 19881 expansion the end of the Soviet Empire Obama mentioned none of these in this post 1945 workers revolts against stalinism which were undoubtedly too eurocentric for him they did after all take place in Europe assuming that he heard about them at the same time he and his menu have undoubtedly described those revolts against revisionism from 1970 onward I moved into a broader more diffused anti-is Muse in the Bay Area R Victor surges Memoirs and or world's arm to calonia we discovered lucous class history and class consciousness and a situationist we saw Chile's 1970 1973 popular front once again crushed by the same collaborationist policies which elb stalinist lineage had first perfected in France and Spain in 1936 and unlike elama and his friends we were hardly startled when the Chinese Communist Party Embrace Pino as by the way they really did do that to piss off the USSR it had not escaped our eurocentric attention that China itself had pushed the Indo the Indonesian Communist party to adopt the same popular front strategy in 1965 leading to a massacre of hundreds of thousands a success for us imperialism more than the offset of the later defeat in Indochina and that it had applauded when the sanes regime in today's Sanka butly repressed as trosy student movement in 1971 astris we know we today uh and many people trying to celebrate Good Old CPC Marxism and the Soviet Union ET for the bad Cru Chef part um have often uh not only downplayed these things but also downplayed the the inter Ness sign killing between Marxist leninist themselves and tried to make it seem like only kushev was doing the sinos Soviet split and it had no implications for anti-communist Action including actions against Chile and socialist and actions against the Vietnamese themselves huh imagine that barn out on this one we were not shaken like Al Obama and his friends when China went on to support the South African in intervention against the mpla in Angola our call for the strengthening of NATO against Soviet Social imperialism yeah the Chinese did that by the way are support the right-wing recruitment against the Communist influenced Armed Forces movement in Portugal from 1974 to 1975 if anything today the is why I'm talking again one of the most maddening things is so many people trying to make these things disappear from history it angers me to no end how Communists lie to themselves about their own role in their own suppression it is unforgivable in many ways but you know one more College try which bring back the past that's how we're going to get the workers back on our side again is campism for regimes that have ugly histories even if I think and I am defens on China I want people to know that but my defens ISM on China is not to erase the realities of the consequences of the SOS Soviet split and how it helped NATO our support the right- ring regroupment against communist influence on forces movement in Portugal in 1974 and 75 remember China was just trying to piss off in the 70s despite running very internally left-wing policies uh China was actually highly involved in stalkering the Soviet Union and including you know stifling communist revolts in the area of the third world themselves which again is erased from history by a lot of these people Obama and his friends at the same time presenting the battle between two wings of the most elephantine bureaucracy of modern times as a brilliant success in putting politics in command against capitalist restorationist technocrats and intellectuals and burning beeth them for good measure all of these writhings of Chinese stalinism struck us as more of a second time farce the firsttime tragedy of the worldwide ravages of Soviet stalinism from the 1920s onward elama and his friends cheered on Paul pot's russification campaign in Cambodia in which one million people died no sooner than they Digest Ted the 19 the post 1976 development in China after Ma's death the arrest and vilification of the gang of four the completion of the turn to the US in an anti-soviet alliance when in 1979 after Vietnam occupied Cambodia to depos of the Camille ruse China attacked Vietnam and the Soviet Union prepared to attack China how difficult in those days to be a third world Marxist difficult indeed in a history that many people who just want us to give a good old College try to Marxist leninism want us to forget we have been shaped by the worldwide Renaissance of Marxism set in motion by different diffusions of the early marks and growing awareness of the hegelian dimension of the late marks and the gresta capital and theories of surplus value we leaned upon the unpublished sixth chapter of volume one of capital as demonstrating the essential continuity between the early and late marks we although we did not yet know that Marx is writing on the Russian Mir and ethnographic notebooks which Drew an even sharper line between the late marks and the bized productivist versions from the second third and fourth Internationals that last bits of dig trus familiarity with any of these currents would put pay to the diat worldview and text which the standard Fair of elb bomb's world it was of course the eurocentric to rethink Marx and official Marxism through new unexplored content not eurocentric to observe Marx through the Luminosity of Stalin Barry on hoja the marks who had WR an extensive journalism on India and China from the 1840s onward may have been eurocentric but the brain dead articles have been adding from the peaking review about the three goods and the four bads were for these people decidedly not Rosa Luxenberg and everything she stood for including her memorable writings no doubt eurocentric on the Primitive accumulation in the colonial world and her rich material on pre- Capital societies everywhere in ien the National economy meant nothing to these people her critiques of lenen in the earliest months of the Russian Revolution not to mention before 1914 and of the and of the right to National self-determination did not exist elama and his friends were not interested in the revolutionaries who had criticized lynen during his lifetime or at any point and they remain blistery unaware of bordiga Gorda and panak cook the philosophical Rats of course and lukos similarly meant nothing to them they've never heard of the 1940s and 50s CLR James Ronis skaya and the early Max shackman how Draper the French group Socialism or barbarism parl madx Senor Maxim and rubel the Italian workerist Arns Blanc or Walter Benjamin all by the way who get linked today in Western Marxism many of whom actually lived in in Eastern and East and Eastern Germany and were loyal to the Soviets until until the 1950s um even if they were skeptical of stalinism all right um this idea that everybody who critiqued the Soviet Union uh are the Communist Party of China which by the way the Communist Party China was containg the Soviet Union was somehow um a IR renous Western Marxist without skin in the game ignores history itself and often leaks people who are radically opposed some people who are called western marxists or good Marxist leninist who just say things that the current gagle does not like far beat on for any of you to be honest they seriously argue for the Aesthetics of the of the Chinese four revolutionary operas and such song as the mountain Brigade HS the arrival of the night so caras while the serious Marxist world was discovering the Frankford School whatever the ladder's limitations anded the board then there was the influence of the monthly Review magazine and Publishers Baron and Sweezy had migrated from the had migrated from the Soviet Union to various third world anti-imperialists to China they were infused with the buong climate of 1955 the that's movement and the brief moment of the uh Soviet Chinese neutralist Anti-Imperialist block names such as sakaro NASA and Nara Loom large in this mindset as did the leather tricontinental Latin America Africa Asia Consciousness promoted by Cuba and Nigeria the 1966 book on Baran szy Monopoly Capital which which years into the crisis of the Britain wood system did not even mention credit became a major theoretical reference for this Crow still is still a problem in fact part of the assertion of the Monopoly capital is that the contradictions of capitalism were over makes it all you know this was supplemented by International names such as Samara Min Charles bleheim Ori Emanuel arigi Emanuel and the South American dependency School AR Manuel you mean giovan REI Ander Wallin I think that's a weird screw up that's a sick and the South American Independent School cardo prish Etc but the lynchpin was Lin's theory of imperialism with the idea of the imperialist super profits making support of a labor aristocracy and therefore the reformist Western working class against which the whole world was ultimately aimed even today after the dis after everything that has discredited sweezy's economics Elam still uses Monopoly Capital as one of his many unexamined Concepts and yeah it still gets brought back I mean it's still you know I love John Bellamy Foster as much as the next guy I do I've had him on my show um but their use of squeezy and the assumptions of squeezy as to move to make marks about something other than economics and I do think uh Johnn Bley Foster tough a metabolism even though metabolism as metaphor um is actually pretty good uh I do think that the Baran freezy stuff is actually really really problematic and a lot of people use marks and Eng Les as a ventriloquist dumpy dummy at the in in that world because of the world of elom and his friends while reading Capital may have been on the agenda of many study groups in the reality in most cases the study of volume one which is tantamount to reading hegel's phenomenology only on the initial phase of since certainty of the English Imperial syst and skepticism it was far more as he says the paplet of linen are if the truth be known of Stalin bar and Mal ho and hoja which were the main Fair now I would disagree with goldner here that you can actually just list Stalin bar ma ho and ho the same kind of person I I actually I don't I agree with some of the atrocities kinded by ho but ho is a much more respectable figure than bar on Stalin and Ma is a ma is a complicated figure for me my favorite was barriers on the history of the Bolshevik organization and the trans caucus replanted in 1975 by some long defunct marus lind's publisher elb is honest in retrospect the publishing houses of the new communist organizations were issued almost nothing that remains of value to Serious left researchers and Scholars he might have added that it wasn't worth reading at the time either except briefly to experience the ideology run a muuk whereas for the political world I inhabited the question was of recovery of Soviets and workers councils direct Democratic work control the entirety of production uh perspective having its own limits but far more interesting ones by elb's own account of the vision of the socialist society and Marxist Lyon circles rarely discussed Beyond ritual bows to various third world models today utterly discredited or the invocation of socialism and one Ro carun of William Hon's fion are the writings on the Viet Kong democracy by the indefatigable Wilfred burett who had also written lyrically about Stalin Russia 30 years earlier the real marxan project the evolition of law of value I.E the regimentation of social life by socially necessary time of reproduction existed for Vally no one in the 1960s not for El bomb also not for me but the monthly review Monopoly capital worldview in which capitalism was understood not as a valorization process but as a quasi a Duran system ultimately a power and domination met perfectly with the in reality populist worldview of el bomb at all and populism keeps on coming back as if it's Marxism we have never been populist this is Barn talking we are not now populist we are not tomorrow populist we will never be populists and if you think populism is really expressing the definition of the moing class you are foolish now I will defend populism in a weak way like Christopher lash did late in his life as something emerging from real class conflicts that actually existed in 19th century in the liquidation of agrarian labor um in the developed world and it made sense then although it had its limitations and its first limitations was William jamy Bryant dragging their ass back into the into the Democratic party are you know its concession to nationalism and ways that made it subsumed but it had a quote Progressive character nonetheless we have never been the same as that attempts to make us that tend to make us the party of the moment to be liquidated when the moment changes now I don't believe in the invariant program like bigus do but I do think you need to be of tougher stuff than made to order ideologies that you can just unsubscribe from to quote our friends and the managers taken anyway through Baron and Sweezy a kind of left-wing keynesianism pervaded the part of left yes and that that still today dominant relegating the law of value to the capitalism of marxist time and following linen seeing everything else since the 1890s as a power political Monopoly Capital the anti-imperial was and is in reality an ideology of third world Elites in and out of power it was a developmentalist project guys it's what it was and it's fundamentally anti-working class like all the progressive regimes that have ever been established does not trouble El bomin ismo youu that the world of the third world in the international trade has been declining through from 1900 to the 1960s are that 80% of all direct Fallen investment takes place between three major capitalist sectors in US Europe and East Asia so much for Lyon's theory of imperialism sounds a lot more like kowsky as I've said for a long time although I will say that Lyon's theory of imperialism was actually pretty much correct for the time period it was written it's just been transistorized now I think I would disagree with gner on the extent of which lenen was wrong all right I'm not an anti- leninist to the extent gner is but I have to admit that I that all these things that gner mentions has sat with me ill while people are trying to pretend that this stuff didn't happen the illusionary prosperity of the West and their view was paid for by the Looting of the third world and make no mistake the third world was and is being looted the ultimate implication of this Outlook was once again to implicate the white I.E eurocentric working class of the West in the world imperialist system and the name and illusionary bureaucratic peasant Utopias of labor intensive agriculture this working class in the advanced capitalist countries had meanwhile from 1955 to 1973 carried out the mounting wild cat Insurgency in the US and Berlin May 1968 in France and the creeping May of 1969 through 1977 in Italy apparently not having been informed by L bomb's third world Marxism that they were bought off by imperialism a number of unexamined Concepts run through El bomb's book from beginning to end revisionism anti-revisionism leninism Marxist leninism ultr leftism Albom never explains that revisionism meant to this monu above all the ideological demotion of Stalin after 1953 and therefore those who call themselves anti- revisionists were identifying implicitly or explicitly and usually explicitly stalins Russia with some betrayed Marxist Orthodoxy in contraposition of revisionist anti-revisionism albomb does not demote one line to the consolidation in 1924 of the grotesque concept of socialism in one concept country a concept that would have made linon whatever his other problems wretch not for nothing that had Lyon's last Testament call for St removal as general secretary and the fact counted for nothing in the mental Universe of third world Marxism there's a lot of people uh including some Scholars who think that was fake I'm still not sure for someone who is writing about it on every page albam has in fact no real theory of thinis whatsoever whereas ailia I frequently stayed up late at night to determine if the Seas of sism or in leninism elama and his friends mainly uh saw mainly are entirely an unprop continuity between linen and Stalin and affirmed it as for Marx's leninism Elam doesn't meit that it was a concoction of Stalin it subsequent career Marxist lism could mean anything to anyone of anything of course except the power the Soviets and workers councils in which every fail proletarian revolution of the 20th century Russia 1905 and 1970 1921 Germany 19 1918 to 1921 Spain 1936 to 67 Hungary uh 1956 France 1968 worth more generous common elements than all the large and small totalitarians and El bombs thir World MOX with Pantheon put together I want to call out that I've also noticed that Marxist l ISM for all it's called for Orthodoxy and there are Orthodox Moxy leninist out there some of which I even respect um tends to be whatever you want it to be right it just means usually State good something else good uh but the people today particularly now that there's no that you know other than the pssl and the cpusa people adopting this kind of adopted in a in a uh media fashion will will combine multi polarity keynesianism um mmt whatever the into their things now I I do think that uh dogmatically insisting that nothing has changed ever in the development of capitalism and that everything written early on is completely applicable today is kind of bizarre and weird I also think there's a lot of people who are pretending they're Orthodox while changing every thing in the script is nutty to me and this is something goldner stood up against and you see it here Ultra leftism for elbon means little self-appointed vanguards running a mck and demarcating themselves from real movements elbon seems quite aware of the true historic Ultra left I mean quite unaware of the true historic ultral left yeah this is also a problem in Kaho and the way people used ultral left today in the DSA until very recently one can agree or disagree with panak cook whose mass strike writings influenced lyen State and Revolution yeah they did Gorder who told Lyon in 1921 that the Russian revolutionary model did not could not be mechanically impos uh transposed upon Western Europe or borga who called Stalin the great digger of the Revolution to his face in 1926 and lived a tail to taale um one of the things when people bring up uh everyone's favorite medievalist turned Soviet historian um Grover fur is Grover fur has trosky saying what borga said and complete Mis tribut because for uh doesn't really seem to know the history even though he does occasionally find interesting documents in the Soviet archives but such people and the general mass movements in Germany Holland and Italy that produced them our Noble tradition which hardly deserves to be confused rhetorically with the thug anx of the happily defunct League of proletarian socialism the latter name being true contradictorio and objecto inadvertently rebuilding the bureaucratic Dre Maran socialism means the abolition of wage labor and hence of the proletariat as a commodity form of human labor power as indicated above such figures as cormatic cor cordatus and the early CLR James whatever their problems can similarly be considered part of the ultra left and unlike the products of Elum from youu their writings were imminently worth reading today one Dutch Marxist organizing an Indonesia in 1908 had already graphs the basically bwa nature of nationalism in the den Colonial World an idea that elbon was still catching up with in two in 20 2 internationalism for elbon means cheerleading the latest third world Marxist movement or regime but in reality his vision of the world is laughably America Centric I've noticed this before amongst a lot of people who won't shut the up about multipolarity today he refers on occasion as a source of inspiration for his renew the French mass strike of 1968 which swept aside all the self-appointed vaggu guards Marxist list first of them all but this is lost on El burm by the early 1970s trist groups had clearly out organized slist and for what it's worth today the two largest Tris groups uh luta oier and Liga communist together account for 10% of the vote in the French election and are now the larger than the CH than the Communist party without a Marxist list in sight in Britain similarly TR has organized the Marxist leninist hands down played an important role in the 1972 strike wave never mentioned by El bomb and today the British Socialist Workers Party not to be confused with the American rump of the same name is the largest group to the left of Labor and now this is from 20 years ago all this stuff trisms collapsed in her lifetime uh for reasons beyond the scope of this essay but I think it needs to be noted but at the time there's a reason why trism represented a lot of this elb referred to the passing to the Japanese far left in the 1960s as an influence on some Japanese Americans but he seems blly unaware that the Zinga Karin were overwhelmingly anti-stalinist and mainly view Russia and China as state capital most creative most creative internationally influential currents of the Italian 1970s the so-called operis or workerist were breaking with the linis from the early 1970s at the latest to be fair in Italy and Germany large Mal and Marxist linous groups did exist and the trus were basically marginal and it's also fair to notice that oper rismo and autonomism emerged out of the Marxist Lin muu despite the fact that they get characterizes Anarchist today somehow on the subject of trosky I am not a trist and have basically as previously indicated since my cow youth you all called social societies as class societies and not as trosky as do as worker States but I have more respect for trosky who can been distinguished from troski is than I ever will have for Stalin ma ho kiml son Castro graa aabo I don't hate Cabo graa or Castro myself I uh and I don't hate ho but uh ma is a is a best of times worst of times figure Stalin for me is you know pragmatism as opportunism and bloody farce um and I'm not going to go into Kim song right now wearing the blinders of his muu Alabama shows real ignorance of trism third world Marxist Philistine hatred for trosy while generally not stooping to the 1930s trosy the ancient of Malo type slander were were exceeded only by such ignorance blinded by his myu's complete acceptance and positive continuity with Linton Stalin the world of the early 1920s which this which decisively shape both trism and the above mentioned Ultra left in the last 80 years of human history have no importance for him hence as indicated earlier the Triumph of socialism in one country after 1924 and the total subordination of all communist parties to the Soviet foreign project are totally un promatic un problematic for these people as were all the debacles of the Comon term mentioned earlier similarly the question of the relationship with the buik party and the Soviet state to the Soviets and workers councils I the question of the actual working class management of society which was settled and the negative by 1921 is of no consequence either it's your Centric to be concerned about Soviet history before the rise of Stalin not your to manner ston Russia with his 10 million peasants killed in the 1930s collectivization it's Massacre of the buik Old Guard and the Moscow trials ex factories operating with killing speed with killing sped up under the GPU uh the gpu's control are its 20 million people in slave labor camps at the time of Stalin's death for such revisionism must therefore be Cruise an equally top down attempt to decompress a bit of this nightmare the memory of stalins Russia still weighs on the consciousness of the masses of people around the world who seemingly inevitably outcome of trying to do away with capitalism and reinforces the still important neoliberal Mantra there is no alternative but why people like elom described the most dynamic parts of American left in 1970s were so taken with stalinist Legacy never seem to strike him as a major problem to be addressed I mean I think it's interesting that I keep on hearing about the anarchist stuff the new left that the fact that it led to the new communist movement and its dissolution is never really talked about yes there was rampid anti-communism and gross misrepresentations of the USSR that even perpetuated through the new Left absolutely true um it is also true that there's a whole lot of that the anti-revisionist tried to ignore including divisions within themselves and they try to ignore it still today elbon might also inform himself about trosy and Mark's theory of pernament Revolution which was a centerpiece of the bolik international strategy in 197 and its repudiation by staling was key to all the post 1924 politics swallowed up whole 45 years later by Al bomb's third world Marxist permit Revolution rightly or wrongly meant the possibility that a revolution in a backwards country like Russia could link up with or even Aspire see Marxist preest to the 1882 Russian edition of the manifesto revolution in the develop European Heartland and in that way be spared the bloody primi of accumulation process which every capitalist country from Britain to Russia to contemporary China has necessarily undergone it is this Theory and not some eurocentrism that made a small minority of honest trist keep their distance from regimes using thir World Marxism as a fig leaf for capital's primitive accumulation most trits were howling with the wolves that Vietnam will win well we have seen Vietnam and even more Cambodia one this is hardly the place to describe the Devolution of trism after trosky but the honesty and courage of convictions were not the strong suit of the mandels and baronesses and Pablos who shaped it after 1940 El bomb sees the the American S swp as the main face of trism for the 1960 and70s leftist in the US and he's right about that and claims that tros ism's involvement with the old 1930s issues and the European question was a main Hance to the larger impact of trism within the third world from China to Vietnam to Cuba were supposedly similing with Revolution and building socialism in point of fact fact watching the S swp like the for carts the commun east in the 1960s and70s I could only laugh up my sleeve watching the very the very way they buried their critique of stalinism as was the case with the Vietnamese inlf in the fine print of their theoretical journals were rushing after popularity waving in left Flags in the exact millu influenced by El bombs third world Marxism to take only one anecdotal example in a 1969 debate and Berkeley between the ISC and the S swp we put the s swp spokesperson P kameho mentioned him earlier up against the wall about the 1945 Massacre of the Vietnamese trus in front of the new Left audience and kameho conceded that yes hoi men ho hoi men's Viet men had in fact oppressed vietnames comrades of the fourth International I'm sure most of the new Left cheerleaders present considered our point to be ancient history 25 years earlier today as as they watch Vietnam rush into the market socialism with investment capital from Toyota mishishi I sure they don't think about all about it at all I remember K's brother Tony telling a similar audience that we wouldn't be too critical of black and Latino nationalism in the US because black and Latinos had not yet passed through their B Revolution as if American blacks and Latinos and also live in the most advanced capitalist country in the world but we had to put our finger on a certain reality since many of the Black and Latino nationalists in 1960s and70s were in fact on their way to middle class careers once shouting died down as uninterested in the nationalism of 1960s 70s weren't fact see once the shouting down di uned in general pran Revolution and the true 20 example of it today as they were then they were and are in no way different from the great majority of the white new left Max Al provenly quotes Tu Ali attacking those who such as myself and the ISC to which I belong saw no difference between Mal Jong and sha Kai cek Castro or Batista well I would also attack them there there is differences it doesn't mean they're that they're good whereas all the world's history since Ali has uttered the remark that has demonstrated nothing is that the main difference between the old style us back dictators and the third war Marxist dictators with state power is that the latter better prepare their countries for full Brown capitalism with M China exhibit a for prosecution and Vietnam fallowing close behind furthermore El bomb never seems to notice that many of the 19th of the 20th century mark is still worth reading today and he apparently has not read them such as the early shackman James Draper cordatus made most of their important contributions in the break to the left of trism in the 35 years in leftist politics I have met many Exon and Malice who became trist and coun communist I've never met anyone who went in the opposite direction I have as a side note I have uh once you played Grand Master Chast you rely go back I think the difference however is the people who go back now are just are are have never lived with people actually defending real exist really existing regimes finally while Elam rightly says that the current turn 1969 of thousands of new leftist to the American working class was largely fruitless he does neglect one important counter example namely the success of the international socialist named the ISC after 1970 and building the timers for a Democratic Union the TDU and through it being the spark plug for the election of Ron KY as president of the teamsters in 1991 there is no question that this development however much it turned into a fiasco was the most important left-wing intervention in the American labor movement since the 1940s I no more wish to go off on a long tangent about the terribly botched episode that I wish to expand on the history of trism I left the is milu in 1969 a lot of my favorite writers are people who who believe the ism moou uh Draper himself in some ways but also um Rain price Etc even though I have issues with price the is's success with the TDU came at the price of bearing or at least for the purposes of the teamer Politics the fact that they were socialists not merely honest trade unionist it turned out that carry wasn't even that anyone educated in trus groups in the is despite its rejection of socialist character of so-called worker States was a trus in every other question and contrast to mostest and Malice groups develops a healthy aversion to train Union bureaucracy into the Democratic Party yeah everyone else is entry as popular front this and you think after the popular front just exploded in everyone's face they would learn something about that but apparently they're wrong elbon provides a long history of how MA was involved under the wreckage of the old CP USA after the 1960 signo Soviet split some of these groups look back to the CP under Browder others preferred William C Foster but almost all of them saw something positive in the cp's role during the Roosevelt Elder era both in the Democratic party and in the CIO the problem of those working off of trism was on the contrary the bureaucracy in developed that developed exactly the way to see in the area of CP influence the problem of those working off of marxist leninism was revisionism Stone and malism for some reason don't have too much to say about bureaucracy except as in the cultural revolution when they're supporting one Democratic faction bureaucratic faction against the other I I think that's an unfair characterization of Mal of malism um I do think that yes it was supporting of one uh faction the other but uh the reev the uh the revolution in the countryside uh During the cultureal Revolution was actually pretty serious um was and uh led to actual strengthening of working class bonds I'm I'm not quite as willing to throw it under the bus what I can't reconcile is that the period where that was actually happening in China was also the period where China was like doing really opportunistic things supporting rightwing regime to fight the Soviets anyway so I wouldn't go as far as goldner does here but I think that is important and the concept of revisionism rarely inculcated the people against seeking influence in high places either with the Democratic politicians or with chain Union bureaucrats as the CP had done successfully in its Heyday it is certainly true that many of elb's marxist list did neither he seems to ignore the fact that the ability of a group like the is to intersect with the teamers re and file rebellion of 1970s and thereafter has something to do with the fact that they in contrast to every Marxist L around were not approaching the American working class with tall tales about socialism in CU Albania Cambodia or North Korea the oso radical Defenders of beijing's line whatever for or against the gang of four turned out to be defending a considerable part of the global status quo finally if elama would lift his head out of the Rob with third world Marxism he might notice that in Britain and France trus had a solid Mass base what everyone thinks of the politics involved whereas Marx and list almost almost no had almost nowhere to be seen and in the politically backward us groups like The Inevitable ISO not to mention the useful Anarchist scene are attracting more people interested in Revolution than any Marx Lin that that was true then that's not true today remember this is written after 2002 uh that was in the days of the alter globalization movement and the growth of the iso which is now collapsed uh and liquidated itself primarily into the DSA which is also seemingly going bankrupt so everybody looks bad today being for the overthrow of every government in the world it lets lets you go see and do things in the baggage of Po part or shining path for Kim Kim Jong ill conceals it is now time to turn to the merits of alam's book which contrary to what the reader May conclude from the above it indeed has first and I have to say uh I have no quar with Al Obama attacks the good 6 the bad 60s visions of figures such as Ty glenland for whom they late 1960s turned Revolution was the bad 60s compared to the early 60s per Heron vision of of participatory democracy Revolution was necessary den and is necessary today whatever the current ideological CRI met favor Obama's also right in critiquing glint uh glands and many others almost exclusive focus on white new left seeing the movement essentially collapse with the SDS in the 197 1969 1970 and not recognizing its extension particularly among blacks and Latinos not to mention thousands of white efsts who went into the factories and the Wildcat strikes that lasted until 1973 but elb does put his finger on the fact that the third world Marxist stalinist Marxist list and Malice muu was much more successful in the 1960s and70s in attracting and influencing militants of color and he is equally right in saying that most of the trus currents not to mention the post trus of which I was closest were partially blind to America's blind spot the centrality of race in the American class equ equation the ISC when I was in in it in Berkeley in the late 1960s was all for black power and like many other groups worked with the Panthers but itself had virtually no black members trasy groups as the S swp did did have some as did all the others but there is no question that elbon menu was far more successful with blacks Latinos and Asians as was the cpusa to cut to the quick I think that the answer to this difference was relatively straightforward as Alama himself points out many people color who threw themselves into the firmament of 1960s and 1970s and joined revolutionary groups with the first generation of their families to attend college hint hint when people complain about the black PMC it's often the black PMC who are complaining and were rather whether they knew it or not on their way to the middle class thus it is hardly surprising when one thinks about it they would be attracted to regimes and movements of progressive middle- class Elites in the third world this was just as true in a different way for many transient militants of the white new left similarly bound after 1973 for the professional classes not to mention the actual ruling class Offspring one found in such groups as the weathermen aren't you know most of the Marxist list groups today um elbon does point out that the white membership of many third war Marxist group was for working-class families and were similarly the first generation of families to attend college yeah this is true too this is VN agreeing with that he also shows the preponderant origins of such people in the prair radicalism I populism of the Midwest and con more European left of the two Coast an important clude to their essentially populist politics these are important social historical and cultural insights which could be developed much further Charles de's Black workers notebook deby was a member of w Den scy news and letters group effectively identifies the middle class character of the black p milu around stokeley carmichel at all as well as black workers distance from it the Detroit base League of revolutionary back workers simly critique the black nationalist middle class though it was hardly anti nationalist itself it is undeniable that the 1960s movement of peoples of color in the US was influenced by the global climate of decolonization of most of Africa the Middle East and Asia following World War II and the decentering of actually eurocentric views of Western and world history following the 1914 through 1945 dis entering of Europe and the new line drawn by the Cold War they were similar influenced by and themselves were the main Force enacting the shattering of centuries of white supremacy in American society it would be idealistic and IMM moralistic to explain their attraction to Third World Marxism malism and marxis lism by immediately by a meaningless assertion that they had the wrong ideas one important part of the answer is definitely the weight of the arriving middle- class element in these political groups who are today to be found in the black and Latino professional classes but the typical black Latino Asian militant in the US raving mes Little Red Book or chanting we want a pork chop off the pig we're not signing on for Stalin's goog or the millions who died in Miles greatly Ford in 194 57 or the mass murder and Pops Cambodia of the goulish toll on to numbers of political period in SEO T and seeo T's beginning where the black nationalist oy car Michael spent his last days with no descent anyone ever heard about anyone anymore than the working-class militant in the cpusa in the 1935 were signing off we signing for the Moscow Trials of the massacre of Spanish Anarchist and TR trus all the above real history and Theory blotted out are falsified by thir Marxist was available and known in the 1960s and thereafter by those who Sol it the question is precisely one of exactly when the groups of the people in motion are ready to seek and hear certain truths when El bomb Camp face that what elbon camp face is that the entirety of the third world Marxism was and is anti-working class whether in Saigon in 1945 or Budapest and pison in 1956 or Jakarta in 1965 or in the case of all the Shanghai workers slaughtered in the midst of the cultural revolution in 1966 to 69 workers white and non-right in the American 60s since more clearly than elb's minions blinded by ideology as Mark said in the 18 perire speaking of the English revolution of the 18 of the 1640s the same way but in different stages of development crl and the English people have borrowed for their Bazi the revolution language and passion the Old Testament when the actual goal had been when the bulis transformation of English society had been accomplished lock drove out the haboc AKA we all LARP until we don't when the upward mo upwardly mobile middle class elements in 1960s and 1970s new left in third world Marxist both white but also important numbers of blacks and linos had established themselves in their professional and Civic service jobs and academic tenure it's always said that as a positive that you know the female black panthers uh ended up as professors and the male black panthers in jail as if that wasn't a condemnation of the failure of both and that's always struck me as weird Suburban life and VCRs drove out ho CH and and Ma AKA everyone went back to normal and this is the part of the elbon book I've warn people about people can be radical for a couple years and just drop it and you're seeing it right now some people are going to double down on their radicalism but most people are just going to walk away things were quite different above all for blacks without a ticket to the middle class and as one can see in the difference in the ultimate fates of the Wither underground after years1 and the black provisional Prov uh political prisoners such as Dro plat but to conclude if elvon have offered us hundreds of pages on the wars of sex and ideologies that no that no one himself included misses it is not from an antiquarian Impulse the real agenda is spelled out in one of the Aus of blurs on the dust cover finally we have one book that can successfully concoct the dots between the battles of the 1960s and the emerging challenges and struggles of the new century the giveaway is elam's treatment of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign of 1984 and 88 which is presented as something as almost as mous as the 1960s yeah people blocked this out you know Jesse Jackson is a pre in his Rainbow Coalition is a precursor the Bernie and it failed similarly and a moment of reaction um and uh the millennial left and the JY left is don't know about it all right anyway and which offered a few Marxist linen groups the Marx and linen is for Mondale as one once called them uh still around their last chance at Mass influence and contrast in the 1960s the Jackson campaign came and went with no lasting impact except forther illustrate the Dead end of the Old roosevel and New Deal coalition and the aian welfare stadium that was once the bread and butter of the old Democratic Party of the cpusa strategy within the Democratic party AKA you know that thing that uh BOS Caron SAR tried to resurrect and we now seeing fall apart and his organization seemingly to lose all this money anyway and when all is said and done the Fatal Legacy of the cp's role at the height of stalinism in the mid1 1930s is El bomb's Legacy as well just as he tells us nothing about the true origins of marxist leninism and third Marxism Albom tells us nothing about the cpusa coming off its 1930s heroic phase hurting the American workingclass off to World War II through the enforcement of a no strike pledge with the Calamity of any critic of American imperialism's moment of arrival at the power at world power as a hito fascist and Applause in the daily worker for her oimo Nagasaki so it is necessary to concoct some further dots this book aims at being contribution to some new Progressive Coalition weding the American working class to some re vamping of a capital estate and an allout drive to beat Bush around the dean campaign or something like it in in 2004 it joins a grind SW of descent amongst capitalist forces themselves currently being articulated by the likes of George Soros Jeffrey Sachs Joseph stet and Paul Hugman as a still dominant neoliberal Paradigm of the past 25 years begins to seriously Fray and by the way did Fray in 2007 I know we keep on talking about neoliberalism we live in some weird post neoliberalism which has neoliberal characteristics but other characteristics uh nonetheless here we are while elon's book makes occasional passing references to economic hard times of the past 25 years begin uh uh economic temp times in 1970s he doesn't see the extent to which the American clim has has CCRI any possible agenda of Reform which can only be some kind of tax the rich share the declining wealth kind of left populism with a suitably diverse forces which will probably be be the final fruit of the progressive mle class white and people color that evolved out of elbon third world Marxism despite what elom thinks and what he and his muu thought 30 years ago the faith of the world is in the hands of the of the world working class and contrast with 30 years ago however the world working class is no longer limited to North America Europe and Japan but has now spread through the many parts of the Anti-Imperialist third world led by China the East will be read again not as a bureaucratic peasant hallucination of third war Marxism 1960s and 70s but a genine working-class revolt against precisely the forces that use third world Marxism in the third world as us as in the US and Europe to metal every social question Advance the social stratum the remant of the forces are position today in and around the Democratic party and train Union bureaucracy as well as the anti-globalization movement reading themselves again to revamp the capital system with t of progressive rhetoric as it did in 1930s and 1940s the only thing Progressive in today's world is a workingclass revolution I don't go as far as goldner a lot of things and I do not think that simply because I oppose elements or I see elements of of uh fatal flaws and all of the Marxist list ideologies I also see them a lot of leftcom ideologies and Center left ideologies as well so here we are I mourn Gunner's loss he was often a a point of Rage um at the concessions made by people who pretended they weren't making concessions and I'm G to miss that voice he's one of the people along with uh Jill D who introduced me to bordiga and panic cook for good and Ill nonetheless here we are read Max albom's book but also read it closely and critically andri goldner read him closely and critically too I think he's too hard on some of the Marxist roness failures even though I am equally appalled by the Eraser of the ugly history of the failures of the common turn and of the failures of the Revolutionary moments of the 20th century to blacked them out only in our completely fair and only in our failures um as a kind of ghost just makes the specters of marks look sadder and more correct in time don't do that like And subscribe hit the Bell we're going to be losing a lot of greats and we Bloss a lot of greats in the last five years I don't know who's going to replace them I'm not seeing a whole lot on the horizon protect your peace be the leader that you need take care [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh

Channel: C. Derick Varn

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Length: 62min 37sec (3757 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024