Guerrilla History - Electoral Theory and Strategy of Marx and Lenin w/ August Nimtz

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Professor August Nimtz to talk about his book, The Ballot, The Streets, or Both? From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution.  This book takes a look at the theoretical and strategic groundings and evolution of electoralism via the writings of Marx/Engels and Lenin.  A conversation that will add a lot of historical nuance to the debates that we have every election season in the "western democratic" countries! August Nimtz professor of political science and African American and African studies at the University of Minnesota.  His book The Ballot, The Streets, or Both? is available from Haymarket Books: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1385-the-ballot-the-streets-or-both.  His other books include Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (SUNY Press), Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America: The 'Absolute Democracy' or 'Defiled Republic'  (Lexington Books), and Marxism versus Liberalism: Comparative Real-Time Political Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan).   Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember Dinn-Vin-Vin? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use

the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined as always by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm really well, Henry. Glad to be with you. Glad to be with you as well. And also joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-hosts. of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing this fine morning where you are? I'm doing great. Glad to be here. Great. Looking forward to the conversation, because today we're going to be covering a topic that I think is germane to many of the conversations that we have

periodically in the United States and Canada in these Western democracies at large, which is electoralism. Our guest today is Professor August Nymphs, who's a professor of political science in African-American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota and the author of, among other things, but the book that we'll be talking about today, The Ballot, The Streets, or Both, from Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution,

which can be picked up at Haymarket Books.com. The entire book is very, very interesting. The book itself is only about half of the book, and then the other half is just resources for you to dive into from Marx, from Lenin, that look at how their electoral strategies were framed individually and then how they tied together from Marx's original conceptions of electoralism and what should be done in a revolutionary movement to Lenin's actual tactical choices that were being made through the Duma periods.

This is 1906 through 1917. There was four Duma's that were around from that time. the first Duma, second Duma, third Duma, fourth Duma, obviously, with the fourth Duma ending when the October Revolution was essentially around. And electoral strategy is something that comes up in the news, or maybe not the news, but within left discourse pretty frequently. Should we engage in electoral processes? Should we reject electoral processes?

Should we act within a major bourgeois liberal party? Should we create alternative institutions and alternative parties, whether we think that they're going to win or not? Should we only engage if we think we're going to win? These are all questions that are debated basically every time that we have an electoral season and including and not limited to, but very prominently within the last two United States presidential elections, both in 2020, with many people nominatively on the left saying that we have. have to vote for Joe Biden to get Donald Trump out. And in 2016, a similar rhetoric being used for why we should be supporting Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. And the question is, should we have been supporting those candidates from a principled left perspective? And of course, that's up for debate. But the whole point of this conversation that we're going to be having

with Professor Nymphs is what would Marx and Lenin have been thinking when trying to figure out how electoralism should be working within the society as it is. So I'll turn it over to my co-hosts now for any initial thoughts that we have on this conversation that we will be having. Of course, we're going to get pretty deep into this with Professor Nymphs. But guys, who has some initial thoughts that they want to share on electoralism and the book that we're going to be talking about? Brett? Yeah, sure. So I guess the first thing I want to say is just sort of bouncing on how you framed it just the second ago. you know, who we should vote for, you know, how this stuff comes up, the lesser two evilisms.

We all know it. We all deal with it all the time. But I think it's important and I'm interested for this conversation to get away from thinking about how a single individual should or shouldn't vote and to think about how our left movement should engage with electoralism broadly. And it actually does have a lot of importance because the, you know, the statistically largest socialist organization that the Democratic Socialists of America seem to be convinced and their strategy revolves around the idea, not only that the Democratic Party is viable,

but that actually most of their electoral fights should be channeled through the Democratic Party. And that opens up some interesting debate and hopefully NIMS will talk about it regarding what the Democratic Party actually is and how a real revolutionary movement should relate to it. Should we work through it? Should we work with it? Should we confront it? Those are open questions that really have a lot of real-world implication. And then the second thing is just about marks and angles and obviously the focus of this book, Lennon, it's not so much that we care what they say in like some dogmatic doctrinaire. What did these great leaders think? But we care what they say because it worked, right? With Lennon specifically, the first

workers revolution in history, the first attempt to build a worker state in human history. And it was largely Lenin's strategizing that got the Bolsheviks to that point. And so we care not because of some doctrinaire respect for great men of history. We care because it worked and we care because we want to make left movements revolutionary energy work here. And so that's why we study this history. And so it does have a lot of importance for our movements what Lenin thought because Lenin put those thoughts into action and actually changed the world by doing so. And that's what we aim to do as well. I just want to jump in very briefly and say, Brett, thank you for articulating that point because

I absolutely was not trying to say that we should dogmatically follow what was done in the past and what was conceived of in the past. And I know you know that, but I just want to make that clear for the listeners that we're looking to these leaders of the past for inspiration as to what we should be doing, but not dogmatically. Adnan, any thoughts? Well, I also think the other, the first point that Brett made is very important as well, that we shouldn't frame it as a matter of individual choice and decisions. Too often, this whole question of electoralism is understood through the idea of the individual, moral, or ethical choice. And this is a very kind of isolated consumerist kind of idea about politics that turns electoralism into personal morality and how one

feels. And I think it's very understandable why this has happened because the entire metaphor of our society is then mirrored in the politics that we make our decisions by what we choose to buy and how we choose to vote. And since we don't have the confidence that we can build a broad-based left-wing workers' movement that can transform history, it all becomes about individual sense of themselves and what they want to perform and how they want to feel about it. And I think the very important thing that we're learning from this book is to see the practical implementation of Lenin's ideas

in a revolutionary context and the pre-revolution. get to the revolution what do you do while you're preparing for a revolutionary moment and transformation and it's not very personal about morality it's about understanding history i think that's one of the other things i'd be very interested to talk more with our distinguished guest the author of this fascinating book is you know very much this idea of how lenin's politics is built upon an assessment of historical materialism as the foundation, not whether it's right to do this or that in an abstracted way for him as an individual, but what serves the cause of liberation by understanding the present state of social and political forces? And then you decide where

electoral engagement can achieve something. And so I'm looking forward to this episode. This is, As Brett said, such an important and profound moment in the history of left movements where Marxist theory and worker organizing come to fruition, not just in theoretical terms as outlined by Marx, but in practical flourishing of a left movement. And so that's why we're returning to this kind of profound moment, 1917, but not just through the way everyone has looked at 1917, but through Lenin's electoralism, because you would think that it's a revolutionary moment, so it's what falsifies the need or

importance of electoralism. And in fact, actually, there's a much more complicated way of understanding and doing politics and no answer of either principally yes to electoralism or rejecting you know, electoralism for revolutionary action actually makes sense. Each historical moment needs to be understood in historical materialist terms, and that's what's been missing, I think, up to this point. This is a very valuable study for us to get into. I mean, there are also some other very interesting issues I hope we'll get a chance to talk with our guest about, about, you know, imperialism.

I mean, this is what Lenin is so distinctive in is the way in which he understood. both the transformative revolutionary dimension of trying to topple the, you know, Tsarist empire, but also broadly speaking how this could be a global revolution and the importance of taking an anti-imperialist stance. So that'll be also interesting to see how that related to left movements, because that is covered as well in this book. I think that the last thing that I want to say during this intro, and I'll give you each the opportunity to go around the horn one more time, because I know we want to get into

this interview. The last thing that I want to say is that we have to understand that elections aren't and ends to themselves, and that's made clear by Marx, by Lenin, and that's something that people that take these dogmatic stances, that we have to ensure that we win this election against this tyrant, and people that say we can't engage in the electoral process whatsoever because it's subordinate to the bourgeois state, these are both very dodgy. positions. Elections actually have some legitimate uses outside of simply who wins and who loses in the election. This is made clear by Marx and by Lenin in their writings. I know that we're

going to be talking about Marx's address to the Communist League. It's a huge part of the book, and it's something that I quote from fairly frequently, but Marx is very, very explicit where he says that the workers need to engage in elections through a workers-led revolutionary party, even if they have no chance of winning. And I'll find the quote that way we can bring it up during the interview. But even if they have no chance of winning, if for nothing else than to be able to count our forces, to understand what the stage of the upcoming revolutionary movement is, You know, do we have nobody that's looking for any sort of revolutionary party at the moment?

Do we have a lot of people that are interested in joining a revolutionary movement right now? That's an important thing. Getting your message out to the people, when we don't have election seasons, let's just think about the U.S. context, because I'm sure all three of us are well aware of the American context and many of our listeners are going to be as well. you very rarely hear conversations about almost any political topic of really use outside of election season. And even in election season, you know, most of the topics are barely talked about, you know, think about imperialism. How often on a debate stage have you heard American imperialism brought up and debated?

Almost never. But if it wasn't going to be on a debate stage, people would never hear those debates. you know, the broad masses of people would never hear such debates. Now, if you had a revolutionary movement, a revolutionary party that was engaged in the electoral process, even if they weren't going to win, and I know the U.S. has, you know, many barriers to preventing these sorts of messages from getting out and from these revolutionary parties from getting any sort of traction. But let's say that you did have a revolutionary movement that did start to get some traction. And, you know, in some elections you saw an

increasing groundswell of support among this party, you would then be able to use the apparatus of that party to basically promote propaganda to talk about the American imperialism and the issues inherent within it. And you would have that electoral period to be able to discuss it. Elections, if for nothing else, are useful for that purpose. Even if we know that our theory of change is not going to be rooted in electoralism itself, the elections still serve a purpose. And we have to consider that, that this isn't a dogmatic position. We We can understand that elections, and just speaking from my personal beliefs here, we can understand that elections are not going to be the way by which we transform this country and this world into the world that we would like to see, but we can also understand that we can use them as a tool to advance that movement. And that's something that I think is going to come up during the conversation.

It's something that I know that I'm going to want to focus on in the conversation because we can't be dogmatic about this. We have to use every tool at our disposal to be able to advance our goals as much as possible. And if that is using elections solely as a method of counting our numbers and to produce material to be able to get our message out to the people and to have some sort of framework in place for when the revolutionary movement is here, I think that that's an important thing. Brett, any final words before we get to the interview? No, I think we'll have a lot more to say after we talk to August here. because there's plenty of threads that you laid down that I would like to pick up and I'll pine on. But I think probably going through his interview first and then at the end, we can sort of touch on some of these things again.

I agree. I'm looking forward to the discussion with our guest. And I think there's a lot of interesting issues. We'll see how we can carry those threads depending on what he has to say. Well, in that case, then we'll get right into the interview with Professor August Nims, professor of political science and African American and African studies at the University of Minnesota. Listeners, we will be right back with the interview. And we're back on guerrilla history, and we're joined by our guest, Professor August

Nymphs. And just to remind you, even though we read in his bio at the beginning, beginning. Professor NIMS is a professor of political science in African American and African studies and distinguished teaching professor at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several books, including the one that we're going to be talking about today, the ballot, the streets, or both, from Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution, which is available from Haymarket Books. So hello, Professor Nymph. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Hello, to everyone. It's a real honor to be on the program, invited by you to have a discussion.

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot of places that we could start this conversation off on. And I guess that the way that I'll lead us into this conversation is that really the area of focus of this book is across the four state, Dumas. And I think that most of the listeners, unless they've already read your book, and hopefully the listeners do after listening to this, they'll be. be unfamiliar with the state duma. So could you just run us through what these four state duma were, what the character of each of the duma's were, maybe why the duma's were originally set up in 1905 and, you know, whatever else you feel like throwing out there is a way of getting us into the conversation? Right. The four duma's were Russia's first experiment in representative democracy. And they issued from the 1905, 1907 revolution, as has been a history with representative democracy elsewhere in the world, as a revolutionary development had taken place. Russia was late to representative democracy. It was an absolute monarchy until 1917, and it

begrudgingly, the regime, the monarchy, desauchingly made these concessions to representative democracy. And the first form in which that appeared was in 1906, the first Duma, the first parliament, Duma might be translated roughly as parliament. And so that lasted for about three months, three or four months. Then it was replaced by a second Duma in later in 1906. And that Duma was ended just as the first one. It was pro-wrothed by the Zor. The regime decided it no longer was willing to tolerate representative democracy. And so they tried with a second Duma.

That Duma proved to be much more to the left on the political spectrum. And the regime was especially upset with. with it. And so it was also paroched by the Zoy. And then a new set of elections took place for the third Duma in 1907. It sat for five years. It was the longest of the Duma until 1912. And then the fourth elections for the fourth Duma in 1912. And that Duma was in place till the outbreak of the First World War, war. It was suspended and only revived after the ouster of the regime of the czar in the beginning of 1917. So those are the four, the four due months. Again, beginning with the first one in February 19, it was six for about four months, three or four months, replaced by a second one later that year known as the second Duma. And then the third Duma, beginning in 1907, and its set was in place until 1912. And then 1912, new set of elections for the fourth, for the fourth Duma.

And it was the fourth Duma that was in place on the eve of the the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Is that useful in terms of an old view? And again, they came out of a struggle. They came out of a, just think about the history of a representative democracy with the bourgeois democratic regimes and revolutions in the United States and in France and so on. So they were a product. The Dumas were a product with mass mobilizations in the streets.

And that's what 1907, the 1905, the 1905, the 1907 revolution, brought into the existence. And in many ways, the end of that revolution in 1907 really spelled the end of any kind of substantive democracy, even though the third Duma, there was an election, but it was much more restricted, and exactly because the regime did not want a Duma on the left end of the political spectrum. So it imposed new restrictions on who could vote. very limited and so on. So there was a much more limited in terms of democratic opportunities

with a third deal one. Yeah, I think that's incredibly helpful. And I want to move on to this question up front to make sure that we address it. And it's really a core part of your work, which is this argument that, you know, as you make very clear, that Lenin understood Marx better than any of Lenin's contemporaries. So could you just talk a little bit about how Lenin's views on revolutionary parliamentarianism was rooted in a clear understanding of the politics of Marx and Engels? Yes, Lenin drew on the experiences of Marx and Engels, specifically the German revolution. That is, Germanist first experiment with Representative Democracy came out of the 1848

revolutions. The European Spring, as it is sometimes called, beginning in Paris and February at 24th, 1848, it didn't spread to Berlin. And out of that uprising in Berlin, the Kaiser, the regime was forced to make concessions toward representative democracy. And so Germany's first experiment with representative democracy came out of the 1848 revolutions.

And Marx and Ingalls, were deeply involved in the 1848 revolutions in Germany. And that was sort of that baptism of fire, as Lenin once put it. And the lessons that they drew from that experience, what's involved in a revolution, what happens when a regime is trying to place limits on a revolution by making concessions for representative democracy, those were the experiences that Marx and Ingalls lived through. and drew, most importantly, drew a balance sheet on that development, on those developments.

And that's what Lenin really, really absorbed to his bones. He read everything he could that Marx and Ingalls wrote about that experience. And that, as communists, Marx and Ingalls were obligated to draw balance sheets on the revolutionary process, even the defeats, because it's true the defeats, that you can learn something. And so they're very conscious about documenting everything, and that's what linen, And that's what informed Lenin. And one of the key documents I argue is it's only 11 pages. And I always advise people to read it.

It's the March 1850 address of the Communist League. And it's a balance sheet. It's kind of a self-criticism, actually, of the Communist League. The organization at Marx and Ingalls are headed up. And it was a critique of the Communist League. and how it responded to the revolutionary of surge and it was memorized by Lennon. Lennon committed that 11-page document to memory.

And I contend that that document served as Lenin's playbook for subsequent development, and especially to trying to understand how the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917. I argue that that document is crucial. And he committed it to memory. We know that from one of his biographers, David Riazanov, his great little book on page 100, page 100.

He quotes Lenin, saying the importance of the document. And not only did he commit it to memory, but he also loved to return. repeat it and to cite from it in making his case. And at the heart of that document was the notion of independent working class political action. On almost every page, you see the word independence, independence. That is, the working class had to be independent of the bourgeois porters and the petty bourgeois porters had to have its own political party.

That's crucial, crucial. That's the key theme in the document. It's a kind of a self-criticism because the Communist League suspended its activities and sort of blended in with the larger Democratic movement. And what they're saying in that document, that was a mistake to have done that, to dissolve themselves into the larger democratic movement. Not that they shouldn't relate to it, but they should relate to it as allies. And only if the working class had its own political party, could it relate to the larger democratic movement in a much more. effective kind of way. And in that document, who are the kernels of wisdom that they distilled about how do you participate in elections, how do communists participate in the electoral process.

And I contend that would become at the center, the core. That advice would be the core of Lenin's perspective with regard to the electoral process. Yeah, that's really interesting to make that connection about basically historical analogous circumstances being really important to Lenin. And I think, you know, you do a wonderful job of showing in some ways how his methodology wasn't just an abstract one of principles, but was grounded in historical circumstances and being able to analyze contemporary situations. situations to determine how you applied those principles, which seems to be a weakness of a lot of other tendencies, is that they formulate around an ideological position and then stick to that as if that just defines any historical circumstance, whereas he had a very elastic sense of what do you need to judge? And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about these things

like his use of historical and political analysis to determine what's the right approach and action at that time with these upsurges and downward moves, like it's cyclical and it goes in waves rather than that you just sort of adopt the same approach all the time. Maybe you could comment more. No, that's an important question. And I think there are two things involved here. The first thing is that in the Russians, and it's something that Trasker thought about years later, because they're trying to figure out why were the Russians able to do what the Germans were not able to do. And as Trasker said, the Russians had an advantage, and that advantage was they lived in a revolutionary situation. They lived in a revolutionary situation, highly unstable, fraught with all kinds of,

kinds of tensions, revolutionary potential, what I sometimes call the laboratory of the class struggle. You have to have opportunities to test your ideas. If you don't have those kinds of opportunities, it can all be very abstract. And Russia was because of historical circumstances, the last man standing, the last absolute monarch standing and so on. It was a thorotic regime on its last lake, very unstable. And that instability was forthwith revolutionary potential and opportunities. So having an opportunity is to practice politics is really, really crucial. And that was absent in Germany.

Germany was fairly quiescent. after the defeat of the 1850 revolutions, really you don't have any real upsurges in Germany until the First World War, until 1918. And so the absence of a revolutionary situation made it very hard to practice revolutionary politics. In order to practice revolutionary politics, you need a revolutionary situation, the laboratory of a classroom, the test your idea. is, to see what works and what doesn't work. And that's the advantage that the Russians had. And Marx and English

toward the end of their lives, they began detecting that. Marx in 1872 began to recognize that Russia was really the place to look at, the instability there. He translating capital into

Russian. His studies on the peasantry in Russia. He learned Russian. He wanted to be able to communicate with the young, with the youth who were coming out of Russia, who were looking to him already. They're looking for

guidance and so on. And so Mark died in 1850, 1883 and did get a chance to see, but Lennon lived, I'm sorry, Engels lived until 1895. And so Engels really saw the developments that were going, on in Russia and that's what their eyes were cast to again because it was a highly unstable highly unstable situation and they're up that's so then the second thing is really the uh the leadership question and and and i think exactly because of that unstable situation it was lennon who was

able to come to the conclusion very early of the need for a revolutionary party and his insight in 1901, written a year in a document that was the lead-up to his famous book, What Is to Be Done. But in the year earlier, he wrote a short piece in which he stated, if a revolutionary party was not in place, did not exist before the proverbial shit hits the fan. It would be too late. It would be too late to try to form one in the midst of all the turmoil. If you didn't have something already in place, before it hits the fan, it would be too late to try to form a revolutionary party in a midst of turmoil. That was in 1901. I argue that that insight goes a long way in understanding why it is that the Bolsheviks emerged victorious, given all the

all the other competing organizations. There are lots of other organizations and never ever forget the liberals. You have lots of liberal groups and so on. So you have to explain why is it that the Bolsheviks were able to emerge as victorious. And I argue that that insight as early as 1901 on the part of Lenin.

And the need for a revolutionary party goes a long way in explaining and explaining that outcome. So those two factors, Russia was highly unstable, revolutionary developments taking place all the time, an opportunity to test your ideas, to test ideas, to see what works and what does not work, and that and the importance of leadership. Before I ask my question, I just want to remind the listeners that recently we had an episode with Emmanuel Ness where a big part of the conversation was about the necessity for having

a revolutionary party in place before you have the mass action take place because otherwise when you have mass action take place, you have no ideological framework for them to follow to drive the objectives home and actually achieve success. So for listeners that haven't listened to that episode yet, I'm highly recommending you to go back and listen to that. It was just a few episodes ago now. And as some of you may have noticed as I was writing my book, I was writing in the middle of the Arab Spring. And to me, there was no better example. What happens when the masses go into motion

and there's no leadership. There's no revolutionary leadership. That was a tragedy. But that was like 1905. In 1905, they really, the Bolsheviks were a minor. They couldn't provide leadership in 1905. But the lessons of 1905 and preparing is what made it possible for 1917. Yeah.

So I know, Adnan, you're going to have a few things to follow up with. So we'll get to you just a second. But what I want to turn to now is to follow Lenin's thinking for a second. So you talked in quite some depth about the phase of the upswing versus the phase of the downswing and how your tactics vary depending on what phase the feeling of the society is in at that time. And you can see Lenin's thinking changing, or at least his tactics changing over the course of the four Duma. So that's point number one. And point number two, just reaching back to Marx for a second.

This is a quote that I wanted to read earlier, and I'll just throw it out there now. It's from that address to the Communist League. He said, even when there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence to count their forces and to bring before the point. public, their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection, they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the Democrats, small D, as, for example, that by

so doing, they are splitting the Democratic Party against small D, and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is indefinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. Now, this was something that Lennon really took to heart, especially when we're talking about the black hundreds, which is something that I also hope that you'll address in this answer. So can you talk about Lenin's conception of the phase of the upswing versus the phase of the down swing to kind of interest that topic, just a little bit more for the listeners,

talk about how tactically he evolved from the first Duma through the subsequent Duma because the first Duma really was an outlier. And then can you talk about how, for example, this splitting of the support with allowing some reactionaries in dating back from Marks, this is getting back to Brett's original question that you asked, Brett. Can you try to tie these threads together and give the listeners a little bit of insight into how Lenin's tactical noose kind of developed over time. I smiled when you said small D.

I smiled because it could have been capital D. Exactly. That's why I had to specify because it would be absolutely applicable with the big D. So, yes. Well, again, Lenin is a student of history, a student of Marx and Ingalls, and therefore the revolutionary process. And history had taught. that revolutions go through upsurges and down surges.

And that that was what history had revealed. And certainly for Marx and Engels, the French Revolution, was the classic example of a revolutionary process, a revolution going through an upsurge asset, and then it begins to descend. And that's the overall framework that they implodent, and that's what Lenin, understood to his bones.

That is, the revolutionary process is indeed a process of assent and descent. And most importantly, in an accent, characteristic of assent is when the masses are in motion. The masses are in motion.

That's what really makes a revolutionary process effective. It's the masses are in motions. The democratic gains that a one come from the fact that the masses are in motion.

Again, that's one of the lessons of the history and the revolutionary process and the fight for democratic, the quest for democracy. We only advance in the quest for democracy when the masses are in motion.

It's when things begin to descend that becomes a tricky part. And what do you, how do you respond? how do you respond to that? And again, he was drawing on the lessons of 1848. 1848 went through an upsurge, and then by 1849, late 1849, 1850, it began to descend. It wasn't clear whether that it was over with. That's a whole other question.

How do you determine whether a revolutionary upsurge has come to an end? And that led to a split inside the, inside the movement. It's not, it's one of the most difficult things in the revolutionary process to know when an upsurge has actually come to, it's come to an end. And because we, it's, and the hard part, again, is what do you do when it's going into a decline? It's easy, someone who's a real revolutionary, he or she will know what to do when the masses are in motion. The hard part is when the masses are not in motion, how do you respond and how do you, how do you behave? So, and that's a part of the background for understanding with how Lenin's attitude on the elections and boycott or not to boycott. So yes, the regime in October of 1905 suggested that it might be willing to under pressure to grant a representative.

representative democracy. It floated the idea of a duma. It was named after, sometimes known as the buligian duma, named after one of the ministers in the regime's government. And the question was whether or not should revolutionaries participate in the elections to that, to that Duma. And Lennon advocated, just as most people did, even some of the liberals actually, calling for a boycott, recognizing that it was an effort on the part of the regime to siphon the energy off the streets. And we've seen it's throughout history. Oftentimes that a regime will make concessions in order to undermine the masses in the streets. If we get time, I'll give you an example of something going to happen in Minneapolis in the George Floyd moment. But, yeah, oftentimes the powers that be, they want to get the masses off the streets.

So they want to make concessions. And so, okay, you all can have the vote. We'll give it a vote. And everybody was so blatant that everybody, most people recognized, no, no, no, this is not real. And so Lenin, like many people, advocated that we boycott. those elections because it was an attempt on a part of the regime to divert the energy, the mass energy, into the electoral process. So that was no problem.

The problem came with the with the next, with the elections to the first Duma, what would be actually the first Duma in February. And there there was a split in the Bolsheviks. Well, actually, I shouldn't call it a split, because Lenin was in a minority. He wanted to participate in those elections. But the overwhelming majority of the Bolsheviks didn't want to, because they were under the impression that the revolution was still in its asset. Lenin felt that that was no longer the case.

But he felt he had to concede to the majority of the Bolsheviks who were already there in Russia, who had been living through this. He doesn't get back. He's been in exile. He doesn't get back until October of 19, of 1905. So he feels he has to concede to the Bolsheviks who were there. So he reluctantly goes along with this boycott of the elections to the first Duma. He will say later, he will admit later in 1920 in his famous book, left-wing communism. He would say it was a mistake to have boycotted those elections. elections. So the Bolsheviks boycott the elections. The Mensheviks participate in the elections. And you can see Lenin chomping at the bit. He wants to participate in the elections. So he's willing to work with the Mensheviks who get elected to the Duma, to provide leadership to them, to help organize their activities. And so He clearly wants to be involved. He really wants to provide direction to the fraction. Remember, they haven't formally split yet. You still got to mention of its interval.

There are two factions within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, but they are still operating as a part of the same organization. And Lenin, once the elections take place, Lenin is trying to provide leadership to the elected members of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. So that's part of the arm. I know there was more to your question, Henry. Yeah, we'll take a brief pause for that, though, because you don't seriously think,

Professor, that we would have a professor from University of Minnesota Twin Citieson who would make a comparative historical analogy to George Floyd and not have you tell the story. So let's have it. Let's hear it. Let's go. Well, I'm convinced that the call for defunding the police was really an attempt on a part of elect officials in the Democratic Party. Here in Minnesota, by the way, it's known as the Democratic former Labor Party, which is an interesting story in itself. But that's what it is. And the people who call for defunding the police, I'm convinced. I know some of them. I know the person who actually issues a former student who issues. the call, I think, well-intentioned and so on, but objectively, what it did was to divert

the energy of the mass movement into the streets back into the official process, into the official process and led by the Democratic Party here in Minneapolis. It was an attempt to outflank to the left, the mass movement in the streets, to try to get a lid on it, to try to, to try to direct it into the official business, the business of government. And in my opinion, it's one of the things that led to the downturn of this of the mass movement here. And then at the national, well, yeah, locally too, I had one of my students told me he was at a at a rally, at the state capitol to a George Florida rally. And one of the Democratic Party officials told the people, say, look, now, uh, it's a,

It's time for us to end these demonstrations and direct our energy into making sure that Trump does not get elected again. That was the call. And then at the national level, Stacey Abrams wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times. She pleads with the demonstrators. She pleads with them to stop the demonstrations and now turn your energy into the electoral process and making sure that Democrats get elected. That's what I was referring to him, right? An effort to divert the energy, the mass movement from the streets into the electoral arena. And not only did, just to pop in here really quick, not only did that co-optive process take place, that reorientation to the electoral realm.

But then on the national level, when the Biden administration got in, they increased the funding to the police. So they didn't even do any of the demands, even in the electoral realm that were demanded. and that really shows the insidiousness of the co-optive mechanism. Yes, yes. And they even wanted to use, you know, rather nefariously, the defund the police as one of the causes for the narrowness of the congressional victory, saying, well, you know, we lost seats because, which have had no basis in reality, really. But so if you're right that this really was a Democratic Party,

attempt to redirect these energies they also then cleverly used it as you know as as a further way of trying to marginalize left progressive forces but in any case i mean we can say that this history is really profoundly valuable for thinking about other periods we don't want to say they're the same but you know there are all these analogies and one analogy that came up to my mind or at least something that was very useful going back to this contrast between the German social Democrats, you know, in the international at these various congresses with Lenin commenting and critiquing what's going on and the more radical potentialities that seemed available in Russia, as you had been describing. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, very often Germany is felt to have been

where the heart of the potential proletarian revolution and industrial society could take place and that Russia was sort of unpredictable, that that would be where a successful revolution would happen because of its backward peasantry and a small proletariat, that these were not ideal circumstances. And yet, as you were pointing out already in the 1880s and 90s, Marx and angles both are looking to Russia as a potential place for radical change. And the contrast that came up is like the colonial question. So it's very interesting in thinking about today's politics, how much the left and certain elements of social democracy

pay attention entirely to these national concerns and will try to apologize for U.S. Empire, for example, in the same way that these German social Democrats, were trying to socialize colonialism. It's almost like a neocon kind of move, it seems in some ways that this could be the civilizing process. And I think the context here is, of course, the Scramble for Africa, the Berlin Conference,

and for whatever reason, they seem to have followed along with it, in comparison with the clear anti-imperialist stance and perspective from Lenin, who's actually even interested and what's going on in Turkey and Iran and has a very global sort of perspective. So I kind of wanted to see if we could probe a little bit more, you know, that issue about the colonial question and how we can see those debates then

versus the kind of politics now on the left that we have to wrestle with. Well, for Lenin, it was a colonial question that first suggested to him that there was a problem in the German party. And it was at the meeting of the Socialist International in Stuttgart in 1907 that the colonial question was on the agenda and for Lenin, he was taken aback

by the German delegation's support to the colonial project in Africa. And at that moment, the German regime was carrying out a very bloody, repressive process against the people, what would become Namibia, the peoples of Namibia. And, yeah, Lenin was very harsh about the, called the Socialist International, the white international, because of its failure to come out in opposition to the colonial policies of its government. But that was the first sign, I think, that there was something problematic within the Western European Social Democratic parties.

And later on, they would go on, go back and try to look at that development, what had gone wrong. How do you explain that conservatizing of the German partists? And again, the problem, the lack of revolutionary opportunities and so on, combined with the growth of very powerful party, socially was the leading party in Western Europe, and it had opportunities within the electoral arena and also within the labor movement that also contributed to the conservatization in the right direction of the German party. And so, yeah, by 1891, Engels is making comments about how the party is becoming bourgeois, the Social Democratic Party, and his critique of the effort program was one of his clearest. one of his clearest criticisms of the party.

And a lot of his criticisms, by the way, they got bolderized. That is, they were corrupted by the German parties. They were never, his criticisms were never made public. They tried to hide his criticisms within the party. But that was all symptomatic, though, of the. And the sad, the tragic. is in 1918, one of the tragedies I think we live with today. When the revolutionary moment does occur in Germany, there's no revolutionary party

to be able to lead that radicalization, which goes a long way in my understanding in why the Russian Revolution ended up the way it did, the failure of the Russian Revolution to spread to the West. And in order to understand why it didn't spread to the West, we have to look at what Lenin would call the treachery of social democracy. And I'm referring specifically to the assassinations of Leibnick and Rosa Luxembourg in January of 19, 1919. So I think it's a tragedy that we still live with. We still live with today.

So I don't know if that answers your question about it. On the colonial question, by the way, I like to take this opportunity to talk about how Marx and Ingalls changed their views on the colonial question. And briefly, for Marx, it was the Irish question. The Irish question was most instructive. And he says in a letter to Ingalls in 1869, he said, up until this moment, I always thought that the Irish question, Irish fight for self-determination had to wait depended upon the English, the English Revolution. And he says, no, I'm no longer convinced of that. That's the case. And I'm working on a little short paper. I hope to get written one day. I'm convinced that his 15-year-old daughter,

Eleanor, known as Tussie in the fellow, played an important role in helping to convince him of the importance of Irish question. She had spent about three months living with Engels and his wife and his Irish nationalist wife and boy, she came back to London, all supercharged in favor of Irish self-determination. It was a

big demonstration in defense of the Finian prisoners. And she insisted that her parents go to the protests and so on. So shortly after that protest, he's changed his position. And it has implications too, I think, for the U.S. because he's

trying to understand the race question, the end of slavery in the United States, so the white working class in the South especially, and he makes interesting parallels between what's going on in Ireland, what's going on in the United States. So I just wanted to throw that in, because sometimes he's been charged with having neglected the colonial question. And you could argue, yes, on both the Algerian and maybe to Mexico, maybe India, maybe India, that his earlier views left something to be desired, but I contend that note. By 1869, he was very, very clear. And Lenin knew about that. Lenin knew very much about Marx's views on a colonial question. So, sorry, that digresses a bit, but that's okay. That's what we're all about on this show,

is these interesting digressions. Eventually we'll get, you know, reigned back into the, you know, the topic. But we certainly encourage these tangents because they often bring up interesting things. And so that was one thing that I just wanted to make sure that didn't slide past the audiences without them having the opportunity to look more into it is Eleanor Marks, who I think everything that I've read about her is really remarkable. And she's somebody who really is not covered very. very much in, you know, historical text, she's just kind of glossed over. I know that maybe a couple of years ago, and I think it was Verso, put out about a 550 page biography on her. And that was something that has been on my reading list for a very long time

at this point. But I want to make sure that the listeners didn't just hear, you know, Marx had a daughter and think, okay, you know, whatever. Eleanor Marx was a very fascinating individual and somebody that is worth looking into if you're looking for revolutionary women. She's somebody who's rarely talked about, but is very interesting. Brett, I know you have a question. Yeah, I echo all those sentiments. And I read a book called Love and Capital that really dives into the home life of Marx. And the impact that Jenny and Eleanor and just the broader family had on Marx and his thinking is really important. Eleanor, like sort of held Marx's feet to the flames in numerous different ways on numerous different issues. And it helped

him grow intellectually so we should never forget about that but just moving on and this is this is sort of a just taking a step back and you know big picture because we've talked about a lot of these ideas we talked about the duma's the historical processes but we haven't yet talked about like the general approach that lennon takes to electoralism broadly so can you like sketch out the the general characteristics of lenin's approach to parliamentarianism well those two those two quotes of that section from the 1850 document that Henry

Ray's really distills Lenin's approach that is that elections were not seen as an end in themselves but as a means done in. Not as an end of themselves, but as a means

to end for the working class to take political power. And that's what informed Lenin's perspective in the four Duma's that he helped to provide leadership to for the delegates from the Bolsheviks who were in those four in those four dumas to use the elections. There's positions within the four Duma's to publicize, to educate what the Bolshevik program

was all about. And to use the elections to determine when would be the, the best time to actually carry out armed struggle. And that's what this, what Marx and Ingalls are referring to them when they say, count your forces. You want to count your, you can use elections to figure out where your strength is, what parts of the country your strength is, what neighborhoods your strength is in, and to determine when best to carry out, to carry out armed struggle.

And it's my contention, if there's anything original, well, there are two things I can argue that are original about the book. Let me just say for people, yeah, all I've done is a deep dive into the 45 volumes of Lenin. I haven't discovered anything that's not there. It's in those 45 volumes. I think I'm just simply the first person who's taken Lenin seriously about his, about the importance of elections and to get as much as I can to find that and to put it into print

for the first time. But it's all there. I don't contend that I've discovered anything new. There may be talking about a digression. One linenologist Robert Service claims that there are linen documents that have never ever been published somewhere in Moscow perhaps and it's a wealth of information and hopefully one day that they actually

will be. There are about 10 times the size, actually, of the 45 volumes. So there may be something lurking somewhere that we don't know about, but I think not. So that's the first thing I just wanted to say about what I've done, is taking the time to take linen seriously and to try to pull together. And as you notice, what I try to do with the appendices is to provide it in original documents so people can go and check for them and check for them. So the nice thing is that all of the documents are now online. There are a group of people who kept Lenin's collected work so you can check my citations to see if I'm faithful to the original text.

The second thing I wanted to say, and it relates to your question, I think if there's anything original, It's that I claim to have, I claim to show the continuity between Marx and Engels' perspective and what the Bolsheviks did in 1917. If you're trying to explain why the Bolsheviks were ascendant of, well, hegemonic and so on, I argue that go back to the 1850 address. I think it's the playbook for, for what Lenin. does in 1917. And in other words, I claim that I've been

able to make a case to show that how linen used utilized the electoral process drawing on those two essential ideas within the 1850 address to explain what happened in 19 in 1917.

So that's the claim that I'm that I'm making. And then And lastly, as a part of that claim, I've come up with a term. I think it's original. And I'm drawing on linen and also on Marx and Ingalls. And the term I've coined is called voting fetishism, voting fetishism.

And what I mean by voting fetishism is that is the mistaken assumption that when you vote, you're exercising political power. My argument is, no, when you vote, you're registering, you're exercising an important democratic right to register a preference for either a candidate or for a particular policy. To exercise power means that you're actually imposing your will. When you're voting, you're not imposing you will. You're simply registering your preference. To impose your will, that means that's what power is about. to impose your will, and that voting fetishism is the notion I'm trying to get at is the mistaken assumption, again, which is all too common in mainstream politics, that when you vote, you're exercising power.

And it's a part of that perspective that you're asking about what was Lenin's general perspective, and that is real power comes from the masses in the streets on the barricade. on the battlefields, and that's where power is exercised. And elections can play an important role as a means, as a means to assembling the forces to be able to exercise power. So that's what I mean when I said, the Lenin elections were not an end in themselves, but a means to an end. Whereas for social democracy,

for social democracy, elections are an end in themselves. And I don't know what your opinions are of the, candidate Sanders, but he was very clear during the electoral process that he was going to make an election by means, I mean, I'm sorry, make a revolution by means of elections. I consider that to be voting fetishism. Yeah. I'm going to follow up here. And just so you know, you're preaching to the choir on this front, you know, I think that you're

in a very friendly audience right now on this sort of. of analysis so don't worry about it but uh something that i think kind of follows up and it kind of also reigns us back into the duma's themselves when you're talking about this voting fetishism and bringing about a revolution via voting it it completely misses these structures of power that are already inherent within the system and we saw a very clear example of this in the coup of 1907, which was led by Piotr Stelieckin, would you be able to just briefly

describe the coup of 1907 and why I'm making this comparison with, you know, current day voting fetishism with kind of what was being thought about at the time in 1907 and why, you know, you made this statement that I think that we all agree with that if you're relying entirely on voting without any sort of mass movement that's really

supporting it, that you're not really really going to see the outcome that you want to see? Well, as I mentioned, the second Duma had a constituency that was much more to the left on the political spectrum of Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were represented in a way that they simply were not in the first Duma. And that frightened the regime. And the main issue, inevitably forgotten, was the last. land question, the land question, whether or not to, how do you carry out a real land reform?

And the bullshitics were serious about it. And Lenin wanted to use the Dumas to preach, to propagandize about carrying out a real land, a real land reform. And that issue really made the regime increasingly uncomfortable with the Duma. And at a certain moment, it pulled the plugs, Stolipin pulled the plug on the Duma. The idea that you're going to use the Duma to polemicize in favor of a real land reform was simply intolerable. And one of the things that Lennon did was always very conscious about having a newspaper. That is, you use the speeches of the members in the Duma, and you publish it, you print those speeches. And again, the key issue was the land, the land question.

And what he was able to do was expose the reality of the regime and the failure of the liberals, the failure of the liberals in the Duma to actually support a real, real land reform. And so at a certain moment, yeah, the regime headed, was Shalipin representing the czar and their interests decided to pull the plug on the Duma. So, yes, it was, and none of the liberals were willing to mobilize. They were not willing to mobilize because they had invested so much of their energy in the Duma itself. They had forgotten about what was going on outside of the Duma. And that's where the term, by the way, parliamentary cretanism, Lenin loved to use that. That's a term that Marx and Ingalls coined in 1848, 1849. And parliamentary cretanism, they said, was the mistaken belief that what takes place inside the legislative arena is the end all and be all of politics.

The mistaken assumption that what takes place inside the legislative arena is to be all and end all of politics. It ignores what's happening outside, what's going on on the outside in the larger world. So, yes, that was also illustrated. Parliamentary Creightonism was also illustrated about what happened in 1907 when Stolieta decided to pull the plug. And none of the liberals were willing to mobilize, to mobilize that to challenge this. Because, again, they had put all of their integers into what was going on inside. So, yes, my notion of voting fetishism draws upon that. a label that the notion of this parliamentary cretinism that Marx and Engels coined in 1849.

Yeah, they also talked about the professors in the Frankfurt Parliament. They had drawn up this really, really great liberal constitution. And they assumed that because they had this great constitution, they had actually instituted parliamentary democracy in Germany. that was a, the most outstanding example of parliamentary, parliamentary cretanism. So, yes, I don't know if this is what you were referring to Henry with regard to Stolipin and his coup, his coup data. Yeah, and I'll go again just to keep the conversation going. So I know we're getting a little bit towards the end of the conversation, but we do have a little bit of time left.

And so before we get into more of the current day analysis, let's just go to 1917 very quickly because things changed for very obvious reasons in 1917. I guess you really don't need much of a lead in from me. Can you just tell us about 1917 and Lenin at that point? Well, I think probably the most interesting thing about 1917, if you think about the electoral process and trying to link it to what we were talking about earlier, There was a form of representative democracy that appeared in briefly in 1905, known as the Soviets, in October of 1905, and Trotsky came back and headed up to St. Petersburg Soviets of sailors and soldiers. And basically the Soviet began as a way to coordinate the different strikes. The strikes that were taking place in St. Petersburg to coordinate them.

And Lennon at first was a little skeptical about the Soviets. Not sure whether or not they really constituted some form of a representative democracy, but was one to them. began to realize that significance and began to see the parallels with the Paris, with the Paris Commune. And the Soviets were far more democratic than the Duma. And this is what was attracted to him. They were more representative. You had immediate recall.

If you didn't like your representatives, you could recall them. That made them much more accountable to the masses. And so you've got, for a brief moment in 1905, then, you had the Soviets. All right. They disappear. At least they're ended. But they reappear in 1917 with the overthrow of the czar in February of 1917. And we should always remember the reason, the basic reason I claim for the overthrow of the czar and the Bolshevik revolution was the first.

the First World War, the slaughter, and the fact that the, that the masses themselves had grown tired of this and decided to overthrow the czar. But leading up to this is a very interesting story. We don't have time to get into, but in the fifth, in the, in the fourth Duma, I mentioned that when the war broke out in August of 1914, the Bolsheviks had five members in the Duma. And one of the things they did was to, was to propagandize against the war. They were the only members within the Duma who were, who were actively involved in using their parliamentary immunity, using parliamentary immunity in order to oppose the war. And by January of 1915, they were arrested by the regime. They were put on trial and so on. But that trial, the trial of the Bolshevik Duma members is what really put the Bolsheviks on a map within Russia. They were accused of having betrayed the cause, the First World War.

They were traitorous and so on, and they went to prison, and they were not released from prison until the outbreak, until the February, the overthrow of the czar in February of 1917. that because it was an example of how Lennon saw the importance of the Duma as a way to publicize and to get out the ideas of the Bolsheviks. And that was important in understanding that why the Bolsheviks had a kind of a head start in February of 1917. Because of the previous work they had been doing in the Duma, their anti-war work, it gave the Bolsheviks' credibility in February of 1917 to take the lead and to move quickly into the leadership position. So with the overthrow of the Zard, the Soviets come back into existence.

And so what you have in 1917, I contend if there's one issue that's at the heart of the struggle in 1917, is that which form of representative democracy would be hechamonic? Would it be the parliamentary form of representative democracy through the Dumas, that would be hegemonic, and would it be Soviet democracy? Those were the two issues that were at the heart of what was going on in 19th. So which of these two forms of democracy would become, would become hegemonic. And so Lenin is insistent. He wants elections.

As soon as he, even before he gets back into Russia, he's insisting that there be elections, the elections, election, both to the Dumas and also, and at the Duma's at the local level, the local level versions of the Domas, and also to the Soviets. And he wants that because he wants those elections in order, again, to publicize Bolshevik ideas

and to counter forces. He sees those two forms of representative democracy as a means by which to the Bolsheviks could publicize their ideas and determine when would be the best, to take to take power. And so by September of 1917, it was clear that the Bolsheviks were hegemonic in the Soviets.

The Bolsheviks were hegemonic in the Soviets. And if you look back on the minutes and the debates within the Bush, amongst the Bolsheviks and so they're really fascinating because Lenin is in a minority. The only support he has on the central committee is Trotsky on the central committee about the need to take the take. power. And he's insistent. He keeps saying, look, gentlemen, look at the elections. Look at the, look at, look at what we have achieved in the elections, especially within the Soviet. And especially, and I forgot to mention this because this also comes up in 1905. That is, there were Soviets also, Soviets within the

military, Soviets within the military. And one of the things the Bolsheviks did, along with Dementiaviks in 1905, they had newspapers. They had their newspapers. And, and, you know, And within the military, within the military. And so, yeah, so they already have that experience behind them. So when 1917 happens, they're able to draw upon that prior experience and do work in the military. And as you obviously can see, if you can win over the military to the Bolshevik cause, that's crucial. That's crucial. And so that's that's the experience that's behind.

that working in those four Dumas, all of that is what I argue gives the Bolsheviks a kind of a head start, a leader. They're in they have the advantage going into 1917 because of what they

had been able to do in those four Dumas. And as my evidence, my main evidence is that claim that Lenin makes in left-wing communism. And he's arguing with the delegates from Western Europe who's saying, well, it's a waste of time to be doing work and to be doing parliamentary work.

And Lenin says, look, we worked in the most reprehensible parliamentary institutions in history. But we found that work to be indispensable for taking power. And again, he uses the word indispensable, working in those four Duma's. All that was preparatory work in preparing for 1917. And I argue that the reason why in Petrograd, especially, as it was known by that time, why it's estimated that perhaps maybe no more than 11 people died, no more than 11 people died in the revolution in Petrograd, it's exactly because the military was on the side. The military sat on the revolution.

That was the preparatory work that the Bolsheviks had already done before. Moscow was a bit more bloody, and it depended upon where the Bolshev had their power and their strength. But the Petrograd, yeah, all of that prior political work to get by maybe to Brecht's question about the big picture. And so that's what I'm trying to sketch out in answering your question. Yeah, just very interesting, maybe for listeners to clarify who are probably much more familiar with, you know, the parliamentary form of liberal democracy as a model. Perhaps you could contrast the difference, what constitutes the difference in the Soviets as a mode of representative democracy. Yeah, the Soviets were democracy in the workplace, in the workplace. Yeah, with parliamentary, remember, think about parliamentary democracy and the world we live in and so on.

Yeah, you and I don't get a chance to vote on what our bosses, what our bosses are doing. We only get a chance to vote on a geographical basis. So in that sense, yeah, the sovers are much closer or much closer to the actual, the socio-economic political power arrangements within society. And they're much more accountable, as again, they, you had immediate recall. If you didn't like your representative, you could immediately recall. You can't do that under parliamentary democracy. And it's, and what 1917 proved, and this is what really undermined the Duma.

would undermine parliamentary democracy. And that is, parliamentary democracy in 1917 and Russia failed, failed to withdraw Russia from the war. It persisted in keeping Russia within the war. And that's what undermined its credibility and legitimacy. Whereas it was in the Soviets, it was in the Soviets, Lenin, if the Soviets take power, we will end the war. And that's exactly what they did.

If the Soviets take power, we will end the war. That's exactly what they did, much to the distress and the anger of Woodrow Wilson, the fact that Russia, Russia, the Soviets pulled out of the war. The Bolsheviks pulled out of the war, and it forced Wilson to make all kinds of interesting concessions, too. He was under pressure on the colonial question. All of that, his positions on the colonial question were motivated by trying to look, better, trying to look better than the Bolsheviks. Yeah, that's so fascinating.

And we could talk for hours about that incident and then what happens afterwards, of course. But we have limited time with you. And although I love, you know, listening to you talk historically, I would like to get your analysis on the present. So a question that I'm just going to toss your way, take it in any direction you want. We're talking about, you know, we mentioned this conversation, the revolutionary potential of different places at different times. And I'm really wondering what your thoughts are on the revolution.

potential or lack thereof maybe in the U.S. today, perhaps in the near future with climate change. And then if there are any historical analogs that you're aware of that get close to the situation that we're in today. Well, yes. One, I think we have to admit that this moment we don't see the working class in motion. That's just, we have to begin with reality. At the same time, I think the crisis of capitalism is deeper now than it's ever been. The crisis is deeper than it's ever been. It's indicated in all kinds of ways. Think about the recent figures on mortality rates in the United States, the opioid crisis, which is a part of this.

It's my claim that the best that capitalism has to offer the working class, That's behind us. That's behind us. And I think many, many working people are aware of it. And what we lack is a leadership in a political party and an organization be able to address the crisis. But the crisis is not going away. And the capitalists only have one solution to the crisis. And that's to solve it on the backs of working people.

They will begin, they have no other recourse than to squeeze, to squeeze working people. my contention is that it was it is out of that reality it is out of that reality that working people will be forced to will be compelled to use the language of the young marks and angles about the working class it's the class that is compelled to fight you may not want to fight you may try to avoid it you may try to try to do all kinds of things to avoid the fight but the ruling class will compel you to fight that's that's what that's what faces us And what whether, so I'm, I'm thoroughly convinced, yeah, we have big class battles ahead of us. What is that certain, what is uncertain is whether or not, will there be a leadership in place to be able to direct all that energy, all that anger, all that anger, you've got the most armed working class in history.

What? How many weapons? The only thing we can say about all those people in their weapons is that they only have. I got two hands, but they, but you've got, and the most elementary task will be making sure that they're pointing all those guns in the right direction. That will require leadership. So I'm convinced, yes, the fights are ahead of us. That's what is not inevitable is whether or not will we win. The fights are inevitable, uncertain is whether or not we will win. And that will require organization of what we do now. The preparatory work. The insight, the insight of Lenin in 1901, and the biggest political obstacle we face is the, in my opinion, is the Democratic Party, illusions in the Democratic Party.

That's the biggest obstacle that we face. And I do a lot of my weekly political workers around Cuban solidarity work. And leading up to the elections, those of us in Cuban solidarity work, of those of us in Cuban solidarity work, of course, we're had to discuss and debate whether or not Biden versus Trump. And this is a big, big debate, as you can imagine, as it was for all kinds of sectors. And some of us argued that a Biden candidate would not make a difference when it came to the Cuban revolution and other people, we were in a minority on this question. And many people thought that no, anything, anything but Trump, anything.

but Trump. And sadly right now for the Cuban people is that Biden is actually worse now than Trump on the Cuban question. Biden is worse than Trump on the Cuban question. And I mentioned this on because I think your question was

related to the lesser too evil question. And this is a dilemma that we all face. It's it's that issue that Henry read from the 1850 address. That was what Marx and English were talking about in the 1850 address. And so the biggest

political obstacle we face is the Democratic Party. I call it the graveyard. The graveyard of progressive movement. The black hole is the black hole of progressive movements. And clarity on the Democratic Party is crucial. And so, yeah, I think to try to answer your question, Yeah, big, we shouldn't have any doubts about big class, big class battles on the way. And the question is whether or not will there be a leadership? Will there be a leadership in place to be able to direct all of that energy and all of that anger that will unfold? Right. And I mean, I think that reminds me that Kashama-Sawant, the socialist city council,

member in Seattle has also described the Democratic Party as a graveyard, a cemetery for our movements. They go there to die, essentially. So you're both on the same page there, which does bring up the question of leadership. And something that you pointed out in the book had been something of a conundrum or a problem that Lenin had to address with the participation in the Duma's that you ended up having a Duma party group of elected officials. who were from, you know, the party, but that there were tensions or problems because of that inside view, you know, inexorably they start acting as if the activities within the Duma are, you know, the end and be all of power. And there's some disjunction with the rest of the

party and its leadership. And you pointed out that Lenin had to address this problem to try and reconnect and direct, you know, the Duma Party leadership. And that really reminds me in the current circumstances where there have been some progressive victories in terms of electing the so-called squad, for example, but there are real concerns about how responsive they are to the movements that actually got them elected now that they're in office and part of the Democratic Party internal leadership issues and taking direction from the leadership. So I wondered if you had any thoughts about that and about the challenges following up on this discussion about the real limitations of the Democratic Party for the people's struggle.

You know, what about this question of the, you know, the progressive leaders who have been elected and dissatisfaction. How do you reconnect, if we want to think about it, the squad with the progressive left? Because they're, you know, there's sort of parting ways in some respects currently. First, let me just say on, I was on a panel with Kuomish back. I can't remember, but I think it was 2016. And our differences were on display. And I say this because I think it's also important, it's related to this question. The only time that Marx and Engels ever made a correction to the Communist Manifesto was after the Paris Commune. And that correction was in a preface to the, I think it was the German, the new German edition of the Civil War in France.

And basically they said that the commune had taught us that the working class cannot seize hold of the capitalist state to bring about socialist transformation. That was the lesson of the commune, that the working class cannot seize hold of the capitalist state to bring about socialist transformation. And my reading of the socialist alternative, much of the DSA, is the belief that the capitalist state can be utilized, can be utilized to bring about socialist transformation. And that's the difference that she and I had on that panel. So I thought it's important that I make reference to it. That's really interesting. Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. And I think sadly, history has shown us, because.

is related to the second party. Think about at the international level. Think about Ceresa in Greece. Think about the workers' party in Brazil. These are examples of parties that people like her, the squad, tend to look to. And the problem with all of them is the belief that they can make use of the bourgeois state.

You can make use of the bourgeois state to actually bring about socialist transformation. So that's my brief answer to your question about people like that. And my difference is with them. I take serious the lesson of the Paris commune, and I think that lesson has played itself out tragically, tragically, throughout the 20th century into the 21st century. And I think the latest casualties are Sariza in Greece.

and the workers party, the workers' party in Brazil. I agree with you. I think the reason why I'm asking the question is, is Lenin clearly managed to reorient the Duma Party faction, right? So the question is, what did he do and what should we do in this? What would Lenin be doing right now to try and reorient those people who have emerged from left movements? You can consider the Mensheviks or Bolsheviks types, you know? How did he use that instead of losing everything?

He actually built something positive out of that. Interestingly, and as I just thought about this, maybe we should have talked about it earlier, the issue, the policy of democratic centralism first came around this question about the how do you hold accountable the members of the party who've been elected to parliament.

It was around this question and this is where the policy of democratic centralism comes out of. Even a mention of it's described to it. If you get elected as a member of the party, you are obligated, you're under the discipline of the party. And all too often, this happened in a German party. People are starting, they became independent actors.

They began to distance themselves more and more from their party. They hated the discipline of the party. They wanted to be independent entrepreneurs, operators within the Duma. And so, yeah, that's the brief answer to your question. These people, they don't belong to an organization that imposes discipline on them. They can do their own thing. And I'll just add Podemos then to other parties that, yeah, fit in that more.

I mean, there's a lot that we could go through. but Podemos has been in, you know, the back of my mind lately is fitting in this exact mold. I have a question that, you know, this is a very serious question here, and I'm sure you're, you know, you're going to have to think very hard about the answer. In the lead up to the last election, there were some relatively prominent DSA members who, you know, were writers and whatnot, who were getting in online arguments with more revolutionary socialists and communists. Surprise, surprise, you know, DSA members and communists getting in arguments online. But one of the things that was being said by a couple of these DSA members was very, very interesting to me,

which is they made the point-blank assertion, what are you doing, arguing against Biden? Lennon would have voted for Biden. Can you address that point? Yeah, you sent me a note about that, and I've been thinking about it. And I can, I can, under no circumstance, think even in any possibility. You might want to say, Lenin argued that at times it would possible that the Bolsheviks might form an alliance, an electoral alliance, with liberals. under certain circumstances. This is with the cadets specifically.

Yeah, with the cadets. Under circumstances, I think around the question of when the programs began against Jewish people in 1912 and so on, yeah, I think he would indicate some of his writings indicate he wanted to block this, we needed to block with the, with cadets and anyone else to stop the programs. And, but we had to do it independently. night. And this is why, and I think going back to the 1850 address and where Marx and Ingalls say, yeah, we're not opposed to alliances. We're opposed to unity. We can enter

into alliances, temporary alliances with them. And yeah, you might want to argue, boy, yeah, maybe before 1917. And what I'm referring to the fact that up until 1917, the elections were based upon an electoral college system. There were different levels of electoral colleges and which voting took place. And they were not direct elections. But in 1917, they were direct elections. So there were no longer these electoral colleges.

And when he talked about maybe forming alliances, it was in the context of those electoral colleges. But I can't think of any instance in 17, that Lennon would have voted for a Biden. So I think the burden of proof is on the person who made that claim. There was more than one. I saw it from a few relatively common DSA members. Okay, I would love to see the references.

I would love to see the references. I'll give you a hand. There is none. And you took this question much more seriously than I did. When I saw it, it was after I had already been looking at your book. And I saw this point being raised online and these arguments between people. And my response was not to try to refute it. It was just to laugh because, you know, what else can you do?

But I'm glad that, you know, as a true scholar, you actually went through the effort of trying to address this. Yeah, maybe I miss something. Well, we're just about out of time, but I want to give you the opportunity to tell the listeners briefly in just a couple minutes here, if there's any take home lessons that you want them to come out of this conversation with as well as what you're working on now that you want the listeners to be aware of so that they can keep their eyes peeled for when it does come out? Yeah, I think the main thing is to be open to the possibility of two things. One, the

working class needs its own political party and that we need a vanguard. We need a communist vanguard. And we should take serious, 1901, Lenin's Insight. And we should see the Trump the Trump phenomenon as a wake-up call. The Trump phenomenon as a wake-up call. We don't have to panic about it. We don't have to panic over January or the 6th, as some people do. We're seeing it as a wake-up call, and that it represents a crisis, the crisis of the crisis of capitalism. And this will deepen. And the more, the longer it takes for us to build a working class for it, the more we put off, we keep making excuses about why we've got to keep voting for the lesser of the two evils and so on. We are taking ourselves far away from.

We're not advancing around this course of independent working class political action. There will be big class battles. We should have no doubts about it. The question is whether we'll all aside be ready and prepared. And history has shown sadly and tragically what happens when they're big class battles and the working class doesn't have its act together. When it doesn't have its act together. Again, the Arab Spring, even more sadly, 1930s Germany, what happens when the working class says when there will be big class battles because of the crisis of capitalism and capitalism. Capitalism has no alternative than to solve this crisis on the back of working people, and they will squeeze people.

I recommend, by the way, my students, I always read, get your daily dose of Tucker Carlson in. Try to get it there. Or if you want to see what happens when we don't get our act together. No, the Tucker Carlson agenda. That should be a wake-up call for anybody. And what are you working on now briefly? Yeah, I'm working on a couple of things with a book project comparing Marx and Frederick Douglass and looking at how two revolutionaries responded to an event, a real time, comparing them as things are going on at that moment.

The argument is, as I argued in my last book, is that we can all be Monday morning quarterbacks. The question is, what do we do in real time, making decisions in real time? So that's what it's doing, looking at specifically around the civil war and how they were responding. How does a communist respond and how does a revolutionary liberal, such as Douglas, respond to what was happening? Well, I can say, I think for all of us that we really hope that you'll come on to talk about that major work when you're ready. That sounds fascinating and really exciting. Absolutely. And Adnan, just as a brief note, I think that Professor Nymphs is someone that you should bring on to your other podcast, The Mudgellus.

Now, this book is quite old at this point, but Professor Nymphs, you wrote a book, Islam and Politics and East Africa, the Sufi Order in Tanzania. And that is very much something that would fit within the Uvah of Adnan's other podcasts. So there's a collaboration that I'm hoping to see at some point right there. Sounds good. This has been fun. Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely. So the listeners, again, our guest was Professor August H. Nymphs at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, author of, among other things, the ballots, the streets, or both.

From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution, which is available from Haymarket Books, we'll be right back with the wrap up. And listeners, we just finished our interview with Professor August Nymphs, author of The Ballot, The Streets for Both, from Marks and Engels to Lennon and the October Revolution, which, again, you can get from Haymarket Books, and I highly recommend you do. It's a very, very useful book. Great interview. Professor Nymphs is a great interviewee. He's very fun, but also very, his analysis is very cutting. he's able to tie multiple threads together from different periods in history and different historical contexts, even bringing in something from the George Floyd protests in with talking about Lenin's electoral strategy.

I mean, the conversation was rooted in the Lenin's electoral strategy, and we got analysis that tied current events in or relatively current events into that. Very fascinating interview. A lot of really interesting points, very important points being made. I'm sure the listeners agree with me when we say that this was an important conversation. Guys, why don't I turn it over to you to get our thoughts and pick up some of these threads that we laid down in the intro and during the interview itself? Sure. Yeah, I'll start on this. Yeah, I guess one thing I mentioned in the intro, I believe, that was sort of followed up on is this idea of who's truly carrying forward the analysis of marks and angles in the new era, right?

post-Marx and Engels actual life. There's these debates. What does Marxism mean? How do we implement it, et cetera? In this new era, and, you know, Lenin had plenty of beef and arguments with plenty of different people and held, you know, firmly to the idea that he was literally carrying forward the truest form of Marx and Engels. And I think he was right about that.

I think history proved him to be correct about that. But I know that we still have debates today on the left broadly, specifically with people who might want to keep some Marx and angles, but they don't want the Lenin part. And so they have to frame Lenin as some tyrannical destroyer of real, pure Marxism. And, you know, Lenin wasn't authoritarian and Marx actually wasn't. And maybe libertarian socialism is more like downstream from what Marx actually thought and felt. And I think August Nymphs obviously makes a very strong case completely compelling and convincing to me that Lennon was the true carrier of that particular flame. And I think that that is important because trying to separate marks and angles from the Lennons and the Mows that came after him and actually tried to implement marks and angles theories into the real world practice, I think it's essential that we understand that and to not try to separate those two. because the moment you try to put in ideas into practice in the real messy world,

it's not going to be pure and perfect and match every single idea you had about how things are going to go beforehand. And, you know, that can't be a reason for us to turn away from these movements and these leaders and these theorists. So that came out in the conversation. I really loved it. And then another point about being pro or con electoralism, as always, and I think Glennon makes us, point in left communism, you know, the quote unquote left communists in the sense that Lenin is using that term in the book will come to a situation with an a priori commitment, regardless of how the actual conditions and dynamics of that situation are playing out. So you can come to this conversation with an a priori commitment, never ever engaged

with electoralism, it's always bad, or we absolutely have to engage with electoralism because that's the only way forward, right? We see these strands on the left today. Both are coming to a constantly changing evolving set of conditions and imposing an idea upon it that is supposed to stand outside time and outside of that flow. And that's always going to be a mistake. And one thing Lennon was amazing at is not making that mistake and pointing out that mistake in others. And so it's not whether you in a vacuum or for or against electoralism. It's what conditions are you operating in and how are you advancing the movement? And so that really stood out to me as well.

I have plenty more to say, but I guess I'll stop there and hear your thoughts. Oh, I really like those points. That's definitely part of what I found very informative, compelling about this discussion and about the book. Just picking up on that, I think we have this sectarian tendency, you know, on the left when it comes to doctrinal theoretical discussion. And I think what's really important is to recognize that these figures and thinkers, like Marx and Lenin, angles, we don't want to think of them as authoritative in all of their conclusions that we then have to apply almost robotically and then fight over our particular interpretations of how you adhere most. closely to, you know, the true Marxist line. I think it's really more about learning from their method of thinking in their circumstances, because Marx would update and change his views on things. He was capable of revising his opinion because he had a method that assessed

current history. It understood the past and it understood the present. And that's why I think historical education, along with political education, are absolutely vital because we often try and take a conceptual, which is ultimately an idealist way of thinking about history, even when we're interpreting Marx and Lenin. And they are positioned within their historical moment trying to analyze what was happening and then take the best, use the best analysis to guide their actions forward. And that's what we have to be doing in our own time and understanding their method. And what's great about this episode, the Russian Revolution, the period of Lenin's career, is that you can see this happening in action and how he is attempting to do just that by reading

and understanding Marx's methods, not just by following exactly what Marx would have, you know, trying to divine what the correct idea is, but rather using that method to figure out what's the right way to proceed in our particular moment. So I think that's very important and it was very useful to study. I think the second thing that I was very interested in in the discussion is how much Lenin really appears when you look carefully at his career and writings and actions during this period is an organic intellectual, you know, what that really means. You see that, you know, fulfilled in his approach, being connected to workers, peasants, movements, understanding those conditions.

And that really, it seems to be what the vanguard is, not elitist leaders who are making pronouncements, who are in charge of these movements, but organically organizing and then expressing that political will effectively within the array of forces that they find, whether that's in the electoral sphere or whether it's in revolutionary action. And I think that was a very important and interesting lesson to really appreciate from this conversation and from the book. And lastly, I would say it's great that Dr. NIMS included all these sources. You mentioned that at the outset, that that's something sort of unique about this book.

And I think that was great in the conversation. is that he was able to refer constantly to documents and evidence from that period that informed that many people just, you know, haven't really read closely. And even more so, however, as a historian, to provide those sources to us so that we can read them and sharpen our analysis historically, because that's actually what we need to do for our contemporary circumstances. So I loved that about the book and about his facility to bring particular evidence from Lenin's writings and from documents of the party to support his analysis of what was happening.

That's the kind of method and approach we need to do more of. I'm going to hop in and just say one quick thing. And I'd like your opinion on it, which is, so at this point, we have a little bit of a a back catalog in terms of episodes that we've already published up, and I'm very proud of the episodes that we've done. But at this point, we have enough episodes already out where the connections are becoming more and more clear between episodes that we've already made. And something that I've seen in several episodes, I remarked on it during the interview, was that more and more, as time goes on, we see, regardless of the ideological underpinnings

of the guest, these are all guests that are broadly speaking on the left, but, you know, different specific tendencies, perhaps. The need for a revolutionary party and a revolutionary movement to be partnered with these other movements, social movements, community movements, is essential. And we continue to see that as each interview goes on. One of the things that I think is really interesting. And it was something that we talked about during the interview. But is worth repeating once again is that understanding this phase of the upswing versus this phase of the down swing and the revolutionary potential of the society is an important thing for us to gauge. Because depending on what phase of that revolutionary potential you're in, that revolutionary feeling within society, that can change on how you see a specific tactic, you know, maybe electoralism, but other things as well. if you have a lot of very deeply, deeply held contradictions within society that are creating

very precarious situations for the people within society at a given time. And those people are all coalesced around a specific idea. It is the right time to take basically every method that you can to try to galvanize that popular discontent into the revolutionary movement to try to affect change. whereas there's other times where those conditions just aren't present. And it's important for us to understand that. And I think that it ties into the conversation about electoralism because one of the things that you can do to gauge this popular discontent

and one of the things that you can do to see what phase of this revolutionary potential you're in is through the electoral process. Because again, if you're forming a revolutionary-based party, you're not expecting to win, but by providing that as an alternative, providing it as a way for people to voice their opinions, you can better have an idea of what the feelings within society are. And that's not just to say the percentage of people who are voting for our revolutionary party is the percentage of people who are within this potential revolutionary movement. I think there are some ways in which, for example, some people that voted for Trump could be indicative of a revolutionary. feeling within society that just wasn't harnessed in a productive and actually revolutionary way.

You know, it was very much a counter-revolutionary movement that they were subsumed within. And that's not to say that, you know, we should be focusing primarily on Trump voters to try to bring them over to the revolutionary left. I don't think that that's a very fruitful strategy. But what I'm saying is that if you have multiple avenues that you're fighting through, you have mutual aid that you're doing. You have community organizing and you have a revolutionary party that is providing an alternative. You can do study then on how these electoral periods are showing the contradictions in play by how people are voicing their opinions. People are staying home. That could be indicative of something. We have to study why people are staying home and not voting. People are voting

for a neo-fascist, well, we have to study the reasons why that's happening. We have more people voting for our revolutionary movement than ever before. We also need to study that and understand why it is so that we can galvanize a movement around those contradictions to fight against those contradictions and overturn the society that creates those contradictions. So I think that one of the things that's very important for us to take home out of this conversation is this phase of the upswing and phase of the down swing. And I don't know if either of you want to on that in the general, in the general sense. But I would be very interested to see both of you after any general comments if there

is any thoughts about what phase we are in in the United States and Canada, for you would not. I'm in Russia right now, but I haven't gotten a feeling of the society here to understand, you know, what kind of a popular sense there is in terms of revolutionary necessity. But I'd be very curious as to you. take on where we sit? Are we in a phase of very low revolutionary potential? Is there some revolutionary potential? Because we know the contradictions are there within the society. It's just the question of whether or not that revolutionary potential is present. Brad? Yeah, so I think that's a

really helpful way to think about things. And it kind of attaches to what Dr. Names was saying about continuing crises that capitalism is going to continue to create. I think we're in truly a moment of if you zoom out, like I'm sure if you zoom way in, you see like these little ups and downs, down swings and upstrings. But if you zoom out, you see like this general upswing that we're generally in right now, specifically after the 2008, 2009 banking collapsed. And then, of course, in the wake of Trump and in the wake of the pandemic and the wake of the historic Black Lives Matter uprisings, it's very clear, left and right, that we are in a moment where more and more people are looking for alternatives. Now, that can, with, with, with, with,

decades of anti-communist conditioning and American patriotist nationalism inculcated into us since the day we were born, it's easier for those alternatives to be on the right. We live in a hardcore right-wing society. We have two right-wing political parties. We have a right-wing history. Everything about the United States is like culturally and politically and economically right-wing. So when people start looking for alternatives, it's very easy for them to look in a right-wing direction to find those alternatives. And they have. And Trump is one manifestation of that. Now, I was born in the late 80s, so I was born in a time where we were historically in a down swing for revolutionary, right? People in the 90s, for example, were watching friends. And there was plenty of problems in the society,

but there was like this general, like this is, and looking back in hindsight, I was telling my wife this their day is like the 90s was kind of the pinnacle of what America can do. And we talk about the 60s was great. That was the upswing of like Americanism post-World War II. But the 90s is like right before 9-11, it is sort of like, you can tell why people kind of thought end of history. Like it kind of felt like that. Like not even like an intellectual level, but on a visceral level, it kind of felt like,

okay, now we're like smooth sailing from here on now. And then of course, 9-11 happened. And that was not an upswing for revolutionary thinking. That was a gift to the right wing to the war. to the military industrial complex, and in those heady years after 9-11, to say that you were against the war, to be labeled anti-American or not a patriot was a societal death sentence. I'm being a hyperbolic, but, you know, it was not a time where the revolutionary left

had a lot of capacity to reach people with our ideas. It's very reactionary. Even people on the liberal left were full-on reactionaries when it came to like patriotism, nationalism, and supporting the troop. But after the collapse of 2007, 2008, we're clearly in this prolonged upswing. And as NIMS said, the continued crises that capitalism is creating specifically the ecological and climate one that's not going away. Those are going to continue to mount up and continue to offer space for us to navigate. And look at just the very existence of our shows, you know, and all of the proliferation of left-wing media now.

That was not even here five years ago. 10 years ago, it was the ideas that are now becoming more and more mainstream or that liberals are having to contend with were completely off the charts. I was talking about, you know, health care for everybody 10, 15 years ago, and I was considered a fringe, you know, person. And now it is very clear, a majority of Americans left and right want something like universal health care. So this is a time where we can really be active in spreading our ideas.

But at the same time, it's also a moment where the right and the center are doing everything they can to sort of make sure that our ideas, it's like keep them under the surface. We can't let these really revolutionary ideas bubble up and become more and more mainstream and more and more people hear it. So if there is any attempt to do a third party, a real revolutionary working class, anti-imperialist third party, we know that both parties will come together to throw everything they have to stop it in collusion with big capital, etc. So because of all the conditioning, because of living in the imperial core, even on the upswings, especially after decades of neoliberalism and anti-communist propaganda, it's difficult.

But even just having a political party that was worker-oriented, that was anti-imperialist, that confronted the Democrats and the Republicans in the ways that both those parties need to be confronted, I think would be a huge advance for the left in this country because most Americans, like it or not, engage with politics primarily through the electoral process. And if we were to engage in that in a real principled way, not in the sense that we're going to win with the 60% of the vote or anything like that, but to get these ideas out and to percolate them out into the wider society. We've seen how people radically shift on gay rights, radically shift on health care.

Now we're seeing a radical shift in people's awareness of climate change. Those are all in our direction broadly. And those do represent gains. But we have to organize highly so that we can be able to amass the forces that can get to something like a vanguard party with an electoral wing, right, where that's one arena on which we fight and get these ideas out to more people. Because if we were somehow able to get them out to masses of Americans, I think we would be genuinely surprised pleasantly at how many people, more or less, like the set of ideas that we're advancing. It's very interesting. I've been thinking quite a lot about 20th anniversary of 9-11 and the Global War on Terrorism. And as we were recording, the interview is in these weeks of the U.S. withdrawal anticipating U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. And so I think in some ways there have been, as you were just outlining, Brett, so many important and interesting changes. I also remember the 90s as a kind of, you know, although I was an oppositional person when you look back at it, you feel like we were so sheltered in some ways. I mean, we never got the peace

dividend of the post-Cold War. You know, Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations was already gaining purchase, but there was this sort of sense that globalization was inevitable reality. and as you say is sort of the high point on some level before the real decadence and collapse of neoliberalism started to become apparent and the disintegration of neoliberal character as paul mason sort of talks about it as where the rise of our contemporary version of fascism is coming from hadn't yet become so obvious though you already still had, you know, widening, you know, the stagnation of wages and widening of, you know, increase in security. This is insecurity. This is the period where NAFTA and the offshoring, you know, of industrial labor was taking place. And so those processes were really starting

very aggressively, and you could still, you could see some signs of it. But it wasn't that apparent to so many people. Now it's very apparent post-2007 and what has followed. But I think the one component where it has been difficult, despite those changes that you've mentioned, is really on this anti-imperialist element. 9-11 was a gift to the right wing. It was a gift to a dying and failing U.S. imperialism, but to convince people that it was necessary because of the need to you know, prosecute the war on terror, to protect the homeland, that we would have to invest in imperialism around the world, even though it was failing, even though it very clearly its failures were apparent with, you know, Iraq, and now, of course, we're talking about the symbolic

character of U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but that was a war that was lost, you know. a decade or more ago to every policymaker or anybody who really had a clear sense of reality so that i'm wondering if at this moment uh some sort of a turn may be possible because the big plank of uh of a left of a viable left that has been the plank that has faltered i think in this last 20 20 years uh those techniques of repression, the rise of the surveillance and security state. And what are our responses? I mean, my concern, if this is to be an upswing moment where there is potential, is, you know, even all these shows that you mention that we would celebrate because political education can take place, we can disseminate these messages, it also can follow the logics of kind of neoliberalism and

this kind of factional, you know, what are they really talking about sometimes on some of these popular YouTube shows on the left? It seems like internecine personality politics, rather than using the online possibilities and potentials for political education, genuine political education, historical education, and real world organizing. I mean, these are obviously tools that could be used. And that's the part that I feel is missing, is connecting, organizing workers, and then also connecting that to an anti-imperial politics. So I'm hopeful that with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, there's an opportunity for really assessing U.S. Empire and our obligations on the left in the first world to be an effect.

break upon US Empire. We're pivoting now towards Cold War with China potentially. We've had a recent episode that will be coming up, you know, about Africa and, you know, elements, the U.S. Empire's involvement in Africa. So that needs to be stopped if we're actually to connect the different threads and bring them together in an effective revolutionary change. And I think that's very hard. That's very hard. So we'll need to think a little bit more about that dimension. I remember recently V.J. Prashad talking about how important Lenin's legacy for his anti-imperialist politics, you know, has been, we need to recover that thread, I think. Brett, any final thoughts from me before we wrap up? Not really. I'm just bouncing off what Adnan said, you know, you're absolutely right that

there is plenty on the left that, you know, does not rise to that, to that standard that we so desperately need, that internationalism, that anti-imperialism, etc. But I think that's also that comes with the territory. When you have a proliferation of left wing broadly conceived, you know, sort of in general opposition to like central liberalism, et cetera, you're going to have, you know, a thousand flowers bloom and some of those flowers are going to be more developed than others. But it's the fact that so many things are blooming that can give us some hope. And even on YouTube, you know, there is like the sort of red tube, sort of rad lib, you know, side of it for sure. But there are also, you know, plenty of political educators, second thought, Hakim, you know, Marxist Paul,

and many more popping up every day that really do really good work, really good analysis, is our solid anti-imperialist and are always connecting their education with trying to push people in the direction of organizing. And I think we'll continue to see more of that. And ultimately, we could have a million YouTube channels

and a million podcasts. They serve a purpose. But ultimately, organizing is what's going to build up the forces that we need to make any attempt to finally go on the offensive politically and to be able to put forward demands,

organize strikes, take care of people in crisis, etc. Organizing is what is fundamental to that. And I view political education as part of that process and maybe even at some points a prerequisite to getting enough people thinking in new ways and organizing to be able to build up those forces. But also because of the hyper-individualist and consumer society we live in, it's always going to be sporadic. There's going to be the good and the bad. And socialism becomes much more popular, but so does confusion about what socialism means at the same time that's that's the that's the difficulties but uh just just last words on

on the entire interview i really loved it it's really refreshing to to go back and and look at how our comrades in the past successfully made these things happen and what those debates were how those debates continue to live on and how the confusions that marks and angles and lennon had to confront and on their own left movements still exist in so many different ways today and and And they offer us a way of how to combat those things in ourselves and in others. But always, always, and this is what guerrilla history stands for and what Rev. Left and Red Menace stand for. Everything we do is ultimately to give you a nudge in the direction of getting involved in whatever way you can in your community

and to put these ideas, these theories into real world practice. And I think Lenin agrees with us. Obviously August Nymphs agrees with us. And I hope most of our listeners need to. Yeah. I'm just going to say to close us out that I'm really. really proud of what we do on the show. As you mentioned, we do this for political education. We do this from an analytical standpoint from a strongly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist,

anti-colonialist standpoint. And the goal is to provide the tools for people to analyze the world using the historical examples that we use and to then go out, organize and be activists in their own communities and to try to fight for a better world. I know that all of us, us, are activists and organizers in our own rights in the real world. We do this simply as a means of political education. On the left, broadly conceived, we've seen a lot of these personality confrontations, personality feuds between different content creators on the left. And we refrain from that on principle because we're here for political education.

We don't go out intentionally sniping at other people to try to stir up a ruckus. to give you the tools needed to analyze the world that we're in from a historical context, from a contemporary context, and to be able to affect change. And just last thing, one of the friends of the show, who actually was the, is the lead guitarist from the band, Eve 6. You remember them, Eve 6, yeah? I love him. Yeah, yeah, a friend of the show, friend of the show.

Shout out to you, John, I know you're going to be listening to this. and I'll be interviewing him shortly on the David Feldman show. He showed it us out as one of the media outlets that is firmly rooted in analytical work without engaging in this petty squabbling among left personalities. We're not doing this for personality. We want to give people the tools needed to change the world and make it a better world. And that's what we're going to go do as soon as we end this conversation. So until next time, listeners, thanks for taking.

tuning into guerrilla history. Let's do our sign-offs. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcasts? Well, listeners can find the M-A-J-L-I-S, a podcast I'm involved with and host on the Middle East Islamic World Muslim Diaspras. And also, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N. Brett, how can the listeners find you in all of the outstanding work that you've been putting out lately. I mean, really, I've just been consuming all of it and loving every second of it. So thanks for doing that. But how can the listeners find it? Thank you very much. Rev. Left Radio, Red Menace, you can search them on any podcast app. And of course, you can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com and find everything we do,

including guerrilla history, all linked up there as well. And, you know, there's been a debate on the left recently about red patriotism, proletarian patriotism. It's a big thing. A big debate. on left Twitter, for example, and Allison and I are going to tackle that topic in depth because it's easy to snipe at people and toss back accusations as we so often see online, but to actually take the argument seriously and to try to rebut them and confront them and analyze them, I think is worthwhile. And so we are going to do that soon. So if you're hearing this, we'll probably be out by that point. So you can go check out on Rev. Left, me and Allison and working together to try to address that particular issue that's cropped up on the left right now.

Really looking forward to that because that was a debate that I have been. I have very strong thoughts on it, but to try to avoid that just personal sniping, I have not put my personal thoughts on it out there, though I'm pretty sure it's fairly obvious what my thoughts on it would be. I'm very much in line with you, Brett. I have seen you have expressed your feelings on that debate, but I'm really looking forward to that that you're putting out with Allison, whom I also love.

Allison is fantastic. Listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's H-U-C-K-1-9-5. Shout out to the David Feldman show. David lets me do segments on there. Adnan, you do segments on there. So folks, if you're looking for a, you know, twice a week, seven-hour per episode show, Brett, you've been on there a couple of times.

Thanks, David, for letting me do that. So listeners, if you're looking for more stuff from me, that's one place that you can turn. And to find more from us on Twitter, you can follow us, Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-L-A-U-L-A-U-L-A-U-R-A-R-I-L-A-Hust. It helps us keep the show up and running, pay for our platform fees and whatnot by going to patreon.com forward-slash guerrilla history. Until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.