Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" by Karl Marx

Episode Date: May 18, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Mar 19, 2024 Alyson and Breht explain and explore Karl Marx's classic work "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." Together, they discuss Marx’s incisive analysis of Louis Bonaparte’s rise to power, the complex interplay between historical events and class struggle, and the profound insights into how revolutions unfold and regress. In the process, they delve into French history, the peasantry and lumpenproletariat, Bonapartism's relationship to modern Fascism, the role of the State under capitalism, and how all of this helps us to make sense of our contemporary moment of crisis in the US and around the world.  ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE  

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Red Menace. On today's episode of Red Menace is our long-awaited episode on the 18th Brumair of Louis Bonaparte by Carl Marks. It is something that we've been talking about doing for a while. we got caught up with obviously the current events and whatnot for the last month or two, but we finally got to it. And we're going to get into it today. Now, the first thing I want to say up front is that this was sort of a surprising, surprisingly difficult text.

I didn't necessarily know what to expect with the 18th Premier. Of course, I was vaguely sort of familiar with it. I hadn't actually read it myself, hadn't actually tackled it myself. I knew sort of its role that it played within Marx's overall work and some of the main ideas that sort of came out of it but the first thing you'll realize very quickly upon diving into this text is that it really is in some ways

a blow-by-blow historical account of French politics at this time so on its face it seems like a sort of summary of events if you will of this really tumultuous time in France but of course by way of that summary

Marx infuses his analysis with core Marxian concepts and generates certain ideas and concepts that are still within Marxism today. So it is an important text for that reason. But a lot of our older texts that we've done, we really have done a sort of summary approach where we spend the first 30, 45 minutes, sometimes even longer, summarizing the text. And we thought that would be, we wanted to move away from that in general because we think that is kind of sometimes the drier parts of our episode, but

specifically in this text, we thought it was worth getting away from because it would be in some sense a summary of a summary of French history. Instead of that, we're going to let Allison do a quick summary of the basic political situation that Marx is analyzing just for people to sort of orient themselves to what is actually being analyzed. And then instead of doing a summary beyond that, we'll just tackle main points and then have an organic discussion from that point forward. So let's just go ahead and start there as the basic historical summary of the situation in French politics that Marx is covering in this text, and then we'll get into the main points. Awesome. Yeah, I'll go ahead and take us right into that. So like Brett said,

the text really does kind of just give you this story in depth. So I always, you know, kind of try to stress that we are providing a compliment to the text. So if you want to get the historical details, the text itself is them, right? To do an adequate summary of this text might just be to reproduce it in the sense, which is not what we want to do. So this will be the quick history, glossing over a lot of details that are in the text. So I would encourage you to go and engage with them. Broadly, this is a text that is about the short-lived life of the Second French Republic, and more specifically about the French Revolution of 1848, and the eventual foundation of another French empire in 1851. So that is kind of this period of time

that is being spanned here. And the story that Marx presents for us here in this history, really all begins with the overthrow of Louis Philippe, who was the leader of the July monarchy. We don't need to get into a lot of details about him, but an important thing to frame this is that Philippe was in this position where he had risen to power with actually some cross-class support and actually with support from a lot of the bourgeoisie within France. He acted as a constitutional monarch who kind of bridged some of these aristocratic interests with these bourgeois interests, and he was very responsible for eliminating a lot of the past. power of the bourgeoisie after his election, though. He reduced suffrage within France.

He actually ended up kind of getting in the way of both worker and bourgeois and peasant interests within the country. And unsurprisingly, as often happens in these cases, this actually led to an uprising and revolt in which Philippe abdicated the throne. So while Philippe tried to leave the throne to his nephew, that didn't work out. And actually a new provisional interim government was declared leading to the Declaration of the Second French Republic. And so you have this French Republic, the Second Republic, which is pretty much finding itself in an immediate state of political crisis, with warring factions that are attempting to shape this Republic in a way that favors their interests. The uprising was very

cross-class in nature, actually, and so you have these various groups that are all kind of vying for power here. Originally, the Republic in the provisional period creates massive reforms towards liberalism and progressive kind of values that both some bourgeois factions and many radical Republican and worker factions support, such as universal suffrage for all men within France and significant increased freedom of expression. Early on, we actually see fairly successful proletarian pressure put on the republic, in particular, to kind of do some labor socialization work with the expansion of these national workshops, these kind of government-owned jobs that are able to be spun up in order to help the workers of France be able to have employment and be able to get

by. So when elections are finally held in April of 1848, the Bouchoir elements within this new provisional government actually saw an overwhelming victory. And this led to some very interesting things. Even though the Republic originally had this very progressive nature, suddenly a conservative move happens. The national workshops get closed down, even though they had been expanded under pressure. and the Republic ends up mobilizing its troops to crush workers who take to the streets to protest against this. And so eventually you have this constituent assembly. And alongside the development of the constituent assembly in this time period, Louis Bonaparte, who is the nephew of Napoleon, is that correct? Yeah, nephew of Napoleon. I get all the relations lost. He's elected to the Republic, the president of the republic, which kind of sets a stage for a later conflict.

We're not going to get into the details of the constituent assembly, but suffice to say that by 1849, it dissolves itself, and the center of the government struggle shifts to the legislative assembly. Within the French legislative assembly, conflict was primarily between what was called the party of order and a group referred to as the mountain. The former represented monarchist conservative elements, while the later was composed of social Democrats and radical Republicans, and in various ways, and at times shifting between the two, caught in between, you had more kind of, of contemporary bourgeois Republicans. The party of order, unfortunately, ultimately would succeed in actually expelling the leaders of the mountain from the legislative assembly, leading to their own dominance with that assembly. But unfortunately, for the party of order, as Marx kind of draws out this irony over and over again, this shift and the conservative reforms that they then apply actually puts more power into Louis Bonaparte's hands over time.

And ultimately, we see interesting things happen, like universal suffrage being abolished. one of the things won during the original revolution, which sets the stage for Louis Bonaparte to make some populist moves on his own, restoring some level of suffrage, and eventually to take military control from the assembly and stage a coup that would lead to the abolition of the assembly and leading to Bonaparte himself, assuming the role of empire. And that basically ends this short little historical period that Marx is focusing on here. So while we get into, you know, the details in various contexts, this is the broad arch of the history that you have to try to keep in mind, because Marx kind of takes it for granted that you know it.

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, when Marx is writing this in the early 50s, this has just happened. This is just rocked Europe. Everybody, you know, that would be reading that text in the immediate aftermath of his publication of it would, you know, would know what's going on. And so, of course, you know, separated by time and space and language, it's a little more difficult for us to wrap our heads around the obvious historical stuff that just would have been taken for granted by people at the time. But, you know, one thing that immediately jumps out at me from this is this sort of pattern that you see sometimes, especially in France, where you have this, the French Revolution, it gives rise to the First Republic. And then Napoleon, you have the, you know, destroys the republic while carrying it forward in some ways. Of course, it's never a clean, you know, break. It's a continuity and a rupture of sorts. But, you know, he becomes emperor.

And then you have this other republic that forms after another uprising. And then you have the, you know, destruction of that republic and the rise of a new, you know, empire, a French empire under Louis Bonaparte. And that kind of gives rise to some of the first words of this text and one of the most famous quotes from Marx, where he says, quote, Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add, the first time as tragedy, and the second is farce. and that there's lots of depth to that quote you know you could give many many examples but on its fate on the surface of that quote is this basic comparison between napoleon who you know the the og really was in some ways a great historical figure whether you agree or disagree with his politics his role in history etc um he was sort of self-made and really was um a sort of great man of history as it were of course the napoleonic wars were a time of great tragedy for Europe. But this coming of his nephew is farcical in that this is really running on the momentum of the name in a lot of ways. It is a product of a really messy political sort of contradictory

mess that gives rise to Louis Bonaparte. And it wasn't the iron will of Louis Bonaparte that made this happen. And I think Louis was sort of seen particularly by Marx and people on the progressive edge of society at that time as kind of a moron you know certainly not a great genius or a great strategist of any sort and so there's something farcical about this second bonaparte as it were and the second empire that he oversees which he opens the entire text with so that's worth noting now before we get into the main points i just want to talk about some things up front to again further help orient people to the text itself who might not have read it of course alison did a wonderful job summarizing that history. And I'm just going to throw out a couple things that are

relevant for Marxism broadly that are addressed in this text or that you can at least extract from this text. And one is, you know, how class conflict and class rule play out in a real world example. So this is a, this is an opportunity for Marx to wrestle with an actually ongoing sort of situation and try to make sense of it in light of his, you know, emerging theories of society, economics, politics, et cetera. Another thing this text touches on is intra-class conflict, right? We on the revolutionary Marxist left are always sort of, you know, keeping our eyes on the fact that there is no conspiracy, there is no small cabal, there is no smoke-filled room necessarily

of people who rule the world, but that the ruling class itself is often riven by conflict and contradiction. I mean, of course, you can look at American politics today and look at the Democrats. and the Republican parties. We often say both are arms of the ruling class, but they're constantly at loggerheads with one another. Sometimes it's more substantive. Sometimes it's less substantive, but there is a lot of interclass conflict. And even within those huge parties, there's a lot of conflict. And of course, there's interclass conflict. That's just a basic premise of Marxism. But another thing that I think is important here is that, you know, Marx in his earlier work,

And during the lead up to 1948, you know, these revolutions, these uprisings that popped off all around Europe, you know, Marx predicted a sort of revolutionary break in 1848. And it seemed almost immediately confirmed. But then we get the 18th Bremere, right, a political and theoretical problem for Marx to wrestle with and make sense of because it seems like history is going backwards. And there's something weird about elements of the laboring classes. We'll get into this later, the lump in proletariat, peasantry, certain factions of, you know, different classes that seemed to side with Bonapartism as opposed to what would be more clearly their, you know, from a Marxist perspective, their economic interest at the time. And so this presents a really interesting problem for Marx to solve and to sharpen his analysis through this historical event that seems to, in some ways at least, run counter to what would be expected from a Marxist perspective before this occurred. And, you know, some ideas that are thrown around is, you know, maybe French society wasn't developed enough, right? It did have this sort of disproportionately large peasantry for Western Europe.

And because railway construction in France just took off in the 1840s, there was sort of this new development of a new upper class of industrialists and merchants just on the scene, a decade old, that were forming the French bourgeoisie that might not have been consolidated as quickly as it might have happened in England where the Industrial Revolution started or even in Germany where there was more sort of industrial progress than France at this time, even though France, of course, culturally and under Napoleon militarily was a powerhouse in Europe, there was certain ways in which it were behind. So there's a problem to wrestle with here. You know, there are things that that would have been predicted that didn't exactly go as a Marxist

analysis might think. And I think that's relevant for why Marx is writing this. And it's wonderful because, you know, Marx wrestles with this problem. He doesn't try to ignore it. He doesn't try to wrinkle it over he doesn't try to turn away from it or you know gesture at it and act like it's solved or that you know retroactively try to make sense of it in some bad faith way he takes it head on and i think not only does that give rise to an interesting text but it sets an example for all of us today to really wrestle with reality even when it goes ways that we don't expect or wouldn't have predicted but we actually have to face it and deal with it as it actually is and that is a a bulwark against dogmatism um so yeah those are some opening

thoughts that I have. Allison, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, kind of two thoughts on this. One of the other things, you know, kind of asking, as you've framed this, what is like the relevance of this text for Marxism broadly and Marxism today? Because it's easy to lose that in light of the details is that a thing that you hear people often say is that like Marx doesn't theorize the state very well, right? So the state is what Lenin theorizes later on, right? Or Kautzki theorizes, but Marx himself doesn't present a super coherent theory of the state. And I think this is the text that kind of contests that in a lot of ways, right? This text has a really intense engagement with what the state is and the ambiguities about that, and actually a very complicated

approach to what the state is, actually, I think, that in some ways would be interesting to read alongside later Marxist theories. So I think one of the reasons it's worth engaging with is so that you do get to see where Marx is doing that work explicitly. The other thing is just like a little shout out is that I think this is like one of those Marx texts that is just incredibly well written in a way that really stands out. The constant sort of poetic in and out of historical allusions to mythology and then to the past, this very kind of like beautiful writing style that also in many ways I think reveals Marx's own frustration at what he's looking at, right? And his own disappointment in it, there's a very human and very, I think, funny and witty

marks that is writing this in a way that I think, you know, really stands out amongst his work and is just another reason why I do think you should actually go read this text in addition to listening to what we have to say about it. Absolutely, yeah. Well, let's go ahead and get into some of the main points and just kind of let this conversation take whatever path it wants to take. One thing that jumps out immediately for me is this, the use of the word bonapartism, which we hear today. And, you know, this whole sort of destruction of the second French Republic by Louis Bonaparte and Bonapartism writ large as a word, is seen in retrospect as sort of a forerunner to 20th century fascism. This sort of attempt to do above-class authoritarianism

claiming to represent the interests of the entire nation, as opposed to any one class, but taking a very sort of fascistic and authoritarian style. And of course, the quintessential example of this is Hitler. I'm in a class right now. I'm in a class right now. a high level history course for my masters on just the holocaust and it covers the rise of Hitler, the rise of the Nazi party and importantly it covers in great detail sort of how Hitler would present himself and you know even like the word national socialist and talking about you know we're trying to do this for all of Germany this idea that that we are neither free market capitalists nor are we international Marxist socialists, right? Those are both our

enemies. Of course, the economic system itself is capitalist to the core. And of course, you know, the big bourgeoisie and various industrialists were very much behind the Nazi movement in Hitler. But this sort of mystification that class conflict need not exist and that a strong figure could step into this sort of tornado of conflict and sort of rise above it and represent all the classes within a nation, right? And of course, as Marxists, we know that that's not really possible, and we have all these critiques of fascism. But I just wanted to put that out there that this Bonapartism is this sort of forerunner to what would later become 20th century fascism. Yeah, I think there's a lot to work with here that I think is interesting. And I think

the comparison is apt, right? The Hitler reference makes sense. And I'll give a couple of thoughts on that. But broadly, I think what is interesting, right, is that whether or not Bonapartism and fascism can be treated as fully analogous to each other, they're both a response to the same thing, which is the fact that whether or not the bourgeoisie likes to admit it, class conflict is inevitable and it is destabilizing, right? You can pretend all you want that liberalism is able to paper over class conflict, able to create a state, which is just a nice mediator between the different classes. But the reality is that this is not how the state operates and it's not how class society operates. Class society has contradictory forces within it, which from the Marxist

perspective, force a crisis. And when these crises occur, that has devastating impacts, even on the ruling class, right? Everyone is destabilized by these things. And so in Bonapartism and fascism, I think you're precisely right, Brett, is the illusion, which is a nice sounding illusion, actually, to a certain degree, that somehow you could have a state that is a total state for all the classes, right? That somehow mins these together. And I think what's interesting, is if we think about fascism as a movement, right? Fascism is built around this idea that the interest of classes can be subsumed within a national interest, which supersedes that, right? So in the context of Germany, it's subsumed within the figurehead of the fewer, right? But it's also subsumed

within the Volk, the people, and understood as this racial category. And this is supposed to be able to produce some type of unity, which then allows us to get past the instability that class contradictions produce. And I think what's really interesting in the case of Bonapartism and in the case of fascism is you see how much this project is a failure, right? One of the things this text ends on is Marx makes this statement that under Bonapartism, the brutality of the state is laid bare, right? All the mythology of what the state is is gone. We just see the repressive apparatus of the state as it tries to hold these contradictory interests together. And I think you see the same thing very much if you look at the history of fascism,

What I was reminded of reading that idea of, you know, the brutality of it being laid bare and demystified is in the context of Germany the night of long knives, right, which is this moment where these multiple factions within the Nazi party, in particular, the factions that were more associated with the big bourgeoisie and the aristocratic classes, just flat out murder the part of the party that is most aligned with barkers and most aligned with the lympho proletariat, who unfortunately did form part of the Nazi base, right? And so what you see is that the class. conflict that the state has always facilitated under fascism and under Bonapartism is just reduced to just the most proof instrument of stabbing someone to death in a sense, right? And there is almost a demystification of the state that comes about there. And I think there's something interesting there. So marks this debate if Bonapartism equals fascism, right? I think to me, I see that similarity very heavily there. But both of them are based on the same kind of delusion about what class is. And both of them ultimately can't hold those contradictions. together in a way that I think is interesting.

Yes, well said. Now, I want to read this quote about humans making history but within restraints, and then I'll bounce it over to you to give your thoughts on it, because I know this was part of the document that you had some thoughts on. So this is, of course, one of the most famous quotes in, you know, with all of Marx's work, really, but it comes out of the 18th Bremere. And the quote is, men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

They do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already. given and transmitted from the past. The traditions of all dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living. Now, Alison, can you take that quote and let us know what he's saying with that and how it situates itself within this text?

Yeah, so this is probably, I think, like the most famous quote of this text, right? That you all, if you are familiar with this text at all, this is the one you've probably heard alongside the first as tragedy, then as farce, right? These two kind of make up the big thing. So there's kind of two ways that I think we can approach this quote. First, within this text, and then second, within the broader context of

Marxist history and dialectical materialism. So within this text, I think this sets the tone for this very strange idea that Marx comes back to of the second time as farce, right? And so when he says that all dead generations lay like a nightmare on the minds of the living, he points out the extent to which all revolutionary movements, both the original French revolution and this current revolution that he is describing are trying to call back those generations, right? He says they parade themselves as Romans. They parade themselves in light of previous empires and of previous victories and glories and martyrs. And so there's this constant weighing there that is happening. But also more broadly, I think a thing that weighs on Marx throughout this text that he's wrestling

with is that on the one hand, revolutions are made by people. They are made by people taking decisive actions. The proletariat is a class of people who can act and who can fail to act as well, which we see throughout this text actually in very interesting ways. But at the same time, it always acts within a moment that has existing conditions that it did it choose, right? So if we think specifically about the original establishment of the Second Republic in the context of the overthrow of the July monarchy, this is a crisis which the bourgeoisie did not, or which the proletariat themselves did not necessarily produce multiple classes or being driven to the point of desperation by policies carried out by this constitutional monarchy, and suddenly revolutionaries find themselves

within a moment that they didn't choose while being tasked with taking decisive action, right? And this is this tension, again, that comes throughout the text. Marks throughout many moments of this text bemoans both proletarian and bourgeois factions, who, when they had the opportunity, chose not to take an important step, chose not to do the thing that was necessary within that condition. So I think that's one way it fits in this text. But broadly, I think this is also a statement about the Marxist theory of history and about historical materialism that is really worth wrestling with for us. One of the tensions within Marxism, we've talked about this throughout many of our episodes, is this tension between sort of free will and determinism, right? There is a way to read Marxism as saying history is determined by material conditions and the logic of those conditions contradictions playing out on its own.

oftentimes in Marxism, whether it's Marxist work or later revolutionary work, you hear this language of inevitability, right, where it is inevitable that capitalism will collapse under its own contradictions and socialism will arise. You have this language very frequently. To tie this into something recently, there was a recent contrapoints video where she kind of put forward this idea that feudalism wasn't abolished by people deciding to abolish feudalism. It was abolished by the contradictions within its own sort of conditions, right? There's this deterrentice. read that you can do. And I think here Marx is contesting both determinism and kind of free will libertarianism in the context of history. He's on the one hand saying, well, the determinism is real to a certain extent. You find yourself in a moment you didn't choose where those contradictions are playing out. As I think everyone organizing in the U.S. knows, we're usually caught off guard when a crisis happens here, right? They're not something we chose. We didn't choose for the police, the anti-police uprisings of 2020 to happen. They occurred based on contradictions that already existed, but then we were tasked with responding to them, right? And that is where the ability for humanity

to make history comes in. So I think, you know, inasmuch as this has anything to do with historical materialism, Marx is threading the needle in a very complicated way. Historical materialism does hold that these conditions play out outside of our individual control, but determinism is only half of the story. The other half is decisive action. I think back really when I wrestle this also to the October revolution in the context of Russia, right, where there's this crisis of the provisional government that comes up in Russia, and it literally is a vote by the Central Council of the Bolsheviks that says in this moment, we're going to try to overthrow them. That wasn't inevitable. That didn't have to happen. Within the moment of the crisis that arose,

humans had to take actions, make a brave history-altering decision to engage an insurrectionary struggle at that precise moment. And I really think we can see so clearly in that case how what Marx is talking about here is true. So I think Marx here gives us a corrective against this determinism that can be an excuse not to do anything, right? It can be demobilizing. It can tell us that we don't have a responsibility to act. History will resolve itself. But it also humbles us and hopefully keeps us away from the absurd kinds of adventurism and idealist thinking that assumes we can just impose anything we want onto reality because we absolutely cannot. Yes. And I think there is a sort of strain of that hyperstructuralist

determinism, a strain within Althusair, which we've covered before. Absolutely. And I think on the other side where this idea that we can just invent the future from Holcloth has certain strains with an anarchism, certain idealist strains with an anarchism that don't really want to do the messy work of dealing with the situation as it currently is and moving from that to a better situation. Not all anarchist, of course, but you know, there's strains. And so I think, and to the contrapoints, you know, argument, yeah, there's a dialectical relationship between people and the structures, right? There's, there, and to try to separate that, to try to say that the people weren't really involved is to say like it's like a car without an engine it's water without a glass it's

form without content you know these things go together structural reality shapes the present shapes your possibilities shapes your opportunities but of course human beings are the mechanism through which history actually unfolds and so you can't wipe them out of that equation um and and you can just looking back over feudalist history of course there's many uprisings you know look at caliban and the witch look at the resistance to to to to you know cordoning off the commons there's there's always been revolts human beings have always revolted against unjust conditions um and so you know you can't just have the structure without without the people and you can't just have people freely inventing futures without structures

that determine their possibilities so this is this is an important point now that quote i read about men making that men not making their own history etc um it goes on and i want to i want to touch on that and of course alison you touched on that um sort of obliquely by just continuing to mention concepts that this next part of the quote gets at. So the next part of the quote goes, and just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis,

they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from their names, battle slogans, and costumes, in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. and you know you can think of the initial french revolution the initial american revolution there was a lot of conjuring up of roman antiquity and seeing themselves as as continuers of the roman republic look at the how institutional buildings in the united states are built the white house for example it's it's supposed to be consciously reminiscent of roman pillars

and roman society um you know which is fine to a degree we we have certain um figures and movements in our history that we also latch on to and draw inspiration from. But we've all met the dogmatists that want to copy and paste, right, that want to take exactly what a Lenin did or something and try to make that happen here. And then you run into problems. And now one thing that I thought about in the context of this quote, and of course, correct me if you think I'm off base here, Alison, but, you know, most historical actors throughout history were not aware of the role that they were actually playing in history's development. Marx's goal, of course, in this text and beyond, is to equip workers with a theoretical

understanding of their collective role in history and more broadly to make murky and mystified and obscure laws of historical development clear and fully conscious for the first time in human history. You know, he's telling us to not put on the costumes of the past, but to actually try to grasp the historical moment in its evergoing evolution. And, you know, just some interesting. examples that I think in just in the American context of the last 10, 20 years of putting on the costumes of the past, sometimes quite literally. You remember the tea party? You know, it's this

moment where Obama, the first black president, is coming to the four, and this tea party is this sort of reaction where they're, you know, they're not dealing with the 21st century and the actual realities of what's going on. They're hearkening back and literally putting on the costumes of the Boston tea partiers, right? Maga, Make America Great Again, often conjures up the image of a 1950s Americana that we're trying to get back to, but of course, you never can. The return spelled with a V, right? That you see these dorks online, these fascist dorks constantly referring to, look what

they took from you, the trad larping, you know, now you see these trends on TikTok today of like trad women who are now, you know, okay with their super, confined to the kitchen roll and the husband goes out and makes the money and it's sort of this attempt to try to go back to a past in conditions that literally won't allow for it. So all you can do is sort of present the image, present the spectacle of traditional lifestyle. And meanwhile, you go outside your house and it's still 21st century America. And that's a problem for trying to live the trad life in any real consistent deep way. So all of these and many more, These are just some examples that immediately popped to mind.

Are this sort of putting on costumes of the past that I think Marx is sort of referencing in the context of, you know, 19th century France, but which we still very much have with us today. And it can happen all along the political spectrum, but particularly in moments of crisis, the past is, especially by the ruling class of various sorts, the past is reified, it's nostalgicified, it's glorified. And I think that's not a coincidence that it. happens precisely in moments of crises where we need to actually be thinking about the moment right now and how to get through it, how to move forward, how to advance the ball and not look back and try to conjure up spirits from the past, right? Right. Yeah, I think there's two things there

that I want to touch on. So one of them, I think this is what's interesting, right? The way that I was focusing on the quote mostly was how revolutionaries referenced the past, but also I think you draw the other application of that in this work, which is how reactionaries reference the past. which is what those examples you gave really get at. And again, I think this is where, you know, we see the second time as farce thing so clearly, is that those references are pathetic and grotesque, right? They're nothing like the thing that they are trying to reference anymore. They're farce.

Yeah, they are, right? The people who insist on them are not living the way that they are, you know, demanding people live, the great heroism of the greatest generation or whatever about fascists talk about in the context of the United States. is so far from the dumb basement-dwelling fascist, right? And you have this very bizarre thing. And in this text, you see that with Louis Bonaparte, right? Because he is pathetic. And Marx calls him grotesque in this text, right? He is undignified. He is not good at what he is doing. He is a bit of a buffoon. And yet he paints himself as his uncle, right? Who, again, regardless of how we

think about Napoleon, there's a grandeur that is kind of called up when we think of Napoleon. And so that, I think, is very interesting to think about how reaction always does. that. To tie it back into the fascist, too, I mean, Hitler is this grotesque thing as well, right? Hitler is not the enlightened warrior leader that he pretended to be. He is a drug-addicted, very much in his own way, degenerate old man, right? Who is trying to reference this greater past that he himself is just a shoddy reproduction of. So it is interesting how you see that play out over and over again. And then I think the other thing that you got at that is interesting here, right? It is this idea and this text that stands out a lot to me of when people are involved in their historical moments, revolutionaries throughout the past, they're not always aware of what they're doing, right? They don't always have consciousness of the role that they're playing. Many of the early bourgeois revolutions did it understand that they were ushering in the end of feudalism, right? They just understood themselves as advocating for the interest that they had as early merchants, right? And so I think that is interesting. And I think you're right. The goal for Marxism, the

almost like, it feels like such a big claim. But the claim for Marxism is we can be conscious of it, right? We can have a class that understands its role in history, understands itself as a class, and can take action with full cognition of what it is doing and what that means. And I think what's interesting is this text is kind of Marx trying to do that, right? This is Marx looking at very recent events and saying, okay, a lot of people in this moment found themselves not really understanding what was happening to them. But can this theory that I've come up with allow us to read the very recent past and see what was actually happening and see what kind of decisions could have been made, right? And I think, again, there's this tragic tone that marks this text in so many ways of failure after failure, both of the revolutionary proletarian forces and the revolutionary bourgeois forces. And it's this interesting early application of historical materialism to kind of say, is this tool that I'm developing here actually capable of providing that kind of consciousness? So there's a very kind of meta read of the that I think is interesting from that perspective as well.

Yeah. And, you know, in contradist distinction to the Marxist understanding of trying to grasp the laws of history and be conscious sort of, you know, agents of it is in today's world, look around, is the sort of either end of history liberalism, end of the Cold War triumphalism. But more than that, it's this liberal idea that basically, and the end of history, of course, you know, sort of reifies this idea and really gets at it, that that capitalism and Democratic, you know, Republicanism is sort of the pinnacle of human accomplishment. And now it's just a matter of working out the kinks and, you know, smoothing the sharp edges and making this thing

work. But there is this liberal presupposition, this premise that this is more or less the final system. But as Marxists understanding how modes of production have shifted over time and importantly, thanks to Marx and Engels, understanding what caused those shifts to different modes of production and how those played out gives communists in particular a like a consciousness of our historical epoch knowing full well that if we're right at least that that capitalism just like every other mode of production that came before it is not permanent it cannot be permanent and it will change um because it's riven by of course this class conflict these contradictions inherent in class society and of course you have this you know this perpetual return to a golden age

reactionary conservatism that you know is always different the golden age and every epoch is different it's always but it's always backward looking and that's the thing that the reactionary shares so it's sort of like this end of history liberalism this back to let's return to the golden days reactionaryism and then this unique sort of thing within Marxism socialism socialism communism of being able to try and grasp these historical shifts and if you take if you take seriously the idea that you know slave societies. They evolved into feudal societies unconsciously, right? No, no actor in that transition was at all aware of what they were doing. And then feudalism itself gave rise to a bunch of contradictions, which over time tended, and this is hyper simplified, right,

giving rise to this mercantile class who then had their own interest, were not conscious that they're ushering in capitalism would never imagine in a million years that 200 years later we'd have skyscrapers and cities and smartphones the way that we do. But they played this sort of unconsciously progressive, you know, role in history writ large. And those are really interesting. But, of course, then that means that we're also in our own epoch, and we're also in a specific mode of production that will one day be transcended. And we think that socialism is the way out.

Just as mercantileism was this transition out of feudalism and towards capitalism, socialism is the transition out of capitalism and toward communism. And communism itself, you know, we can debate about this. And I don't want to get too off track. But does that still contain contradictory? Is there levels beyond communism? Or is communism the sort of end of history? We got to work out the wrinkles, but is more or less there. You know, maybe that's a, those are, those are fights that our descendants will have to have. But at least we can see that far. And that does give us some real analytical power. And I think that it's, you know, obviously incredibly useful and absolutely crucial to historical materialism and dialectical materialism. Absolutely. Now, did you want to say anything about the theory of the state? Republican parliamentary, the form of Republican parliamentarianism, anything like that, before we move on?

Yeah, a couple of thoughts that I want to say here broadly about Republican parliamentarianism, the theory of the state, and about counter-revolution as a concept, right? Because I think that is the central idea that is in this text. So again, one of the things that I think people accuse Marx of is not having a theory of state, right? So you will hear people say, like, this is underdeveloped in Marx. And this is one of the reasons that, interestingly, you'll have anarchists. who just adopt Marxism in terms of some parts of it, right? They'll say Marx didn't theorize the state. Lenin theorized the state. But I do think there are some really interesting things that happen in this text in terms of theorizing the state. And in particular, in terms of theorizing the bourgeois Republican state, what that is, what function it has, whose interests it serves, and the contradictions that exist within that, right? So Marx understands

the parliamentary republic as a fairly, you know, brief period within in the Second Republic. It only briefly had the swarm. At the beginning, it was something more radical. At the end, it was an empire, right? But there's this period where the parliamentary republic does exist, and there's this struggle that happens within it. And I'll just read a quote real quick from the text. He says, quote, the parliamentary republic was more than the neutral territory on which two factions of the French bourgeoisie, legitimate and Orlinists, large-landed property, and industry can dwell side by side with equality of rights. It was the unavoidable condition of their common rule. The sole form of state in which their general

class interest was subjected to itself at the same time both claims of their particular factions and all the remaining classes of society, end quote. So there are a couple of things from that quote that I think we can focus on, but one of them that I think is very important is precisely this idea that the state does not just act as a neutral space within class society, but that the form that the state takes, its form is determined by the class conditions. Other society and is a reflection of that. This obviously gets taken up later on by Lenin, who extrapolates this out to the idea that the state is actually a mechanism of class rule within that given society. And I think we really do see that prefigured here within Marx in a way that is

important. I think he's prefiguring Lenin, and I think, you know, as we've done before, you can read Marx against the liberal theorists of the state here who think that the form of the state is, you know, some product of a social contract or an agreement between the people and think that the goal of the state is to essentially mediate antagonisms between different classes. And Marx rejects that here. He says that it does play somewhat of a mediating role, but its form is shaped by those class interests. And as we'll see in this text, that mediation is always doomed to fail, right? Even if it was supposed to be the terrain on which the different classes could have their ideas subsumed together, ultimately it falls apart as those classes have differing

views and they come into conflict with each other. So I think that is very important. But I also think really important in this text and in this idea of the bourgeois republic is this notion of the bourgeois revolution that comes up. One of the interesting things here, right, is that the bourgeois republic serves the interest of the bourgeois classes, but its foundation isn't just by the bourgeoisie fighting for itself, right? Bizarrely, the Second Republic has many classes that rise up. And so the progressive role of the Bouchoir Republic partially has to do with the workers being involved in it, the peasants being involved in it, also rising up for this. And the bourgeois republic, in its attempt to be this progressive thing, tries to throw out these ideas of rights

for everyone, tries to throw out these ideas of universal suffrage. But they're in contradiction with the classes that actually control that republic, right? And we actually see that here when the party of order eventually blocks back universal male suffrage within France. And these contradictions that are bound up within this republic are important, because I think they allow us. us to understand one of the dangers with a reformist strategy, perhaps, which is that reforms through bourgeois states can be very meaningful. It was important that the French Republic immediately took those reforms, but they can also be quickly undone, right? And what's more than that, they can not just be undone, they can be replaced with something that is actually in many

ways more tyrannical than what came before those reforms. And we really do see that here. So I think within this text, we actually see a prefiguration of a lot of Lenin's work, both on the state as a reflection of class society, and also on the need for revolution as opposed to reform, which doesn't mean reforms aren't important. We're always going to insist on that, but means that reforms aren't sufficient in and of themselves. And we start to see that Marxist theory of reform, revolution in the state, I think really cohere in this text in many ways. Yeah, beautifully said, absolutely correct. And I have the perfect follow-up to that. A quote and everything. But really quickly, this is a side note. You know, the social contract theory,

which is sort of fundamental to liberal political philosophy is, in my estimation, and feel free to disagree with this, but it's sort of like a post hoc rationalization via abstraction. So like literally the creators of the social contract, which is not materialist, right? The creators of the social contract knew that there was no actual contract that society signed. It's just like looking backwards, making up a story about how things turned out the way they did, a just-so story that we've talked about before on this show. And that is, you know, obviously completely weak compared to a historical materialist analysis, which doesn't depend on a thing that never happened, a complete and utter abstraction to explain the formation of the bourgeois state

or the formation of modern, you know, parliamentaryism, but is actually rooted in modes of production, you know, the base superstructure analysis, historical materialism at large. So I think that's important. And just something to think about when you inevitably come across. you know some version of a social contract theory but to your main point i have a wonderful quote and then a little a little follow up on that to get your thoughts and to drive home the point you were saying so in this in this text mark says quote as and as the party of order the bourgeoisie exercised more unrestricted and sterner domination over the other classes of society than ever previously the party of order is this monarchist sort of party a domination which in general was

possible only under the form of a parliamentary republic. For only under this form could the two great divisions of the French bourgeoisie unite and thus put the rule of their class, instead of the regime of a privileged faction of it, on the order of the day. If they nevertheless, as the party of order, also insulted the republic and expressed their repugnance to it, this happened not merely from royalist nostalgia. Instinct taught them that the parliamentary republic makes their political rule complete, but at the same time undermines its social foundation, since they must now confront the subjugated classes and contend against them without mediation without the concealment afforded by the crown. It was a feeling of weakness that caused them to recoil from the pure

conditions of their own class rule and to yearn for the former, more incomplete, more undeveloped, and precisely on that account less dangerous forms of this rule. Now, that's literary. It's a lot Maybe you didn't fully understand it, but my, my recognition of that quote is something like that the bourgeoisie, particularly in this situation, sides with, in this case, you know, monarchist overthrowing of, of, of the republic because, you know, the parliamentary republic is the form of the bourgeois, you know, class rule. And so it sort of seems on its face counterintuitive that they would want to side with monarchism against their own rule. But the bourgeoisie sides with bonapartist, authoritarian, fascist democracy enders, because in this case, it secures their ability to continue profit accumulation and ends the democratic threat to that ability, right? The democratic threat of contending with working class parties in a parliamentary republic. They can kind of hide behind monarchism, which would, which, you know, the emperor, which allows them to continue to profit. But it also at the same time undermines their overt political power.

in the form of the bourgeois parliamentary republic because they could keep their social and economic power and you know kind of bringing this to the american context we can kind of see some of this anxiety as well like liberals think that this will happen sort of with trump without all the analysis of the bourgeoisie and class politics right but they're really fearful of trump but i wouldn't be surprised if if you know if a figure like this does arise in the u.s context if it emerged from the democratic um party itself or even the nonpartisan military itself. You know, you can imagine a situation in which the crises in American society continue, that there is no resolution. Look at our government and there's no sense that there's any solutions forthcoming. That the crisis continues to pile up. Contradictions continue to pile up. Institutions are continually discredited and that there is at some point a collapse or acute crisis period of time

where the bourgeoisie in the U.S. would actually back, you know, in our parlance, a fascist, an authoritarian, maybe a military dictatorship. This is often called the American Caesar theory, that, you know, America could give rise to its own Caesar or its own Napoleon, which ends the American Republic and ushers in the American Empire. It's a little different because obviously those societies that Caesar was in and that Napoleon were in, didn't have a quote unquote democratic culture, a history of trying to understand themselves in democratic terms. You know, America was founded on at least that idea, if not that idea, put into practice. So that kind of throws a wrench and, you know, is this even possible? But you could, you could imagine a situation where things get so bad that the bourgeoisie would rather, you know, step back from the political stage, would rather usher in some form

of dictatorship, military or otherwise, in order to maintain the system that can no longer be maintained through the mechanisms of normal parliamentary democratic institutional rule. And, you know, so the bourgeoisie prefers law and order and stability to liberalism and democracy when push comes to shove. And I think we see that in this case. I think that quote is exactly what Marx is getting at, pointing at them and saying that that's basically what they're doing. They're giving up their actual real class power in the form of the parliamentary republic politically.

in order to maintain their social and economic power as the bourgeoisie. And I think that we're in a crisis period in the United States that could, of course, end in a million different ways. There's a million trajectories from here, good, bad, and ugly. But one of them is precisely like this mounting up of crises and this sort of the ruling class or at least a large overwhelming faction of it decides that this democracy stuff itself is not worth it. And I truly believe that if somehow some way, the American proletariat were able to use the American democratic political system to get in power that I think more than a fascist, I mean, coming like, you know, the liberals talk about Trump as this, he's this fascist threat to democracy. No, no, no. If the socialist actually won and started getting real political power, I think you would precisely see this exact move. They will throw out all the democratic facade. They'll throw out the institution. if it means maintaining class rule and their position atop that hierarchy.

And so I think, you know, it seems like it's this sort of this thing from 200 years ago. But what Marx is saying right there, I think is perfectly applicable to us, at least as a as a very real possibility in the near future. Yeah, I know. I think you're correct. And I think, you know, there's so much in this quote that is interesting to break down. One of the things that I think you gesture at that I want to emphasize as well is this idea that there's a distinction between the interests of the class as a political entity and the

economic interests of the class, right? And those two things can be at odds with each other in an interesting way. So the republic is great for the bourgeoisie, Marx tells us, because it unifies the different factions of the bourgeoisie, right? And we actually can see this throughout the history of capitalism, where the Republican form allows both industrial and financial capital, which are too often clashing sides of the bourgeoisie, to find calming ground together. But again, the trade-off, though, is now it has to contend in the democratic sphere, right? And there's this constant anxiety that the bourgeoisie is plagued with about instability that results for that and about other classes contending against them.

I would say in modernity, as time has gone on, the parliamentary republic has gotten better at keeping out the actual working classes from its democratic workings. That has gotten a little bit easier for it over time. But certainly early on, especially in this exact revolution that we're looking at, there is a proletarian element, right? The mountain represents both the radical Republicans, but also the socialist, right? That is real. And they have a present within the legislative committee, uh, in a way, our legislative assembly that creates this anxiety. So there's this interesting distinction between the political interests of the class and the economic interests of the class and how the class itself navigates those tensions, right? And moves back and

forth between different political forms based on those. So I think there's a lot to focus on there. I think the fascism part is interesting too, right? Because we do see precisely the same thing in fascism, in the instance of fascism, where it is the anxiety of the bourgeoisie that causes the shift to fascism. In the case of Germany, it's this very fascinating thing where the bourgeoisie basically accedes power through the enablement act to Hitler to someone who is leading a party that gestures towards its own twisted form of socialism, bizarrely, right? There is this strange side of the Nazi party, particularly found in the essay. which frames itself as a slumpin proletariat semi-workers movement, right? That actually the bourgeoisie is willing to accede power to because at least it prevents the socialists and the communists from having power. So there is this fascinating repetition of history that this text obviously explicitly addressed, that we see, you know, a century later, actually, as we apply it. That continual cycle that continues to happen there, which I think is interesting.

And I think you're right. In the context of the United States, we would see that very, very clearly. if there were ever any major socialist success electorally. And I think in the U.S., it is always interesting when I think about the sort of Republican-Democrat divide is I think oftentimes that divide reveals those frustrations that the bourgeoisie has about republicanism and about democracy, right? Trump, to the extent that he could be a fascist, which I don't actually think is the correct word for him, really. But whatever Trump is is an expression of one half of that divide, I think, right? Within Trump, we see, in my opinion, really kind of the larger part of the petty bourgeoisie having their

interest represented, small business owners who are much more susceptible to crises within capitalism, right? They get hit much harder by it than large financial institutions. And they are interested in this kind of strong man figure who can promise them stability and you can even express populist disdain for democratic norms in an interesting way. Whereas the Democrats, I think, you know, much more clearly do represent these finance capital interests, right? this much larger big capital. Where fascism comes in, in my mind, is actually when both of those factions are willing to abandon the democratic form of the state, right? When both of them are willing to jump ship. That's where you kind of get this horrific move to fascism. And that is

what's fascinating in this historical context where the party of order, which represents these two competing factions within the bourgeoisie, slowly basically just gives up trying to govern itself, right? And allows Bonaparte to step in and take that position. So in the U.S., I think it would in a sense have to come out of both parties, kind of giving into their anxieties in order to embrace an anti-democratic

impulse. I could not agree more. And I always make that point that when fascism arises, it's a rising out of both parties in slightly different ways right now, and that there's no one party that is against fascism and one party that is for it. And I think like, you know, that's the liberal delusion. But

also in some ways that you listen to like, Yeah, Tucker Carlson or even Trump himself talk. He'll say about the Marxist and the communist and he throws in fascists, too, like as this sort of threat. Right. Which I just think is sort of funny and also kind of points to the fact that Trump, I don't think, knows what those words mean. Certainly. But yeah, like in the Nazi example, the attempt to do national socialism was this attempt to lure back the German worker into the fold because for political reasons for political power. but of course the branch of the Nazis, as you were just talking about, the essay, who did have some of those politics, were ultimately liquidated.

But they had to appeal to the German worker because communism was a real fucking threat at that time in Europe and in Germany. I mean, of course, the German revolution was, you know, a decade or so earlier, but still communists are very much present in German society, present across Europe. And so you can't, you can't just dismiss the German worker if you're trying to do fascism at that point. you have to appeal to them in some way and you say not for all the workers we're certainly not for the russian workers fuck the french workers but if you're a german you're arian so even if you are a street sweeper in germany you are made glorious by this bullshit race science that we've invented you know that brings you into the fold and of course socialism was appealing to lots of people at that time so you weave that in to your sort of party apparatus from the

get go when you're trying to to gain power the moment you get power of course You do the night of the long knives. You exterminate the communists, right? You attack the labor unions. You dismantle unions throughout the country, et cetera. And so that gives the real face to the beast. But, of course, you have to make these appeals. And then you have, unfortunately, 100 years later, or 75 years later, the dumbest people on the planet saying that the Nazis were left wing because they called themselves socialist.

That's the nightmare that weighs on our minds that we have to deal with. Absolutely. Well, yeah, no, really quick, the last point is there is a point. I mean, right now, the most recent situation is like the governor of New York sending National Guard troops into the New York subway station, which just aesthetically has the sort of look of authoritarianism that Americans aren't quite used to. It's kind of more prevalent. Like, if you go to the beaches of Mexico, you'll often see, like, militarized, you know, soldiers marching down the beach. even in when I've been to Europe before, it wasn't a strange sight to see military,

you know, figures and fatigues fully armed standing on the corners of Paris and shit. So I think there is something slightly unique about the American situation where that sort of shocks us. But, you know, that's kind of just pure image, pure, it's pretty shallow. We'll see where it goes.

But, but in 2020, when there were Black Lives Matter protests popping off, when shit was really, really intense going on for a long time, you had the National Guard, you know, in these major cities, deployed to put down these protests because the police themselves were no longer sufficient to be able to do it.

There was like this real chaos in the moment that I remember thinking like if this continues, if this goes on, right, what are the liberal, what are the Democrats and the Republicans really going to do here? You know, could this be, if this continues on for weeks or months and you can't get back to business as normal, could we see something like the activation? of a military coup or just an ushering in of military power or just a permanent martial law declared. Of course, things sort of evaporated after that

was co-opted, the movement itself had these various contradictions, et cetera. But there was a moment in the summer of 2020 where shit looked like it could very well go off the rails. And it would not be surprising to me if in the next five to 10 years we have, for a different reason perhaps, something like that happened where it doesn't,

fizzle out, where it continues to go on, where there is a real fucking crisis, and where the military, which is still sort of seen as neutral, you know, could step in as the final guarantor of, you know, bourgeois class rule. And the democratic facade could be sort of wiped away temporarily, permanently, who knows. And then what struggles that would ensue from there, who knows. But it's not fantasy to think that that's a possibility in the near term. Yeah. No, I think the bigger fantasy is to think that like democratic republicanism can continue indefinitely. Definitely, right? Because we see these ever-increasing crises, and again, an increasing pace at which those crises occur. I mean, I even think now, like, this is not of the scale of 2020, but the mobilizations in the street that we are seeing now around Palestine do indicate the just continual instability and also, fascinatingly, indicate the liberal inability to navigate these crises, right? Like, in that sense, Biden's failure on this question, his just kind of inability whatsoever. to give anything other than just kind of the weakest scientist justifications, I think do reveal these contradictions really fascinatingly and do reveal the fact that when push comes to shove, the liberals are on the side of the most reactionary impulses of the Bouchozy, right? And we are seeing that now. And I think I can't give you any time frame, but certainly within our lives, I think we will only see this accelerate more and more and more. And here's the thing. The fact that those happened under Trump allow the Democrats to sort of, you know, know participate in it like you know certain elements of the democratic party were like yeah the resistance were against trump some of these protests going a little too hard but more than more or less we we grant them you know approval and that was like literally a line on msnbc and stuff like you know this black lives matter movement is is fundamentally just it's not as violent as the

right as saying but imagine that exact situation or i mean the the tumultuousness of that situation occurring under a democrat where they didn't have the ability to say that they were part of the resistance. But they actually saw this, and it wasn't just a January 6th, hyperpartisan thing, but it was like broad swaths of society rising up while a Democrats in office. I think you would see a very different side of the Democratic Party in that context. And things could go haywire very much more quickly than they could under Trump, where the Democrats and the liberals could at least sort of fancy themselves part of that resistance to him. And that the, that the critique from the bottom up protests and the goals of the bottom up protest were not fundamental.

aimed at taking away their power, right? It was like anti-Trump, and of course, like, these racial politics that we more or less endorse. And so that was easy for Democrats to get behind, again, keeping the ruling class split. But again, in a slightly different context, with the Democrat in power, I think things could have been very different. And that's actually, I think, the threat of fascism, quote unquote, whatever that turns out to be, the threat of the dismantling of the democratic institutions, I think a lot of people, especially on the left, intuitively assume that's going to come from the Republican Party. But for all these other reasons, I don't think it necessarily would. I think more scarily and more probably, you know, it would

come from the Democratic side. And I think that would be a lot harder for people who fancy themselves progressives or liberals or more or less aligned with the Democratic Party in some ways, be much harder for them to to compute and process and wrestle with what's going on in that context. Right. No, I agree. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's move on. And I kind of have some thoughts on how Marx analyzes the lump and proletariat and the peasantry. Do you want to get into that? Yeah, please. I think that is one of the fascinating parts of this text.

And one of the contradictions of the event, because the lump and proletariat or at least broad swaths of it, as well as the peasantry, when push came to shove, seemed to side with bonapartism for different reasons. And Marx, of course, wrestles with those reasons. But this is some of the, you know, in the Marxist tradition, Marx had a certain sort of contempt, if you will, for the Lumpin proletariat and the peasantry that in later iterations of Marxism, that contempt is sort of inverted. And there's a recognition of, you know, like the Black Panthers understanding the role, the revolutionary possibilities of Lumpin proletariat or the Chinese and the Russian communists, understanding the role that the peasantry must play in the revolution. Right. And it seems like in this context, Marx is more dismissive than subsequent Marxist theorists and Marxist movements would be towards these groups. So I guess before I give my whole thing, I talked long enough, if you want to open up thoughts on Lumpin proletariat or the peasantry?

Yeah. Broadly on the Lumpth and Proletariat, I will kind of respond to some of your framing there, right, of Marx's, like, disdain essentially for the Lumpur proletariat, which you see in this text and you see in other texts, right? when Marx references them, it is always kind of evisceratingly negative. And then I think you're right, within the 20th century, you have groups like the Black Panther Party who start to kind of rethink the role of the lump and proletariat and also you have revolutions abroad that incorporate them in interesting ways. And so I think where we stand now in the 21st century, looking back on this, there's kind of these two legacies abused to them. And oftentimes I see people like really fall just like entirely on one side or the other, right? So they're actually, I will reject this here slightly. One reading of fascism that gets put forward by some is that fascism is primarily a movement of the Lumpin proletariat, right? That is one theory of it. It's not the predominant Marxist theory, which tends to emphasize finance capital as actually kind of the C-moving factor a bit. But there are sort of traditions. You see this in some forms of left communism, actually. They see the Lump and Proletariat as like the main mover of fascism. And so you get this very kind

of rejectionist idea of any incorporation of the Lump and Proletariat. On the other, hand, there is sort of, I think, an anarchist attitude towards the Lump and Proletariat that often is very uncritical in its kind of approach. So they kind of look at the Lump and proletariat and say, because they actually often live in more squalor or more precarity and instability than the working class, there are potentially even more revolutionary class, right? And there's this kind of read that happens there. And I think both in this text and more broadly within history, we have to kind of reject both of those views. Neither of them ends up being quite

correct. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. The first is that, and this is where I think Marx is really interested in this in this text, the Lumen Proletariat, even when they're capable being progressive, are not positioned in the same way that the proletariat is, right, in order to actually play a revolutionary role. And actually, they are often positioned in a way

where they can benefit from reaction. So one of the fascinating parts at the end of this text is that Marx notes that the Lumpin proletariat kind of loved what Bonaparte set up for them, right? He says they were in many ways able to engage in underhanded bribery and trading around the expansion of the rail system that happened under Bonaparte in a way that benefited them truly and they were able to have advantages from it. And so their interests can overlap with reaction in interesting ways, even though their kind of displacement from society happens as a result of capitalist relations.

And even though, again, oftentimes, once, you know, reactionary movements come into power, they are not super kind to the Lump and Proletariat. They often liquidate them as well. So I think there's that tension there. But I also think to the extent that the Lump and Proletariat has revolutionary potential, it is because of their desperation that they often find themselves in. It is because they are positioned in such a way that they would benefit from the overthrow. But one of the things that I think we see later on is that the extent to which they are revolutionary requires them to come into unity would be actually revolutionary class, right, i.e. the proletariat themselves, which doesn't happen in the story of history that Marx gives us here. We actually don't see that happen. But one of the things that I will say since Marx, that Marx, I think, could not have predicted, is the role of revolutionary parties in proletarianizing parts of the Lupin proletariat, right? I think back actually to our review that we did on the Battle of Algiers, right? And this is actually a central part of that story, is this lupin figure who has to essentially put himself into proletarianized position of society, who has to make himself complicit with this party that is representing

a more proletarian perspective and has to subject himself to that position in order to escape. He actually has to give up a lumpin proletariat lifestyle in order to properly become a revolutionary. And I think in the anti-colonial struggles that emphasize the Lumpin proletariat, they often do really focus very heavily on the proletarianization of the Lupin proletariat. And that's something that I think when you see Marx talk about them here and elsewhere, he couldn't have predicted happening, but is one of, I think, the advantages of a revolutionary party, as Lenin puts it in what is to be done, that finds all of the potentially progressive classes and unifies them under proletarian leadership. So those are kind of some opening thoughts there that I think might be good

framing. So in summary, would you say like their gritty and desperate life experiences could make them, great revolutionaries, but because of their situation and the way that they get by in society, they are susceptible to being swayed by money or the promises of power and therefore are sort of easily co-opted by like reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces. Yeah, I think that is precisely it, right? The same thing that makes them potentially useful also makes them viable in a sense, right? And I think that's what Marx says happens to them here in relation to Bonaparte. Here's a question for you.

I just thought of this. We can cut this out if you don't like it. Are the Sopranos lumpen proletarians? Oh, man. Isn't that a question? So there are some people who will talk about, as I was going to say, who will talk about the lump and bourgeoisie. That is more how I think of like organized crime, right?

But within those groups, you have these lower level figures who are living in precarity generally, right? They're getting by off of what they're doing, but they're not integrated into the real market. they are constantly at risk of state repression, right? So you have both the Lumpin proletariat there, but I do think there is a sort of Lumpin Bouchozy, especially in colonial situations. I often think you see the development of a Lumpin Bouchozy that comes about to take advantage of the instability that colonialism brings about. So I would say the Soprano's there, the Lumpin Bouguiz, but when you

get really down to the nitty gritty, the characters that get kind of thrown away in one episode, those might be the Lumpin proletariat. Great answer. Totally agree. Yeah. I was also thinking, of course, in our own time, cartels, right? There's these hierarchies. At the very top, you do have these people living extravagant lives. They make their money on the black market by illicit, by the illicit trade, but they're at the top of that particular hierarchy such that they live sort of bourgeois lifestyles like like Tony Soprano did in a big ass house, nice car, etc. But yeah, the structure of the organization itself and the way that those people are able to be on the top of that hierarchy

is premised on a huge sort of pyramid of lump and proles as the base of their of their sort of economic possibility. Yeah. But I love that idea of the lump and bourgeoisie. It's really interesting. But let's go, let's go ahead and move into the peasantry, because this played a really important role in this context as well. As I said earlier, I think France had a disproportionately large peasantry compared to Germany and in England at the time. Of course, Germany itself didn't exist. Germany came into existence in 1871 through the nationalist movement, but you know, we get the basic idea of what I mean when I say Germany at this time. But there's a wonderful quote where Marks calls him the peasants a sack of potatoes.

But it's actually more interesting than it sounds. So let me read the full quote and we'll suss that out. The full quote is, quote, the small holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions, but without entering into relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France's poor means of communication. and the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no division of labor in its cultivation,

no application of science, and therefore no multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient, directly produces most of its consumer needs, and thus acquires its means of life more through an exchange with nature

than an intercourse with society. A small holding, the peasant and his family, family. Beside it, another small holding, another peasant, and another family. A few score of these constitute a village, and a few score villages constitute a department. Thus, the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes. Homologists, I don't know, fuck. Who knows? Yeah, homogenous maybe. It's not how it's spelled, but whatever. Homogenous magnitudes, such as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. And so, far as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life,

their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interest forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention they cannot represent themselves they must be represented their representative must at the same time appear as their master as an authority over them an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from

above the political influence of the small holding peasants therefore finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself so that's a fascinating quote but when he's saying when he's calling them a sack of potatoes what he's basically saying is that you put them all together and nothing greater than the sum of their parts emerges which is not like proletarians right you take proletarian people you put them in the same neighborhoods you put them in the factory shoulder to shoulder with one another you put them in community with one another close contact community they have a very obvious antagonist the boss you know in the factory who who is you know sort of cracking the whip on the

them or withholding their pay or whatever and because of that tight-knit community where they are forced to live and labor together something greater than the sum of their parts emerges which is they stop being merely a class in itself and become a class of itself meaning a class that is conscious of itself as a class because of the intertwined nature of their daily lives and the exploitation that they endure together but the peasants of course as he just said in that quote they live in these family farms they live far away from the urban centers they're you know they have many kids and the kids help toil the fields and they might have a local village where they go into exchange goods on a more or less you know almost barter level system um but they they're not

sort of um you know putting a bunch of peasants together doesn't create a class in conscious of itself as such in the way that proletarian class consciousness emerges so the sack of potatoes is they are nothing more than the sum of their parts They're just a conglomeration of this hum of their parts. And that creates an interesting question. I think I actually heard Matt Christman say this on a podcast in one of the EPS that I was listening to in preparation for this episode. And, of course, Matt had a pretty massive stroke a few months back, so we wish him the best. But he says, you know, he basically asked the question, are we in America, in modern day society, a sort of sack of potatoes?

And the idea that he is talking about is, you know, because of the nature, of the service economy, the nature of gig work, of alienated individualism, and the overarching ideology that sort of entrenchedes that alienated individualism. There is a sense in which American workers in the 21st century, you know, are, or can sometimes seem like a sort of sack of potatoes. How do we come together? If you're doing Uber and DoorDash and then working part-time at the gas station to make ends meet, you know, you are not necessarily shoulder to shoulder with a co-worker every day, with a singular boss that you can understand as the incarnation of your exploitation and then go to war with or, you know, just in that process of contradiction, gain a sort of class solidarity and a class consciousness that, you know, puffs you up and gets you ready for class struggle. And so there's a way in which going through industrialized capitalism to post-industrial capitalism kind of, you know, in some ways makes it harder to generate that prolete.

class consciousness that was easier when all the workers are working in the same factory and living in the same ghetto. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, I do. I think, so, yeah, broadly, I think there's two thoughts that I have here. So one is this question of, like, the difference between the peasants and the proletariat and the sack of potato part, right? So I think half of that is what you've gone at, which is the way in which they live, right? So again, the peasants don't live in this interconnected way that the proletariat do. But the other thing that's like interesting in this quote that I think is worth teasing out here because it gives us some tools for thinking about this service economy and gig work is also Marx's emphasis on divisions of labor, right? So one of the things that he points out

is that the division of labor hasn't been applied to the peasants, right? The peasant family operates as a single unit, which it does all the work necessary in producing the food, which it sells off and which it lives off of. And that's different, of course, from the proletariat, where the proletariat because of the division of labor performs one part in a broader socialized labor, right? And this is kind of what Marx sees as progressive about the proletariat is. The socialization of labor has, in many ways, it's alienated humanity because of how capitalism treats it. But it has also set humanity free to produce things on a scale that could have never been produced before, right? This is the side of things where Marx often is in awe of capitalism at the same time as he criticizes it, right? It has set labor free in that. this particular way. So the proletariat has this socialized aspect of it, not just in its lifestyle, but in the type of work that it does as well. And I think that's an interesting thing here. So what's interesting that if we want to do the comparison work between the peasants as sacks of potatoes and then the comparative work to service economy, gig workers, and alienated individualism

as the sack of potato, is that I think you're correct, right? There is this separation off from the rest of the class that occurs here. But what's interesting is that, that if anything, though, it's achieved through different ends, which is that gig work is like the most horrific division of labor, to the extent to which you're no longer even involved in the production of the commodity, right? If you're a DoorDash driver, it's even more fascinating than that. You are the last step in the delivery of the commodity, right? It's been actually divided down into an even more small level. So I think there's one difference between the peasants and kind of service work that is interesting. And I think the other thing, too, is that the peasant

part of their autonomy comes not just from the fact that they don't have this division of labor and socialized labor. It comes from self-sufficiency, right? This is what Mark says is they actually produce most of the goods that they need to consume. And I don't know if that's true for the service economy, right? Something interesting is that very much, if I'm a Uber driver, I'm probably not self-sufficient, right? I am still reliant on the consumption of commodities in a way that connects me to the socialized production of commodities in a way that the peasants aren't. So I I feel like there's this half overlap where there is this adivization, this intense individualization that occurs, but also there's still a dependence on the capitalist system for consumptive ends that maybe might complicate some. It might give us hope at least that there is some way that the organization of this kind of work could fit within the fight against capitalism. But broadly, as I'm trying to think about it here, I do think there's tension within the comparison in terms of self-sufficiency and also in terms of socialized, individuated labor. point about socialized labor proletarians regardless of what your job is if you are an uber driver or factory worker or whatever your existence as a proletarian implies and of course is deeply you know connected inexorably connected to the bourgeoisie as a class so you know in the way that the peasantry is not connected to the rise of a dominating class so you know whether you're a worker in a factory or a gig worker in a service economy and a post-industrial you know, American society, your labor is still being exploited by a class that extracts

your surplus of value and pockets it as profit in a way that peasants, because of their self-sufficiency, because they can live off the land, don't necessarily have. So I think that also puts more tension on this idea of that comparison between modern proletarians, even in a very alienated gig service-oriented economy and peasants, because you're still, no matter what job you work as a proletarian, you're tied to the existence of the bourgeois class in a way that the peasantry is not. Yeah, that's a really insightful point. He also made a really funny joke, Matt did, that I have to replicate here.

He, you know, kind of playing off this idea that modern people in a gig economy might be something like a sack of potatoes. He says, but of course, we're postmodern. So instead of a sack of potatoes, we're pringles in a tube. Right. I just laughed my ass off when I was working out, listening to that. So, you know, hats off to Matt for that joke. Totally.

Okay, well, I think that ends the at section for me. Is there anything else you would like to say before we get into a couple quotes here? No, I think that's a pretty solid spot to finish off there. And, you know, I don't want to, I will actually maybe I do with something to say. I don't want to reject the comparison, right? There is something true to the fact that there is this hyper individualation and alienation that makes it hard for the class to be a class, right? But I just think we get there through kind of a different means.

So there is a truth in the comparison, though. for sure for sure yeah all right well just really quick at one quote that i have i already read my other quote so we can get to years after this i just thought it was interesting and sort of a stand-alone quote mark says in this text quote the bourgeoisie in truth is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses so long as they remain conservative and the insight of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary and i just wanted like right when they said that i stood back and thought of all the ways that liberal elites, you know, specifically the conservative voter. I mean, there's this new book comes out called White Rural Rage, which tries to say that rural white America is the number

one threat to American democracy from sort of a liberal elitist perspective, constantly looking down on them, you know, they're deplorables, they're stupid. And of course, some of them absolutely are. But, you know, at the same time, they're human beings and they're sort of cluttered and confused by ideology and sometimes they have really good instincts and honestly knowing many low level even rural working class conservatives there's something more human and more genuine and more relatable to them than I would ever sense from anybody in a fucking suit and tie any liberal elite any millionaire anybody that's in the upper echelons of the democratic party so at the end of the day as Marxist especially during this period of time where the liberal rhetoric is going to be

ramped up, we should not turn our neighbors into the enemy and side with the bourgeoisie and the Democratic Party when they inevitably try to, you know, make the guy who lives next to you with a Trump bumper sticker, your enemy, not the fucking, you know, CEOs of fucking Goldman Sachs and Nancy fucking Pelosi. So just keep that in mind. But then another half of that quote is the bourgeoisie is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses when they're conservative, which we see all the time, and the insight. of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary

and I think that is you know we unfortunately we don't have as big of a mass organized movement to really strike fucking fear in their hearts but you know god damn well the moment we start getting organized when we start pursuing political power in a real fucking way when we make it very clear we are not

under your umbrella democrats we are our own thing and you are our opposition that is going to scare the living shit out of them and um you know if regular ass working class conservatives are able to be brought in and uplifted through this movement for the working class, all the more terror will, you know, lightning bolt down the hearts of these liberal elites. So I thought that quote, you know, written almost 200 years ago or 150 years ago is just as apt today.

Yeah. No, I completely agree. And I think, you know, it is interesting. And I think what your ending on is very important is this idea of like, we need to not mistake who our friends and enemies are. And I think that last point that you hit of like, when all of this goes down, we need. need to not just side with the Democrats is super important in this exact moment, right? Because this is exactly what they're trying to do right now. We're trying to unify around Biden, who is our enemy, right? And being able to understand that is a really important takeaway, I think. I'm going to jump to one of my quotes. I'm going to skip the first one and actually go to the second one, because I think it's very applicable to the American context right now. And I'm just curious some of your thoughts on it. So this is around the middle of the text. Marx writes that quote,

Thus, by now stigmatizing as socialistic, what it had previously extolled as liberal, the bourgeoisie confesses that its own interests dictate that it should be delivered from the danger of its own rule. That, to restore tranquility in the country, its bourgeois parliament must fire, must first of all, be given its quietest. That to preserve its social power intact, its political power must be broken, that the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and to enjoy undisturbed. property, family, religion, and order only on condition that their class be condemned along with the other classes to political nullity, that in order to save its purse, it must forfeit the crown, and the sword that is to safeguard it must at the same time hang over its own head as a sword of Damocles. So one thought here, I think. This is a quote that one, I think, is very, very, very poetic and really cool. I just love how this is phrased. And it also, I think, relates to that quote that you read earlier about this kind of giving up their position of rule within the Republic in order to see here the class interests. So there's definitely relation there. But I think this opening

is very interesting. This idea that we call socialistic, that which we once called liberal, right? And I think that is very telling for what the temperature in the United States is and maybe has been for quite some time, where now if you just go so far as to suggest that something like liberalism, New Dealism is ideal, that gets denounced as socialism, right? And it tells you precisely how much anxiety exists within the anti-communism of the United States in some very interesting ways. And how much the U.S., you know, even though it is a Democratic Republican some way, is always just on the verge of this kind of anti-democratic reaction. So I do think it speaks to our moment. I hear this language and how we talk in the United States in a way that is kind of

interesting. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, everything. thing that is really just par for the course liberalism that is at all progressive, at all requires taxing the rich. My entire life has been called socialist. And everything in American society actually has been called that in real time. Like when FDR was president, there was an attempt to coup him from business elites that failed. They called him Franklin Stalin Roosevelt. They thought he was a secret communist, right?

of course Roosevelt himself this might be apocryphal but i heard that roosevelt said that his greatest accomplishment in politics was saving capitalism because he understood that his liberal reforms were actually going to allow that system which he believed in to perpetuate itself in a way that if he let it go into full-on crisis could easily be you know inverted and taken over either from the left or the right communist or fascist etc but he himself was the the ostensible target of a of a fascist coup that was, you know, of course, never launched and never succeeded by any means, but, you know, was sort of in the mixture at the time. You know, yeah, minimum wage increases, the expansion of health care, basic environmental protection now, which, you know, Teddy Roosevelt is making the fucking, you know, national park system. And today, even saying that we should not allow drilling or that we should do stuff to, to protect the environment is often called socialism. Look at the rights breakdown and freak out over the Green New Deal, which takes environmentalism. And, yeah. FDR's New Deal puts them together very liberal in every way. And that is seen as like this communist, socialist, you know, attempt to take over society. So I think that is incredibly interesting. Now, what's hard for me to parse out is the American context and how it differentiates itself from the European context. Because what is taken for granted in Europe is still seen here in the U.S. as socialist, as communists, right? Like the universal health care system that they have, the robust welfare states that that many European societies have

which are completely liberal and capitalist of course they are remnants of these communists and democratic socialist and social democratic movements of the past century or so that allowed these things to become normalized and America was always

because I think of its settler colonial nature in part this hyper-libertarian fucking fever dream country you know this terrible monstrosity that Europe created that you know sees even Europe as socialist and literally growing up like in the in the early 2000s becoming to political consciousness that yeah i mean listening to sean hannity he would just call the french socialists he would

call european socialist all the time it was just taken for granted that that you know europeans are loony lefty communist and they're just like cutthroat capitalist over there too um so i don't know what's what's a purely american neurosis and what is this broader phenomena within liberal capitalism, you know, it's kind of hard for me to parse those two. No, I think that's really important, though, that you mentioned the Settler Colonial part, because that is the tough question, right, is that the United States is very different than Europe in that way. And also, I would say, the United States didn't have a clear-cut bourgeois revolution in the way much of Europe did, right? So one of the things that I would use to kind of explain

that difference, and, you know, this is drawing on horn a little bit here, which is always controversial, but I'm going to risk doing it, is that the founding revolution of the United States wasn't the same type of revolution as, say, the revolution of 1848 in that it didn't declare universal suffrage, for one, right? We never had that in our initial revolution that founded this state. And even after the Civil War, which I would say in my mind is kind of more the actual bourgeois revolution in the United States, even after the Civil War, there's massive crackdowns of actual universal suffrage on racial grounds. So much of Jim Crow is basically an attempt to prevent that from actualizing, right? And so perhaps some of the difference there

and the reason we see this language in the United States is that the U.S. never actually even fully embraced republicanism in the way that much of Europe did. It never actually fully embraced those values. And our bourgeoisie has always been a little bit more on the line about how it feels about republicanism and democracy such that the language of the European bourgeoisie calling the liberal socialist, which occurs in the moment of crisis, we almost do by default perhaps. Yeah, super interesting. Now my last, my last class that I took was this 4,000 level history course just on the American Revolution. And it was really fascinating that I got to see that. But it was as conservative as a revolution could possibly be such that

the term revolution is really called into question. The way that the revolution can be called a revolution, the American Revolution, is in the ushering in of these formal structures of republicanism. You know, in that way, it is technically a revolution. revolution. It is a historical and even progressive break from monarchism of England at that time, even constitutional monarchy. But in every other way,

in every other way, it was more of a separatist movement. The superstructure in a lot of ways remained. The harsh hierarchy, the aristocracy in so many ways remained. And your point that the civil war was actually more closely resembling

of a proper bourgeois revolution I think is really interesting because of course it's the industrial north versus the semi-feudal South, right? And so in that way, it's much more clear cut that this was a bourgeois revolution. But it's precisely that ushering in of this formal, non-monarchical constitutional republic that is the thing that is considered the bourgeois revolution. And so I don't think we can fully dismiss that those formal institutions being brought into existence in the U.S. was important and does constitute a bourgeois revolution.

but it really is important to say that this was so fucking aristocratic, so fucking conservative from the get-go, and the wrinkles of slavery and settler colonialism, because one of the things that pissed off the settlers in the U.S. was this dictate from the crown limiting their ability to settle the western lands, to move west and settle more lands. And there was also this contradiction with regards to slavery, the British Empire outlawed slavery before the United States. south outlawed it. Um, and so those contradictions are very interesting and it's hard to call the people who are on the side of, of keeping slavery and the people who are on the side of expanding their settler colonialism to the west as progressive, as a progressive revolutionary force. So it's one of the weirdest fucking things in history. And it's really a frustrating to see the Haitian and the French revolutions in comparison to the American revolution. Yeah. the fact that I got born in this fucking country

of, you know, with this revolution is like, this is as conservative as a fucking revolution could possibly be. So, yeah, it's kind of, I mean, you got to laugh so you don't cry, right? Absolutely. All right, well, I think that ends my part of the outline. Do you have anything else you want to

say any words to wrap up this episode? Yeah, just a couple final thoughts, right? So we've covered a lot here. I think we've been all over the place in terms of topics. And I think that's a testament to how complicated this text. is, which is really the idea that you opened with, right? Like, this is a difficult text to cover because it's this, like you said, almost a blow-by-blow history, then with this slotted-in commentary

about the state, about reform, about counter-revolution, around class antagonisms, all just kind of thrown in there. So hopefully we have kind of drawn attention to, you know, really subjectively what stood out to us while we read it, right? But also to what I think many Marxist scholars tried to draw out of this text. It is very much worth reading the text. It is very much worth. Also, when I was doing the research for this, I also found that Matt Christman a little bit on this. And I found several other podcast episodes talking about this. People have done good work on this text that get into some of the topics that we don't get into. So I think it is worth, you know, digging into what other media has been produced around this. You could mine this text for a very long time about different theoretical perspectives. But I do think hopefully we have been able to connect it to why it is relevant for us today. Because when you read it at first, that might not stand out immediately. So yeah, you You know, I hope this is useful for people, and I really do recommend read this text. It is not that long, actually. I think you can definitely work your way through it, and there's a lot of value in it.

And if you familiarize yourself with the history first, it's going to make it a lot easier, which is important. And then also just for a recommendation, one of the episodes I listened to that I was really, really sort of impressed with, is the episode from the dig, which I think is associated with Jacobin. I think it's still going on. Daniel Denver, if I pronounce that correctly, did the episode. And it was, it's almost two hours long and it was also very, very helpful in wrestling with some of these ideas and the guests that he had on was really good. So if you want to more check that out, also our friends over at the intervention podcast and turned leftist did a collaboration on the 18th Premier that people can check out as well and continue to dig deep because there is, again, so much in this text, even though it is short, that, you know, we couldn't possibly cover every single aspect of it, even in several hours. So there's always always more to learn Highly encourage people to check it out

One thing going forward is that listeners of the show Might be familiar With the fact that I just have recently I stepped back from guerrilla history I just have a lot of stuff going on in my personal life It's hard to juggle all these commitments But one thing I do want to do in the wake of stepping back from guerrilla history It's not only encourage people to go subscribe and follow them

Because they will continue on But also that we're going to make Red Menace more regular So there was a period over the last year where, you know, maybe two, three months would go by without a Red Menace episode. And Allison is very busy. I'm very busy. But we are going to try our hardest to make sure that we get an app out of some form or another. It might not be tackling theory every single time.

Right. Current events, historical events, AMAs, anything like that. We're going to try to make sure we get at least one Red Menace episode out and month going forward for this year. So we're trying to commit to that. But, yeah, thank you so much to everybody who listens. You know, if you want to support the show, you can share this episode. with somebody who you think might be interested. You can leave us a positive review. Both those things are deeply appreciated. And until next time, love and solidarity.

Thank you.