Rev Left Radio - Debate: Egoism vs Marxism

Episode Date: August 21, 2017

This is our first ever debate on the show: Egoism vs. Marxism featuring Comrade Dr. Bones on the Egoist side, and Comrade Phil on the Marxist side, with Comrade Brendan playing the role of fact-checker and neutral observer/questioner.   This is an experiment; we have never done a debate show before, so we did our best. PLEASE let us know if this is something we should do more of in the future, or if you think these debates are ultimately unhelpful. We really appreciate any and all feedback.   Thanks to everyone who participated in this episode. Go check out Dr. Bones on Twitter @Ole_Bonesy and check out The Conjure House for his writings.    This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition and The Omaha GDC.   Outro Song: Revolutionary Left Radio Theme Song by David G. (Our sound engineer). 

Please support my daddy's show by donating a couple bucks to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio. Please follow us on Twitter at Rev. Left Radio. And don't forget to rate and review the Revolutionary Left Radio on iTunes to increase our reach. Workers of the world, unite! We were educated, we've been given a certain set of tools, but then we're throwing right back into the working class. Well, good luck with that because more and more of us are waking the fuck up. so we have a tendency to what we have, we have earned, right? And what we don't have, we are going to earn.

We unintentionally, I think, oftentimes kind of frame our lives as though we are, you know, the predestined. That people want to be guilt-free. Like, I didn't do it. Like, this is not my fault. And I think that's part of the distancing from, like, people who don't want it to do it with their prejudice. Because that's always how our imperial war machine justifies itself.

It's always under the context of liberating the Libyan people, liberating the Iraqi people. The U.S. Empire doesn't give a fuck about anybody except the U.S. Empire and its interest. According to the legend, Sterner actually died due to a beastie. So the ultimate individualist was actually killed by the ultimate collectivist. Both sides are responsible for the violence. What the fuck are you talking about, dude? Are you kidding me? There's one side inciting fascist violence.

The other side is saying give us free health care. God, those communists are amazing. Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I am your host and comrade Brett O'Shea. Today we are doing something a little different. A few weeks ago, we had Dr. Bones on to talk about egoist communism. That episode got a lot of responses, both people loving it and people hating it. It sparked a little polemical back and forth between some Marxist comrades of mine and Dr. Bones.

And that back and forth has ultimately created. this podcast, which is going to be our first ever debate. So we're going to have a situation where it's going to be egoism versus Marxism. We have a formal debate structure for the show. We have me, the moderator, and then we have Brendan, who is going to act kind of like a fact checker. He will make, at the end of every little segment back and forth, he's going to maybe reach out and ask somebody to clarify on a point or elaborate or add historical context. Brendan, go ahead and introduce yourself as the neutral sort of observer in this whole thing. Yeah, hi, I'm Brendan. I'm a communist, but I think one has been relatively influenced by some anarchist critiques in the past.

I'm also a political sociologist and someone who likes to read history books. Okay. Dr. Bones, you've been on the show, obviously, in that egoist communist episode, but go ahead for anybody that didn't hear that or has forgotten. go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit. Okay, hi, I'm Dr. Bones. I'm a mad Floridian dabbling in necromancy and a political revolution. I seek to destroy pretty much anything that pisses me off or gets in my way, one of them being capitalism. Yeah, and that's about it, really, I suppose.

Okay, and Phil, you were on the Cuba episode, and I think you were on our first ever episode. So go ahead and introduce yourself again for the audience. I'm Phil. I'm a communist. I pursue the liberation of the proletariat. I used to be anarchist, but thankfully I outgrew that. All right, and this actually leads nicely into something that I want to set up very clearly at the beginning. There is deep disagreement here.

It can easily descend into something where it gets personal or name-calling starts. I do not want that. I don't want people to walk away from this episode just hearing people call each other names and prop up straw men to knock down. So try to be as in good faith as possible, try to be respectful. And hopefully at the end of this, people that listen, we'll walk away from this episode feeling

whether they agreed with one side or the other that they learned something about both sides. So that's the definite point of this debate. We don't just want it to devolve into sectarian flame war. So if everybody's cool with that, then we'll go ahead and get into the introductory statements. So this first part of the debate is going to be five, minutes per person, they're going to simply introduce their critiques of the opposite position.

So this is not a time to respond to anything or defend your own ideology. This is simply a five minute section for Bones and Phil to critique the other position. So we're going to start with Dr. Bones. You're going to go first. You have five minutes to go ahead and lay out your foundational critique of Marxism. Ready, go. do you want a religion or do you want a revolution ladies gentlemen and non-binary folk that is the question i want you to consider today because it is my contention that marxism like most ideologies is nothing more than a religion dressed up as politics complete with holy books sacred saints and a red heaven called communism i attest that marxism doesn't serve the people the people end up serving it at every opportunity

it has been given the chance to rule. Marxism has promised revolution tomorrow at the expense of today. Parties demand obedience, police meet out punishment, punishment, and the people remain exactly what they were under capitalism, a class of laborers. Look at China, where the Communist Party has millionaires and factories, have suicide nets. Look at Venezuela, where 70% of all industry is in private wage-paying hands, including American corporations. Look at Cuba, where in 2011, 500,000 Cubans lost government salaries without any

recourse, all to encourage growth in state-sanctioned small business. Today, some numbers have 40% of Cubans working in the private sector for wages, and all without the legal right to strike, all while a small elite of about 1,000 people dictate the economics of 11 million. I throw the question to you, dear listener, is this the revolution you desire? Privileged hierarchies, wage labor, and the inability of the individual to direct their own life. Save for a few social services, this could just as easily have been a description of

Venezuela or the United States. Communism, a classless and stateless existence has been the promise of every Marxist revolution and every fucking time the people give their power away, it never comes back. Instead, we're told our power belongs to the party, or a quasi-religious people, and if we go against their will,

we are nothing more than a tool to be discarded. The same fate we have under capitalism. Communism, rather than a state of being, becomes an abstract socialist rapture, a far-off day long foretold and ever over the horizon. The time for religious fantasies is over.

Marxism has either failed or sabotaged itself in the pursuit of power. In Granada, Maurice Bishop, the leader of a communist movement, the CIA deemed more dangerous than Cuba or Nicaragua, was captured by Leninists who wanted control of the revolution. After the people broke Bishop out of prison, the revolutionary army attacked his family and executed them, giving the U.S. a pretext for invasion. Today, the revolution is in shatters and no longer holds power over Granada. the historical record is clear comrades the party the vanguard and the workers state no longer offer any hope of liberation if we want liberation we can no longer define ourselves by our economic arrangements we can no longer define ourselves by our economic beings or social stratification that has been hoisted upon us generation after generation i implore you comrades to give away the marxist critiques and all of its pillars and foundations and instead turn to yourselves and immediate liberation. All right. In under the five minutes, very well said.

We're going to go over to Phil now to hear his critique of egoism. Phil, go ahead. So egoism is totally determined by liberalism. It's, if not indistinguishable from liberalism. Liberalism is the pursuit of individual freedom, and it is structured and maintained by the system of capitalism. And particularly the neoliberal ideology that we experience today, which is the ruling ideology we live under now, there's an even greater emphasis on individualism, greater emphasis on hyper-individualism, a sort of total emphasis on the self-expression and self-experience. So there's a reason egoism in particular is so heavily determined by liberalism, and that's because every time you have an ideology that is disconnected from any sort of engagement with the masses or any engagement with material reality, basically, you're going to be totally vulnerable to determination by the ruling ideology.

The ruling ideology now is liberalism or neoliberalism. so egoism purports to be something new and something edgy and something quite revolutionary perhaps but in reality it's just liberalism in a different package liberalism for a different crowd liberalism online so I've described egoism in the past is right wing and I'd like to reiterate that because anything that simply parrots the ruling the ideology of the ruling class can absolutely be said to be right-wing because it opposes the people. Anything that reinforces the oppressive systems of liberalism can absolutely be said to be right-wing, and so I'd absolutely reiterate that critique of egoism.

There is also no such thing as egoist communism. Communism pursues the liberation of the proletariat as a class, not the individual. Communism will, you know, provide a more fulfilling life and more free life for the individuals in that class, and for the individuals in every class after it's accomplished. But you can't accomplish communism backwards. You can't pursue individual freedom as a means to attain communism. That's not how it works, and that's not how it will work. And that's all I had. All right.

So both of them have said their piece. both came in under five minutes now we're going to go over to Brendan who again I stress is neutral in this situation to give a few clarifications or ask some questions or just really round out anything that has already been said Brendan

I think a fair point might be for me to admit that I'm a slightly more biased towards the Marxist traditions just as a credit to the fact that I might not be perfectly neutral but i'm trying my best um okay so first and foremost uh my issues with with bones's point is one he's got the standard liberal critique of of communism um i think there's an irony there and

you're treating marxism as a religion in the same way that marks called uh all of the young and post hegelian saints to kind of treat the uh hagelian tradition uh as a as in and of it's self or religion and a saint, St. Max, who exercised the whole thing by rendering it all sacred and so on. First and foremost, there's a, my first critique is that there is entirely a way to be an anti-state Marxist. That sounds very incomprehensible to a lot of people, but that is to say that Marxist critique of political economy, philosophy, and so on, can totally be applied regardless of what you feel about general Marxist praxis as extended from Kautzky and so on. And I don't think that you really, in any way, shape, or form address the validity or lack of

validity of Marx's critique of political economy and so on. Venezuela never really said it was Marxist. In fact, Chavez didn't even really start off as a socialist, so I don't think that's a fair critique. In regards to Cuba, I will like to point out, first and foremost, that I have a degree in Latin American Studies and Cuba is somewhat of a speciality of mine. A lot of the trends you're talking about occur in a period of almost demarcification. Again, the Cuban Revolution didn't really start off as Marxist.

Che was initially an anomaly in that, and I think personally I'm of the camp that Castro embraced Marxism as the best way to get to Cuban liberation. But even if you think that he was a closet Marxist all along, the revolution, the revolution did not start off that way. And certainly a lot of the changes that have been occurring with the liberalization of Cuba really didn't start until the 90s after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the collapse of the Cuban economy. And also a lot of them occurred under Raul after Castro himself stepped down. And Raul has a very clear timetable for his own stepping down. And it's very clear that the Marxist orthodoxy is not necessarily going to keep their privileged position

that they had, say, in the 70s when they saw a rapid increase in the ability of Cubans to get educated and get health care and so on. So I don't know that that's a fair critique in and of itself. In regards to the historical record, post-Vanguardism or non-Vanguardist leftism has kind of dominated since at least the 60s. And I will say that in my personal opinion, the left has significantly lost ground since the loss of the sort of ideal of vanguardism. I don't think the left is in as good of a position

now as it was in, let's say, the 40s. My critiques of Phil, the critique of egoism as being inherently more liberal. I could argue that maybe if there was a materialist, egoism, would that not, in that case, be less susceptible to liberalism? You know, if the problem is ideal versus material, if there was an egoism rooted in material reality, at that point, would it also not be less susceptible to liberalism? I have a big critique with Phil about the classification of egoism as right-wing.

Well, I certainly feel like your egoist communism is a deviation towards the right from left communism. I still certainly think that it's to the left of centrism as you clearly want to end coercive hierarchies, which I think is broadly the goal of the left, some sort of radical egalitarian politic. And I will say that while I think that your individuality, individualism is liberal, even certain elements of liberalism are still to the left of center, especially in response to conservatism, standard liberalism, and neo-fascism. So I wouldn't call your ideology right-wing at all. Secondly, Phil said something about communism, not being about the liberation of individual. And actually, I kind of like that he said this, because this is also my

critique of your own last appearance. Marx and Ingalls very much were about the liberation of everyone, starting from the individual and all. also for society as a whole, you need both in order to get either, according to both Marx and Ingalls. Marks and Ingalls operate based off of relation. So in order for society to be free, every individual has to be free. For a single individual to be free, every individual has to be free. That is society. So I don't think that's really a fair point either because Marx and Ingalls themselves kind of state that while they felt they were beyond egoism, that the goal of liberating the individual is good. It's the individual of every human being, not just an

individual human being. But that doesn't preclude the individual. It absolutely includes the liberation of the individual. It's just every individual. So that's my critique of Phil on that, on that count. Okay, well, I think that went very well. Thank you, Brendan, for that. So now we're going to get into the responses, and we're going to try a back and forth. The technical kind of difficulties we've had to undertake to get this off the ground might make the back and forth cut a little short. We'll see how that goes. But for right now, Phil and Bones are each going to get five minutes to respond to the other's initial critique or just defend their position. So you can take, you can take something that they said and argue against it, or you can just defend Marxism or

egoism, respectively. So we're going to flip the order around. So Phil, you're going to go first. You get five minutes to respond to Bones' initial critique of Marxism. Go. All right. So I found Bones' fiery speech about the religion of socialism to be very interesting. And I think it really proves my point when I say that egoism is liberalism and that egoism is determined by liberalism. Because in that speech, the learned doctor was not channeling Sterner as much easier as channeling Thatcher or Reagan. He's saying that, oh, the socialist and communists have failed, you know, the appeals to the social life have failed. and we need to get back to an appeal, a more base appeal, appeal to this sort of individualism. And so that's really what I was trying to get at in my initial critique, is that this egoism is a phenomena that is wholly contained within neoliberalism.

And it's wholly determined by neoliberalism. It's heavily influenced, as I understand it, by the Internet and Internet Culture, which is neoliberalism's playground. And it really is, I cannot stress enough, it is an idealistic, it's an idealistic ideology. It's a fetish placed upon the idea of the individual ego. And that fetish is not grounded. Well, by nature, a fetish is not grounded in the material reality. It is an ideal.

And as an ideal, it lays itself totally open to determination by the ruling ideology, which is liberalism and more specifically neoliberalism. All right. And Dr. Bones, you get up to five minutes to respond to Phil's initial critique of egoism or just defend egoism. Okay. Okay, we got a lot of ground to cover here, folks. All right, number one, I think where we're sort of really breaking down this debate in one of Sterner's main points was this weird, I think the word was used fetish.

I think that word applies here for certain labels. We're sitting here debating not so much material conditions or specific military and tactical ideas about liberation, but what schools of imaginary thoughts certain politics fall under. These are literally phantoms, imaginary things that reside within all our heads. And we might as well be discussing, which is the more leftist version of Harry Potter. A couple of things I would like to discuss. I'm not channeling Thatcher. I'm channeling the autonomists of Italy and the situationists of France.

If those aren't part of some people's leftist critiques, I can understand that. It's a very different field. But one thing that really put a stick in my craw is, you know, when I'm arguing with Marxism here, we're talking about a very, very large school of thought. And I realized that there are anti-state Marxists, just as there are some people that call themselves anarchists that love capitalism. I mean, if we're really just, you know, again, fighting over the bare definitions of words, we'll be here all night. I'm looking at the historical record, folks, and I'm looking at the governments that are being supported by the people who are Marxists here. When I see Venezuela under attack by the U.S. government, I'm seeing wide-sweeping generalizations about how Venice.

Venezuela is a pinnacle of socialism. When I'm seeing Syria attacked, I'm seeing the lion known as Assad being defended by socialists. So what I'm saying is even in these countries that are now being disavowed by Marxists when they weren't originally, and I agree that Castro certainly didn't start out as a Marxist, at what point do we start pointing at governments that we were calling socialist and we were calling Marxists and start using them as a critique against the philosophy? Even if you say that Marxism was the forefront of these revolutions and it created the state structures and then somehow miraculously by Thunderstrike, all of the Marxist elements in it were struck dead, isn't Marxism still at fault for creating those power structures? Even if all of Maoism is outside of China right now and utterly destroyed, isn't Maoism necessarily at least a little bit guilty for creating the structures that makes such a wide sweeping authoritarian system possible, prisoners having their orders? organs harvested against their will.

These are real things. A critique, again, that was lauded was that egoism is a purely internet phenomenon. Again, I would point to the informal anarchist federation. In Black December, they committed 63 attacks ranging from bombings, shootings, and arsons of capitalist targets. Last time I checked, I hadn't seen any Marxist parties get anywhere near to that level of direction. action, but I digress. There are insurrectionists. There are illegalists, and right now there are egoists out there fighting. They are in the informal anarchist federation. They are committing acts of individual reprisal against the system, and more and more, this system, this idea,

this same cellular network of individuals working together without parties, without classification, and without overarching hierarchies, is proving to be very dangerous to the state. The state, It wasn't worried about the Communist Party USA. They were worried about ELF. They aren't worried about the Democrats specialists of America. They're worried about cellular organizations like the informal anarchist federation that are harder to track and harder to keep under control. Egoism and this informal insurrection is not merely a philosophical thing, which is proving itself now, but also a tactical one. And compared to how numerous communist parties and numerous Marxist movements have, by the own,

definitions that a sheer anti-state Marxist exists proves that we're facing a large co-option of, what was that word, liberalism and capitalism destroying what should be people's revolutions. Again, how many Cubans are working in private industry? How many Chinese people are working in factories with suicide nets? At what point can we start pointing at the philosophy of Marxism and saying, you know what, maybe an overarching quote unquote worker state wasn't a good idea. And again, I'm really shocked at the sheer fact that an anti-state Marxist even exists, that a philosophy has to turn inward and say one of its foundational elements is actually bad, isn't that necessarily a stinging, ringing, and riotous critique against some of the central

tenets of it? You can lambast egoism as a new idea. You can call it right-leaning if you want. You can call it an internet phenomenon. This plain and simple fact is egoism isn't controlling the press. Egoism isn't selling Cuban labor to outside firms and taking the majority of the profits. Egoism isn't harvesting prisoners' organs in China. This is a new era, comrades. This is a new era and new philosophies will arise. All right. So now we're going to enter an open discussion. This is going to be Phil and bones going back and forth. We're going to try this out. So if you guys want to start with maybe Phil bringing up a question or refuting one of his points and you guys can get into a back and forth dialogue try very hard not to speak over each other if possible

Phil all right so what do you think the role the state is in Marxist philosophy my interpretation of it in Marxist philosophy is a vehicle of power that is currently held by the bourgeoisie that must be taken and used to enforce a workers revolution i.e. as I understand it, the Marxist critique is that one class will always put control over the other and that the only way that the workers can effectively wield power in their interests is to have a state apparatus to enforce their interests. So that's pretty good. The idea is that the revolution will have to seize state power and then implement a dictatorship of the proletariat. and then through that, the state will be withered away,

and there will be a transitional period through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the state will wither away, and the withering way isn't just a passive process. You know, we have to systematically create the conditions to where the state will pass away, and then we'll achieve communism. Now, you talked about the historical record, and I want to make it clear that no state has ever purported to, having really achieved communism. All the socialist and communist movements so far have always been in a transition period.

Cuba is in a transition period. Russia was in a transition period. China was in a transition period. These are all revolutions that accomplished a lot, but never, and to make it clear, like very few communists

and very few communists that actually mean anything would say that any of those movements actually ended up achieving communism. And so when we're talking about the historical record, you know, I'd really be interested to hear what your philosophy of history actually is. Like, who do you think writes history? Where do you get these stories of China and Cuba? And do you think that those sources are at all biased?

Do you think they're at all structured by capitalism or, let's say, liberalism? Oh, well, we'll use Cuba as an example. my whole process in preparing for this debate was number one to load up on a high amount of hallucinogens and I spent probably about 15 hours devouring every Caribbean documentary I could as well as listening to Caribbean music I got into some excellent conversations with a guy that runs Caribbean Insight TV he's a local broadcasting show that was actually

he's from Granada he was in the middle of the revolution and he ran a public access show in New York from roughly around 1982. His videos are on YouTube. Excellent stuff. We were talking about what the revolution in Granada was like on the ground. Highly, highly recommend Caribbean Insight TV. If you want to find out what was going on in Granada and why this revolution was so dangerous to the United States. For specifically Cuba stuff, I've sort of mix and matched from, of course, clearly biased capitalist press. I am a leftist myself, so I understand that any capitalist press is going to, of course, be bad. But I've also tried to dabble it with some, not as left-leaning as I would like, Jacobin,

but also one of the papers I read was left voice, was one, and as I understand it, they have a primarily Trotskyist angle. So, of course, I understand that many different aspects of history are going to be skewed and colored and chased. I live in the South. Our entire history is a gigantic lie and tries to make white supremacy seem like it's just fantastic. I see people every day carrying a battle standard that is equivalent to a Nazi flag. Trust me, I understand that histories, historians are merely PR people for the past. One question I did have, and this was about the transition period. And I'm not sure if you've heard of communism, but communism is a theory came out of the situationists in France.

Again, I don't think anyone would argue that the situationists were a rightist movement. I could be wrong. but the situationists had this critique that sort of formulated with the autonomists that every time we get told that there's a transition period it never comes around and this is sort of my ideas behind a really religious idea because just like heaven on earth or the lilinsite as the germans used to call it we get trapped in this idea that oh don't worry communism's around the corner and it never actually comes one thing i wanted to ask you specifically and we'll get in a historical specific things here. You had said earlier in your polemic that according, you know, basically once a Marxist revolution happens, the relation to work by workers changes completely. It is not the same. Here's my question to you. Please explain to me how the relation to work has changed for a Venezuelan working for wages at a Heinz Corporation factory or a Cuban driving taxis for tourists because it pays more than psychology.

Well, I will explain that, and it's quite simple. As I just said, no, there's no revolution currently that has achieved communism. So the relationship, the relation between the worker and his work has not been fundamentally changed to that level. And it has, you know, I think it has changed to a certain degree at certain points in these revolutions. You know, I think there is a breakdown in Cuba, and I was in Cuba, or earlier this year. And it was really troubling to see, and this is something I talked with the Cubans there about, that, you know, you can make more money begging in the park from a tourist than you can working on an agricultural farm. And that's a genuine problem. It destabilizes the very careful system of incentives. People like Che Guevara tried to set up on that island. And it's, it's absolutely a danger, and it's absolutely something to be guarded against. But I don't think that's, I don't think that's an indictment of communism. It's just a problem with our current society and the powers that shape our society.

Because it's not that communism is responsible for bringing American tourists to the island. Imperialism is responsible for that pressure. U.S. imperialism is responsible for the economic blockade. That means that they have to turn to tourism as a means of gaining capital so that they can develop their island. And it's also responsible for sending tourists to the island who do create this. pressure on that system of wage. So we're not dealing with a vacuum here, and we're not dealing with some idealist system. We're dealing with an environment where revolutions are constantly pressured by a very determined force and U.S. imperialism. And bringing it back to the historical record,

You mentioned that. You admitted that history is PR. And I don't know. I guess that makes me wonder why you would just simply parrot the U.S. imperial line on every single one of these revolutions. Because the imperial line is that China is a civil rights disaster, that Venezuela is a civil rights disaster, that Cuba is a civil rights disaster. Does it bother you at all that you're simply mouthing the words that the feds have put there? Oh, I'd like to respond to that. Number one, I assume then that Tiananmen Square was nothing more than a small student demonstration that broke away into somewhat of a tea party,

and that the tanks that drove down the streets were probably decoration, fireworks in the sky. Everyone had a good time and everyone went home peacefully. China, I imagine, doesn't have prisons. And in fact, actually, if I remember correctly, and again, I don't have my notes in front me, but I think there's actually been a fair amount of talk in the UN about China's horrific prison policies. But, I mean, we'll use something that China was talking about earlier. Now, as I understand it, this year in July, specifically, they distanced themselves away from it. But they were sort of doing a social engineering game where you would have a social value score,

similar to a credit score, where the sort of larger state apparatus would be able to track your loyalty, everything like that. As I understand it, the Chinese state is backed away from it a bit after a little bit of uproar and what they referred to as a conflict of interest. But I'm not parroting anybody's lines. And I think there is one distinct communication breakdown we're having here. Now, five minutes ago, you said that, you know, we've not seen communism. Everything is in a transition period. And then you say, yes, the worker relationship has not been fundamentally changed in Cuba. However, that is not an indictment of communism.

I agree. I am not indicting communism. What I am indicting these socialist and Marxist revolutions that claim that they are working towards communism when we've seen anything but. And again, do not mistake me as some idea. I don't think Che Guevara went into this with the idea that this is what it would be. I don't think that. That's not why Che went to Bolivia. That's not why Che went all over the world to fight these revolutions. I don't think Castro went into it thinking this. I don't think Mao went into it. Now, granted, I have plenty of problems with some points of their ideology, but I don't think that these were evil people running around trying to enslave people. What I am saying, and my very simple point is

this, that these transition periods aren't transition periods. We haven't seen them transition towards anything. The Cuban state has gone backwards. By your own words, Venezuela isn't even socialist. And China, if you can honestly believe that China, is not an autotorian state and that the Communist Party does not have a wide rule over the press and all sorts of different aspects of private citizens' lives. I mean, that's just going to be a fundamental breakdown in our two realities. There's no way to communicate that. However, this is what we can communicate on, and this is what I'm stressing.

I believe, just as you do, that communism is possible. Okay? I do not believe that it is in our interests to rely on a transition period because I have not seen, and as you've said, no one has seen a transition period lead towards communism. Now, I've heard a lot of people say, well, as long as there's capitalist powers and bourgeois Z powers that are constantly going to be fighting it, we won't be able to have it. Well, then what's the point? I don't think there's ever going to be a day that one ideology or one idea is going to totally take over one planet. And if every socialist revolution aiming towards communism has to be a transition state until every capitalist is dead, we'll be waiting here forever. Communization says that everything that the capitalist society has hoisted on us, the worker relationship, the state, everything must be abolished.

The proletariat must abolish itself as the proletariat. That is the main difference in our theory here. So, real quick, I did ask you a very specific question, like, are you comfortable with parroting the CIA PR line? And you responded by just going into more CIA PR, by talking about China as if it were still purportedly socialist or communist, whereas no communist were their salt would consider China to be communist, and they wouldn't consider China to be communists for like 50 years. So, and like you brought up like the UN. Like, that has nothing to do with liberalism.

So there's that, and also, I think it speaks to the broader point that what I was kind of getting at earlier, whereas you're channeling Thatcher. I think that's really, you know, I'll stand by that because you are just sort of reiterating right-wing critiques that I've heard throughout my time as identifying as a communist. You're talking with the voice of my mother who, like, shits on that Soviet Union. every day. Like, I could go to any bar and hear the same critiques of communism that you're dishing out. So it's not something I haven't heard before. The problem is that you're purporting to be a leftist, you're purporting to be a communist. And so I don't understand why you're so comfortable just sort of reiterating these sort of right-wing critiques without any real critical thinking about how the real world works, that material world works. And more importantly,

how imperialism affects revolution. And we've seen every revolution through the past, no scratch to that, every revolution has been attacked by United States imperialism efforts. And the answer to that is not that we wait around for the capitalists to die. The answer to that is we destroy United States imperialism from within, so it doesn't have that pressure acting on other areas. But that's not to say that revolutionary efforts outside of the United States are doing. because we have seen, and I will continue to uphold,

massive improvements in the quality of life of people under these revolutions. There have been revolutions that have gone astray. There have been revolutions that have been off the mark. There have been resolutions that have failed horribly. There have been revolutions that have been dominated by the CIA. But the reality is that for many people, many people in China, during Mao's reign before the liberalization, in the Soviet Union before Khrushchev and the liberalization of that effort, and Cuba, and continuing in Cuba.

People's lives have improved, and it's not hopeless. We pair the efforts of our comrades overseas with anti-imperialism at home, and that's how we win. All right, just a couple of notes here. um notice that in all of the examples it was before before before china was a great wonderful socialist paradise before the capitalism started seeping it uh you know things

all right i'm sorry yeah i'm just cutting in here you have 30 seconds to wrap up your point and we'll go into the question sections i'm sorry uh i would raise one point since my opponent has basically written off every evidence, every article or every piece of media that does not suit his particular worldview, I ask one question, what media can I use? And where would it be based out of? Revolutionary left radio. I mean, I have a Twitter. Like, Jesus. Okay, yeah, well, let's just stop it there. We will get into that. We will address that.

Now I think we're going to go into a question and answer section here. So we have Brendan, we have me, and we have our friend Seth, and I think we're all going to be as fair as possible and ask questions of both sides and start kind of filling out this debate in that form. So I'm going to go ahead and start it off. I'm going to ask you, Dr. Bones, you criticize the notion of a transition period, and some of your critiques rooted in history are more or less fair. But what other way is there?

If there is not a way to grab the state and to use it as a tool or a weapon for working people to, you know, not only establish their revolution, but defend it, what other options are there? Because we've seen even anarcho-communist attempts at revolution and in infiltration and slaughter by bigger and stronger forces. If you have something like the state, like let's say the United States of America, that government at your hands, those levers. and those mechanisms, wouldn't that not give you the best mechanism by which to establish and defend the revolution? So what other option besides for a transition period with the state do we have? And how would that play out in real material conditions? The answer is going to be two parts here. Number one, why isn't it easier just to grab the state? Of course, if we have cops and jails and prisons and, you know, a court system where we

can, you know, arraign class enemies and everything like that, it's very easy to deal with them. The problem is that the throne corrupts. Any organization naturally wants to keep itself alive. You'll see this in a lot of American unions that were once revolutionary, well, I mean, the AFLCIO wasn't truly revolutionary, but they sort of get stuck in this position where they keep having to make themselves worthwhile. So they continually have to feed the beast and continually have to do things that no matter what keep the union hierarchy going, the minute you start getting revolutionaries into the state power,

as we saw with Lenin and how that turned into or we could even say since you know Maoism is clearly no longer existent in China the same power structures that Mao built are now being used against you know any sort of socialist principles it's a power that ultimately corrupts it has plenty of power but the minute you start using it the people that are in that office are going to want to keep it now we have seen especially in Zapatista territory they have some very interesting ideas with a sort of rotating council. You know, you can only hold office for, I think it's an extremely short amount of time, about two months, and then you go to a new village. And so the idea is that no one has time to really set up a power structure like Stalin did, how he was able to kick all these people into offices that he could rely on. We've actually, there's a whole history. And again, I want to stress this to the listeners. There's this thing as if egoism just blew out of nowhere. If we look at Argentina in 2001 or the autonomists in Italy, the situationists in France, this is not a new thing. And especially the worker council movement. You have these workers in these factories that

didn't want to deal with union hierarchies. They didn't want to deal with parties. How would it play out? Two things. How would the attack play out? I think the informal anarchist federation, its cellular network of attack, has proven to be one of the most dangerous things to the state. And, I mean, I hope I don't get yelled at for reading state material. But if you actually go through modern American military manuals, the big fear is asymmetric warfare, not state armies. This isn't World War II where you're going to have columns of troops clashing into each other. As in Venezuela, as we are seeing the U.S. do there,

you pump the domestic population full of as much money, guns as you can, and you create a sort of dissolving within. the IAF basically has a cellular structure that doesn't have informants it doesn't have a leader to kill it's basically if you've been a member of Antifa you have been a part of an informal organization and you didn't need a party to do it you didn't need a leader to do it all you needed was an idea and willing bodies how does this play out on a larger scale especially with society ultimately this is going to be down to individual things and basically small scale organizing because I think it's kind of ridiculous to have an anarchist in California try to figure out how they're going to do the public sewer system in Miami. We're talking about problems that are so far out of our control, we will be here all night plotting and planning them instead of, as Bonanno talked about, seizing power now. Ultimately, what I would imagine would be a large-scale resistance in insurgency, a leaderless cellular attack of non-stock sabotage and armed insurrection, until ultimately you weaken the state from within, causing it. collapse. After its collapse, councils can be set up,

areas confederate, and we can sort of see what is going on in the Zapatista territory, what was going on on pirate ships, what was going on in Italy in the 1970s, on a larger and wider scale. But one thing I want to stress is I don't have the answers for what the United States

will look like after this, because ultimately I'm not the one that's going to make those decisions. If you want to know what it's going to look like, it's up to you in your individual locales to figure out what it's going to look like. The technology is there, the ability is there. I just don't think we need the power of the state to achieve it. Okay.

I'm going to go to Brendan really quick for a next question, whoever you want to aim that at, Brendan. Before I go into a question, you keep bringing up the autonomous of Italy, who are largely influenced by Marxist academics in that tradition. I think Negri comes to mind immediately or Sylvia Federici. I just, I, I'm not an orthodox Marxist, by any means. I don't really follow the Plectnikov sort of line of sort of a stagist situation.

And I do, I do have a bit of an issue because I feel like you're using non-marketers. examples like Venezuela to critique the Marxist tradition. And so there's an issue in which if we go to its most orthodox, Marxism requires the revolution in order to be successful to come from a truly industrialized location. Britain, the United States, France, and Germany really being the only options there for most of the time period we've talked about. and if you go through a loose definition, you're using Marxist critiques of non-Marxist socialist revolutions as a critique of Marx. And that really doesn't sit well with me as someone who certainly also has some critiques of Marx and Marxism and certainly the sort of Soviet-style Orthodox Marxism. But it seems to me like you can kind of, the way you're doing it is you're

picking and choosing what's Marxist for your convenience. And that's, I'm not sure how to respond to that because there's a sort of, like, how are, if you're using Negri to critique Chavez, how am I supposed to say that Chavez is right when he's not the Marxist and Negri is? Can I, can I respond to that just real quick? Again, I would say that I'm having some difficulty here as well, because you're telling me, you know, that I'm giving, in one hand, Venezuela isn't Marxist, China isn't Marxist, Cuba isn't Marxist. Cuba isn't Marxist. All right. Go ahead.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Let's really try not to talk over each other, try to formulate exact questions, and then try to answer those questions as succinctly as possible so that we're not just having this long go back and forth, which I think we've all been a little guilty of tonight. So, Dr. Bones, go ahead and continue your response to that. i'll try to boil it down into one bubble here what i again the whole scope of the debate is marxism now as you yourself said this is an extremely wide field um at one time i am being

i'm supposed to debate soviet marxism uh anti-state marxism also how marxism was related into the Cuban Revolution, but of course not how it is now, how Marxism may have played into Maoism, but then again, it's not Maoism now because China isn't Maoist, but also it is, I'm also eating up CIA propaganda about a Marxist state that's also not Marxist again and again. This actually kind of fits into Sterner's critique, this sort of fetishization of words, labels, everything like that. If it doesn't sit well with you, let me try to explain it as best as I can here. I'm trying to critique specific historical instances and how they played out. Now, if you can, we can label the Autonomists Marxist if you want.

Technically, I suppose you could label the Situationist's Marxist if you want. What I'm critiquing are certain elements that appear to repeat through Marxist thought. If I am incorrect in labeling them Marxist thought, please forgive me. Specific instances of what I am labeling here are number one. One, a state, which I guess if there's anti-state Marxists that invalidates that, a transitionary period, which my opponent has basically used as part of his critique that we've had a dialogue on. So again, I'm really struggling what exactly I'm supposed to critique, how I'm supposed to critique it, and what sources are applicable or acceptable to both you, a professor, Marxist and my opponent. I want to make it clear that I was not, I'm not trying to echo Phil's statements about

your sources being liberal. My point also initially to Cuba is not to say that there are not elements of Marxism in the Cuban state. So, you know, it's applicable. I just think that there's a nuance there. Venezuela, I still uphold. in that Chavez really doesn't claim to be a Marxist, or I mean, he can't now.

The most Marxist elements of the Venezuela Bolivarian Revolution tend to come from the barrios and from the communes and not from the state or from Chavista parties. So I do think that that still is pretty significant. I do think that there is probably a limitation of non-state Marxists. I think there's kind of an irony to that statement, and I think we need to be critical about that

when we call the Zapatist as that, as some Marxists like to do. But I also, you know, I do think that it's also fair to point out that, again, a lot of the Italian autonomists self-identify as using a Marxist critique of political economy. And to be clear, I don't have a problem primarily. I think there's an impasse here that is a big problem. problem between the sort of state socialists and the non-state socialists, you know,

whether you want to label it as anarchists or Marxists, you know, versus Marxists or like communists versus anarchists, however you want to label it. And that there is an impasse in that we can really look at a lot of these states and, you know, a lot of Balkanin's critiques of, you know, workers' parties, becoming ex-workers parties and so on and so on fully apply. And a lot of these transition states don't deliver. At the same time, the anarchists, sort of spontaneous thing does tend to result in this Paris commune backlash that results

in deaths. You can see very clearly, despite the influence of Moscow inspired parties really internally hampering the revolution, I think a big

part of the problem of the Spanish revolution is that it was dominated by syndicists who refused to take state power and as such the coalition ended up being dominated not only by the Moscow party but by liberals which squeezed out the anarchists who really honestly were doing the right thing otherwise you know so i don't think that that critique is invalid i actually really uphold it something i struggle with so like if my critiques are not phil's critiques i'm trying to to point out that some of your critiques are marxist because

i Marxism as you keep saying is a broad like tradition and i don't i don't i don't have a problem with you using Marxism as a critique of Marxism, but I do have a problem with you using Marxism as a critique of non-Marxist socialism without acknowledging that the source for the critique is Marxist as a critique of Marxism. That's what I'm trying to bring up. And that's very fair. And I think part of the asymmetry of this debate is precisely that Marxism is so broad and egoism has its sort of a lack of historical record as far as the things that it has accomplished. And so there's this asymmetry between those two things. and it makes, it props up, you know, difficulties for each side.

But I will let, I will let Phil just take 30 seconds here to respond to one point or two that Bonesmaiden. Then I'm going to ask Phil a very pointed question. So, Phil. Okay, just real quick, I think the frustration that you're expressing about how you're supposed to reckon with all these different time periods and different movements and different revolutions and different transition periods is the fact that you're running up against the reality that history is not a neat little packaged narrative, like some of the

like Reagan would have you believe, where it's good versus evil, freedom versus oppression. You're running up against the reality that history is messy, there are many forces, and that you have to look at the actual material conditions of each moment to actually determine the truth. And secondly, real quick, you asked me earlier what sources you were allowed to decide or whatever, or what sources are acceptable. I think that's really childish construction, because the reality is that you can't just accept any piece of media or any source. You have be critical, and you have to be, most importantly, most importantly, you have to be aware of the function media plays and the ideology behind it and the system of economics and material

that structure, that function. Okay. Is a Chinese newspaper okay? No, I just said. That's a childish way of looking at it. Let's side that. Let's side that. That's fair.

That's fair. Now we've asked Dr. Bone's questions. I'm going to ask Phil a question. So part of the implicit sort of question inside a lot of anarchist critiques of Marxist states is that once you take over the state and you turn it into a quote unquote tool for the proletariat to use to liberate itself from class society, it might tend or to some people it does tend to create a ruling class above and beyond or separated from the very workers that it is supposed to help. so how would you respond to the criticism that just by the very nature of taking over the state it separates itself and creates a second class that is not at all identical with the people they are supposed to represent well i do think that's a value critique and uh you know it's something that needs to be dealt with in communist revolutions and like it has been dealt with in

past communist revolutions it has been dealt with in the theory uh we do see breakdown in practice and that's something that we'll have to improve at and get better at in the process of revolution. But I don't think that at all takes away from the achievements of these communist revolutions or takes away from the process of Marxist revolution. And also, these transitions, these occurrences where that sort of has happened, where, for example, in China, you sort of see the new ruling classes being sort of these communist, party members. And those instances, I don't, like, first of all, I don't think it takes away from the

achievements of that revolution. And, but secondly, it didn't happen in a vacuum. They're still being acted upon by forces of imperialism that they reacted to in certain ways. And I think that it would be naive of us to look at that and say, this happened, therefore, the entire model. Let's just dump it out. Yeah, here's my question for Phil.

in hearing a lot of bones and in fact even some of the more collectivist anarchist critiques of Marxism it seems to me that Marxism also has a tradition to respond to that whether it's in the form of the idea of permanent revolution

or Luxembourg thought or maybe like the sort of Marxist existentialism of Sartre or whatever it is and traditionally Orthodox Marxist parties tend to shut those elements out. I wonder if you think that there's a space for those sorts of lines of sort of like left communist as it's traditionally called thought in the revolution. And do you think their exclusion in the past maybe contributes to some of the

problems that Bone sees with the movements that have occurred? You know, personally, I don't agree with left communism. And I don't, I wouldn't wish to, you know, as I build revolution in my own by yard. I'm not trying to alienate left communists, but I do hold certain principles, and I will struggle over those principles with comrades. And I would hold a left communist to be

a comrade. I do, like I said, I do have my principles, and I will struggle over those principles with my comrades, but for me, ultimately, you're either a revolutionary or you're a counter-revolutionary, and if you're a revolutionary, I'll work with you no matter what. I will still

struggle with you. but I will work with you. Okay. Does that answer your question? Kind of. Can I ask a follow-up? Sure. You said you're willing, and it's great. I'm a unity person.

I like, if you're a revolutionary, I'll work with you. It's a great response. But I still don't, you said you do have a problem with left communism, which is obviously a broad term. I'm wondering maybe if you can give a specific of why. You don't have to necessarily address the entire, of left communist tradition, but maybe why, let's say, like, the communist party of the USSR only took permanent revolution so far and then said it wasn't good enough, even though they used

the initial bias, or whether it's Luxembourg, just one element of left communism. What's your issue with it? Okay, well, just briefly, I see, you know, left communism as being often a capitulation to liberalism, where they will go so far with communism, but then be like, oh, but we're going to accept this liberal line on something. Like, for example, communism is authoritarian, and so we're going to combat that. And I think, you know, once you start sort of accepting that liberal narrative, you're going in a wrong direction. And so the dynamic there for me is, like, we're not in the place where in the United States, we have a communist party, but once we get there, I'd be more than happy to debate this with a left communist and to try to convince them

that they're capitulating to liberalism, whatever. But ultimately, like, For me, as long as I can get them to stand beside me and fight with me, there's not a problem there that we can't overcome. So let's just go ahead and just give each person their five minutes for a closing statement, preferably closer to three if possible. Dr. Bones can go first. Just please give your closing statement and let's go ahead and wrap this up. Well, I went first the first time, so I want to be fair and a good comrade. So if Phil wants to go, I'd be more than happy to. Oh, thank you so much. I will say one thing in favor of the good doctor, and that is, well, I find most of his politics to be bad.

I will say that he's not a bootlicker, and that's something that is always good. I'm going to repurpose an old idiom and say that if you've never been an anarchist, you have no heart, and if you've never been a socialist, you have no brain. And I think the appeal of bones is that he has the heart and he has this sort of romanticism. But I do think that romanticism is a danger and I think it's very open to liberalism. So that's why my critique has been so focused heavily on liberalism because that's, for me, that's the, when we're talking about ideology, when we're talking about tendencies, when we're combating, when we're struggling with one another over questions of political orientation. it's really liberalism that we should be combating and so that's that's my main that's my main goal and uh let's see what is my um just to i guess uh wrap up my argument uh you know i do think

that egoism is so heavily determined by liberalism and i think that marxism uh communism is much more grounded in material practice. It's much more grounded in connection with the masses, with the working class, with ordinary people. And so for that reason, I consider it to be far less vulnerable to liberalism and far more promising for a revolutionary future. Okay, and Dr. Bones, your three to five minute closing statement.

All righty. Well, folks, it's been a hell of a ride. It reminds me of Christmas when your very Christian parents I'll get together and try to tell you that you're going to hell. I'll say this, very simply, folks. We have transition periods. We have states in transition periods. And those states are going backwards. By their own admission, Cuba's going backwards. By their own admission, China, the revolution has failed there, and it is no longer a Maoist state.

Yes, while some leftists in other countries have used the power of the state. to momentarily win, as we have seen in Cuba, as we have seen in China, as we have seen in Granada. Very interesting. That revolution has been left out. These things are very weak in the fact that once you build that power base, once you build the power of the state and of the party, any subversive element can get in and change it. Anyone can get in and change it. And that's exactly what we're going through. That's exactly what the world is going through. Now my ideas, I don't have the history of 40 years of failure and transition and achievements that we cannot deny and that will surely bring us on to the path of communism. No, folks, I don't have that.

I am just a simple individual in Florida that desires to be free. And if you two desire to be free and if you can no longer wait for a transition period and if you realize that the planet probably only has about 150 years, maybe 200, and that things need to be done immediately. and they need to be done very quickly. I highly advise you to look into egoism. I just want to thank both of you for coming on, Dr. Bones and Phil. Before we go, though,

we're going to have a last second conclusion recommendation plugs situations where every person gets a chance to either plug their work or recommend further reading. So Phil, go ahead and recommend anything to people listening that might want to learn more about this situation.

So my writing is not widely available online. nor it, I wish it to be so. But if you're in Omaha, if you're in the Midwest, talk to your local communists. See if you can get a hold of me. I can get you onto that good shit. As far as recommended reading, read angles, read principles of communism, read on authority. Those are probably two of the most important and most clear and accessible explanations of communist thought that are out there. All right, Brendan, go ahead and give yours. Yeah, I think my concluding point would be everyone who,

listens to this, please do some independent research because I think there are some points that I would like both Phil and Dr. Bones to have addressed that they never fully did. Similarly, I'm sure that there are gaps in my own knowledge. Most of my knowledge of Venezuela is broad, for example, and a big part of that is because of their ties to Cuba, which is much more of a specialization for me. Read marks, read angles, not only on authority and stuff, but read some of his letters. He he liked Sterner. He had some nice things to say about egoism, and he had some very great points to why it didn't go far enough that I really like. And don't take anybody entirely at their word. Bones, one of my favorite things, is that he keeps bringing up cells. I love

cell structure. Cell structures are great. That's how you get stuff done. Look at the IRA. That actually highly is influenced by Marxist infiltration techniques. So do a little research on that, see where it came from. See how it applies. Look at Italy. Italy does do great things, not only because of its autonomous and egoist traditions, and it's syndicalist traditions, and the fact that actually these groups work together, including the Marxists and the egoists. They actually work together on some of these things. This is important. So don't take any of us at our word. Do your own research. Don't trust anyone. Learn. Learn. Learn. Marxist critique of political economy, entirely valid. Read some

David Harvey. You want to learn more about the autonomists? Read some Negri. Marxist feminism. Sylvia Federici. Not only is she an autonomous who doesn't trust state power, but she uses an entirely Marxist critique of primitive accumulation to say that Marx didn't go far enough in addressing the way that the

witch hunts and the oppression of women was part of the necessary buildup for capital to take power. And what I think she's missing that she hints at is the way that in and of itself was drawn from the inquisition in the oppression of Muslims and Jews in Spain and in the Crusades. So, you know,

there's so much to it. There's so many social forces. Keep working. Do what you can. We've got a big enemy to face in the current order. And there's so much we need to learn in order to fight it. And also do. Because if you're just learning, you're in the ivory tower and you can say all you want, you can be perfect. And then you're just helping the status quo if you never leave your bedroom. Yeah, absolutely. And we're doing a Marxist feminist episode next week for everybody that is wondering about that. But Dr. Bones, go ahead and plug your work, plug your pages, and recommend any further reading that you think people that listen to this debate would benefit from. All right. Well, since we are living in a new era, I highly, highly recommend if you guys can get on YouTube and look up Caribbean Insight TV. Specifically, look up some of the speeches by Maurice Bishop. This is a revolution in Granada that's not touched on that I haven't seen any sort of really well.

Western scholars or traditional Marxists go into, highly highly recommend you look into it, see what they were able to achieve with real people power, and then really read it to understand what all went wrong. I would also highly advise reading some Monano. He was an Italian who sort of really came out of a sort of Marxist critique and really got involved in insurrectionism and everything like that. He has some great stuff on authority, on anarchism, everything like that. And most of all, one of Sterner's main points is, you know, there's this great Buddhist saying. If you ever meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

And the idea is, folks, that ultimately, Sterner's main point is that you yourself are your great savior. Marx is a fantastic writer. Sterner had some great ideas. Hell, I'm just some Florida dude. But ultimately, it is up to you to find your path to liberation. Link up with your comrades, start studying together, get involved with a real direct action, and again, start studying some of the more violent insurrectionist tendencies going on in the world right now. You have comrades worldwide. They are acting, and you two can join

them. All right, and I think we all agree that every fucking Nazi needs to die. So I think we all agree on that. All right, hey, thanks everybody. Everybody in this conversation is a comrade to me. We all came together. We have very differing points, but this is struggle. This is how we work out our lines. This is how we all become better leftists. So thank everybody for listening and thank everybody for participating and join us next week for another episode of Revolutionary Left Radio. Thank you. Thank you.