Rev Left Radio - Marxism-Leninism in Dialogue with Libertarian Socialism (ft. Srsly Wrong)

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

This episode with Srsly Wrong was initially published earlier this year for their Patreon-Only Revolution series; a way for them to give back to their supporters. But generously, they have unlocked the episode for us to post on our feed and share with our listeners. Enjoy!  Check out and support Srsly Wrong here: https://srslywrong.com/ Follow them on Twitter @SrslyWrong Follow them on FB: https://www.facebook.com/srslywrong ----- Follow and Support Rev Left Radio here: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. Today we have an absolute treat for you. This was originally an episode that I went on the Seriously Wrong podcast to do as a guest for their Patreon only. So we really, like, it's a defense of Marxism, Leninism, we talk about libertarian socialism, we talk about our different tendencies, and then there's a bunch of really funny, I hope, funny clips that we did together. This is an episode that was only heard by the Seriously Wrong podcast patrons at a certain tier, but Sean and Aaron from Seriously Wrong were nice enough to allow us to finally put it out and unlock it on our feet as well. So if you like this episode, definitely go check out Seriously Wrong.

If you haven't already figured out who they are and don't know them, great friends of the show. We've done multiple episodes with them on their show or ours. So either way, go check them out. So yeah, I hope you enjoy this show. As always, if you like what we do here at Rebel Left Radio, go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, find our YouTube page, our Twitter page, as well as our Patreon. And if you join our Patreon, depending on what tier you sign up for, you get a bunch of bonus content. So let's go ahead and just jump right into it.

This is our unlocked Patreon episode with Seriously Wrong about Marxism, Leninism, Libertarian Socialism, and a bunch of other stuff. Enjoy. Warning. Although many of us would criticize revolutions from the outside, we too as individuals are capable of both good and evil. Even utopian libertarian socialists, the pure utopian, do-eyed boys and girls themselves could fall prey to embodying the idea of hierarchy. Yeah, I think imagining yourself immune to that stuff is, in a large part, the problem. There are no perfect ideas, and whatever truth or, like, positive action always is an interactive process, a dialectical process of different people with different political ideologies, giving each. other space to participate. Do you still have that VHS tape of an episode of law and order from

an alternate universe where libertarian socialism won but was corrupted? I love that tape and I love that universe. Maybe we could visit it a couple times in the upcoming hour. Let me see, law and order. Yeah, here's the law and order episode. Well, I'm going to crack a brusky. Do you Want one? Oh, no, thank you. Alcohol, I heard, causes cancer at a similar rate to cigarettes. Is that true? That's what I heard, yeah. Oh, shit. And I'll hit play. In the utopian justice system, the people are represented by two separate, but equally important groups, the people's defense forces who investigate crime, and the people's district attorneys, who represent the transcendent, a mortal idea of justice. These are their stories.

All rise Brett O'Shea Approach the stand Hello Now it's no secret to the courtroom That you've been an influential member Of the utopian cadre That's helped build the libertarian, socialist,

Democratic confederalist, Library Socialism, Revolution It brings the people's tribunal no joy To try you for your crimes Oh God, what? You are accused of not spitting when the Soviet Union is mentioned. Well, it was a hot day, and I didn't have a lot of water in my system.

You guys gave me free Mountain Dew, but that's not really conducive to spitting. In any case, I defend the Soviet Union, but go on. You didn't spit, Mr. O'Shea. Again, I'm parched. I still won't spit, but I'm just saying I don't have any spit also. Bayliff, bring the defendant some water, give them the opportunity to not spit. This is a huge glass of water, but I will drink it in front of the court. Additionally, Mr. O'Shea, you are accused of denying the existence of authoritarianism.

I mean, I don't think necessarily that authoritarianism is a helpful, heretic device by which to understand past proletarian movements, if that's your question. When you were doing your monthly check-in for your ideological position, you failed to check off the box, which asserts that you are against stifling bureaucracy. My pen actually just genuinely ran out of ink, and I didn't mean to not check that box. I mean, even as a Marxist-Leninist, I would have checks to that box. It was a pen issue at the end of the day. A likely story. Well, it's true. I think the court decides what's true.

Next to the stand, I want to call a former comrade and colleague of yours. Aaron Morris, please. That sack of shit. First, I just want to say that I do recognize all the hard work. Brett put into the revolution, but we always knew we'd have to deal with these sectarians struggles at some point. Yes, I've seen him not spit many times. Wow. Fucking traitor. Order, order. No, I'm not doing this because it's something that I want to do. I like Brett. I always liked Brett. He was my best friend. I wouldn't say that. But there's a higher calling than just

sticking up for your friends. There's something called virtue. And I don't want to live in a society where people are afraid to speak their mind openly. I don't want to live in a society where, you know, friends are turning on one another informing show trials revolutionary tribunals i don't want to live in a world that's a bureaucratic nightmare nobody who cares about people wants that and that is why we all always spit when anyone says the word Soviet union how do you feel about the Soviet union now that you're uh have enough water in your mouth i am hydrated but i still think that the Soviet Union, given its flaws and its excesses and errors, was still ultimately a unprecedented show of proletarian power. And as such, I just won't spit when I hear the name.

Well, it's clear, Mr. O'Shea, that you're an unrepentant authoritarian who is in favor of stifling bureaucracy. I don't think anyone here will deny that. I deny that. Before you're inevitably found guilty of these particularly heinous crimes, we want to be fair to you and give you the opportunity to self-crit to reduce your sentence. Okay, the one thing that I am very critical about is Aaron. I thought that we were close comrades. We fought side by side in the Great War. We've killed numerous fascists together.

I invited them into my bedroom, you know, thinking that we'd all have a good time together. And this is how it's repaid to me. So, yeah, I'm going to be critical of my previous friendship choices. But beyond that, I have nothing to apologize for. Wow. What the fuck up, Aaron. I think that Aaron's going to be spending a lot of time with your wife a year ago. As a judge, my job is often really difficult, but fortunately, this one's really easy.

He's guilty and will be sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in the luxury rehabilitation gulag with an option to re-up if he's unrepentant. God damn, libertarian authoritarian authoritarian. Three months later, Brett O'Shea is writing a letter to his wife from prison. nearest wife. Everything on my end is well. I could not be treated better by my captors. I get three meals a day, all of them vegan and extremely healthy. I have exercise routines and self-actualization therapy in the evenings. I'm starting to understand myself on whole new levels. In any case, I'm still pissed about being locked up. I was and still remain correct to this very day. I wish these libertarian authoritarians would understand that. And honestly, what's up with the spitting thing? I've never been a fan of spitting in the first place. I've always sort of found it off-putting and gross. Yes, it is libertarian and collectivist spit, but at the end of the day, it's still spit. And I just don't like it. I've never liked it. Send Aaron and the kids my best regards.

Hopefully I'll see you all very soon. I have to get back to my Casper mattress and HDTV and myself. Talk to you later. Mr. O'Shea, it's time for your mandatory daily second massage at 11.30 a.m. I've already had a massage today. I had three massages yesterday. I'm so loose. I could snap a tiger's neck in half.

I don't want to go have another massage section. Sorry, Mr. O'Shea. We want to make sure that our prisoners' muscles are supple and relaxed so they can come to correct conclusions. You can come feel me. Feel how supple are you. All right. Let's have a gander here.

I don't know. You feel a little tense. It feels like you've still got a little bit of stress deep down. Do you have something in your pocket? I'm not going to ask you again. It's time for the mandatory massage. But if you're good, at the end of the massage, there will be cheesecake. It's one of the guards' birthday.

You are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You're straight up wrong. You are wrong, wrong, wrong. You are incorrect. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You are wrong. You're straight up wrong. Hey, beautiful geniuses. Welcome back to the Seriously Wrong Revolution series. Today on the show, we have the extremely nice and intelligent guy, Brett O'Shea, who hosts both Revolutionary Left Radio and co-hosts the Red Menace. In Red Menace, they do sort of like a textual analysis where they read something and then react to it.

It's a really engaging way to like click into these old texts that if you just try to read in a vacuum, you might not get all the context of. And Rev. Left Radio is sort of a showcase of all these different sort of left tendencies and stuff happening. He's a really generous and kind host, gives people space to express. their ideas. It's sort of got like a metamodernist thing and that you're seeing all these different angles and it's all being given a platform of like the revolutionary left in general and in the spirit of that sort of metamodernism. Giving Brett a space to share his ideas was one of the things that we wanted to do in the show, but also in a neighborly way, exchange feedback about

ideas back and forth. And so in doing this revolution series, we know that engaging with the revolutionary history of the left means engaging with Marxism, engaging with Leninism. These are Brett's areas of expertise, his tendencies, wonderful person to have these types of conversations with. So if you haven't already, definitely check out Brett shows if you're interested in learning more about the things that he talks about. And without further ado, on with the show. Thanks for being on the show, Brett. Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. I know we've worked together in the past and I'm really excited for this conversation. I really want people to know that this is a comradly and sincere discussion. And though, you know, I'll probably say things

that will make some people bristle and vice versa. I think we all are saying them and we're working through this in a spirit of true investigation and with the sole purpose of clarity and understanding so that we can actually build an effective revolutionary movement. I don't think I'm an expert or that I know everything and there's plenty in my politics that can and should be criticized. But at the very least, I hope people, regardless of what you identify with, tendency-wise, I hope people can at least see me trying to articulate the Marxist perspective in good faith and in a way that's truly informative and engaging and correct some ideas or confusions that people may have about us and our politics. And I'm grateful that the wrong boys had me on to have this discussion

and to work through these issues. It's really important. It might be good to start with sort of broadly the world that we want to build. Like, what is the post-revolution supposed to look like? I think this may be one of our least controversial questions because we kind of agree, right? I mean, we want a world without class society, a world not divided in between those who have an enormous amount and those who are sleeping in the gutters, you know, one where the entire incentive and motivational structure of society is no longer rooted in profit and competition, but instead the incentive structure is something more akin to providing people with the highest quality of life, living in balanced harmony with our environments and our ecosystems. systems and where we all cooperate as much as possible to solve our collective problems. And none of that can happen under the constraints of a class society. So the sort of world we want to build isn't divided into unequal classes, a world that isn't premised on domination and exploitation, especially of the global South and a vulnerable and

marginalized communities, one in which every human being is given the opportunity to truly self-actualize. So no matter what happens, what pitfalls you fall into, what your position in life is, you're are always guaranteed food, clothes, shelter, education, infrastructure, the sort of basis for any dignified human life. Yeah, and what you're talking there about sort of like the universal basic outcome of making sure that people have the things that they need. I know that in social ecology, they refer to that as the irreducible minimum.

Is there like an equivalent phrase within Marxist-Leninism that they've used for that? Hmm. That's interesting. I'm not sure if there's a specific phrase. I actually like that one, and it's certainly that concept is very much. alive and well in the Marxist tradition as it is in the anarchist and the social ecologist tradition. I'd have to think harder on an exact term. Well, feel free to take it if you want. All right, it's ours now. It's a Marxist term. Yeah, everyone can use it.

You know, it's maybe an obvious question, but I'd still love to hear your answers. Why do we need revolution? Like, what is the impetus for a revolutionary left? The impetus, I think, is what it's always been to overcome the injustice, the inequality, the cruelty, the depravity of a society premised on the capitalist mode of production, which incentivizes people to step on other people at all cost. It incentivizes profit at all cost. It really raises the market above human decision-making, right? So in a capitalist society, although it loves to talk about democracy and freedom,

most of the world is effectively cut off from a democratic say in how their daily life is structured, and how their economy is structured, and increasingly in how their political system is ran. because the very inequalities produced under a capitalist mode of production create political inequalities, right? Wherever there are some people with a lot of money and those with no money, the people with a lot of money are going to leverage that to dominate the political system and dominate the mechanisms of decision-making in society to push things in their interests. So the impetus is to overcome this state of affairs. And I think that's an admirable goal. And it's something that ever since the dawn of capitalism, there have been human beings who have rebelled against it in every conceivable fashion.

and I see us as sort of humbly carrying on that tradition of fighting for for justice and equality in a world deprived of it. And so when we're doing this, what do you think that we should prioritize first, like to move towards this in your view? I kind of took that question like revolutionary movements and insofar as we can get victories, what should we prioritize as far as going about changing society? And so some of the first things that popped into my head on that front is defense, right? I think all of history, all of the history of proletarian movements, whether Marxist, the anarchist or anything else, show that your ability to have victories and to get gains for working in poor folks is really premised on your ability to defend those gains over the long term. And I think we already can see how just regular organizing attracts reaction. You can see in the Occupy Ice movements of last year, there were fascists in Texas who attacked one of those setups. Here in Omaha, we've had marches where there have been fascist to show us.

up to harass people and throw things at people and try to get violent with people. And so even in these little protests or these spontaneous movements like Occupy Ice, we're already having to defend ourselves. And I think that's only going to become more crucial as these victories get bigger. Look what happened in Cuba. Look what happened in Chile. Look what happens in Venezuela. Every time people try to structure their societies in a way that's not conducive with private

corporate interest, it gets attacked by the strongest and most institutionalized powers in the world. The second thing I would prioritize is things like health care, education, infrastructure, collective control over national resources and collective control over banks. All of these things take a very specific formation under capitalism, which prohibits some people from having equal access to those absolutely necessary institutions. So whatever sort of revolution we build, these things are going to have to be at the absolute center of it.

And then the last thing that comes to my mind is writing the wrongs of historical capitalism. And we can implement these things in our everyday organizing. We can also think about them as things we have to do if we get victories and we gain revolutionary momentum and actually start piling up sorts of victories. And a few of those that come to mind are like, this is a stolen land, right? The only way that capitalism exists in North America is through genocide and through slavery. So any movement that claims to be about liberation and emancipatory politics for everybody has to absolutely take that into account and it has to be woven into how they organize

and what they do win and if they ever get power. And that includes reparations to black folks, to Native Americans, to people in the global South who have been dominated by capitalism. You know, you can't just end capitalism say, oh, by the way, you know, all the imperial plunder that we have that's made our country rich in the first place, we're going to basically keep that pattern.

We're going to keep all that wealth and we're just going to give it to Americans. The moments you do that, you sort of just reinforced the genocidal and slavery basis this entire system was built on. And with that sort of stuff like strengthening and ensuring access to health care, democratic control of banks and stuff like that. Is this something that you think inherently requires like a revolutionary puncture, like a moment of a transition from one society to the next? Or are these things that, for example, say, like, Gravel wins the nomination

somehow for president and he starts calling for like worker control of the banks and stuff like that. Do you think that's a legitimate potential but maybe unlikely route or is that something that is not legitimate? I absolutely believe in and support. and have organized around things like universal health care, like expanding education, even something like expanding Medicaid can make a real material difference in people's lives. Taking over banks and nationalizing or collectivizing them would be a monumentally revolutionary step because, you know, monopoly capitalism is really undergirded by banks. But here's where the question arises, right?

Okay, you want to do these things. You have some reforms that are very meaningful and that we support wholeheartedly. but as long as they take place inside of the capitalist framework, inside of the capitalist structure, those gains are always going to be fought every step of the way. And insofar as they're gained, they could be rolled back whenever they become inconvenient for the ruling class. So you can look at history for this. What happened during the Great Depression? You had somebody like FDR come to the forefront,

obviously undergirded by huge mass movements, feminist movements that force them in this direction, also undergirded by the fact that there's a rising Soviet superpower, which makes giving your workers more concessions a more practical thing to do so they don't have a Bolshevik-style revolution in your country. At the end of the day, you get the new deal. Made huge benefits for working people. But what's happened since then? It's been the systematic rolling back of those gains, the shattering and the tearing of any

social safety net that we've had. And when climate change comes or when a crisis occurs on capitalism, the first thing they're going to look to cut, as they always do, is social spending and any reforms that put power into the working people's hands. And so we have to understand that reforms are great. They should absolutely be defended. They should absolutely be pushed for in every way. And radicals should be a part of those movements.

But we should constantly point out that unless we change this underlying structure, these things are tenuous at best and always subject to recall, unless we take these victories and use them as impetus to push the momentum and the revolutionary energy further. And sometimes that does happen. If you can lead a struggle to get material gains for working people, those people become emboldened. They see that, wow, victories can be won.

And moreover, we have some agency in creating them. And that's a great, wonderful, beautiful thing. But there's also that limitation inside capitalism itself. And that has to finally be overcome if we want to make these things long-term and sustainable. When you brought up defense, I thought of that sort of thing of like we've talked about it on the show. We've called it Gibroni socialism where you have a right-wing government takes over and then takes a good social program and then tweaks it behind the scenes. it becomes prone to failure so they can then make the argumentizing or abolishing it and stuff like that. One of the problems with electoral politics and democratic engagement within the current

systems is you have that pendulum swing between these opposite types of governments and you might have a really good election where you elect a bunch of like real bona fide democratize everything socialists who want the best for everyone and have put in a bunch of great new social safety nets that take care of people. But then maybe you have a bad election, two elections down and all of a sudden the whole thing is being dismantled over the course of the next four years when a piece of shit gets in. And that's sort of like structural need for defense. It strikes me as this is the type of thing that could make a lot of people bristle. But I noticed some commonalities between social democracy and Marxist-Leninist states in this context. If you go too far within social

democracy, you're going to find some of the same like outside forces pushing in on your project. And that also there's these sort of like transitionary concessions that you have to make, you know, anarchists, very, very anti-cop, social Democrats, sort of a little bit anti-cop some ways, but then they've got some good apologetics for it. And then similarly within the Marxist-Leninist states, anti-cop in their current form, but they're like, well, there's these actually these revolutionary sort of proletarian cops that are possible. Like, it strikes me sometimes that there is some commonality there in the logic of it. And like these issues around police, military self-defense of movements and the possibility of outside forces or even other internal

forces trying to like push things in the opposite direction are commonalities between all of these different spheres of thought and that it strikes me that like we need to I think on the left come up with really really good sort of conclusions on these hard questions because they're going to be relevant no matter the form it takes I would just start off by saying show me anybody who who hates cops more than me and I'll be impressed like I fucking hate cops and I know the the social role that they play I know the role they play in maintaining white supremacy and maintaining class society I've personally experienced brutal violence against me and my loved ones my fiancee my father myself at the hands of police and so I hate cops and I don't make any caveats to that

is not conditional they're trash and it goes far beyond the individuals right the Marxist idea is like yes individuals can be very shitty and like politicians and capitalists and cops, they're shitty because of the social formation institutional role they play. And you know, you can alter that role and alter the sort of incentive structures that they operate on. And I think that's an important distinction to make. And sometimes when you have a society like Venezuela, right, Venezuela's worth noting pretty much democratic socialist. It used the mechanisms of bourgeois electoralism, writing a wave of mass support into power. And then they started nationalizing key industries and they've been being

fought against every step of the way thus far. They didn't liquidate their bourgeoisie. And what happens, you know, the bourgeoisie comes back in full force and full reaction, teams up with U.S. imperial power and tries to stage coup after coup after coup. And they're still trying to do this. But a Venezuelan cop, they might have some of the same problems and same issues. I'm not saying that all those cops are greater that we love cops in that context. But in a situation where you have fascists in the street trying to overthrow proletarian power, Venezuela still has a police force still has a military, largely loyal to Maduro, Hugo Chavez, and the Bolivarian Revolution. And so they go out on the front lines and push back these fascist movements who are

literally burning Chevismos in the street. So in that context, is the cop in Venezuela fighting violent street protests the exact same as a cop shooting an unarmed black man in the U.S. with our history of slavery and white supremacy? Absolutely not. We can talk about those nuances and we can have some disagreements there. But I think that's at least worth stating that our position isn't so much is like, oh, you just call yourself a socialist state, therefore everything the cops and military do are good. It's this broader shifting of forces that comes into play and adds complexity to that question. It's really, really different to like arrest someone for inciting genocide versus to arrest someone for saying that you shouldn't incite genocide. You know,

like the substance there really matters. And maybe the arresting of itself and the institution of the police itself in either context has these underlying problems that should be critiqued. But, like, I do agree that there is a, at least in theory, there should be and can be differences between these, like, exercises of power towards different ends. For sure. One thing I just want to jump back to quickly is that earlier you mentioned that reforms are good, but they don't fundamentally challenge the power of capital. Like, I agree that without more fundamentally socialist changes to society and a commitment to these kind of goals on a social level, like an understanding that this is what we need to do, Without those things, any gains that are made through electoral processes or reforms are going to be vulnerable to attack. But I think the reason that they fight back is because these things are a challenge to their power.

And so I think laws, if they have the right words in them, actually can change the system, so to speak. But even leaving that aside, let's say, like, reforms definitely won't cut it. We need this revolutionary break. We need this puncture point. How do you see that going down? What is the strategy that you think that people should employ in trying to create this revolution to make this puncture point work and make it actually get us to a better society? So we can look over centuries of proletarian class struggle, starting from the Paris Commune, truly proletarian movements after that, and find what has worked and what hasn't worked. Some have taken the left-wing terrorist route, which we still see today.

some people have taken the electoral route some people operate solely within trade unions some people tail spontaneous social movements in the hope that they will become revolutionary and some people turn to the party form all those options have been tried a lot of lot of times and a lot of different continents and a lot of different conditions and what rises again and again what takes the class struggle to a new unprecedented level is that party formation and spontaneity you can have examples like occupy wall street the yellow vests the arab spring etc For the party form, you can see things like Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, the Black Panther Party, etc. Those are good examples of each. So let's just take the Yellow Vest Movement. Since the Yellow Vest Movement is still going, we can actually formulate a prediction, right? Looking back over the history of proletarian struggle and saying, what is likely to happen given this organizational and tactical approach the yellow vests are making? And that prediction with regards to the yellow vests, unless they somehow embrace the party form, is that they will share the exact same fate as Occupy or May 1968. Namely, it'll fizzle out or it'll be crushed and never result in the overthrow of the French state and the construction of any form of socialist society.

It may get some policy changes. It may make a few sympathetic bourgeois politicians carry forward some of its arguments or ideas, which are all good, but it can never actually challenge or topple the ruling class. I can be proven false here. If the yellow vests swell their ranks, went over chunks of the working class, stormed the institutions of France, kick out or repress the ruling class, and build actual proletarian power, then I can't. I will be proven false, and the theory of the party, though it wouldn't be defeated completely, would then have some empirical evidence against it being the most effective form of organizing against capital. If, however, they end up as I predicted above, we will have gained yet another piece of empirical evidence suggesting that spontaneous insurrection is in and of itself, and in lieu of formal party organizing,

which can take it to the next level, objectively limited in what it can possibly achieve. It's not that we disagree with trade unionism, we love it. It's not that we disagree with spontaneous insurrection, we love it, It's real mass populist energy, but it needs to be given a direction. It needs to be given a focus. And in lieu of that, it will fizzle out. It will be co-opted or it will be crushed. And we see that time and time and time again.

And so, I don't know, that's at least our perspective. So this is a bit of a loaded question, but haven't all the party form experiments either fizzled out, been crushed or failed somehow? Some of them are still going, like some anarchist experiments are still going to. But like, haven't we never succeeded in bringing about communism with any strategy or tactics? Yeah, so that's obviously definitely true, right? Our argument is not that the party form is the last stage of the science. And once you do that, then it's communism from here on out. It just says that given where we are in two centuries of class struggle, the party form has been able to overcome the limitations of these other forms of organization like spontaneity and insurrection. And it's been able to take that class struggle to a new, more advanced stage, right? It does not mean that we know what comes after, then therefore it's all good. I do agree that. that Marxists can and often do turn this into dogmatism when they say stuff like, you know, this is the end all, be all, or we know how to do this, just sit back and let us take,

no, it's a process of experimentation and it's always open-ended, and the class struggles have only been able to get so far. The question is, how do we get past the level of the Soviet Union, past the level of Fidel Castro and Chez, Cuba, and take the class struggle onto the next stage? And then that's where disagreements open. That's where new experiments, if you will, need to be tested. But one thing we can definitely say is that we shouldn't go backwards, right? We shouldn't go back and say, let's just tail spontaneous movements and hope they burst into revolution. Let's just have a socialist party that gets embraced and, you know, absorbed inside a bourgeois electoralism. Because those things have proven time and time again to not get us to that highest stage of class struggle.

But then once we get there, we've got to take it further. Look what Mao did. You know, Mao saw the Soviet Union, saw how it sort of devolved into revisionism, saw how it created a bureaucracy and how it times it separated itself from the masses. He went about experimenting on how to take that further. He tried things like the cultural revolution, unleasing the masses on the party itself, and things that the Soviet Union would never dream of doing. Mao was trying to do it. You can point to him and say, what an asshole, all this stuff he did was a failure. We should learn nothing from him. Or he can say, wow, he was really on the cutting edge of this thing,

and he was really trying his hardest consciously to solve some of the problems he saw in the Soviet Union and take this experiment further. I think that's a good sort of a approach to have. I think it actually benefits our movements to have that sort of open-ended experimental approach to things and to sort of say, hey, some of these strategies are good, but they're very limited. And here's how we can get beyond these stages. Our comrades in the past have already done it. We should learn from them. Yeah, I definitely agree that we should be learning and looking at like the history of these movements and how they succeeded and failed in various ways. But I do have a little bit of a bone to pick. I got bristled.

That's our favorite word for this episode. It's a friendly, comradly. It's a friendly, comradly term for something that's actually pretty challenging to navigate around in these conversations because you use the phrase of sort of like going backwards. It strikes me as sort of tautological. So like within the logic of the endorsement of the sort of party structure of the way that Marxist-Leninism endorses it, obviously to that structure, it's going to assume itself the ultimate form, or not the ultimate form, but the most advanced form thus far. So even if you're taking a scientific perspective that say, oh, we're always open to more revisions, you know, like, have you ever seen the early designs of various, like, flying machines

where, like, some of them had propellers and some of them had, like, weird different wings? Sure. And, like, maybe the Marxist-Leninist form is, like, one of these weird propeller things. These weird propeller things that never got off the ground. But, like, I swear to God, we got it off the ground for four or five seconds, man. We got to just keep on. No, get that plane shit away from here. That plane shit makes no sense.

Planes only crash. Right. We got this sort of hovering thing to hover for a second. And so maybe there is totally a way for the sort of like party form as you advocate for it to be more successful than it has been in the past. And I'm not completely close-minded to that, but the assumption that it is what we need to refine and work on and that. Or even that historically, it's got us to the most advanced places towards the future that we want to get to. And especially when comparing insurrection or that spontaneous uprising from people and the party

form, whereas like the party form has historically sort of latched itself onto. that insurrection, right? Like, it's been a combination between that sort of insurrectionary popular movement and the party form that's created these states. So it just strikes me as a much more complicated question. And I think that we might lose out on the first flying machine that actually flies if we become focused on something that may or may not be one of these diddly rotocopters that didn't end up going anywhere. Well, yeah, so I would say in the case of your analogy to planes and stuff, what the airplane that the person in your analogy rejected symbolizes is actually no there is something else to reject the fact that

something new has been developed and to just focus on the thing that you're sort of committed to is an abandonment of the scientific method if something works better show us and we will pick it up right at least the people that are not dogmatist and that are genuine materialist and actually want to get to this point of proletarian power you know we will absolutely take anything that advances the ball in our direction but you can sort of look at something that just a-price priory rejects the party for him, which is anarchism. Anarchists, they just reject outright this idea for the need of a party. And in this, you're sort of talking about like an anti-organizational anarchism, right? Like always spontaneity, organization is itself oppressive, that sort of like

subsection of anarchism, right? I would think that even like platform anarchists, an anarchist that like a lot of good anarchists don't reject organization as such, but they do reject the Vanguard party, right? I think all anarchists, you're an anarchist because you reject the Leninist's conception that a party is what can take the struggle to the next level. And so on that thing, I don't think it's just a subsection of anarchist. I think it's anarchist as a whole. It's part of the thing that makes them anarchist, right? Would you agree with that?

Well, I think I wouldn't, but that might be because... You're not a very good anarchist. Welcome to Keyboard Warrior Radio Theater. So you're saying Che Guevara wasn't a mass murderer. get this fucking authoritarian tanky piece of shit off of my meme page now, please. It's okay, I understand. I was young once too.

Before I cracked open a book and read socialist history or confronted my internalized white supremacy, I also bought the bourgeois lie that She was a mass murder. Oh yeah, because we all know growing up and getting mature turns you slowly into a red fascist. How is this? any different than when you're young and you're not a liberal you don't have a heart, but when you're old and not conservative, you don't have a brain. It's the same shit. And it's exactly

what I would expect from bureaucratic, totalitarian monsters who just want to use the working class movement to get power for themselves and purge anybody they don't like. I am so sick of this Marxist-Leninist bullshit. Bye. Keep spewing that CIA propaganda there, Bucco. Why don't you close to you your Facebook tab and head on over to the ACLU homepage. They're looking for liberals to donate to help them protect Nazis' free speech. And while you do that, I'm going to keep searching history for a successful anarchist revolution. You're going to be looking for quite a while, I think.

You authoritarian always talk about combating and deconstructing class society. But is not a state and the bureaucratic apparatus that it gives rise to, nothing more than another class, a political class that stands over and above the average working class people in the streets? When you tankies get power, what do you do? Do you build socialism? Of course not. It is just state-managed-capitalist

societies. It's so state-managed and you guys are so confused on this topic that you probably think China is a socialist state. You tankies are so fucking funny. It disgusts me. The Communist Party is the working class. It's the most advanced part

of the working class. This is I say that anarchists aren't even leftists. You're fighting with leftists who existed a century ago over choices they made in certain historical contexts. It's absolutely ridiculous. And yes, I do think that China is a socialist state, a socialist state that has managed to double the average lifespan of its people. I can think of a few lifespans under authoritarian communism that weren't exactly doubled, more like cut in half. Oh yeah, you mean the fascist? ones and the collaborators, yeah, they get the wall. I don't know if you know this, but even when you go into incognito mode, the CIA can still

clearly see that you're Googling Stalin feetpicks constantly. If anyone would know about CIA policy, it would be one of their most effective online mouthpieces, so I take your word for it. Oh yeah, you got me. I'm in the CIA. Good job, comrade. I mean, comrade. I'm going to leave now, so you can get back to rubbing one out to pictures.

of Stalin's shoes whenever you're ready. Stalin's shoe sniffer. Mao Zay Dong Thong liquor. Whatever. If I'm going to be licking boots, I'm going to be licking the clean, orderly, proletarian boots of one of history's greatest leaders, Joseph Stalin. Yeah, well, while you're licking the boots of politicians and presidents,

I'll be tongue deep in the actual working boots of the working class. I'll have my cheeks full of the shoelaces of actual proletarians. And we'll see you next time for another episode of Keyboard Warrior Radio Theater. So anarchists fundamentally, in my view, is they're defined by their opposition to illegitimate hierarchy and more specifically social hierarchy, that is, where you have the ability to command and control those beneath you under threat of expulsion, punishment, etc. And so in some cases, there is sort of like, call them like very vulgar anarchist. that believe like any sort of organization is itself authoritarian, which I think is a laughable

idea. But there's also a lot of good principled libertarian, socialist, anarchist perspectives that are saying, like, how do we organize? And there is a need to organize. There's a need to have organizations and structures that might have some overlapping characteristics, but are distinct from, at the very least in rhetoric, but also in substance, from the sort of Leninist vanguard model that are focused on how do we have this organizational structure without having to resort to the command and control structure that we see is fundamental to the history and to the way that oppression operates in our society.

I mean, I can understand that. I think that there's a confusion, oftentimes on the anarchist side, that the vanguard party is like this commandist and control sort of thing where you have this hierarchy with a Stalin-like figure at the top, and that's indicative of the vanguard party. I do think sometimes that maybe anarchist and Marxist will have different short-term goals that may lead to some of our differences

in how we organize. For example, I think a core Marxist-Leninist goal is to challenge capitalism and imperialism on a global scale, right? And we take that as like, that needs to be done if we're going to build global proletarian power because as long as capitalism is around to exist, it's always going to be attacking and working against any of these movements. Anarchists sometimes focus more on just sort of checking out of the capitalist infrastructure and structure, building autonomous territory, operating those territories along the lines that they believe is the most ethical and responsible and politically correct. But I think what we can see is that where do these

anarchist projects get? Well, they get to a point where they can have territory, but they never actually, at least in my opinion, challenge global capitalist hegemony in the way that Marxist states for all of their myriad flaws and failures and excesses can and do. So you'll look at anarchist movements and even though Chiapas and Rojava, you know, some would argue, they're not technically or formally anarchist, they sort of take this approach. And what you get out of that is these isolated territories, often on the fringes of bigger, broader, and more powerful states, sort of operating autonomously and doing a lot of good work for the people in that territory. But as a Marxist, I'm concerned about every person. I'm concerned about the people having bombs

dropped on them in Yemen, people in Venezuela fighting for living standards that are acceptable, people in China and Japan and Korea, all these places. And for that, we need an ability to globally confront capitalism and what is capitalism if not highly centralized, highly organized, highly militant, highly funded. You're not going to be able to challenge an organization of that caliber without sadly replicating some of those realities. You're going to have to be militant. You're going to have to be sort of centralized. You're going to have to have a big organizational movement that has funding and that is international and scope if you're going to take on an enemy that's international and scope. And so I see where anarchist projects lead.

and sometimes like Catalonia or Chiapas, you know, I love those things. Those make my heart swell with proletarian pride. They're beautiful. But I also see what happens when, even when you have an imperfect state like the Soviet Union, challenging capitalist hegemony on a global scale and how those effects ripple out and affect everybody. And not only that, but then the Soviet Union or Mao's China or little Cuba can give aid, funding, weapons, and defense to other socialist projects trying to get their footing

and fight their fight all across the world. And so I think sometimes the Marxist and the anarchist projects takes these two variables, and I like the Marxist route better because I'm concerned about liberating the entire world from the tentacles of capitalism, not just having a little autonomous territory where me and my community can operate outside of the confines of the capitalist mode of production, but never actually challenging it on a global scale. Yeah, I definitely agree that it is important to approach these types of things on a global level and, you know, just taking territory and whole. holding that is insufficient. That's not the perfect final revolution to a better society that I imagine. The kind of anarchism that I find more interesting and more attractive is this idea that we want to build directly democratic bodies, like starting locally, but networking and keeping in contact and promoting the idea of other such bodies being built in other places around the world, everywhere around the world, begin building these democratic institutions of our own inside

the structure as it exists, and then kind of using that democratic legitimacy to challenge capital however we can. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how I think about this rather than trying to click it into a specific, like the variety of anarchism that does withdraw in a certain territory or even like there's back to the land anarchists, like off the grid anarchists. I ran into a lot around Occupy Days. never really vibe with me as my preferred mode of libertarian socialism. So one of the things that I see is sort of fundamental to the project of social ecology is this idea of retention, like ideological

retention. I can't speak on behalf of all social ecologists, but I'm influenced by the school of thought, and I think in some of the terms that I've gained from studying this philosophy, there's this idea of retention of like social ecology is consciously retaining aspects of liberalism, anarchism, communism, ecology and the study of nature. and integrating them into a bigger project or a synthesis that, and so in my view, there's a lot of debate about this in social ecology of like what is the preferred mode of transition and stuff like that. And the biggest one that at the end of his life, that Bookchin became absolutely focused on was the idea of the face-to-face democracy at a community level, which then

create sort of like a democratic organization made up of representatives from other democratic organization, like a nested democracy all the way to the top. And the reason that I bring this up is because I want to talk about the challenge to these global power structures which we oppose, which may or may not need to take the form of, say, like, a nation state that is countering global hegemony in the way that you've outlined, whereas, like, you could even say that a small media outlet by just a few people could have a global reach and challenge global hegemony, that you could have thousands of tiny cuts that collectively together build a revolutionary transition that is not yet understood because it's going to be relied on the context in which it comes up.

So, yeah, I have this tendency to always think in terms of a plurality of tactics, which lean on each other. And like, so when there's an anarchist community that's able to like gain a territory, it's like, okay, well, that's a foothold for the final, for the final push. The prefigurative stuff is great. It's insufficient in itself. The electoral politics stuff can be great, but it's insufficient in itself, even when it's really good. Like all these things, they're insufficient in themselves, but it's through building a, like a mosaic of all these different modes together. and then also reaching sort of like the right historical context where these things are developed. Like I imagine that as, and it's a very sort of open-ended proposal, I guess, but I imagine that as being sort of like the transitionary moment. Hmm. Yeah, there's a lot there. Really interesting stuff. I have a couple thoughts.

One, I guess, would be, I mean, I totally agree with this concept of diversity of tactics and pulling from the toolbox. And I'm not anti-anarchist. I'm not anti-social ecology. I think there's lots of wonderful things inside of those movements that we can learn from. And certainly whenever territory is controlled by a left-wing socialist anarchist, communist organization, that's better than not having that territory at all. Some concerns I have, I don't know if anarchist and libertarian socialists would extend that same open-mindedness to Marxist movements. Sometimes I feel like they say that they're down to try it on all fronts and try all these different things, but the moment a Marxist-Leninist organization comes to power, seizes the state, it seems like

there's no end of just constantly critiquing them, picking them apart, saying this is not right, whereas you don't really, you do see it on some sections of the Marxist left. I'm not one of them, right? I don't think that we should preclude and exclude genuine anarchist or social ecologists movements. I do feel sometimes that that same warmth is not. pushed back or given back in my direction. And sometimes you'll see people constantly critiquing state communism, state socialism and saying, actually, that is the dead end. There's nothing to learn from the Soviet Union. There's nothing really to learn from Mao's China. Those were just

statist coups and nothing more. They're just as much of our enemy as the bourgeoisie or the fascist right. That's not all the time and probably social media always distorts these things, but I sometimes feel like that's not extended in our direction. And then the other concern, something you said about participatory democracy, direct democracy, everybody having a say in how their society is run, you know, in theory that sounds great. And sometimes you've seen that. Like in Catalonia, I think you see a real explosion of what anarchism can do with very little, like even I think Rojava and Chiapas are probably more structured than Catalonia was, given the conditions they were operating in. But I think sometimes anarchist and libertarian socialist don't always take

into account that sometimes people aren't wanting to constantly be engaged in a, revolutionary project. Not everybody in the world is as intensely political as you and I may be. And sometimes I feel like people want to project onto other people a willingness to engage in the minutia of constantly creating this revolution, pushing it forward, making decisions. Yes, you do have representatives, but those representatives have to go back and you have like these town hall meeting types where the community debates and discusses what their needs are. That sounds great in theory. But I think a lot of people that exist on this planet actually don't want to have to do that. shit, right? Totally agree. And what the party form sort of offers in that direction is that people can plug in at whatever level they feel more comfortable with. And we're actually trying to build the power to create a world in which they don't have to worry about that shit, you know, where things are not so bad that they have to be constantly engaged and they can actually go back and enjoy their own lives. And I'm sure you guys share that the ultimate conclusion with me as well. But sometimes I feel like anarchists don't take that as seriously as they sometimes maybe should. Yeah, I totally agree

that, like, for me, especially the idea that the good society we want to build is going to be taken up with five days of eight-hour meetings every week or something is just like a horrifying nightmare to me. Today's episode of Seriously Wrong is brought to you by the directly democratic future utopia, where there's five days of mandatory eight-hour meetings every week. There is nothing that I like more than an eight-hour meeting. And five of them per week? Where do I sign up? It's the duty of the citizen to participate in the polis. Democracy doesn't work with unengaged citizens, and that's why this is a sustainable, good social system that works. It's got all those classic utopian features. People would want to live there.

It seems better than this world. When people think eight-hour meetings five days a week, they think, can we throw away capitalism already? Time to get in the nitty-gritty about sewage policy. Oh yeah, I can't wait for everyone to agree on that. particular approach to that. And you know what else is exceptional about this model? Getting to meet lots of strangers all the time.

Yeah. It's a constant churn of new faces and names, different political dispositions. It is tedious, but inevitable. And it's utopian. And it's the sponsor of this episode. One of the non-hierarchical types of solutions that we talk about on the show for that kind of stuff is the idea of liquid democracy and the idea that people who, don't want to participate in local community meetings or workers councils or really take part

in the political sphere at all can delegate their individual votes to someone who they trust, who they think will represent their idea, someone whose politics they trust, and then that person can vote on their behalf. And of course, the votes always recallable. If you don't think they voted the way you wanted them to on something, then you can take that back. But this allows for a decidedly direct democracy system that doesn't rely on any type of centralized organizational structure except in the sense of the nested democracies leading up to the global sphere, ideally at the end. You want to have a global society while maintaining that every single person can vote on any issue if they want to and they can delegate their vote. if they want to. Yeah. And so that might be an area where we can sort of converge, right? If we're really interested in trying to take the best ideas from different directions, I think people would

actually be kind of pleasantly surprised to see just how much Lenin thinks about this stuff, how much Lenin hated bureaucracy, was so concerned about the Soviet Union devolving into the bureaucratic state that it eventually did. He was fighting in his last two years to talk about democratic federalism throughout the Soviet Union if it was at all possible. Now, it's worth saying these people were forced into horrific circumstances that people could sit back all day and criticize, oh, you dissolve the Soviets. That just goes to show that Leninists really just want power and control. But if you look at the actual history, why did they dissolve the Soviets? Because they tried experimenting with worker control over their workplace and things were very hard to get off the ground, right? Some factories

were led into disarray. Some workers straight up sold the factory to a capitalist for profits and they just split the cost and they went their own way. And so the Soviet Union tried to, to do that and because of circumstances were forced to nationalize so they could coordinate more reasonably and more effectively. And again, you're talking the Soviet Union, the Soviet experiment happening between World War I and World War II with the most brutal civil war Russia has ever encountered, sandwiched in between. So to deal with that level of external pressure is very difficult. And when you say, well, look at this representative participatory democracy model we have could be scaled up to a global level. It could, but the moment

that that gets scaled up to a point where it actually starts to conflict with the power and wealth that the capitalist class internationally and nationally have, they will absolutely seek to annihilate you, to destroy you. So these movements have to be coordinated across space and time. They have to have a mechanism of defense and they have to be powerful enough, strong enough, and resilient enough to eventually fight back and defend their movements when you get to that level. I don't think you can just form workers' councils and participatory democracy in the community and then slowly scale that up without eventually coming into violent existential combat with the powers that be?

Sure, yeah, any attempt to challenge them, whether that's through socialist state using a vanguard party form or whether it's networked directly democratic socialist communities across the globe. Either way, once you start challenging global capital, you're going to come into conflict with the defenders of global capital, of which they're numerous, well-funded. And, yeah, you're going to need to defend yourself against that, and that's going to take coordination and organization. But I do still have concerns about what the most effective means of organization will be, and also means of organization that keep your ideals intact in the society that you want to build intact through the process. Because as you were saying,

Like as Lenin was heading towards the end of his life, he was having these concerns about the USSR devolving into a bureaucratic type of state, which you said it eventually did. So the reason that I want to keep the focus on a directly democratic model, even if it will have problems, as you mentioned some of the problems that they had in the Soviet Union attempting to do that and why they scrapped it or why the Soviets were dissolved at that point in time in those circumstances, it does make sense historically why they would decide to do that. But we also see that it ended up becoming something that Lenin didn't want it to in the end, not just because of that one decision. obviously the external circumstance of a huge effect on that and other decisions and other leaders who came into power after him. But for people who really, really are focused on this kind of stuff, it's hard to not see that dissolving of the Soviets is a synecdoche that is tied to what the Soviet Union becomes, right? So, like, for example, if the workers are going to say, like, oh, we've decided that we're going to sell off our factory instead of democratically running it, like there's a few things you could do before completely dissolving having democracy, like, the communist element there, because I think that's really fundamental to communism, right, as the worker control of the production. So then for it to be like, oh, well, we're encountering

these troubles, instead of forbidding people from selling their workplaces and putting that into structural laws somehow, we're just going to give up on the sort of like doing communism thing. Like that, to me, that like rubs me the wrong way. And with the idea of this democratic control of the workplace being so fundamental to the building of socialism and then saying, well, they dissolved the Soviets in, what was it, 1919, and then the entire project of the Soviet Union after that, I'd be curious how much did they experiment with trying to reintroduce that democracy? And was that ever a priority? Was that ever something that they pushed again? If they made this concession, this tactical retreat. Yeah, because of the civil war being so tough and they have to tactically

retreat from this front, how much did they push it coming in the future, rebuilding, experimenting with it, and then trying to make it work? Because that's always been, I guess, a piece of the history of the Soviet. Union that is always stuck out to me as one of the indications of people talk about actually existing socialism. But I feel like the Soviets were an example of like actually existing actual socialism. And this connects to something you were saying earlier about not feeling the warmth in opposite directions. And it's something I really appreciate you is that with that warmth and that being able to talk about all these different things. But also like frankly, and this isn't your fault by any means, but there's only two groups of people in the world who have ever threatened

to kill me over political arguments. One of them was fascists and one of them was Marxist Leninists. And I hate to say it and like, that's not on you, but it really left an impression with me. And our anarchists are liberals and liberals get the wall, baby. So yeah, I want to be warm, as warm as I can.

But like, for example, earlier you made reference to liquidating the bourgeoisie and it was sort of an offhanded comment. Like it was not the main part. You're like, oh, you know, they didn't liquidate the bourgeoisie, just moved on. I'm like, wow, they're pretty casual about liquidating classes of society around here. You know, like, that's not my background. So I think that might be, like, what you feel in that sort of tension comes from, number one, there is an anarchist history, you know, both in books and also

an oral history of the risks of teeming up with the Leninists and the times that the anarchists or the libertarian socialists were betrayed. And that's something I think is really felt by people. And then there's also the lived experience of literally having my life threatened by Marxist Leninus more than once. Not that I took it seriously, but it did sort of left a little mark. So a couple funny things. One is there's that video of Murray Bookchin saying the same thing where he was like, whenever I talked to Marxists and Leninist, like it called a petty bourgeois individualist and threatened to be put up against the wall. And he was speaking at a libertarian right and left libertarian conference. And he's like, I feel much safer in your guys's presence. And like everybody

laughed and clapped. So like that's a weird, sad sort of tradition. Where it comes from the whole idea of liquidating the bourgeoisie is just that sadly because we live in a class society and because the state is an instrument of class domination that either you get liquidated or you uproot the power structure of the class you're trying to overthrow.

You know, the capitalist and the liberals who defend capitalism, they're never forced to defend the fact that their entire political project is premised on genocide and slavery and brutal imperialism, which as we speak is dropping American bombs on the heads of some innocent people somewhere in the world.

world. But the Marxists are constantly being forced with this idea that's like, look how violence you guys are. You guys just love to slaughter your enemies and stuff like that. And so it's not totally fair. And the other thing I would say is that anarchists, they love to say this thing where, uh, look at the Marxists. They've always brutalized us and destroyed us. And, you know, we're just trying to do our best. And we're 100% the victims and the Marxists are 100% the perpetrators. But when you go back and look at the history of the Russian revolution, you know, the socialist revolutionaries, the anarchists, the terrorists, they were constantly, attacking, bombing, trying to kill Bolsheviks. In fact, there's this hilarious story of Bukharin,

one of the Bolsheviks, you know, having a conversation, giving a speech in front of his Bolshevik comrades saying, guys, we got to be nicer to the anarchists. I know we have disagreements with them, but it's not very helpful to just see them as just as much of an enemy as the elite and the bourgeoisie. And guess what happened? As he was giving that speech, an anarchist bombed the speech, an anarchist bombed Bukharan's attempt while he was talking to the other Bolsheviks about being nicer to anarchist. there's also instances like in the Spanish Civil War where anarchist burned churches by the thousands to the ground, slaughtering nuns and slaughtering priests as well. So violence is just

sadly ingrained in human civilization. And any time you're trying to topple a state of affairs, it's going to sadly involve violence. When Mao said revolution is not a dinner party, it's the means by which one class forcefully and violently overthrows another. He wasn't saying we love violence. He was saying that's just the sad reality. And, you know, know every instance where you have a socialist movement that tries to go about living alongside the bourgeoisie like you saw in Chile or like you saw in Venezuela, when you leave that power structure intact, it's only a matter time before it comes back and destroys you. So, you know, you're kind of given this question. I think actually anarchist and Marxist come to a better

understanding of this reality than social democrats and democratic socialists who still kind of have this idealist idea that they can operate and live peacefully at least for a time alongside the bourgeoisie, and I think history has proven that to be incorrect over and over again. Finally, I would just say that when you're looking at these revolutions, when Soviet Union or Cuba or China, you have to understand that the transition from feudalism to capitalism was not overnight. You don't have just the French Revolution, the American Revolution, all of a sudden you have capitalism. You have a cacophonous amount of movements trying to topple feudalism, sometimes winning a foothold here, being overthrown, sometimes, you know, doing it for good over here and

actually bringing in a new constitution that codifies these. rights, but it was centuries of transition. The Russian Revolution was the first time in human history that the Marxist ideology was tried to put into practice. Of course, it's going to be flawed, and of course, it's going to probably end in failure. These aren't a one-shot thing. These are a long protracted process, and we have to learn as much as we can. So that's not necessarily an argument against you. That's just sort of this broader context that I want to sort of push into this conversation. Oh, yeah, I definitely appreciate what you're saying. I do want to make one counterpoint to Mao, which is that I do think that Revolution can and should be a dinner party

if possible. That would be nice, yeah, at least alongside the horrific bloodshed. Okay, thanks for coming to this quick lesson. Sure. The question is, I'll just write this up here, will Revolution be a dinner party? Now, the answer is, and oh, no, no, it won't. Oh, I just kind of thought it would. Revolution's not going to be a dinner party, it's not going to be a pizza party, it's not

going to be a birthday party. It's not going to be a really nice pizza party with four cheese pizzas and vegan options. It's not going to have streamers and balloons. Your friends aren't going to be there all around you saying that you're the best person of the day and giving you gifts. You're not going to be getting cake. There's no hot tub in revolution. No pool. This isn't Mickey Mouse time. This isn't Disney presents the Animal Kingdom theme park. This isn't Harry Potter World. This isn't a water slide. Okay. This isn't getting off after a long day of work and smoking a really nice joint. with someone that you love, revolution is going to be tough.

Let me just erase this. So I'm going to write up here, dinner party. And down here, I'm going to write Revolution. Now, you might notice I haven't drawn an arrow connecting the two. That's on purpose. Now I'm going to write over here the word communism. Okay. I'm actually going to add full to it, full communism.

Sure. Oh, yeah, it was good to specify. And just watch where I draw the line. Dinner party to full communism. So what am I saying there? Full communism will have dinner parties. Yes, but even more than that. Oh, full communism is a dinner party.

Yes, yes. Full communism is a dinner party. That's exactly right. So while it's true that revolution won't be a dinner party, communism most certainly needs to be, otherwise it's not legitimate. Oh, great. Thanks for the lesson.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm always happy to tell you what revolution won't be. This is kind of a jokey idea, but it struck me like, how social democratic footholds or social democratic reforms, it'll be criticized from the left sometimes as placating the proletariat and making the real uprooting of capitalist society less likely because there needs to be that sort of tension. The contradictions of capitalism need to be made more forceful. And all of this stuff is kind of propping up capitalism by throwing the

proletarian scraps and keeping them placated. I got health care, so I don't want revolution. Right. And if we have this idea that people can be placated by making sure they have health care and of food, just like giving them a decent life, maybe instead of liquidating the bourgeoisie, we can just placate them with nice things during the revolution. Yeah. And then, you know, they won't want to fight back.

What do you think? Well, so I know that's partially tongue-in-cheek, but you're partially getting at you know what I think makes you guys so wonderful and I think I share it is like empathy and we're not violent people like never in my life for your guys's life are we going out shoulder bumping people in the street or trying to fist fight motherfuckers or kill our enemies you know we don't like violence yeah it's not something that we particularly excited to take part in and as far as it can be mitigated and push to the side we should absolutely take every single step we can and again the Marxist idea that the capitalist you can't just chalk it up to being bad people right

That's sort of liberal idealism where you're saying, you know, it's the individual's fault for these broader structures at play that are sort of buffeting. They're just operating within a system as best they can. Some are evil assholes and some are just people trying to do their best for their family in whatever context they're given. We should absolutely take as many steps as possible to address that and realize that and give people an opportunity to come over and see how things could be different. In fact, in Cuba, as they were doing their revolution, all this land and like all these resources were owned by the West. because the Batista regime was a U.S. puppet dictatorship that funneled wealth northward to the U.S. And so what Fidel and Che were trying to do is like, hey, America, we'll actually pay above market value for this land, right? We have to do it in bonds because our treasury was ransacked after Batista and his regime fled.

They emptied the treasury. We don't have any money on hand right now. But we will absolutely, through a bond program, pay for this land back. That was way restrained. That was so generous of the Cuban people. They did not have to do. This is a revolution. take the land and point a gun in their face and say, fuck off, but no.

They were still trying to be conciliatory. And in fact, Fidel says, I wasn't a Marxist-Leninist at first, right? I just wanted a better world for Cuba. But once I came up against the realities of capitalism, and once I saw just how obstinate and disgusting U.S. imperialism and capitalism were, I realized that I had to be pushed in this direction. They said no to those offers. They said, fuck no.

We're not giving you any inch of ground. We're not working with you whatsoever. We're going to choke your economy. mean we're going to destroy your people and the first chance we get we're going to kill you Fidel, we're going to invade your country and we're going to replant a U.S. puppet dictator. In that context, what in the fuck could Fidel possibly do? They were forced into this position to be like, okay, assholes, fuck you and let's go. And, you know, so I think that gestures toward this strain in Marxist history where there has been an attempt to be conciliatory, even way more

generous and forgiving than they should have been. And still it was met with the most disgusting and repulsive obstinence on the part of U.S. imperialist and capitalist. And so we do ourselves a disservice if we paint too rosy of a picture about how this is going to go. But we also do ourselves a disservice if we fetishize violence and say we must slaughter every person who's ever been a landlord or a capitalist and not ever give them a chance to come over to our side, engage with our ideas, and maybe even be won over. Yeah. And just picking up on Aaron's idea about pacifying the bourgeoisie, I don't think I'm ever going to be. able to get behind liquidating group X as like a phrase. I find it deeply disturbing. And rightfully so,

because it's the description of one of the most horrifying things possible, mass murder. But I could maybe be convinced of like the need for in certain circumstances to like restrain and imprison and pacify them as, as Aaron suggests. Like I'm sort of, I'm sort of open to that. And I don't want to be completely closed minded. But I just feel like we need to really evaluate all of our options. When we're talking about the one true global revolution that brings about 10,000 years of world peace and abolishes patriarchy, racism, class relations, the idea of hierarchy, and creates a library socialism based on the principle of Eusephrek that make sure that everyone gets their irreducible minimum check. And I can imagine sort of like the critique is like maybe

you're not thinking about this seriously enough or you're not seeing the severity of the situation. But I don't agree. I think that a really scientific perspective on it would say, like, how many options do we have open? What is our ethical priorities? How do we live according to those ethical priorities? And how do we live according to those ethical priorities while creating the outcome that we want? And have we exhausted every single option before we resort to this kind of thing? That's really, really important to me in the way that I think about this stuff. And I guess that's like one of the big questions is like the means and ends question. It's like, do the means justify the ends? What is acceptable to do in the process of securing the bag

on behalf of the global proletariat. And I find myself absolutely convinced that there needs to be a unity between means and ends and that the risks of not doing that are too great. So, yeah, the means and ends question, I think, is an absolutely important one. If we're building our movement in a way that replicates the brutality, the inequality, the patriarchy, the chauvinism of our broader society, we're not doing ourselves or our movement or anybody else any favors. And I think this is taken very seriously by pretty much everybody who's active.

on the left. If you're an organizer, whether you're an anarchist or Marxist-Leninist or Democratic Socialist, and I've been in circles and organizations with all three numerous, numerous times, got along very well. Everybody's very concerned about this, right? The way that our organizations are held, like here in Nebraska Left Coalition, maybe the white males don't talk first, right? We put the floor open, the women talk first, the people of color give their perspectives. Those sorts of prefigurative, if you will, approaches to our organizing. It's not only essential, but they've kind of sort of always been there, right? There's always been those tensions in our organizations

and always attempts to make them better. I mean, the Black Panther Party, for example, had a huge problem with heteronormativity, machismo, and patriarchy. And within that movement in the 70s in the United States, no less, there were movements by women members and some members like Fred Hampton pushing against that, fighting against that strain in their own organizing. So this is something that we absolutely cannot dispense with. I think the means in the ends should as much as possible

become aligned. But I also do believe that we need to have a very sober, clear-minded, historically informed picture of what exactly a revolution means and the exact sort of situations that we're likely to be thrust into. And if we're not willing to defend our stuff, if we're not willing to protect one another by any means necessary, then I think we weaken our movement. We might not ever get to those ends. So, you know, maybe there needs to be some synthesis here as far as decrease all of this negative shit as much as we can. But on the other, hand be sober and clear-eyed about what it's going to take to actually build this better world and it's definitely going to force us into confrontation with some people who, for my God, kill

children. They don't care that thousands of people have to sleep in gutters every night. They're willing to bankrupt entire families to get cancer treatment. We're not dealing with people who are going to sit at the table with us and talk about ethics and morality. We're dealing with people that have been proven to be some of the most ruthless, depraved people, especially at the highest levels of capitalism and imperialism really fucked up people. But again, I want to reiterate some level of prefigitive politics is important, but the prefigrative politics don't matter as much if we never get to the point that our prefiguration is aiming at, right? And so that needs to be taken in consideration as well. But absolutely, be as ethical and you're organizing as possible.

Root this nasty shit out of not only our organizing, but our personal lives, right? I feel like I have a responsibility to cultivate within my own personal self, an ethical, moral, nurturing, loving, generous personality so that I can sort of be a representation of the sort of world that I want to have, right? You can't be a greedy asshole who wants to put everybody who disagrees with you up against the wall and build this world that's supposed to emancipate and liberate, you know, hundreds of millions, billions of people. That's at odds. And I think that contradiction needs to be paid attention to and needs to be overcome. Well, and I got to say that warmth is something that I love about you, Brett. You make me believe in left unity when all left

community seemed to be lost. Thank you. Doctor, doctor, I need your help. My heart is so swollen with proletarian pride that it's pressing against my ribcage. It hurts. Now, okay, sit down, sit down. Doctors recommend a healthy amount of proletarian pride. Here, sorry, can you lift up your shirt?

I'm just going to grab my stethoscope. Yeah, you can even see my left peck is just pushed out. Okay, this is going to be a little bit cold, okay? Oh, yeah, yikes, yeah. Oh, yeah, I recognize that beat. It sounds like the international. Yeah, it's been doing that since yesterday. All right, well, it is dangerous to allow this to continue, but there is a simple cure.

I'd just advise reading what most historians think happened in the Soviet Union. Pay particular attention to the era of Stalin that should reduce the swell. I don't want to read all of that stuff again. You know, sometimes I think this post-scarcity, ecological socialist utopia, spends way too much time trying to dunk on the Soviet Union. I mean, obviously, all of those states had flaws. And yes, obviously none of them created final communism, like the revolution that did create this society did. But also when I'm reading those books, I see skyrocketing literacy rates.

I see vaccines being implemented places where they weren't before. I see homelessness being tackled. Citizens of Russia were polled about the former Soviet Union following its collapse. They said that they preferred the previous system. There was real successes there. And, you know, like, I read those books, and I tell you, my heart just swells even bigger. It's doing it now just as I'm thinking about it. Doctor, you got to help me.

Give me some inflammation meds. Things like a balloon, it's going to pop. Sir, sir, your life is in danger right now. Please, you have to listen to me carefully. In Stalin's Russia, they would sometimes diagnose political dissidents with what they called sluggish schizophrenia. The hierarchy of the Soviet Union created a medical. justification for the suppression of dissidents. Not defending Stalin.

No, I'm not telling you that to dissuade you to have proletarian pride. I'm saying that I think that you have sluggish schizophrenia and you're a dissident and that you should be sent to a hospital. Even though this is a perfect libertarian socialist society, all humanity has the potentiality for evil in their heart. So although we had utopian dreams, we're diagnosing you ironically. Okay, I guess I'll accept my ironic diagnosis. Yeah, I think it's a pretty humorous.

reversal. Turns the camera. And now back to the interview. So you mentioned that within the context of Russia, they're dealing with the worst civil war in Russian history. And when we're talking about a revolution that's happening within the context of a nation state, with the intent of forming a state capitalist project with the ideology of Marxism to serve the people there. One of the things that seems to me sort of inherent of that kind of transition is the internal conflict part. It's almost intractable from civil war. Like it's hard to think of a way that you could have a transition, even led by the vast majority of people all agreeing with it, against a very small group of people who are trying to oppress them that isn't a civil war.

I feel like within the context of like a Marxist-Leninist revolution, one of the inevitable things to overcome is how civil war is a fact. and that how civil war distorts the trajectory of the revolution, distorts the priorities of the revolution, and also impairs, I think, to a great degree the people who are involved in bringing about that revolution or bringing about the changes that will benefit people post-revolution, having this sort of scarcity wartime mindset where maybe they're not taking weekends, they're sleep deprived, they're worried about being attacked by outsiders, and like all that sort of like weird paranoia bomb in the context of a country that's actively at war with itself.

seems to me like it would be a major stifling on the building of actual communism. Because you mentioned we need sober analysis, and one of the issues that I see is the issue that war traumatizes people, and it causes PTSD, and we know that that's just a factor of war. It always happens. You don't get engaged in battle and come out of that an emotionally healthy person. It just doesn't. Yeah, like it doesn't happen. So to me, when I think of like needing sober, clear-eyed analysis for what can actually get us to a better society, I feel like the trauma of violence and the trauma of war is something that often isn't accounted for. And the idea that it is more sober analysis to make violence a primary tactic. And part of me is just like,

well, no, like that will upend the results because it's going to damage the people participating in it. And not just them, but their children, like intergenerational trauma of war. Like, yeah, I think you know what I'm kind of getting at. Yeah. No, I totally understand the sentiments and I agree with it largely, right? These things are horrifying and any sort of war is a horrifying process. Revolutions themselves are very destructive upheavals of the status quo. And so one thing is just to say, hey, revolution is not worth it.

It's not worth the pain and misery it'll cause. So let's just try to go about more peaceful, voluntaristic ways of implementing socialism, maybe have some co-ops or pursue the electoral route, build a socialist party and fight for our rights within that context. And certainly numerous, numerous people and numerous situations have done just that. I would just remind people of the trauma that comes every single day from global capitalism and imperialism and by extension the oncoming climate chaos that we're all going to experience, right? The absolute trauma of poverty, the trauma of racism in our society. Look at the Native American community. The science of trauma says that trauma is actually encoded in genes,

right? There's scientific evidence that shows without a doubt that impoverished children are traumatized, that black children being raised in a white supremacist society are traumatized. Climate change and the absolute onslaught it's about to, it already is unleashing on this planet, is incredibly traumatic. I just did an episode in Rev. F called Red Hot Take, Life After Warming, and I sort of talked about this, a whole section dedicated to the psychological trauma of hurricanes and flooding and horrific natural disasters that are only going to become more and more under climate change. So we have a situation in which there's trauma either way, right? It's a horrific situation we find in. There is no way to topple capitalism and all of the power and privilege that it implies

without some level of trauma. And so the question becomes, what's a more acceptable level of trauma a trauma that is caused by a revolutionary upheaval toppling an unjust state of affairs and then over the long term implementing a society that will have less on net less trauma right or do we just mire in this current situation where trauma is just a part of life for billions of people around the planet and hope that these socialist parties or this electoral route will eventually slowly chisel away and get us a liberated society but hey we're going to have to put up with decades of this continuing onslaught of trauma that is caused by capitalism and imperialism until we get there, you know, for me, the net benefits, you know, pushing the direction

of a revolutionary moment that hopefully can create a situation going forward where trauma is drastically reduced on net as opposed to miring in the trauma of every day caused by right now. So I guess that would be my initial orientation to that question. What are your thoughts on that? I definitely agree with what you're saying that there is a lot of, trauma in the society that we live in now and there's no downplaying that and it's not something that we can just shake off or anything like yes absolutely yes but i do kind of want to keep that separate from the discussion of how much new trauma we're willing to inject into the situation or to me that the ideal thing that we want to be doing is that we want the steps in the process

to be reductions in trauma at every level, rather than a kind of injection of a whole bunch of trauma as a breaking moment and then it's going to get better afterwards. Like, potentially something like that might happen, but it's not what I consider ideal or what I would want to be pushing for. I mean, and I agree with if the current situation is intolerable, then there could be a justifiable amount of trauma

in transitioning to a society with less trauma. But as a justification for something, like it relies first of all sort of on the promise of that on the other side of this traumatic break there'll be less trauma so it's okay which may or may not happen and like being honest I've been looking at the history of revolution revolutions succeed or fail and they tend to fail so like to introduce a new trauma at the hope of having less trauma later it's a risk it's a gamble I mean I was thinking about this recently because we did the episodes on the french revolution for patrons and you know there's obviously a lot of sort of horrific violence during the french revolution

but something that it clicked for me for the first time, which was that the pre-revolutionary conditions were so violent that there was like a continuum of violence that this happened on. This wasn't an introduction of new violence that was suddenly just like, oh, it was this peaceful, feudal society all of a sudden like, bim, bam, boom, we're introducing the concept of violence. Like, no, like violence was already happening. So I think there's a real truth to that in like the intolerable conditions are overthrown by the introduction of this new violence. But at the same time, as a rhetorical strategy, I find it potentially dangerous because it could be so much of a blank check to say that, well, everything is so rough now that we can basically justify anything at the promise of a future utopia. And I'm very, very hesitant to endorse that as a functional justification. Yeah. And those are considerations that are definitely important. There's two things that I think can at least help alleviate this, right?

in any revolutionary process there's dual power and there's mass support so there is no revolution without mass base of support it didn't happen in the soviet union it didn't happen in china it didn't happen in cub or anywhere else where there's been a marxist leninist revolution there's never been just a small group of people forcing a revolution on the population these are decades and centuries of conflicts coming to the four and a mass uprising of people defended and and helped perpetuate these revolutionary movements so that absolutely has to be there and then the other component dual power is in the meantime right we all agree on constructing dual power which are institutions that exist outside of capital that feed our movement and bolster our movement it's what the black panthers did they built dual power literally feeding like old

folks and children they built education programs and they built medical centers right and so those two things can go some length in mediating some of that trauma if we have mechanisms and institutions built where we can make sure people no matter how much money they have are taken care of and their mental health is being watched over and we have truly mass support in the population the people genuinely want change and they're willing to back us to get it then those two things I think sort of help alleviate a lot of that and that all leads to my question that I'm going to toss back to you which is what's the third option right if you say I understand but that's kind of like what aboutism what you're doing bread is saying well trauma and shit is really bad

now but I promise you after this traumatic revolution then we'll have a time of of less trauma and so you know that makes us worried rightfully so my question what third option exists where the trauma caused every day today is decreased radically and a new world is built but which doesn't cause new trauma i'm at a loss there i don't know what path we could possibly take that would effectively combat the trauma of capitalism and imperialism without creating at least some of its own in the process you know I think I might know what I do I got an answer nice I have an answer okay I if you believe in sort of this sometimes I call it a rupture theory of revolution where you have this moment where the old society has this weakness and this new society can come sort of like flooding in so that'd be sort of like an alternative to reform view where you could make little tweaks within systems that eventually cause a major revolutionary outcome which I think is actually a valid thing to talk about and think about yeah you make enough tweaks you have a completely different at the end potentially. We're thinking about for sure. But if you're committed to the sort of like rupture theory, which I think is also totally a valid point of view, what is going to make

that rupture revolution effective and serve the needs of as many people as possible? I mean, one part of this that is really important here, which I'm glad you brought up is the idea of dual power. Because I think dual power is part of the answer to this question, because we can build prefigurative organizations, mutual aid networks, these systems of solidarity that help to reduce the trauma within this current situation, this inherited situation that we're in. A great example is the school lunch program by the Black Panthers. If kids are going to school hungry, they're going to have developmental problems. And also, I think crucially, like, the needs that I'd center here, and the reason why

these dual power organizations are so important to be set up long, long before there's ever any sort of moment of rupture is particularly when it comes to the vulnerable. So children, the mothers of young children, the elderly, the disabled, the people. The dual power organizations are like the training wheels from which, like, the revolutionary transition can happen to have that basic level of security. So I think that's one part of it. And another part of like, how do we make sure that the transition is not introducing new unnecessary trauma? Part of the answer to that question, I think, is technology and new advancements in technology that are specifically designed for the purposes of preventing unnecessary harm. So we've made jokes on the show in the past about innovations and non-lethal detainees.

technology. But I think it's not just a joke. It's a very serious idea because what allows American police officers to shoot unarmed black men isn't just historical racism and white supremacy and the power of the police, although those are all very, very relevant, obviously. But ultimately, it comes down to the fact that police officers have a murder weapon in their hand and they have the legal, social authority to some degree to point it at people, pull the trigger and potentially kill them. We can take that away. Like through technological innovations, they're going to can be ways to immobilize people without killing them. Like on Star Trek, they can set it to stun. Like that type of stuff, it's not just science fiction. That could be real. Like, and it should be

real. And it should be a priority to make it as long as possible. Shoot a net around people and capture them. Yeah, a nice net gun or whatever. Sure. So that is maybe a good synecarchy, a microcosm of the broader capacity for technology to relieve the necessity of cruelty. So generally, like when I write my love letters to technology, which I do, night when I get home is write a love letter to technology. The thing that technology really does for humankind that I think is just so incredibly glorious and wonderful is its capacity to relieve cruelty. So I'll give the example of someone who is disabled and necessitates a wheelchair to travel themselves freely. Without that wheelchair, they'd be in a very cruel situation by

the hand of fate. And the wheelchair is a relief to that cruelty by allowing them some degree of mobility and freedom. That's what technology does. That's the point of technology. That's the reason why we support and love technology. That's the reason why the study of science and engineering is important. It's this capacity to relieve cruelty. That can be part of the conversation on how do we have this transition without becoming

what we hate. We can achieve a better unity through means and ends in part through technology, but also social organization. And I think that we could have a transition where we have an ethical responsibility that we share amongst ourselves to be benevolent, be higher-minded, be bleeding-heart revolutionaries who feel at every point utterly responsible for everything that happens without justifying it against a promised utopian future, without justifying it against the cruelties of the past to say, no, we are above this, we are above that type of cruelty, we are above that type of

destruction, and we are capable of doing this through both social organization and the use of technology to be above the history of violence, which we're seeking to transcend through this revolutionary movement. I think we're capable of that, and it's really worth digging into and figuring out how we make that happen. Now, that's not a complete plan. It's far from a complete plan, but I think it's a framework that we can use to think, and I think it's worth thinking about how do we achieve that unity of means and ends and create a better society for all with far less trauma, cruelty, unnecessary violence, and so on, without needing that little uptick in violence to bring it about. Because historically, when you look at it, that little uptick

and violence is no guarantee. So first off, I just want to say that I'm actually so glad and it's really impressive and admirable that you're giving this so much thought, right? I actually don't come across this level of thinking about this issue at all in any tradition, Marxist, anarchist, or anything else. So the very fact that you're so concerned about this, I think is an absolute testament to your general integrity and your decency as a human being, which, you know, my heart goes out to you. And I love that. And I myself have never really thought about it in quite this stark of terms. And I hope that we're making other people think about it. And I can guarantee you that I will go forward and everything I do having this idea

in my head. I do think that a party actually offers maybe some interesting solutions here because of the coordination and the hyper organization that a party implies, I think you might be able to coordinate people suffering and send them to the institutions taking account to make sure that nobody slips through the cracks, et cetera, in a way that you might not be able to do in a more decentralized way. And certainly, if there's ever a Marxist Communist Party that truly rises in the U.S., you know, goddamn well, that I'll be in it. And I will be carrying this line of thought forward within that movement because I think a lot of people even on the Marxist side like we're not these heartless motherfuckers everybody that I've met that's a Marxist, the Leninist, the Maoist,

not online, but in personal life, I've met hundreds of them. They're all people who have good hearts and that are that wouldn't totally listen to this conversation and be like, damn, that's something that we should absolutely take seriously and we have to think about. It's sad that I don't think it's been thought about as much in the past, but certainly I think it's something that we should and can think about. And I totally agree that regardless of where shit goes, right, regardless of how bad or how magically good things get over the next century, what we all agree on is that constructing these institutions, institutions of dual power, and using technology to think about and address these questions as sufficiently and as well-roundedly as we possibly can,

should be a part of our political project. I don't have an answer to this question. I don't think anybody does because it has been given so little thought, but I'd absolutely love to see. this line of inquiry blossom on the left as we think about our revolutionary and political projects and integrate these ideas into anything that we do because it's crucial and decreasing trauma, especially on people that have already been through so much fucking trauma in their lives and throughout generations decreasing that level of trauma and what we do can only be a good thing. It would be doing a service to other people and it would also lend credence to our moral superiority over those who wish to dominate and exploit endlessly. So yeah, all I can

really say in response to that is great points. Absolutely everybody listening should think very deeply about it. And I promise you, I'm going to continue to think very deeply about it. I'm curious, is there any key ideas, big ideas here that you think that serious, committed people who want to bring about the one true, inevitable, glorious revolution should have in their toolkit? Is there something that you can share with us that's going to make us our analysis stronger going forward. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would just reiterate that when we look over proletarian history, regardless of your thoughts or even whether you like Marxism at all or not, I think we really should take seriously and really dedicate ourselves to studying the entirety of proletarian history,

right? I think too often on both sides, anarchists and the Marxist side of this debate, we almost want to push to the margins, the proletarian history that doesn't align with our tendency. And I think when you do that, you lose so much stuff that you can pull from and learn from and be fascinated by and grow inspiration from. So I really think that the social medialization of our discourse works against this necessary trend. But I would like to see people on all sides, especially, you know, I'm talking about offering that warmth in return to us. I would like to see anarchists not just think that the only worthwhile revolutions that have ever taken place are Catalonia, Chiapas, and Rojava, right? And I hope people remember that whether you were talking about

Soviet Russia or you're talking about Mao's China or whatever, that these were not individual brutal dictators who stood atop a world and commanded it from on high. These were leaders that organically rose to the top out of genuine mass proletarian movements. You know, these were people that had the love of the people to push them forward. There would be no Lenin. There would be no Che or Fidel, there would be no Mao without millions and millions and millions of people undergirding these movements and giving rise to these leaders. So on those two fronts, analyzing all of proletarian history, not segmenting in along tendency lines, and taking seriously this idea that Marxist Leninists are not power-hungry,

tyrant authoritarians who just want to dominate everybody else and realize that all of these movements throughout history have genuinely been undergirded by mass popular movements, those two things could take us a long way in having, these sorts of constructive, healthy discussions, which, let's be honest, we're going to have to be more in, right? We're going to have to do this more. As things get worse, as climate change comes upon us, you know, we're not going to have the luxury of resting on the purity of our tendency and refusing to cooperate or talk to people across different tendencies on the left. And I hope that people listening to this conversation can say, wow, you know, Brett represents

this Marxist-Leninist or this Marxist-Leninist, Maoist perspective, and Sean and Aaron represent this more libertarian, socialist, social ecology, almost anarchist tendency. But here they are talking to one another and they're decent human beings. And at the end of the day, my caricatures of other tendencies are sort of laid low by the reality of conversations like this. And then I would encourage you to take these conversations into your own organizing spaces, to your own friends, you know, get off social media and have these face-to-face or long-form conversations. And I think it could be beneficial to our entire movement going forward. And we're going going to have to work together. There's no way around it. And so, you know, building these bridges

now as opposed to waiting till the fascists are marching down our streets or huge natural disasters have rendered entire parts of the country unlivable for a period of time. Building these connections now and networking now is essential. And I hope that the team work between seriously wrong and revolutionary radio puts people in that direction and shows them that this stuff is possible. And lastly, I would just invite both of you onto revolutionary left radio at some point this year. doing an ongoing series called In Dialogue with Anarchism. I've already talked to working class history. I'm talking to Anarchopac next. I would love to have you come back on and just continue this dialogue on our platform because I do think it's important. I do think it's healthy and I'd

like to see more of this happen. Super stoked to come back on your show anytime. And one thing I wanted to touch on that bringing it back to this idea of retention within my interpretation of social ecology. Part of the reason that I think it's so important to really analyze all these historical revolutions, including the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, and so on, is because I think that we on the left should, to some degree, take ownership of this as part of our history. And I think there's often a tendency to say, oh, well, that was authoritarian communist. I'm a libertarian communist, so I take no responsibility for that. I don't even need to think about it too much. Or the French Revolution, it's like, well, I'm a communist. That was a liberal revolution. I don't

need to think about it. Well, the French Revolution was the cutting edge of the left at that time. There's no argument that there was some sort of more pure other left movement at that time or something like that. That is our legacy. It contains all the Pratt falls. It contains all the virtue and terror of all revolutions of the history that we're on. And I think as social ecologists, even as people who, and I tend away from these types of revolutions, I think that my prediction is that the one true and glorious revolution that will bring us through to an even greater, higher level of society that we can only yet just imagine. It's going to happen by means which we can't yet predict because it has to do with the interference from technology and

the social context being so fundamentally different. But at the same time, I think to be ready for that scenario, we need to look back at all these histories. We need to look back at the history of anarchism, liberalism, and these communist projects, these attempts at state socialism. We need to understand them at the very least and understand they're part of our shared history, even in the places where they, depending on the revolution you're talking about and depending on your tendency, went horribly wrong in different ways, but also had successes. And I think you need to also acknowledge those successes as well. It's not black and white. It's really tough. Really tough stuff. Absolutely. And the last thing, it absolutely is.

last thing I would say is talking about conditions changing. Climate change is going to change material conditions so extensively and in a rate that we've never really had to deal with on a human level that to be hyper dogmatic or hypersectarian or to think that your ideas about the world are going to survive unscathed from the onslaught of climate change is sort of naive and dangerous. And so we really have to realize that climate change is going to really throw a wrench in any of our pre-divized plans and that we have to maintain some level of flexibility and openness and cooperation if we stand any chance at all in surviving it and most importantly helping other people survive it right that's our goal our it's not just because we want to put in a political

system that we like or that benefits us and our privilege like the fascist or the capitalists do we want to build a world that eliminates inequality and liberates everybody and that has to be at the forefront of our mind especially as we go into this unprecedented error of climate chaos. Yeah. Well, this has been a lot of fun and there's so much more to talk about, but I knew this was going to happen that we were going to find stuff to talk about by talking. But yeah, it's, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on again, and I'd love to collaborate more in the future. Yeah, anytime. Thank you so much for having me on, and we will absolutely do a collab on Rev Left. I really appreciate, you know, letting me have your platform to put forward my ideas,

and I hope your listeners find it valuable and engaging and informative. And it's always a pleasure to talk to you too. I love Seriously Wrong. I was telling my fiance earlier today that I remember before Rev. Left even really got started, I was listening to Seriously Wrong, and I was reaching out to you guys as like the first sort of guest I could come up with to have a discussion with me. So my relationship was Seriously Wrong and with you guys goes way back. And every time we collab, it just reasserts the fact that you guys are comrades and friends of mine. I really respect and love what you guys do. Keep up the great work. And I'm here for you guys when you guys need anything at all. I remember that message. Oh, I'm starting this radio show.

Rev Left. I'm like, oh, that sounds cool to that. But then, you know, life happens. You forget about the message and whatever. And then I'm like, oh, what the fuck's going on with Rev Left. Left. Like, this is, it's like a really big show. Yeah, going to the best leftist podcast. Yeah, thanks again for coming on, Brett. Thanks for having me on. It's always a blast with you guys. Welcome back to corrupted libertarian socialist utopian news. And that's the top of the hour. So that about wraps up our rundown on the Kronstadt Rebellion. Yeah, I was actually just reading just a few blocks from here. They're old. opening up Cronstadt Memorial Hospital. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a Cronstadt Memorial Hospital, a few blocks from my house, too, when they opened about a decade ago. Yeah, yeah, there's about 250 Cronstadt Memorial Hospitals in the city because we just...

Take every chance, right, to bring it up. I mean, why wouldn't you bring it up? Worker State, worker rebellion, quash, always feels like a slam dunk, and you can get a bit cocky about it. You know how it is. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's just one part of living in libertarian, socialist, utopia that totally isn't anything like that awful Soviet Union. that we mythologize as the most evil thing. I guess we like to say that they're just as bad as Nazis because it makes us feel pure

as if we're not too capable of evil. Oh yeah, it sure is comfortable over here with my blinkers on. By the way, thank you to the producer for buying these new comfy armchairs for us. It makes the news so relaxing. In other news, it's widely sort of understood in our society now that our libertarian socialist utopia has become a disgrace to its own ideas. Absolutely. We say one thing and do another constantly.

And to do a deeper dive on that today, we have the author of a fantastic new historical analysis says that he may have located the source of this strange contradiction in our world. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much. So this history, tell us about it. Well, I was looking to analyze some of the foundational moments of our libertarian socialist utopia to see if there was perhaps a germ of the corruption that has now become a feature of our utopias.

From what we were able to find in the archives, it seems as though this whole culty thing about spitting every time you hear the word Soviet Union or Stalin, and sometimes for Lenin, some people. Yeah, it's not required, but many choose to. Now, of course, I don't need to tell you that during late capitalism, the people of the world largely had installed contact lenses over their eyes, that would allow them to see live updates, notifications of various things, augmented reality and so on, is something that became widely accepted, even installed in children, treaties is completely normal in that way. Horrifying, yeah, now we know about the mental health costs of those things.

But it certainly was profitable for those who were installing it and getting the contracts with the government. And they're also allowed for more dynamic ads that could sort of jump off the billboard and so on. People who weren't wearing them would basically be excluded from society, which was primarily digital and projected into the eyes rather than material. As a last-ditch attempt before the revolution in the world of ideas guided by love that with the help of technology that was not yet understood at the turn of the 20th century, obviously people from the old society who had standed something to lose.

I mean, ironically, they did have nothing to lose because the abundance would be retained for them more than they could ever use. And he tried to stop it. And of course, what he did was using a back door to the contact system, project horrific imagery into the eyes, people being hit by trains, ripped apart, shotgun to the head, crime scenes, just disgusting bottom of the internet, stuff you saw when you were 13, you regret looking at stuff. So these are contact lenses in people's eyes, and these are three-dimensional images, right? Like it would seem like things are before them almost.

Yes, yes, in some cases, you'd have the augmented reality horror, and in other cases, you'd just have the totality of your vision being taken up by horrific imagery that even when you close your eyes is still there. this was live for several days straight and it affected upwards of 80% of the people who were identified to be associated with the transitionary movement so we're talking billions of people suffering through vivid delusions of violent destruction immensely traumatized i couldn't overstate the trauma that imprint this left on our society as it was in its formative stages and so i theorize that the mass experience of trauma for the people making key decisions about the about the transition from one society to the next, distorted the trajectory to such a degree that they ultimately became what they opposed. When you read about this historical events in normal histories, they just talk about how the trauma of those three days was bad in and of itself. But nobody had thought to think about how that trauma had affected the trajectory, and was that the traumatic kernel at the center of the great contradiction within our society, the one

that ultimately, I think if we're all honest with ourselves, will cause it to crumble eventually because nobody can stand this kind of distance between asserted reality and actual reality. Yes, I suppose it's true. If we don't correct our ways in this society and try to close the gap between what is and what should be, then we ourselves might be turned in an overturn from one society to yet another. And if we're not careful, the next society could be worse. Well, that was food for thought, but it looks like we're approaching 45 past the hour. That means we only got 15 minutes left for this hour's review of the Kronstadt Rebellion, coming right up after the break. Today's episode of Corrupted Libertarian Socialist Utopia News is proudly

brought to you by MemberStat. Memberstatt is anti-Alzheimer's medication for aging ultras. Grandpa, grandpa, can you tell me the story of the betrayal of Kronstadt again? Wait, Kronstadt, I don't remember. I don't remember Kronstadt. I'm sorry. No, Grandpa! No! As an aging Ultra, I'm worried that I'm going to be forgetting Kronstadt in my golden years. Should I talk to my doctor about RememberStat? Remember stat has been shown to keep an Altra's critique of the Cronstadt sharp well into their 80s, 90s, or beyond.

I'm 86, and I remember that the Bolsheviks did not merely suppress a sailor's mutiny. They crushed the working class itself. Yay, Grandpa! You're still here with us. Do you kids want to put on some music and have Grandpa do his dance for you? No, Grandpa, that's okay. No, just tell us the story again. Are you sure? I've got a few more steps.

This Member Stats really got me kicking. Grandpa, we said no. Yeah, no, definitely not. Member Statt can cause the doctrinaire repetition of what constitutes true communism. The refusal to compromise, the running away from shadows, shameless careerism, glaringly reformist perversions of parliamentary activity, boycottism, and the thought that you are terribly revolutionary. Don't take Member Statt when defending the successes of the Soviet Union

to your liberal uncle when you're drunk. Thanksgiving. In some rare cases, Memberstet can cause permanent bleeding from both eyes, or diarrhea in your pants in front of everyone. I remember. Thank you, Memberstet. Oh, no, Grandpa, did you just poo your pants? Booth my eyes.

And it looks like we might just have to end the episode soon. So, yeah, I guess that wraps it up. Thanks again to Brett for coming on. It's a really engaging conversation. Yeah, I really like talking to Brett. He got me thinking about revolution in different ways that is going to inform the development

of my ideas on this issue. So definitely do go check out his shows. Oh, and thanks to you for donating, because you're right now behind the dystopian neoliberal paywall. Yeah, our Utopian Revolution series is put behind the dystopian neoliberal paywall, which is allowing us to keep making this show. It's all because of you. Yeah, I talk shit about this neoliberal paywall, but it's really the reason we're able to keep doing the show to the level that we do the show.

So everyone who helps make this show happen is a beautiful genius, and they shall be remembered in history for generations to come, for their contributions to the one true revolution. Yeah, absolutely. All future historians agree about that. When you open a history book in the year three, 3,000 and turn to the first page, boom, your name. That's part of a big list of names. Yeah, and if you go to the online version, there's a hyperlink, and it even has a little

write-up about your life, that people who were favorable to you in the time after your death, that little tale they told. They call it the Heroes Portal. Thanks for listening, everyone. You are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You are incorrect. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You're straight up wrong. You are wrong. You are wrong. wrong, wrong, wrong, you are incorrect, wrong, wrong, wrong, you're straight up wrong, wrong. Next time on Seriously Wrong, the rich and powerful are placated during and after the revolution with a constant bombardment of luxuries, which distracts them from launching their planned counter-revolution. I couldn't possibly have a single more lobster claw. No, thank you.

No, thank you. Filet mignon, no thank you. I'm full. I'm really full. Thank you, though. Oh, Kyle, that foot massage was incredible. The best that I've had, really. I sincerely, okay, I guess I'll have one scoop of ice cream.

I really do need to call my private mercenary army to suppress the... Oh, ooh, drizzle. I've never seen so many sprinkles at once. You must think I'm bad. Well, no what? I am feeling bad. Bring it here. Mmm, it's chocolate fudge.

Chocolate fudge. It's incredible. But I need to call the... I do need to... Okay, yeah, bring the lobster over. Yeah, you called my bluff. What game is this Red Dead Redemption? It's crazy.

I love it. There's something wrong with the massage chair. Do you have a different one? Oh, you do? Okay, great. Oh, the sauna's ready for me. Oh, I guess I'll have to have... to hold off that call. I've been meaning to get a good steam in before I call it in the mercenary army

to build a counter-revolution and suppress this. You'll do what with grapes? Directly into my mouth, will I lie there? All right. Now, do you guys guarantee me this luxury going forward, or is this just transitional luxury so you can diligently build global communism while I'm distracted? Oh, indefinitely. Excellent. Okay, well, then to the sauna. Bring the grapes. and we're going to be.