Rev Left Radio - Politics in Command: Analyzing the Error of Economism

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

J. Moufawad Paul returns to the show to discuss his newest book "Politics in Command: A Taxonomy of Economism". Together, Breht and JMP discuss what economism is, what Lenin's critique of it was, how it acts as a keystone of revisionism, its dialectical opposite "voluntarism", how they are tied to movementism, the necessity of a communist vanguard party, how economism distorts our understanding of class, the labor aristocracy, MLM analysis of modern China, Refoundationalism and Regroupment, and much more!  Check out JMP's previous appearences on Rev Left here: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/size/5/?search=Moufawad Follow JMP on twitter: https://twitter.com/mlm_mayhem Check out MLM Mayhem here: https://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/ Check out the Politics in Command podcast mentioned in this episode: https://www.politicsincommand.info/podcast/ Outro music "Slight Rebellion off Madison" by Vinnie Paz Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the one and only J. Malfawad Paul, aka J.M.P. To talk about his newest book, Politics in Command, a Taxonomy of Economism. Really, really essential reading, a really clarifying reading for anybody, regardless of tendency, on the socialist and communist left. really great, important exploration of a vital and widespread, a sort of error, if you will. And we get into what economism is, the various forms it can take, what the political solution to it is, what it says about class, what it says about the labor aristocracy, cover a lot of really important concepts. And as only JMP can do, sort of clarifies them in really accessible ways without sacrificing,

whatsoever the rigor and profundity of the points that that he's making. So this is another interview with Jay Malfoyd Paul in his newest work, Politics and Command of Taxonomy of Economism. Also would love to give a shout out to a podcast, which is pretty new of the same name, Politics and Command. Our friend Paul from the channel Marxist Paul was recently. We showed one of his projects on Che recently, and he plugged them. And I listened to their interview as part of my prep for this conversation, and I made sure not to retread those same questions that they asked.

So if you like this interview, you can definitely go check out Politics and Command, listen to their interview with JMP on the same book. They cover, you know, different stuff as well, so you'd get even a more robust understanding of the text. And, of course, there's no replacement for buying the text itself. And as always, if you like what we do here, you can go to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio and support us directly, financially. In exchange currently for a bonus episode every month in early releases, but importantly, and I'll make a special announcement and put it out on the public feed sometime later this month. But we're making changes to the Patreon in the direction of more Patreon episodes and more consistent weekly Patreon episodes. So an extra, I mean, a tripling or a quadrupling of our monthly Patreon output on a consistent day. We're thinking Wednesdays, for example.

So if you're a patron starting in the new year, we're going to likely begin, you know, tripling or quadrupling our Patreon output and doing some really interesting stuff on the Patreon as well as getting back to basics on the public feed, some of the topics and the guests that have cultivated such a wonderful, engaged audience in the first place. We're going to go back to those and double down on what attracted people to the podcast in the first place. So lots of interesting stuff having at Rev left. But this conversation, really important, really wonderful, with Jay Malfa Wad Paul on his newest book, Politics in Command, a taxonomy of Economism. Enjoy. I'm Joshua Gmohuan Paul, Professor of Philosophy at York University, and I generally do a lot of philosophy about politics and, Maoism and communism. Welcome back to the show. I'm sure longtime Rev. Left listeners are very familiar with you.

I can't remember if this is fifth, six, seven the time you've been on. But every time you put out a new work, I'm always excited and honored to have you on. I learn something, truly learned something every time I read one of your works. And whenever I bring you on the show, our audience absolutely loves it. So welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about your newest book, Politics in Command, a Taxonomy of a Connoisse, One again, really love the book. I think it's a really interesting and really timely. I think it's always timely, as we'll get into, but particularly timely given the recent sort of activity around union efforts, the railroad workers right now contemplating a strike, going against the Democrat and Republican Party, as well as the railroad bosses. So it's a timely and interesting topic to have a discussion on. And let's just get into it. And maybe the best way to start this discussion. with is with the primary object of critique of this text, which is economism. So what is

economism? And how did Lenin define and discuss communism and what is to be done? Well, I mean, it's, yeah, it's funny to say, like, you know, a bit of a preamble here is that people often look at this and be like, well, what the hell is this economism thing and why is it important to talk about? And it's like, and why did you spend all these years writing this book on economism? But hopefully this discussion today will will make clear why I think it's important to talk about. So I guess beginning with with a question about what it is. Economism is the practice of focusing primarily on economic struggles and, you know, ameliorating harsh economic conditions under the assumption, and this assumption is largely

habitual, that the working class will spontaneously develop into a revolutionary force through these kinds of struggles. And that's what I call the subjective instance of communism, because it is also tied to the objective instance. which is what we would better understand as economic determinism, the idea that the development of productive forces will spontaneously lead to socialism. Now, I mean, you know, the second part of your question was about Lenin, and Lenin critiqued Economism and what is to be done. That's actually how we get the name because he was critiquing Martinov

and this group called the Economists. So he just referred to it as Economism. He also said, as an aside, that it might not even be the best name, but now we use that name because of them. And these people, Martinov and the Economist state, They claim that communist intellectuals should just let workers develop on their own because workers in their economic struggle would naturally bring about socialism. And the presumption here was that struggles in the economic sphere would spontaneously generate socialism. That's the economic determinism part.

But the practice, and that's the subjective part, right, that I'm talking about, you know, what you do as a subject. And that's what I'm primarily focused on. And what Lenin initiated the critique of was the focus on economic struggle at the expense of political struggle. And that is just struggle in the economic sphere without bringing communist politics into the mix or making these politics secondary because it is most important to focus on the economic instance. Lenin gets his entire distinction of trade union versus revolutionary consciousness from his critique of this position, along with his notions of revolutionary theory being of the utmost importance and coming from the so-called outside. Well, why I wrote this book about this now, just to get back to what my preamble, right?

over a century after what is to be done was written is because the subjective instance of economism, that the primary focus on economic struggles at the expense of political struggle, or rather the failure to put politics in command, has become a significant organizational stumbling block or error in the imperialist metropoles, even when those who practice it may not realize its connection to that instance of economic determinism. So my claim, walking into this book, is it most approaches to organizing when they aren't based on the short-term explosions of the so-called. called Beautiful Moment, possess an economic, an economistic dimension. And a lot of misapprehensions of

class and class struggle have to do with this economicistic way of seeing the world. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in the very title, Politics in Command, there is the solution, more or less to the problem of economism, which we'll get into as we go throughout this, this conversation. But, you know, something maybe we should say up front, you know it, I know it. It's almost not worth saying, but in a context like this, maybe we should just do it up front. get it out of the way, which is the obvious and glaring caveat here that nothing here in this critique of economism is synonymous with non-support of economic struggles, of higher wages, of union efforts. It's simply a critique of the limitations of that position and the default sort of inertia

that it has in our generalized politics. Would you like to say anything else about that before we move on? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the book is filled with caveats about that. It's about like kind of like how we do approach things as communists and not getting struck into just this kind of trade union consciousness and also the dangers of of of economism which is you know those limitations that it creates and not putting politics in command and all the different things but i mean i would be i mean i definitely have critiques of the mainstream union movement which you know everyone who's ever been in the union movement has critiques and um and and and uh you know i definitely am not saying no to unionization and unions are bad or anything like that at all what i'm talking

about is how do we approach economic struggle from the political sphere as people that claim to be communists and the dangers of getting absorbed into kind of this kind of economistic way of thinking and hopefully that will come out as we have this discussion absolutely yeah and it's worth saying that everything you write is incredibly rigorous and accessible you really strive for clarity even when you're dealing with deeply you know sometimes even difficult or nuanced complex concepts and ideas. So again, this is an interview. It's only going to be able to scratch the surface of the text itself. Highly recommend people go out and get it. I also wanted to say that in addition to being a Marx's philosopher, you're also coming from a position of having directly engaged

in these sorts of union struggles, having organized on the ground in union efforts. And thus, a lot of this economism in the critique is not merely theoretical or abstract, but also comes from your lived experiences in these concrete struggles, correct? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, there's examples in the book all the time of like my experience in the union movement too, which hopefully is very helpful for bringing things, making the stuff I'm talking about, I think, more accessible. Definitely. All right. Well, let's get into the next question, which is what are some of the major variants of economism, if you will? How does economism sort of manifest itself in today's politics? And why do you call it a non-position? Okay. Well, I guess I'm talking about major variants. I think there's too numerous to catalog because it's like such a, um, such a deep, what I call like a default opportunism or kind of a default practice, right? And I spent a lot of time in the book looking at instances of these variants.

I mean, it's best to say that it's so normative that it is the general perspective of organizing in the imperialist metropoles. So you can think about like, I guess when we talk about variants here, some examples, like the focus on official trade unions as the primary site of organizing, the fear of pushing an overtly communist political line in worker spaces. The focus to organize one big union, such as the IWW does, with all due respect to the IWW, but I do think it has an economicistic perspective. Draperite slogans such as socialism from below, where it is assumed that social unionism will generate the structures of a partisan party. The whole Occupy Formula of the 99%.

There's still some people clinging on to that. Approaches based on the simplistic use of the slogan, only the working class can emancipate itself. and just the overall strategy of working for the amelioration of harsh economic conditions at the expense of centering revolutionary politics. Economism is pretty normative. The reason I call it a non-position is because it's this normative-reified practice of approaching organizational agitation. And people invested in this perspective do not see themselves as invested in economism.

It's been theorized as an erroneous line, but while there may be theories of organization that are revealed to be economistic, economism in itself is not an organizational theory unless you go all the way back to the margin of and then call themselves that, right? But it's not really, there's no theoretical position called Economism that is seen as a theoretical position that people would take on being I am an economist, right?

Well, it's the vocation of being an economist. In fact, many people aren't familiar with this term, or like that they think I'm talking about someone that, works on, you know, a scholar of the economy or something, or if they are, they might not think they are acting economistically. My point is that the problem of communism, even when it, even when it advances mass, has become a key stumbling block for organizational work. It is an normative way of seeing the world, especially in the imperialist metropoles for would-be anti-capitalist organizers. And that's why, despite the politics expressed on paper, the most

common organizational work tends to be neo-reformist. And because of this reified normativity and how this practice has affected our understanding of revolutionary practice in general in the imperialist metropoles, right? And a lot of this, what my critique mainly has to do with its strength in the centers of capitalism, people don't realize they're occupying this position, they aren't actively choosing to occupy it, they're falling into it out of what be a habitual common sense. Yeah, absolutely. So just to summarize that, it is theorized in the sense of it's theorized via a critique initially with Lenin of this thing that he called

Economism. It is certainly not a theoretical tendency that anybody themselves claims, but it's so normative that it often is the default, unless it is struggled against within organizations, it can very easily and without people even consciously making the decision veer into various forms of economism. And one of the forms that jumps out at me, again, this is not to say I disagree with this. thing, but it's to say that it has this economicistic element is like this, and to tell me if you disagree, but this co-op movement of like we just need to build more co-ops and at a certain point,

you know, if the economy is saturated with more and more co-ops, that that could turn into a qualitative, ruptural change in the mode of production or whatever. Do you have anything to say about that? Well, I mean, I would say that's a very good example of one form of economism, right? It's doing exactly that kind of practice of like building

stuff up. It's trying to meet a kind need in the economic sphere right people need houses it's kind of like an economic need people have which is good but the idea that doing that without kind of a political with that kind of like the politics that you want with the revolutionary politics building for you know organizing to overthrow the system and things like that it's not going to do anything it's just going to be that kind of economicistic going along to get along neo reformism at the end of the day exactly all right well in the book you call economism quote unquote the keystone revisionist phenomena of this conjuncture, as an argument for why it's essential to understand, critique,

and consciously reject communism. How is economism a pillar of modern revisionism? And how does doctrinaire Marxism, Leninism, preserve this communism and help make it normative? Well, I say it's a pillar of modern revisionism because it assumes that the overvalorization of economic struggle will spontaneously generate a politics that will result in socialism. And that is what it means is one does not have to implement a political line or have to deal with politics in any way beyond pursuing economic struggle, which is pretty much tantamount to permitting the kind of productive forces position that the rotors in the Chinese revolution pushed. So it's ultimately neo-reformists and that it believes that fighting for reforms in the economic sphere will lead to socialism rather than a ruptural revolutionary politics that places a radical line and command. So when it does that, it ends up being this kind of revisionism because it says it's like politics don't matter anymore or the revolutionary politics don't matter anymore.

It's almost like those are secondary or that the belief is this practice in the economic sphere will somehow generate the politics needed. I mean, that's also a political position. I talk about this in that kind of what is politics section of the beginning of the book. So now, traditional Marxism, Leninism, it was the first. first to critique communism by understanding as Lenin did and what is to be done

and I talked about this earlier that the working class by itself could not go beyond trade union consciousness and Lenin pointed out that the working class is consciousness in itself was simply aimed

at bettering this class a lot under capitalism it's fighting kind of whenever it had that kind of fighting spirit through organization it was always like through strikes and stuff

to get like a better position under capitalism and struggling merely for, you know, kind of a way to mute, dampen, make better everyday capital, it's violence. The intervention of the party from the so-called outside then, which is like Lenin's kind of notion, right, could push this trade union consciousness towards a revolutionary consciousness by theorizing the reasons for its immiseration. So this is a very important initial intervention, right, and one that I think develops kind of a theory of organization that we, all see is kind of important and universal in its development. It names the problem to begin with.

But we have now kind of reached the point that post-Lennon, the traditional solution to the problem of communism, which is just pushed trade union consciousness towards revolutionary consciousness by focusing on the trade unions, circulating amongst them, and pulling them into a partisan organization, doesn't overcome the problem that Lenin noticed and theorized, right? And may in fact, at least at the centers of capitalism, these imperialist metropoles, may in fact preserve it.

And this is because the official trade union spaces, and this is in, you know, the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Britain, right? These trade union spaces after the New Deal, they're actually organized in accordance to capitalism. These are not necessarily spaces that are open to revolutionary agitation and, in fact, have absorbed communist militants depoliticizing them. The solution to the problem of communism is no longer to focus on pushing trade union consciousness towards revolutionary consciousness. in these spaces, especially when trade unions are not like the trade unions of Lenin's Day. And so over-reliance on that formula prevents a concrete analysis of concrete conditions and results in a new kind of economism, a tailism in union spaces, an absorption and liquidation of cadre. And so in the late 1970s and 1980s, and this is the kind of perspective that I was coming at this book,

is that people that were my political mentors and that were in the organizational circles I was in, they had come out of this entire experience of the new communist movement in Canada and its experience with Economism. And so they were very wary of it. And that's why we have to go, I even say at the beginning of the book, this book is a result of kind of at this time, this organizational circles where we did kind of all these readings on economists and things like this and tried to understand the danger of it because they'd gone through it.

They'd gone through it with the new communist movement. And then some younger cadre had gone through it with this other organization that came out of the new communist movement called Axi and Socialist. And I talk about that in the book. But anyhow, in the late 1970s and 80s, kind of as the background I'm talking about, the new communist movement in Canada, they faithfully pursued that Leninist formula. So the Workers' Communist Party, for example, sent numerous militants into the union so as to capture key positions in the interest of making revolution.

And the result, due to what the union movement had become, was liquidation. So these militants, they were able to capture those positions quite easily because the WCP had a lot of organizational capacity, so it could automatically set things up and win kind of elections and things and organized for it to get their people in there. But what happened is when they got those people in there, they ended up with stable jobs in union officialdom

with good pay benefits and inured to the bureaucratic practices of what trade unionism had become following the New Deal. And so they all kind of quit the organization. And eventually the WCP crumbled. So economism had become, a bigger problem than what the traditional Marxist-Leninist analysis had imagined. There's so much there that I want to touch on, but they're wedded to future questions.

So let's just keep going, because we're going to get to those as we get deeper into this conversation. This part of the conversation is really setting up economism and really helping people understand it before we get into some other more complicated issues, perhaps. But you set up which you call volunteerism as the opposite of economism, but still a total error, and you discuss how both, quote, and quote, necessitate various forms of movementism, something you've talked about in your previous work. Can you talk about what volunteerism is, what movementism is, and how volunteerism and economism necessitate the broader error of

movementism. So where economism is the error of overvalorizing the economic instance, you know, voluntarism is the opposite error. It's the assumption that economic facts can be ignored and politics can be kind of a free-floating association that has nothing to do with any economic reality. To put it crudely, I guess voluntarism would be the assumption that we can have a communist revolution at any stage in

society, regardless of what exists economically. Lenin spoke with a combination of the objective economic instance and the subjective political instance as a requirement for revolution. Economism is that which deletes the political instance. Voluntrism is that which deletes the economic instance. And it needs to be said that these

errors are dialectically interrelated. For the voluntarist, any and every appeal to forces of production is an instance of economism. For the economist, any and every appeal to relations of production is voluntarism. And like both, so whereas an economist has that subjective, active thing of, you know, people, what I'm saying, the subjective instance, the practice of that sometimes is delinked from its, you know, background of economic determinism. It has that practice of just working to ameliorate economic conditions, that sort of thing,

just with the economic sphere. Voluntrism is kind of something that you would see its subjective practice to kind of be like the anarchist affinity group practice of in things like like any kind of demonstration or thing you're going to, right? The kind of movementist practice of doing the anarchist affinity group

just doing the politics of the beautiful moment as Jody Dean calls it. And so the relationship to movementism, and I discussed this in a communist necessity, it's the over-valorization of social movements as a substitution of a communist party ethos.

Both these errors do that. The conception of a variety of social movements opposed to capitalism disconnected and disorganized that will somehow, by their quantity and variation, spontaneously overthrow capitalism. That's the movementist thing. Voluntrism and

economism then are different variants of movementism. if you follow them, that's the kind of perspective you end up having. There are voluntarist and economistic versions of movementism. Both share the notion of social movement spontaneity, but they differ on how this comes about.

Voluntarist versions of movementism emphasize disconnected affinity groups, which I just mentioned that, diversity of tactics and a doctrine of pure novelty. Economistic versions of movementism emphasize social unionism, working within the union structure, and or already existing social democratic structures.

But I think even the voluntarist current is affected by an economicistic perspective because the hope of everything converging and working out as a revolution ends up accepting, if not consciously, that a lot of these different social movements are neo-reformist and thus largely focused on damage control and incremental reforms. So that is the baseline of the majority of social movements and this kind of movementist way of seeing things when they aren't, and this is, you know, of course there's going to be social movements that are going to be disconnected communist sects that are unable to win over any meaningful section of the masses that just show up at all these things.

But if you see the majority of the social movements in this kind of disconnected in the lieu have this kind of neo-reformist position, that's going to be the perspective that dominates. Absolutely. And we see all of these things all the time in all different, I mean, you know, most different tendencies, we see various forms of this stuff crop up very constantly. And so it's really important to understand these things to have a conceptual grasp of what they are, why they are errors, where they inevitably lead, and importantly, how to combat and work against them. And so that's this next question. And I referenced this earlier with my point about the title of the book being politics in command. So where does this phrase politics in command come from

just kind of as a historical curiosity? In what ways does it gesture towards the necessity of rejecting economism? And importantly, what's the correct alternative to communism or what is the theoretical or strategic approach that can best hedge against the errors of economism? Well, the phrase comes from an article written in the red flag during the cultural revolution that was associated with the political line of Mao and his camp as opposed to the camp of Lewandang. And the article was about the necessity of placing politics in command of the economy rather than endorsing a productive forces analysis of a society where economic practices would by themselves generate socialism. The slogan that, you know,

It was a slogan that was raised a lot because of that article, but the other slogan that was connected to it, the one that implied that also appeared in the cultural revolution a lot, was that one should be read an expert rather than only expert. So a conscious communist political direction was necessary. That's what it was arguing. Its gesture to the rejection of economism was that it was opposed to the economic determinism

and the practice that resulted from this determinism of the productive forces line pushed by Lewandang. It became a slogan, opposed to economicistic practice, as I mentioned, and not just the slogan in China, but adopted throughout the world, right? Because the point is not to tail workers' movements, not to presume that by following even the most radical economic struggles, we will spontaneously generate socialist politics, the point is to always approach these struggles with a revolutionary politics that is in command

that hopes to command economic struggles. And this brings us back again to, like, I mean, Lenin's ultimate solution, is the one that, you know, the book is still near to because it comes out of that tradition, although with not just Leninism, but Maoism as well, but it says that, you know, kind of his tactical approach to it about, like, going into trade unions and kind of getting them to leap from trade union consciousness

to revolutionary consciousness is a difficulty now, right? But at the end of the day, what Lenin's main thing and what is to be done is definitely that the party, the partisan, a party of the avant-garde that intervenes from outside, that is programmatically and theoretically united, right? And that that's what should be intervening in these spaces. You intervene from that position and you don't get absorbed in the Economism.

Now, if you follow the traditional way of doing it where you just try to push trade union consciousness to revolutionary consciousness, I mentioned that earlier. That's the danger now to get you absorbed in economism because of the way that trade unions function. But the general idea of just trying to intervene from outside with politics and command and figuring out what that means strategically, but having that kind of party unity in that that you have this unity around and also that you have politics at the end of the day you're pushing for, which is a larger, bigger question. The book keeps touching on it and bringing up more things and more things about it.

But that's generally the kernel of what I'm talking about, about how to theoretically and strategically deal with the connemouth thing. Absolutely. And so the Vanguard Party plays a very important role in this. Is it safe to say that any tendency, perhaps, that especially a priori rejects the very concept of a vanguard party is in one way or another going to fall into a trap of economism or something like economism or like voluntarism or like voluntarism or something i mean i that's that's my perspective and i want you know clear that this has always been my perspective you know

definitely with the the leninist party but also the Maoist party right um and i i put the i think those cards out there at the very beginning of the book saying like look this is this is what i think the solution to economism is but i still think those that you know may not buy, although I think everyone should, if you start following this problem out, I think it leads you to realize the necessity of a certain type of party and a certain type of party ethos. But I think other people who may disagree with that step in the logic will hopefully learn and realize that like this danger of economism and start trying to think through it themselves

and figure out, okay, if my solution is not this kind of the party of the avant-garde with the mass line or whatever, the stuff that I push, right? if that's if that's not my solution to organizing then how am I going to deal with this uh this this kind of organizational tendency trap that we're all going to fall into in different ways yeah and that's i think incredibly helpful and very nondogmatic because it's really saying that even if you reject this core principle which you and i agree with the necessity of of a vanguard party that this is not saying your politics are stupid go do something else but it's simply like okay if you disagree with that and our solution to the problems of economism

and you come from a tendency that, you know, disagrees with that for whatever reason, you have an opportunity here to understand the problem of economism. And if you see that clearly work through your own tradition with your own organizations to try to solve it in your own way, we think that the Vanguard Party is the best solution that's tested historically to be able to at least begin to resolve these problems. But if you disagree with that, then the ball is in your court to just kind of think creatively about how you can overcome it, giving your sort of commitments and the certain things that you see as anathema are unacceptable, right?

Definitely. And also, to be clear, as the book says, as we've been talking to, you can follow it to this error within the party as well, right? Oh, yeah. The party has the best tools to get rid of it, but like anything, these, like any errors that exists, all forms of organization can fall victim to them. Absolutely. And one more thing about the party, because I actually was listening to this wonderful

discussion you did with a podcast, a new podcast called Politics and Command, which I highly recommend, where you made this point, just to clarify some confusion around this idea, the party from the outside, because it's so often, especially by people that don't share our tendency, gets formulated as outside the working class. Can you, can you clarify that? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, that's one way that it's been kind of a pejorative way of looking at it, but I mean, I think, and I talk about this in the book, that the outside is not like, it's not like, um, it's not some kind of point completely exterior to the, to the working class, because, you know, members of the party are from the working class. It's the idea that,

It's a position that is outside of the working class structure itself, right? So it's almost like this Archimedean point. So it's like you can be within a certain shop or a certain factory, right? The party isn't generated from inside there. It exists outside of that, right? And there's people in different factories and different things will be part of this party as well, that won't be inside your party, right? And so it exists outside of the working class itself with members inside of it

in that kind of theoretical way of being that archimedian. outside point, right? So it's able to look in or in the inside intervene and not be absorbed to it. Absolutely. All right, let's go ahead and move on. And in chapter three I'm going to quote at length here, it says, quote, while economism is indeed

the phenomena that results from an inability to move from trade union consciousness to revolutionary consciousness, it is also a phenomena that has become a significant stumbling block to even making this move because at the centers of global capitalism, it is held in place.

by what Lenin called the labor aristocracy, end quote. Now, labor aristocracy is an important term, but one that sometimes is not fully or clearly understood and is thrown around in perhaps different ways for different interests. So what exactly is the labor aristocracy? What is it not? And in what ways does it hold economism in place?

Oh, man, there's so many debates about the labor aristocracy that I try to cover in the book and even have a section, a small exorcist on it, to kind of make it clear for people, that know it and there's a lot of controversy around it so i'm going to try to do justice to it here but i might not in this you know the short short time i have although i have a i'm going to probably talk for a little bit about it especially its relationship to economism so the theory of the labor aristocracy is that the super profits generated by imperialism allows some factions of the working class

to thrive at the expense of other factors largely the working class and the imperialist metropoles benefit due to the super exploitation of their counterparts in the global peripheries. So Lenin's point in theorizing the labor aristocracy was that some workers might have less interest in revolution since they have been bought off by the surplus extorted from their more exploited third world counterparts. To be clear, this isn't a one-to-one buyout, and it's not a conspiracy theory. As we know, power doesn't concede anything without struggle.

The famous kind of maxim there, and it is not as if the imperialist bourgeoisie were going to share any of their profits with the working class of their own country simply to buy them out and because they had the extra resources to do so from imperialist exploitation rather we know that a whole series of workers struggles forced the bourgeoisie to make concessions and this is what we called uh you know the historic compromise between labor and capital and and since so that that compromise came about um because of all of these struggles and because the capitalist, the bourgeoisie, had the means to make this compromise, the means through imperialist exploitation. And so those concessions came in the form of a variety of labor rights and privileges that provided a better life for the workers who received them, right, the legal right to a union, the right to strike, negotiated working days, collective agreements that allowed for better wages and retirement plans, all of that.

I go over this in detail, my book, and demonstrate the law. consistency of the existence of such a thing. Like, in any case, it led to the depoliticization of the union movement and the pushing of those communist elements who were attempting to put politics in command to the margins. It also allowed for patriotism, jingoism, and anti-communism to creep into the union movement. Like, after all, if the capitalist state was answering, or at least appeared to be answering your economic demands and giving you this legal status, right, then what business did communists

telling you about their politics but more to the point it copper fastened economism so by

depoliticizing the labor movement and because of the kind of consciousness resulting from the preponderance

of the labor aristocracy economy economism thrived right and especially now in a situation

where the labor aristocracy has been under attack and the traditional unions are floundering

rather than think about the politics driving this attack the fact that capitalism is never a friend of labor, many unions largely concern themselves, and how could they not, right, with fighting for the economic rights they are losing. And they've been doing this for decades as various crises have erupted, but the leaders of

the official labor movement are so domesticated due to decade depoliticization and the lack of a strong communist movement to put politics in command that their ability to fight even for radical economic demands are stymie. So right when this book was published, The union in kind of in my province, I live in the province of Ontario and Canada, but there's this union across province union that represented early childhood educators, janitors, and other public school staff, they were about to go on strike. And the reactionary provincial government, they passed a law to declare the strike illegal and basically said that, you know, if one on strike, they'd be fined like thousands of dollars a day

and, you know, possibly arrested. and so the union leadership decided any kind of to hold a walkout would be classified as legal and they actually had the public on their side because it was seen as kind of really egregious the early childhood educators, janitors and librarians who hadn't had raises for years

that were actually just looking for like you know more like less less work hours more higher so they didn't have to work long hours and things like that they were they're met with this pretty you know draconian response and so the public like them in was actually supported this illegal walkout so within a day though of the walkout right the government actually

agreed to walk back the law they're like oh well we'll we'll just waive that law but then they're like only if you you only if you come back and and we'll bargain with you again right um and what what they should have done is they should have just kept staying out because uh at this time they they were in a situation where a bunch of trade union locals including mine we're actually planning to illegally walk off their job sites in solidarity. It would have been something closer to kind of a general strike position, right? But the union leadership decided to order their workers back to the classroom being like, oh, the government has blinked and they're going to give us a better deal. They're willing to deal with us instead of carrying on that momentum

that they had. So, you know, the point here is that the leadership couldn't even do anything with this momentum and fell back quite quickly into respectability. And of course, at the end of the day the union didn't get what it wanted and this was still like this whole thing was still in the bounds of communism like a demand for better working conditions um and even the at this point the union leadership couldn't even do that couldn't even do this radical economicistic things but even even then if there was like a organized political movement that had the power to do so and intervene this was this was a moment that could have like you could intervene in very politically and pull people over to your side right but that that didn't exist and definitely the union

leadership to not have that perspective. And even the way other people were going about organizing with this and seeing their position and organizing with it was still within that neo-reformist way of doing it. And then it never happened anyhow. And so decades upon decades of being a labor aristocracy kind of prevented the will of the leadership of the union to see themselves as in a position or even the people that, you know, were walking out and strike to see themselves as in a position of full antagonism with the state, which is like really important. The position of full antagonism that needs to be brought to light every time these things happen. But instead, the perspective is, you know, the organizers will believe that

possibly, but the perspective is always one of some form of reconciliation. But more than this, right, so more than that's the kind of story. The labor aristocracy of official, of union official generally to get back to what I was talking about, leads to the promotion of a general economism throughout society. The solution isn't to struggle against capital, but to struggle within the bounds of capital. Non-unionized shops see unionization as a solution. Not that unionization is bad, right? We should struggle for union drives because it helps people,

only that those leading such drives are part of an officialdom who aren't interested in transgressing capitalism and think only according to the economic bread and butter of the rank and file, and even then, can't even do the best job with it. So I'm not saying that the labor aristocracy is a total edifice in the imperialist metropoles. I don't understand it according to the so-called third-worldest understanding where it's just like every it's everywhere and there is no actual proletariat in the I think there are many words of sites of exploitation that are not part of the labor aristocracy

but it is in command it does define union officialdom and that officialdom promotes a general economicistic mindset and the labor aristocracy and the economism it promotes is what can account for the prevalence of anti-communism amongst the labor movement as a whole A lot of people say that, oh, you know, when I've talked about the labor aristocracy defanging workers struggles, they're like, well, it's not the labor aristocracy. It's just because of anti-communism. There's no such thing as the labor aristocracy. I talk about this in the book, people that deny it. But actually, if you understand the labor aristocracy and start thinking through it consistently, you'll realize it's the other way around that actually it best explains symptoms such as anti-communism amongst the labor movement. Because by pushing out or parting ways with an express anti-capitalist politics associated with revolutionary partisan projects, the labor movement defanged itself and it's kind of pushed all the communists out and aligned itself with capital, right, and to a certain extent. And therefore it became a space where it becomes difficult to perform the traditional

Leninist solution to economism, which I talked about earlier. Because if politics are not welcome in these spaces, if trade union consciousness is now being organized according to a general kind of social democratic capitalist sensibility. And the textbook solution in what is to be done also falls prey to the economism. Yeah, really good answer. Some things I would like to point out or highlight or perhaps even summarize. One is just this idea that, you know, there are some on the broadly conceived left that would outright deny the existence of a labor aristocracy. And there's some like the third worldist who would over apply it, saying everybody that is a worker in the imperial core,

benefits from the super profits generated by imperialism and thus are a member of the labor aristocracy even if you know you're at the low wrong of the working class in the u.s or whatever and so we reject obviously both of those um the other thing and this is a more of a question just in the definition of the labor aristocracy with the labor aristocracy um i have lots of friends for example that are in like steam fitters unions um you know electrician unions etc they're rank and file the labor aristocracy is it usually reserved for the upper echelons of these very solidified sort of major unions of the leaders and the bureaucrats of those unions or does it extend to the rank and file in these unions that do get

in most cases a better cut of the pie if you will than workers that are outside of those unions no i extends it's because it's i think it's like imminent like it's it's almost it's not like you're like oh i'm a member of a labor aristocracy and i'm a labor aristocrat right you're part of the edifice of it because of what you get, right, with the general thing. It's almost like, it's a general condition. You can say maybe the people that you would call the actual labor aristocrats are the bosun officialdom, right? But everyone is kind of part of this labor aristocracy vis-a-vis the rest of the world who isn't, who doesn't get these kind of social democratic buyouts that come from, but it's not, like my issue is that it's not, it's, it's porous too, and it's always

being pulled down and out. And you can tell what people, you know, you can tell people are kind of part of it because of what they struggle to keep when they're pulled down, right? And I'm saying this, too, is I'm in a unionized job. And I mean, I don't think mine is the same as, you know, I talk about this to the class as people that are doing industrial work because I'm a teacher, but it's, I'm definitely unionized, I'm contract labor, so I'm not tenured or anything like that. And we go on strike a lot and we're connected to the labor movement. I'm not making a claim that I'm, you know, some kind of proletarian subject or even close

to it. But I definitely say the labor aristocracy has to do with my job as well, because we get good deals with our work and things like that because of the union movement and things and the ability to struggle for it too so it's not i'm not even saying people that are in everyone in the labor movement is necessarily bought out right um but only that that's this space allows for this kind of social democratic consciousness uh to you know or social the social democratic rights that you get to prolifer and therefore kind of hamper and be a limit on your consciousness you have to overcome and in that case the people that you're going to locate that are

that are going to have a better understanding and have a much more kind of instinctively radical understanding that capitalism needs to go are people that are may not know that aren't in these spaces that are in these kind of that are non-unionized that are working in like much more precarious conditions that you have to make contact with right um not that not that revolutionary conscious can't emerge within places like the labor or stock because it's just it's much more dampened and communism is much more the norm yeah absolutely uh in my personal experience i i like the lower echelons of the work that I've done, like working in, like, you know, kitchens, for example. There's even people that aren't articulated as political thinkers or anything. They just have like intuitive, very radical, oftentimes very revolutionary instincts that the higher you get up in the workforce or you get in more secure layers of it, that kind of goes away and it does become much more economistic. And I think that's the point that you're making. Some people outside of the labor aristocracy at the lower rungs of society, even if they don't have a fully articulated or conscious political ideology, have oftentimes much more revolutionary and radical instincts than somebody making, you know, 100K a year with a nice job and union benefits, which is interesting. And we're thinking about the last question I have is just a point of clarification, because the labor aristocracy is defined by the super profits generated from imperialism. And so would that definitionally mean that outside of the imperial core, the labor aristocracy, cannot exist?

Well, I would say this generally the theory is to account for the difference between kind of, you know, how imperialism generates this difference. I think on the whole, you're not going to find the labor aristocracy outside of the first world. You may find, though, kind of like in the way that, you know, the way that imperialism creates these kind of differentials within their own, their own countries, spaces where there is some, that resembles the labor aristocracy because it's connected more to kind of a comparador kind of capitalism right but generally that's that's the same way that you get you know that's why you get kind of like types of like capitalists that are cronies for you know you know big imperialist capital in in countries that are no victims of imperialism you might find the same thing with some workers that are better than others but that still be connected to the relationship of imperialism I'd say that

those with those kind of instances those particularizations that you always can find these small exceptions. Really on the whole, it's going to be the labor aristocracy is basically its strength and where it is is in the imperialist courtroom. Absolutely. So this next question I'm very interested in, and there's a lot of confusion around this. So the question is, how does economism sneak into and distort our understanding of class? And how should we understand class in a way as to avoid this set of errors? Well, yeah, this is, again, something else I'm not going to do real justice to in this. I have you know, it's

a really big point of my book and kind of I think, you know, it's the reason why, I think I say this I begin in the introduction by saying this is the reason why we should take the problematic of economism as a serious error to be overcome. Because this

perspective has really hampered and undermined the scientific conception of social class. And so rather than, what happens is that I think for a lot of people who aren't like looking at it I'm using this term class in the way that it comes about over a period of time in our lingo. Rather than understand class as a social relation that is a process, we treat it like an identity. And both mechanical workerous notions of class that complain about identity politics

and idealist appeals to intersectionalism make the same error. And that is class is treated like an essence or identity. for the mechanical class reductionist identities generated by oppression don't matter because it simply has to do with the economic conflict right and you can kind of find these kind of weird kind of edgy socialist bros that like are like I don't care about anything else except just class right and they're all white yeah yeah and then I'm going to get into that too right and I talk about that a lot in the book it's like what do you mean by class there and so it's like for them that it's kind of reductive they think all these other things don't matter but it simply has to do with the economic conflict abstractly understood between the bourgeois and proletariat and for the idealist version of intersectionalism class is just one identity among multiple intersecting sites of oppression and actually that's not what class is class is not part of like a identity that intersects with other things it's actually something much more than that and I'm going to try to do justice to my

whole discussion of it in the book so we're so you know so the thing is you know the conception of class as it was understood by Marx and Engels and the revolutionary tradition that followed their insights is it's not an identity that is found in nature right it's a relation that is made it is a process their entire conception of social class was wagered against the notion that the social stratification of society was ordained by god or the heavens i mean so that was that was the medieval worldview that had this like the worldview typified by equinus or confucius or other people around the world where they had this notion that

you know the social stratification is kind of something that is just written into nature and destiny like people were born to be peasants or kings social position was ordained rather than constructed you know people that all that kind of medieval worldview you get both Aquinas and Confucius and other people in that entire society saying like look the way you live a good life is you figure out what social position you were born to and be the best in that

social position the whole notion of changing your position is one that was seen as, even though it's the reality, this is where Marx and Engels came on, but it was one that was seen as not natural, right? The historical materialist notion of class, like, as opposed to notions of caste

or a state, was that one's position in society was due to social processes of production and reproduction. It had nothing to do with a pre-existing essence. When we understand class as a social relation, rather than a pre-given essence,

we can talk about class according to three qualifications there, structure, formation, and consciousness, right? So again, this is the idea that it's going into here about class. Class is something that is a social relation, something that is made, something that is not pre-given to you in society. And then once we talk about that, the three qualifications that I used to talk about it that, you know, come from playing with like Olin-Aren-R-R-N-R-Rates categories, Eric Olin-R-R-N-R-R-R-R-E. But I use them differently with the class of literature, this idea of structure, performance, and of consciousness. So I'm doing these very quickly for this question, right, because it's like

this takes up a large part of the book, right? Structure has to do with the fact that every society has a class structure that in order to function needs to be filled. So the metaphor here is like you have a factory, if you have factory that needs to function, it's the metaphor of the factory, you require people who own it, who are managers and who work with the machines in order for it to be a factory that functions. You have to have that structure. And these structural slots conceptually pre-exist the people who ended up being slotted into them. But they tell you something about how the phenomenon functions. So every mode of production has the same kind of structure. In order to be capitalism, the capitalist mode of production

requires this structural setup, workers who can be exploited and owners who do the exploitation. And of course, that's just on the abstract level, the structural level, and a lot of other things like come into play on this. So that's the structural notion of class, right? But while the notion of structure is conceptually primary, and I point this out of the a book, it is not historically first. And I mean, we need to talk about it first to understand, like, you know, this idea of structure. We talk about it's structure first to understand the structure that needs to be filled up and articulated, but since history is messy, there is a story of the spilling up of the structure

that pre-exist the emergence of capitalism or any mode of production. So the formation or composition of class that we have under capitalism, both as a mode of production and as a world system, is based on the real history of capitalism's emergence. What elements became part of the working class? What elements are still being drawn into the working class? And we find, since capitalism developed, according to settler colonialism and slavery, that this development impacts class formation. Neither the bourgeois nor proletariat is abstract.

Their class formation has to do with these very real historical processes, that in fact have to do with those multiple sites of oppression, the theories of intersectionality wanted to tell us about. But this is, in fact, a story about class composition, how class is formed in relationship to the class structure of society and in relationship to kind of all these many other kind of the actual, the real violent world history that, you know, Marx says has written blood and fire of primitive accumulation.

And, or, you know, and so Patrick Wolf talks about in terms of pre-accumulation and things like that, this idea of this formation or composition, position that historically comes about, that of course is there's a whole bunch of other stories of oppression that lead to the formation of class, of the different class slots of the structure of society. And finally, we need to talk about class consciousness. And this, of course, becomes important. We're talking about, like, economism. And this is the Marxist distinction between class in itself, a class for itself. What matters at the end of the day, especially when it comes to politics, is the notion that the class understand itself as a revolutionary

subject, to simply function according to a basic work for his consciousness, is to be the class in itself, to be working class without any interest in transgressing the reality of working under capitalism, to be the class for itself is to be conscious of the fact that you have nothing

to lose but your chains, that society will be better with revolution, it is to become, in relation to structure and formation, a revolutionary subject. And all this is to say, again, that class is not an identity or essence. It is a categorical assessment about a social reality.

It's not a separate identity of an intersectional analysis, but in fact the material point of intersection. And because it is a categorical assessment, just like the model of the double helix is the categorical assessment of the science of DNA,

it is not something that is found as an essence like a cast or a state. It's not like inside people. I have this like working class essence or I have this bourgeois essence, especially since we know people change classes, right? Class is not something you're born into. But it's something that is imposed

by a partisan, project this is this important like at the end of the day the consciousness aspect by that active aspect of the class it is something that can be imposed by a partisan project that can clearly conceptualize the categorization of class yeah absolutely love that I think it's so essential of course you did a wonderful job summarizing dozens and dozens and dozens of pages within your book so again highly recommend if you found anything in that explanation that you know sort of stoked your interest to go get this text and read it it's really fascinating. It's really important. And of course, you know, you understand class through this

as a sort of dialectical and historical process instead of an essentialist, static, or metaphysical identity or structure that is, you know, embedded within people, etc. And this dialectical and historical understanding of class is the way that you can avoid both the mechanical class reductionist error as well as the, you can call it various things, idealist, identity fetishists, if you will, you know, both of those errors on each side. can be overcome with a true dialectical and historical analysis of class as a process with these three qualifications. So it's really, really essential stuff that I deeply appreciate.

And one of the things why this is important, and this is kind of a silly aside, a clown show, if you will, but there is this new reactionary, mostly online movement, masquerading as Marxists that would, in the last couple months, had this robust attention. attempt on Twitter at least to say things like, you know, these Starbucks workers who are organizing, they're not really working class because they're in the service industry. And I've even seen some of these weirdos extend it to include teachers and nurses. Like, you know, these people are completely outside the working class as well. Do you have anything to say on that to just kind of correct any confusion that might still be lingering around these rather silly debates?

Well, I mean, the thing about the books, I talk about the whole thing about relation to production and exploitation and wage and get into all these debates about class and it's all in there. I just think the final thing to say is that people who say that about like service workers or whatever are usually people themselves who have no connection to any kind of worker organization. They have some weird fetishization of an industrial worker that exists at the point of production. I mean, if they're going to be, if they're going to go that far and say that you have this kind of notion of like a old, like it's got to be at this kind of point of production, the question is where is that point of production? And I say, well, you know, you know where the biggest point of production is where, like, you know, the real material foundation is, it's actually in the third world in mining and refinery.

And so those, that means that you have no point about talking about yourself as a worker or anyone else here either, right? Yeah. I think, though, it's like, it's all, it's all a dumb kind of a weird abstract argument they're having that has, you know, unless they can, they can say that what they're doing is, is demonstrating, like, a better understanding of, like, making revolution. And again, I'm really simplifying. There's a lot of, I go through a whole discussion about this, what it was meant by the relation of production and things like that. But I feel that like people that are basically trying to survive and themselves some kind of job security and to suddenly say, well, because you don't constitute my idea of a real working class, then like I'm not going to support you. And that's bullshit. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. It's really, ultimately, it boils down to a sort of internal aesthetic rejection for whatever reason. of these workers as being part of the worker's struggle and then it masquerades itself or justifies itself as this attempt at class analysis which is of course silly so it's just worth knocking down those arguments especially for new people on the left

who are entrenched in these online circles and we've seen people like this be one over to the side of these weird, fringy, often very reactionary online quote unquote movements or whatever so. Yeah and I would just like it's just weird to me because I wonder what what did the impetus to say to just be like though these people don't count as the real working class okay if you're going to write like

an analysis of classes in in north America then maybe you can like but maybe that's useful for you but to get into an argument what is what is the upshot of that it's a politics clearly you're not trying to organize them so it doesn't matter um is it are you i'm always wondering are you bring this up because you just want to cross a picket line and get yourself your Starbucks coffee like it's kind of similar it's similar to like it's like it's almost finding like some weird political justification to do something reactionary. Exactly. It's like kind of like the people that the other side.

So there's that weird workerist one that is doing it. But then there's like the weird kind of always happens in strike. This kind of like this idealist identity politics version that is like, you know what? A strike, it's like it's ableist. So I'm going to cross a picket line. Right, right. Someone who's being there, it's like, look at all these workers outside not wearing masks. They're abelist.

and so it's like I feel like I can cross this picket line because they're not supporting me but I'm like are the scabs inside wearing masks like what is this like do you have to like it's or you know someone that was against like Uber strikes because they rely on Uber as someone that's disabled or someone that's against Amazon strikes

because they reside and it's like there's also disabled people in these unions as well so it's like you just want this excuse to like do shitty things exactly and in both cases the ultimate position is an anti-worker position that serves the interest of capital, which is never lost on me. But let's go ahead and move on. And I think this is really interesting. You alluded to it earlier. This is a spicy topic, to be sure. And one, perhaps there's a little bit of disagreement between, you and I,

but I really want to hear your position because I've articulated mine many times. But from your perspective and in light of our understanding of economism, what is the sort of basic Marxist-Leninist Maoist critique of modern China, and what posture or line toward China should this ultimately entail organizationally? Well, I'm not sure what an understanding of economism can provide for understanding of China now beyond an understanding of how China moved from the communist road to the capitalist road after the defeat of the socialist line of the cultural revolution. We know that the main criticism of the line represented by Lewandang was that it was

economicistic in the objective sense, right? It was about pursuing development of productive forces at the expense of revolutionary politics. The entire course of the cultural revolution was based on this distinction, right? And that's where the title of my book comes from. The presumption was that the pursuit of communism within the process of revolution

would reinstate capitalism. And this is pretty much the line that the Maoist campus had about China since then. And there's a lot of rigorous studies that get into the defeat of the revolution forces and the emergence of state capitalism under the name of the Communist Party in China. Paui Ching's recent from victory to defeat comes to mind. I'm not going to get into that. Beyond that, I'm not sure what an analysis of communism means for modern China.

I do think we should be critical of China as a particular kind of capitalist formation. But I'm also kind of, you know, I also want, you know, to caution people because I also think we should refuse to imagine it in the xenophobic manner promoted by Canada, the U.S. and Western Europe, perhaps their own. long history of hating China specifically through racist imperialist lenses and then also from anti-communism when it was a powerful communist force and he still has the kind of

reforms has the kind of structures that were brought in from the Mao era even though these are being like a long way. I find always things interesting in the way that China struggles in China are happening. I mean as an aside like I found the recent workers unrest

in China interesting because and the way that it was distorted in kind of mainstream First World imperialist discourse. I mean, it was interesting that, like, a lot of the workers, they were demanding, you know, better, better COVID, like, better rules around COVID, like, better mandate stuff as opposed to the policy that it was starting to be pushed, which was going to be relaxing some things. And the newspapers here pointed it almost made it look like they were like, like, like the workers were like the same as the people that wanted an end to man. mandates and China was so vicious having mandates when it was actually an opposite demand going on. And also that you found, you know, that the journalists outside of the main West things were pointing out that these workers were all shown up with pictures of Mao. They were showing up with like, you know, pictures of, I don't know, like shitty, like American people like Trump or something like that. They have their own kind of like history.

And I think that stuff is interesting. and maybe that analysis of economism or something that's being produced by workers there will tell us something but I don't know I'm not qualified myself

to say that except for the history and also again I like I get aside from being critical of China as state capitalist which is my position I think it's really well worked out I also I also try to avoid

that imperialist jingoism around China that distorts itself in these weird synophobic bullshit analysis yeah absolutely and I really respect that and I love that

there's a theoretical critique to be sure, but it doesn't lead you into just becoming another fucking person screaming on, you know, in the West about how terrible China is and how it needs to be overthrown and utterly destroyed. There is still class struggle happening, of course, as we would expect within China. Do you think there is revolutionary potential even within the Communist Party of China, even if you right now, it's very clearly from an MLM perspective, a state capitalist enterprise? Would you locate any revolutionary potential within the party or would you think that it would almost have to wholly come from without because the party itself is so

fundamentally tied to this. I don't, I don't think so. I mean, the party itself is now has become, has gone to the full kind of revisionist capitalist rotor way. I mean, there may be honest people in it and I think there are, but I think just the party structure is such that it will prevent that. And that's my opinion, but this is also one that like spoken to people that are like kind of communist in China, the time that I am in contact with them to speak. to them this is their perspective as well very interesting all right well let's go ahead and move on to the next question which is about a refoundationalism and regroupment and it's something that i even put in the outline that especially on the regroupment front perhaps i've fallen into myself from time

to time you point out the marxist center in particular as engaging in this and you know from the beginning i sort of superficially involved but you know it wasn't really organizationally deeply embedded within it but it had that regroupment idea behind it. And sometimes, you know, there's been times where perhaps people advocate this idea of like, yes, there's differences between Marxist-Leninist and Marxist-Leninist Maoist, but there's no reason why we couldn't have a line struggle within a unified party. So just with all that on the table, can you just tell us what refoundationalism and regroupment are, why they're fundamentally in error and sort of what works instead?

Well, I think refoundationalism and regroupment, there are two related attempts to rebuild the left, a different emphasis and put on them. And I think when I talk about them, I talk about what I believe in the last chapter of politics and command, I kind of showed their interrelation as well. They have other names, right? But I use these names because they were kind of the common ones that were used at the time that I started writing this book,

and they represent these kind of interrelated tendencies. The first re-foundationalism, that's an attempt to build a broad left coalition so as to rebuild the left as a whole. And you kind of think of it as this flawed version of the United Front. And I say flawed because, you know, the theory of the United Front says that you have a party first that is organized and powerful. Then it sets up a United Front with all these other kind of interrelated forces and it is able to have the strength intervene there. But in this case, it's kind of almost like building a United Front with no party.

And without the strength necessary to use the United Front and the way that the conception was articulated. it's like this united front without a party or a united front almost as a stand-in for the lack of a party in this sense what happens it's kind of like this big tent socialism all this kind of stuff what happens is it's a unity around the lowest common denominator

of economic reformism basically what you end up getting with this kind of refoundationalism is what trade unions fight for anyway because as soon as broader political questions start to be raised the forces that have been contacted to be part of such a coalition they suddenly realize they have all these

serious disagreements on the level of politics. And usually the only thing they can agree with in this kind of refoundationalist process is that capitalism is bad, but not what sort of politics beyond a very vague anti-capitalism should be put into command. The only practical work that comes out of such organizations is economic amelioration. It's not bad in and of itself, but it's something social Democrats would do otherwise. And in fact, a lot of social Democrat groups are in this kind of rebuild the left organization as well, and their politics end up being the ones that are valorized.

Such organizations, these kind of re-foundationalist attempts, due to their lack of political and theoretical unity, end up being mired in multiple disagreements and lack the ability to build anything that can overthrow capitalism, and they tend to fall apart after a while and not be something that can be sustained as an organization for very long. And I used an example familiar to my social context, which is the greater Toronto Workers' Assembly, that after being unable to intervene beyond low level worker support fell apart.

Regroupment is a bit more than re-foundationalism because it attempts to provide a kind of political recruitment already assuming a general ideological baseline, right? The idea of communism is good, revolution is good. But it ends up becoming kind of a process looking for a party. I know you are, I think your experience of recruitment was, and I don't think there's anything wrong.

experiences can teach us something and maybe something can emerge from them but in and of themselves they can they can become this problem i think yours was like the marxist center right yeah you got involved with yeah and the one that i'm more familiar with um even though i wasn't part of it but it was part of like looking in on it and getting in discussions with people involved in it was the kasama project right which no longer exists as well i think i think it's a good example of this tendency because it had a high threshold of but still was this kind of recruitment kind of thing so it definitely wasn't about a broad left refoundationalism, but it was about trying to figure out how to develop a theoretically unified communist organization by beginning at square one and just debating the

general principles of what a new regrouped communist organization would look like. Like the errors prevalent in refoundationalism, there is the problem that even among these communist individuals and factions that are becoming part of such a process, there is a lack of programmatic unity. The difference is that such projects seek to find such a unity and tend to become kind of these eternal pre-party formations like so i remember a conference i attended a decade ago with a comrade from montreal and and and we went to this uh kasama project discussion um and the folks on that panel uh said they did not see themselves as a party but a political process that would eventually discover the basis for a new party or organizational formation capable of making

revolution and my comrade and mentor who was there with me gabriel um she was you know she sadly passed away from cancer several years ago she's actually i'm kind of like every time i like write something or look at my book afterwards and i have these memories of her and the kind of the you know just the mentorship that she provided um she was older and she was involved in a lot of struggles in canada before that and I'm like wow her fingerprints are over a lot of my stuff right and I remember this too right she intervened in this discussion

and she was she started she challenged this process you know this process in search of a party discourse and she said to these people as kind of this panel she said if you if you hyper focus on a process that will bring you a party you're going to end up fetishizing the process and keep pushing its completion over

the horizon since you have this idea that the party or final organization is something that's going to be complete right and her point is that a party formation is never complete it's a party is a process in and of itself and it's actually best to begin by creating a basic theoretical and programmatic unit of a party formation and organize according to the process such a formation will become through its development right and then you have that is your starting point and you have kind of a politics that you can actually put in command instead of a disparate one that you're always arguing about and trying to figure out when you want to intervene

and do work, right? And so, because I'm a project, which represented, in my mind, a very high level of communist recruitment, it did get lost in this process. And kind of in the unending political debate that determined its existence, it was largely a talk show. And where it did try to carry up practice,

or at least what could be observed as practice, maybe there were things that was doing that we didn't know about there. Mike Eli had this old session with clandestinity, but I'm not sure if there was anything else it was doing. But where kind of you could observe from the outside, that it was doing something was it got involved in Occupy, right?

I think it fell apart almost shortly after Occupy. I can't remember. But it did get involved in Occupy because it, but when it got involved, since it didn't, it couldn't intervene as a party formation,

it kind of just ended up tailing the basic economic demands of the 99% versus the 1% and ended up fetishizing a very short-lived and politically limited movementist eruption. So, So, you know, like some of project represents, as I noted, a higher ideological level of recruitment unit than other attempts.

There's others that are close to be foundationalism, but just with some kind of central organizational control of like a lower level socialism. I think Jacobin and the DSA represent that kind of socialist recruitment. And it's notable that, you know, Jacobin has published articles by figures such as Sam Ginden. He's one of the people that was actually behind the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly. and he, for example, the articles he publishes them. He uses that failed experience as some kind of authority for him to push this notion of a mass socialist party that just looks like a shitty re-foundationalism branded with a party form.

And I could take his approach to that as well, which I think is largely very chauvinist too. But anyways, I write much about this and, you know, with better clarity in the book. My point is that it is always better to begin with an organizational ethos that is able to put politics in command because it is theoretically and programmatically united and it is such an organization that will be better equipped

to regroup revolutionary forces and if and when it becomes strong enough either found or intervene in coalition spaces with a perspective that is not limited to the low-hanging fruit of economism. Yeah, beautifully said. Those are subtle but important things to grasp and understand. And as you said, these are not all

just complete disses to these attempts. I mean, some of them are laudable, but we learn from their failures and their mistakes and the theories and the analysis that comes out of those failures are really important for us to take in and figure out new ways and new approaches around. And those ways, of course, are rooted not in novelty, but in history of real revolutionary struggle and the world historical advances that those struggles have given us and handed down the lessons to us. So this is a really important book. There's a million more things we could discuss, as there always are with your wonderful books, but I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there, simply urging my listeners to go out and get this text, no matter

what tendency you're coming from. There's so much valuable, theoretical, philosophical, conceptual work in here that can really help whatever you're doing. And I really cannot recommend it enough. Also want to give another shout out to the newer podcast called Politics and Command, of which you did their inaugural episode interview, I believe, in which you talk about other topics that we couldn't cover in this. So if you like this conversation, you want to hear another one, hop over to the comrades at Politics and Command and check out their interview with the one and only JMP. But before I leave you, can you just let listeners know where they can find you and your books, including this one online? Well, you know, I'm on Twitter, but at the dying days of

Twitter, but who knows how long it's going to be there for long. I mean, I have my blog, MLM mayhem, which, you know, I haven't kept up for a long time, but maybe when Twitter dies, I'll be back on more, you know, being better with that. My books, I mean, they're found where you can find books. I mean, I guess it's best to go through the, to avoid the Amazon's. I mean, the one thing about politics and command is foreign languages press put that one out, and they also put out one of my other books. Well, they also put out a version of the communist necessity for Europe,

but they want the original publisher of that, but they also put out critique of mouse reason. But they actually, because they're a political project, and they don't generate profit really any any extra money they generate goes back into the organization they have other jobs they run as a collective so even my my book was a donation to them so it can be sold at cost and people can get it because they're more about it's not a it's not designed to be like a business where they make money so it's all extra labor for them and because of that one of the things they also do is they refuse to collaborate with amazon for political reasons so they do not allow any of their books to be bought at amazon but you can order it directly from them and it's just as cheap as ordering it

from Amazon because again everything's done at cost and like the money's generated back into it and so that's at foreign languages press I'm sure you'll put up the link for that and eventually too because they also want things to be accessible things are sold at cost but if people can't afford it they eventually put up the PDF free for it so eventually the PDF for politics and command will be available for free from that website as well and aside from that my other books are with like three of my books are with zero books and two of my books are with Kersplebadeb which is another radical

kind of press that it sees itself more as a political project as well and I think one of the ways that you can also even my books from zero books Krasbbedev's bookstore left wingbooks.net it also has ordered a number of my zero books and helps distribute them as well

and again that's better than using it Amazon Absolutely left wing books and foreign languages press I'll link to all of that. In the show notes, you've also, it's worth saying, have done multiple episodes with Revel F. So if you search Jay Malfoad Paul in like the Lipson search bar on Revel F's podcast, you'll find four or five, six other interviews we've done with JMP on various other works of his,

all of which are wonderful and worth reading. So thank you again, JMP. I always love talking with you. It's a pleasure and an honor, and I look forward to having you back on with whatever you do next. Great. I always enjoy being on this show. P.P. Come on, man.

Pat pistol, pads, you know that black air, grenade. Official pistol, A-O-T-P. Yeah, come on, man. Black to stand forever. Oh, oh. No what I'm saying? Oh, oh. Slight rebellion or madden you fucking dummy.

Yeah. Look. Look. Yeah. What is you seeing in the mirror? What did you see? A cold a boogie freaking the tremera. Pull of blood left his body bleeding in Medera.

You fucking do sticks on me like the mirror. They tea into Merrill. This the place to the house a thousand blacks. This the face that launched a thousand sheds. Had a couple bonnetters and goose neck. I'll be trying to play the wall, do my little two-step. I'm John Wilts, Booth, with a derringer. Raise out of roof being, sing the song, selling.

It's brand-daddy purple in the can of sin. Masked on. They ain't going to make me with the camera. Cherry had, fifth of a noose. Forty below's, gumby cuts, bishop, and juice. Man in the can got hit with the duce In the gimbush, Moosburg, linen and fruit

You stupid My hitters get high, My shooters don't die, no lie, Whoa, whoa, Slide with a 4-5, All living, let die, Oh, time, no, no, no, no, no. My hitters get high, my shooters don't die,

No lie, whoa, whoa, Slide with the 4-5, y'all live and let die, O time, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look, talk to When the war took with different Don Cosquarelli The mug with the mortician This motherfucker ain't hit a lip

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Spoil the bra Moorcaba with two soups You inside the Gino store For a few loosens Uli's Nadine and the new Gucci Livia Gravia Carducci We could poke you because we knife me Head like Travolta faster than grief lightning

Well-mannered and well-fed Well done, it's better than well said My hitters get high, my shooters don't die No lie, whoa Slide with the four-five All living let die, oh time, no, no, no My hitters get high, my shooters don't die, no, no lie, Oh,

slide with the four-five. Y'all living, let die. Old time, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Thank you.