Rev Left Radio - Red Star Ministry: Marxism, Theology, & The Human Condition

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Alyson and Breht are guests on the Red Star Ministry Podcast, a Christian Communist outlet. Together with the host Christian, they discuss Alyson and Breht's evolving personal relationship with religion and atheism, the Dialectics of Nature and Human Consciousness, Spinozist Philosophy, Marxist Philosophy, Post-Atheism and much more.

Hello, and happy August. Welcome to the Red Star Ministry podcast. I, as always, am your host, Christian. I have a very special interview to share with you all today. I was lucky enough to have Brett and Allison from the Rev Left Radio and Red Menace podcast. Come on and talk to me. We had an awesome, very wide-ranging conversation. about faith and spirituality, Marxism, communism, kind of where the left is today, philosophy. I know you're going to love the conversation. And if you like Red Star Ministry, then you will definitely like Rev. Left Radio and the Red Menace Podcast. So go give them a listen. Thanks again to Brett and Allison for being on here with us.

And without further ado, here's our conversation. All right, welcome to Allison and Brett from Rev Left Radio and the Red Menace podcast. Thank you guys for being on the Red Star Ministry podcast. I just want to, I want to give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves. I would hope that anyone who listens to our podcast is hopefully already familiar with you guys and what you do. But on the chance that they're not, do you guys want to just like, explain the mission behind RevLeft Radio and Red Menace? Sure.

Brett, I'll let you start out. Okay. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm Brett O'Shea from RevLeft. And then quickly after Rev. Left started, I had Allison on the podcast to do an episode on Lennon Tech, State and Revolution. We hit it off really well. And then we met up, I think, soon thereafter, at a conference in Colorado. And, you know, got a chance to hang out in real life and quickly became,

friends and I knew I wanted to collaborate and do projects with her going forward. And the opportunity arose quickly after we had met in real life in Colorado. And so for the last, I don't know, Rev. Leff's been on air for eight years. Red Menace started six or seven years ago, I believe at this point. And so yeah, we've been trying to just do our best to contribute to what I think is a growing, you know, Marxist, explicitly Marxist milieu. on the on the American left and we've been trying to provide high quality and principled political education ever since and yeah i always say i couldn't ask for a better collaborator and a better co-host than alison so i'm really happy to to have her by my side and i'm really happy to

uh to be on the show today totally yeah i'll chime in a little bit and just say you know it's crazy that it's been that long that we've been recording podcasts together it's kind of wild to think about. But yeah, Red Menace is a project that I'm super, you know, just always excited about. It keeps me reading theory in a context where I wouldn't always necessarily be reading it. And I think, you know, we don't always do theory episodes anymore. We've branched into current events and other stuff. But I do really love when we, like, get back to a text and deep dive into it. And one of the things that I just like about the show is that I hear from people, like, hey, we use your episodes in our political education work. And we integrate it alongside our reading to

help people break it down. And that's always just like the greatest thing in the world to hear. So Red Menace for me just like is a really enjoyable project to get to do with Brett, who is just someone who brings a lot of intellectual rigor to everything, but also just hearing about like the use of the episodes really means a lot to me. And is one of like the main inspirations for keeping it going. And really quick, I just also wanted to add that, you know, there's like this separation between this technical separation between Rev. Left and Red Menace. But I truly believe that, you know, rev left radio wholly and completely includes alison it wouldn't be what it is without her and red menace is is an offshoot where you know alison and i do stuff specifically together but those

episodes are also on rev left so you know it's a it's an umbrella and alison is fully a member of the of the whole thing and rev left wouldn't be what it is without her beautiful thank you for explaining um if you know if you're listening to this podcast i would say definitely go check out Rev. Left Radio and Red Menace. They are a big, you know, I'll add on to what you said, Allison, that, you know, you guys have been a big inspiration on us at Red Star when we, you know, when we talked about doing a podcast. So thank you for all the work you do. And also, thanks for being on here. So at Red Star, we kind of, I mean, our podcast is kind of new, but our kind of purview is Christian Marxism or like Marxist Christianity, depending on how you

want to look at it. Probably the latter is closer to my own, where I fall on it. But, you know, we've kind of focused on these like religious and spiritual topics. And I wanted to have some people on to talk more about like Marxist theory. But, you know, I was listening to your guys' this recent episode you did on the dialectics of nature by Friedrich Engels. And you got into like a really fascinating kind of spiritual discussion towards the end of that. So I was hoping we could maybe start off, kind of, like, building on that. I'm not going to, you know, I don't want to assume that listeners have to have listened to the dialectics of nature episode first, but maybe we could just talk a little bit about your guys' approach to spirituality or how you see that

kind of fitting into a Marxist worldview or to political action that you take as a communist. Yeah, I can take a shot kind of starting off on that, I guess. So, you know, broadly, I would describe myself as religious. So I approach life through what I would call a religious framework in a lot of ways. Religion is not the biggest part of my life, but it is a part of my life. So it is definitely a thing that is coloring things for me. And I would also describe myself as a Marxist. And a Marxist who is fully aware of the tensions between those two terms, right? Historically, those are not two concepts that have been understood as very in line with each other. But for me, I think when I think about what religion is, I have a very, I guess you

would almost say like functionalist understanding of religion. And so I think that religion is essentially a social technology by which people express and reinforce values. It's a social technology by which people build a sense of community and a sense of belonging. And in its most positive iterations, it's a social technology that can mobilize people towards action. And obviously, that can be for good or bad, right? As this sort of technology framing, religion can be used for very horrible things. I think all of us who have ever encountered religious communities before have seen that side of it. This is often the side that I think is most predominant. And at the same time, I think religion can also be used in these more progressive ways. And I don't want to be

too libertarian about our free will ability to use religion however we want. Obviously, religion exists within the ideological sphere of a given society, so it is shaped by the ruling class, and it does often reflect their ideas. But I also think that means religion can be a site of ideological struggle in some ways. And for me, I think that means that as Marxists, it's worth engaging in that terrain to a certain degree. And I think we've often seen revolutionary movements around the globe that have successfully engaged in that terrain and treated religion as a site of ideological struggle and as a space in which people can be mobilized for revolutionary ends, both with good and bad results, right? I don't want to say

this is like the magic bullet to solve the problem of mobilizing the masses, but it is a space where I think we need to engage. On a more like philosophical level like you were gesturing at, I also think that for me, the dialectical worldview, which again, Brett and I have this episode recently, really trying to develop that, does mesh in a lot of ways with a lot of the beliefs that I have about religion, the beliefs that I have about what people might call spirituality, which is a term that I'm always somewhat uncomfortable with. But I think that the dialectical understanding of process and of change really actually does feed into the way that I understand religion, the way I understand questions of God. I definitely come from a very like spinosist

pantheistic process theology kind of approach to that, that in my mind actually plays very well with a lot of the ideas that are found in dialectics. And as we got into in that previous episode, I've begun to try to work on having a more concrete meditative and contemplative practice as well, which is really quite a challenge. But I find that that practice also, in my mind, really brings to the forefront dialectical principles of the transience of things, the development of things in relation to other things, and sort of the lack of permanence of all social and, you know, know, if we take dialectics seriously, of all phenomena overall. And I think in the contemplative

practice, you can kind of see that actually applied to consciousness in the mind, perhaps. So I see, you know, especially within the more philosophical underpinnings of Marxism, sort of views of ontology that actually map on very well to that spiritual contemplative tradition that has become increasingly important to me. So, you know, that's kind of a big picture answer, but that's sort of how I approach some of that interrelation. I'm sure we'll get into more of those details, but that's how I look at it. Yeah, so there's, yeah, I agree with, with all of that and seeing religion, you know, from the Marxist perspective, seeing religion as a, as a terrain of struggle, understanding that,

you know, the vast majority of human beings on this planet still have some sort of religious orientation. And even if that's not an organized religious orientation, I think that there is a religious impulse, right? A religious impulse, for lack of a better term, that humans naturally have, like some way to attempt to relate to the majesty and the mystery of being. And that's always been a part of my life. Aside from my political commitments, there has been this just existential search for the sacred, this profound awe in the face of the miracle that is the cosmos, and just the deep human wrestling with these big questions. is not just the soul in a organized religion, but it is very human, and you find it everywhere

on earth, and even people who are anti-religious or non-religious, I think, still have some sort of yearning or some sort of attempt to orient themselves to the majesty and mystery of life and existence in the cosmos. And so I think that's a part of it. And then if we want to reach people, I think the worst thing we could do is dismiss 90% of people's deepest held beliefs right from the start by over-emphasizing a sort of atheism. And I think there was a time in political history where that was necessary because the religious structures of society were so inexorably interbound with the structures of power and domination

and oppression. We saw this with the Russian Revolution. We saw this in the Spanish Civil War, where it was just clear that the Francoist-Fascist forces were also the clerical forces, and there was an explicit battle between religion and revolutionaries. I think that is a little bit less the case today. It's not to say that organized religion isn't still bound up with power. It is, but I think there's been a dissolution of specific organized religious structures that are synonymous with power and domination. I think that's come about in part because there's just many different ways of expressing religion,

especially in our society, you know, people have every religion or hodge-podge spiritual thing that you could imagine. And so I think it's less of a singular entity than it might have once been. And so I think there is also a way in which religion evolves. And I think it is kind of naive from a historical and dialectical materialist perspective to think that that religious impulse that's been around in the human psyche since we climbed out of trees will magically disappear with a rearrangement of material conditions. It's my belief that religion, like culture, like ideology, like everything else in society evolves with the evolution of the material base. And so I actually don't think socialism and communism would mean the end of all

religious orientation. I think it would represent the evolution of revolution. What that evolution looks like, we can't be sure. We can wrestle with the idea of what it might look like. But for those reasons and more, I don't throw out religion as an important terrain of struggle. And I don't, you know, I don't dogmatically just assert a sort of reductive materialist atheism as the end-all, be-all, commonsensical position that every thinking person should have. Absolutely not. And I think people that do assert that and think like that, think dogmatically and narrowly. Having explored religious traditions, you know, I've settled on Buddhism as the personal

religious tradition that I get the most out of, but I have a deep love and respect for the religious traditions. And I always say every single religion has a political spectrum, right? Every religion has a far right. We see that in Israel right now, with Judaism. We see that in the U.S. with Christianity. Certainly it exists within Islam. It exists within Buddhism, Hinduism. It has a moderate liberal center. And they all have a revolutionary left wing formation as well. national liberation struggles or liberation theology etc and so instead of just dismissing it all as reactionary or regressive i think we struggle with it and we understand it as an as an evolving process itself um that evolves alongside our other work beautiful there's a lot in there i thought of two

kind of lines of discussion as as you both were talking that um i would like to follow up on um alison mentioned spinoza and brett i wanted to ask if you also like see spinoza you guys talk a lot about him in that Red Menace episode that I mentioned on the Dialectics of Nature. So I wanted to ask if he's also his kind of philosophical proofs of God or outlook on God has been influential on you as well, or maybe not so much. Absolutely. I mean, it's not a one-for-one adaptation of Spinoza's view, but I think what he represents is ammonism, meaning that he transcends the duality, the Cartesian duality, mind and body, between self and other, between nature and man, or humankind, and bridges

that gap to say that actually all of these things that are seemingly different, or, you know, what Descartes would call separate substances, separate fundamental things, they're actually aspects of a singular underlying substance, a singular underlying process, which I think is very philosophically rich, and certainly marks and angles in dialectical materialism, can be seen as a sort of development of certain ideas that Spinoza put on the table. But I also think it's spiritually rich because a sort of, you know, Zen Buddhism that I'm particularly attracted to and I'm increasingly a part of a Zen community here in my city of Omaha. There is a deep relationship with the natural world. And you can see this in all of Zen poetry and all of

Zen art and just the whole history of Zen aesthetics are inseparable from the natural world. And there is a very Spinoza's element to that of direct experience of what is happening in the present moment and an integration instead of an alienation with the natural world. So I find Spinoza philosophically a great, amazing starting point and lots to work with. And I think there are profound spiritual implications that fall out of that way of. looking at the cosmos, which doesn't chop it up into separate things, but sees it as a glorious hole that is manifesting different aspects of it, which from our perspective might look like separate, discrete things, but are actually singular, or different aspects of a singular

underlying process, which goes hand in hand with dialectics. Yeah, so I like what you said, you know, about the monism. It reminds me of, like Paul Tillich's theology of the ground of all being that kind of underpins religion. I don't know. So the reason I wanted to ask you guys, because, you know, I have two very philosophically well-read people on here. And I studied history, not philosophy. So, you know, I've read a little bit of Spinoza, but it was kind of in like a history of philosophy context or there was not like a deep engagement with the text. And what I remember from studying and my, you know, it was my history of ideas classes, I think where I, where I encountered him in an academic setting.

It was kind of taught to us as like, you know, here's a, you know, here's 10, 20 pages excerpt, and Spinoza's whole thing was like the ontological argument for God's existence. That's kind of how it was like boiled down to us. I want to ask you guys about that. So, like, the really simplistic version of the ontological argument is that being or existence is a predicate for, for God, which would necessarily have to be, like, the highest of all beings. And, you know, if it's not the highest being, then it's not God. And if it doesn't exist, it can't be the highest being.

I'm guessing that Spinoza actually has a lot more to say than that. And that's, like, just a very, like, philosophy 101 view of it. So would you guys be willing to explain, like, a little bit more? What's the deeper level of that? Or maybe that's not, like, a good way to think about it at all? Yeah, I can take a shot real quick. I mean, I think what's interesting is I think you could say Spinoza makes the ontological argument, but Spinoza does it in a way that I think no one else really does it, right?

So when I think about the ontological argument, like Descartes has an iteration of that, which I think is closer to the version that you're putting forward. But Spinoza does something weirder, right? Because in Spinoza's move, it's not really that like God is a predicate that is necessary for being to exist. It's that being and God, in some sense, are identical to each other, right? And this is really what I think is so revolutionary about Spinoza as a thinker. For Spinoza, God is not like a transcendent reality that exists above or beyond existence,

but God basically is existence itself on a certain level. And we could really get into like, you know, Spinoza's theory of substance and putting that forward. But I don't even think that level of depth is really necessary to kind of see where Spinoza's subverts the standard ontological argument. Because normally God becomes this like presuppositional necessity for then something which is external to God to exist within the universe. But the universe is kind of God for Spinoza in this very interesting way. And this is why, you know, we gestured towards this when we've talked about Spinoza in our own episode. It's kind of hard to even say that Spinoza is like a theist to a certain degree, right? Because the definition of God that he's

putting forward is so contrary to most people's understanding of God, that I think you could affirm it and just essentially be an atheist. That's kind of what is really interesting. And Spinoza, in my mind, is sort of the figure where atheism and pantheism sort of meet in the middle, and the lines between the two of them become very blurred. When I say that I'm a Spinozist, I'm gesturing towards that monism that Brett is talking about, and I am gesturing towards, you know, that actual ambiguity between those two. things, the atheism and pantheism, because I think from Spinoza, this imminent view of God

that is not some separate thing from the universe, actually becomes a very useful, motivating framework for engaging in the world in various ways. That's not like some abstract thing that needs to be appeased through sacrifice, as a lot of ancient religions would articulate it, nor is God just like an internal reality that lives in our heart that like the most crass kind of evangelical articulations would make. God becomes this much, more complicated thing that underpins all of existence, essentially, and that I think colors are interactions with every part of the world in this kind of theological lens that I find very fascinating and potentially useful. Again, you can read Spinoza in a more or less theist way.

I think there are plenty of people who have basically said this is just identical to atheist materialism in the sense. You are just calling things God, but I find the ambiguity actually really generative in Spinoza's work. And it's precisely that transcending of simple dualisms that make him so interesting and so dialectical. The basic ontological argument that Spinoza is putting out in very simplified terms is that God, whatever we call God, whatever conception of God we might have, and in Spinoza's conception, it is not a personal God, right? And this is the accusations of atheism and his time come in his way in part because his conception of God is not a God. that chooses or wills or oversees. It's imminent. It's here. It is the full expression,

the totality, the ground of being under which everything else emerges from. So his argument is that God is a being with all possible attributes. How could it not be? The existence being, you know, existing is a necessary attribute of an absolutely infinite being and therefore God necessarily exists. So it's an ontological argument with its own little twist. But the overall conclusion of this ontological argument is very different from other forms of the ontological argument. And again, the God that emerges from a Spinozist philosophical engagement is a very different God. And then God becomes everything. God is the ground of all being, and everything that exists is an expression of God.

And so what I do with this is, and this is in line, I think, with the dialectics of nature from Engels' text, which we talk about in that episode, is, you know, I take it and just formulate it in this way that there might be other attributes to God, but certainly two that Spinoza identifies is mind and matter, right? The classic subjectivity and objectivity. We look out in the universe, you know, look at pictures of the new James Webb Space Telescope or, you know, the Hubble Deep space, and you see what we could see as the matter or the physical body. of what Spinoza would call God. And then the implication of objectivity is that there is a subjective side, right?

And the subjective side of the cosmos is us, is the subjectivity of all conscious, sentient beings in the cosmos. And with higher degrees of intelligence, we become increasingly self-aware and increasingly capable of abstract thought. So now we have human beings who emerge out of the cosmos with a subjectivity that turns around and does things like cosmology and astronomy and physics, which is literally, logically, it's not even like a spiritual woo-woo metaphor, literally from this perspective, because there is no separability, human subjectivity is not something that's put into an already existing world,

it emerges out of it. Well, then that subjectivity is the subjectivity of the cosmos. In the same way, the galaxies and the planets and the stars and the atoms are the physical body of the cosmos. And that is God. And maybe there are other. aspects that are blocked off from our full comprehension or our engagement with maybe we are too limited as creatures to see other dimensions or aspects of this totality but those two totalities are not separable they come from the same underlying singular process that that process can be called nature or God and we are it you know objectively and subjectively you know what that reminds me of

is this I mean it's kind of on a lower level but there's this post that's been going around at least my Facebook feed, which it's talking about some like nature documentarians, I think, who intervene to save some animals. And the post is talking about how this idea that like we are separate from nature and that to save some animals

lives that you're observing is like interfering with nature. And it's challenging that and it's saying like, no, we are part of nature. And if we want to do that, then that's natural, right? Would you say that is that like a kind of very specific idea of like

what you're getting at where, you know, humans are part of the cosmos, our intelligence and our subjectivity is, you know, part of the subjectivity of the whole universe? Absolutely. And in fact, I think that that is what we're starting to see bubble up in different ways. And hopefully, Allison and I really try to make this explicit, is along with a new material base, a new material organization of the human civilization, which is obviously necessary. The systems we have right now are just unsustainable. They're leading to, extinction, they're polluting the biosphere, they're undermining climate stability. It's very clear that we need a new way of organizing human life that is sustainable and in harmony with the natural world. Well, what does a new material base also come with? A new superstructure. And these things evolve together. So what we're actually seeing, and we see it bubble up from a bunch of different areas, and it's not cohesive yet. It's not put into like an explicit way of being, but more and more people are thinking in this direction. by the contradiction, you know, this new way of thinking is created by the contradiction we're seeing with our natural world and ourselves, is that we have to begin to feel and experience ourselves as part of the natural world, not alien from it, and not something that we go out into and extract and take from and plunder, but something that we are, and because of our intelligence and our consciousness, thus have a deep responsibility to not only live in harmony with, but to cater to, to, to, to shed.

to become genuine caretakers of this amazing blue jewel floating in outer space that we have. And not only that we have, but that we are, that we literally emerged out of. And so another beautiful political implication of this is that when we fight for a better world in this way, we are the Earth's, we are the Earth become conscious fighting for itself. That we are in some sense, through consciousness and intelligence, the Earth produces its own antibody. for also a lower level of being that Earth has also created that needs to be transcended. And so in this way, we can overcome actually the alienation between ourselves and the natural world and begin to create not only a new superstructure, but a new base of being in the world that is actually sustainable and that represents an evolutionary step up from where civilization

is currently and has been for the last several hundred years. Yeah, I'll add to that slightly with a sort of philosophical tangent. perhaps that I think builds on it. We love philosophical tangents here. Right. Hopefully it's productive. But I think this idea that we're not separate from nature, right? As we've all just kind of been getting at, you don't even need to go to Spinoza if you don't want to, right?

That's kind of the one thing that I'll add here. I think you can get that from Spinoza, but this is the point that I think Brett and I made in our dialectics of nature episode. It's a point I want to make more and more, which is that you can just get this from Ingalls, right? Like, this is, in my mind, what dialectics as a theory is. Ingalls has this incredible chapter at the end of dialectics of nature, tracing the evolution of humanity, basically, and looking at the way that the human mind evolves in relation to the hand, evolves in relation to language, revolves in relation to the ability to transform the world around us through labor, the way that we already, as a species, emerge from this

interrelation with nature, where we are not distinct from it, but we are not distinct from it, but we are in fact constantly in it back and forth with it. And you see this in Ingle's engagement with evolution in the biological domain generally, right? This is true of all life. And then Ingalls actually takes that a step further and basically says this is true of nature generally. Nature is governed by dialectical principles that are foundationally about the lack of separation between things. You may have two opposites within a given phenomenon and they're distinct in as much as they are opposites from each other, but they are also inseparable from each other. and they are constantly transforming into each other in these really fascinating ways.

And so I think you actually do really see this, not just in these kind of philosophers that we think of as external to the Marxist tradition like Spinoza, but within Ingle's work especially. And I mean, it makes sense. Ingle shouts out Spinoza as like one of the philosophers that kind of keeps dialectics alive during the time that he writes. So there's an influence there as well. But this is one of the reasons that I think it's really important to like push for what I will shamelessly call like a worldview Marxism, right? Which is the term that has been applied to Ingalls kind of derogatorily to say, like, Eelz wants to make Marxism into this fundamental worldview with its own dialectical ontology, when actually Marxism is just a method of historical investigation. And I think that criticism falls into this very exact trap of thinking of human history as its own distinct domain that dialectics would apply to, but not to the rest of the world. And materialism and dialectics

tell us about that history, but this history is a fundamentally separate human history. phenomena governed by its own principles. And the reason that I think something like a worldview Marxism is useful is it undercuts that dualism, and it replaces the development of human society and social phenomena within the broader structure of the natural world in a way that really insist that they are not fundamentally separable from each other, and that the principles that govern the development of human society are principles of nature more generally. So, you know, slight rant there. But I think this is one of the the reasons that really getting back to the dialectical kind of ontology that underlies Engel's work

really is extremely important in a world that, as Brett gestured to, we are more and more realizing our own interconnectedness with nature and the consequences of not, you know, taking that interconnectedness seriously. Christian, could I add one thing to that? Absolutely. Yeah, that's great. And to take that dialectical idea even a little bit further, we think of historical and dialectical materialism.

Allison and I have struggled with creating like a visual metaphor, but a simple one is like an upward spiral where you, you know, where you return to things at a higher level, right? We talk about communism as returning to community at a higher level, right? We think of primitive communism, and then we go through class society, and there's an alienation from community in that process, an alienation from basic egalitarian, you know, social relations that allow for certain forms of development, but also create contradictions. And we ultimately want to resolve. those contradictions and come back to community at a higher level. I think what we're talking about here is returning to nature at a higher level. Because pre-class society, there is humans, what Hobbs would talk about is living in a state of nature. Nasty, brutish, and short. We're at the whims of predation. We're at the whims of natural forces that we don't understand, much less have any control over. And then there's this period of time where we become alienated from nature, which allows us to act upon

it in a certain way that develops, you know, technological progress, the agrarian revolution, the industrial revolution, no doubt these are needed to catapult us out of a state of nature and out of the state of nature's number one problem for humanity, which is scarcity. So through this long process, we are creating for the first time in natural history a species is trying to extract itself from scarcity. And now we have the technological. and organizational and civilizational tools to do such, but now we need to return to nature at a higher level using our knowledge and our science and our technology, integrating that into a return to a harmonious and integrated relationship with the natural world. And literally

failure to do that is very much an existential threat to our species. And so I could see that this is a problem for intelligent species throughout the cosmos, but, you know, just to narrow the lens here, it's quite clear that this now has to happen. And it is through this process, this historical developmental, dialectical process that we return to, yeah, we have the at least the opportunity now to return to nature at a higher level in the same way that socialism and communism represent this return to community at a higher level. And, you know, we talk about this new superstructure. Well, what does the material? base of that new superstructure of that new way of relating to the natural world and to one another what does that material base look like well the transition looks like socialism and the the accomplishment of it would look like communism and so this these are not separate things that we're just trying to smash together to make sense of two things we prefer they actually imply each other and more than that they necessitate each other and we understand base in superstructure theory as these things co-evolve it's not like you implement

a brand new base and then magically over time a new superstructure emerges right no we understand that the base is ultimately um determinative but that the process is already going the spiral is already happening and this is now a mutually constitutive process and working on both fronts the material political change as well as the superstructural um change i think is is increasingly important awesome so i'm glad you brought you know you brought it back to the base superstructure at the end. I want to, I want to kind of dig down into that a little and make it a little more concrete. So I think that everything that you both have been saying has been very, like, philosophically and logically sound. I align with basically all of it, but, you know, I'm very

open that while I do call myself a Christian, I have extremely heterodox, like theological and God beliefs, right? I even sometimes, you know, I toyed for a little while with calling myself like a post-Christian. I think, Allison, in that episode, you mentioned you sometimes think of, you know, like post-Atheism. And I kind of in the same way, like, I thought of post-Christian but I don't think we're there yet. I don't think Christianity has been, like, overcome or superseded in the way that would make sense. So I still just call myself a Christian. And I think this gets to, like, the difference between spirituality and religion, which I would love to hear your thoughts on, where, like, a lot of this, you know, I already understand.

stand on like a spiritual level where it's how I relate to um you know my outlook on the universe and towards God and how I think about God how I engage with scripture but I wonder if we think that it is desirable or even possible to integrate that with like currently existing religious forms and when I say religion I'm focused more on like practice on the actual like belonging to a church engaging with scripture in a certain way practice seeing ritual and tradition and holidays and things like that. I think of religion as the kind of material participation in those forces. So can, you know, Red Star is focused on Christianity, but we don't have to just focus on Christianity. We can use any religion, you know,

we think is a good example, or we can talk about it kind of more abstractly. Do we think that it would be desirable to integrate this kind of outlook and ontology and worldview into, to already existing religions like Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Hinduism, Buddhism, et cetera. And, you know, if we can, should we? Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I'll try to answer on two levels, I think. So on the first level, like, can we? I think a lot of this already exists within those various Christian or religious traditions in interesting ways, right? Brett and I have both talked a lot about mysticism as a phenomenon, which you know, you can define mysticism a lot of ways. I would

refer to it as like the esoteric branches of various religions. And the mystic elements within Judaism, within Christianity, within Islam, certainly, all tend towards a kind of philosophical monism in a way that I think you can find some commonality with a lot of what we're talking about. So I think some of the seeds of that exist within certain traditions of various religions. And I think within certain strains of Hinduism and certainly within Buddhism, you already see some of that philosophical monism as well, like very strongly in those particular religions as well. I would say the Vedic religions generally have this really strong foundation that overlaps with a lot of what we're talking about. So I don't want to say that it's just a question of like injecting this into

existing religions, so much as it's a question of finding what exists within existing religions that works and beginning to tease that out and develop it. So I think you have these religious traditions that have that. Obviously, in all of the religions that I stated, for the practical life of most religious practitioners of that religion, those are not the predominant philosophical aspects of it, right? Even Buddhism, which gets taken up as this like very philosophically abstract tradition in the West, has this much more like concrete reality in a lot of Asia, in particular

Mahayana Buddhism has a lot of practice. that when Westerners first kind of encounter them, they often find them very alien to kind of the abstract, monistic ontology that they would associate with them. I think similarly, you know, I can talk about Judaism since that's where I'm coming from. You have the whole Kabbalistic tradition, which is kind of its own mess to unpack. But that's pretty separate from the daily lived reality of practicing Judaism for most Jews, right? Various Jewish groups will integrate Kabbalistic ideas to varying degrees, but when you're focused on just like the practical reality of complying with the mitzvotes in day-to-day life, you often lose sight

of that kind of grander, monistic, philosophical process. So I do think they're there already within existing religions. They need to be teased out in various ways, but I do think it's important to do so. And I do think it's possible to do so. One of the kind of core foundational assumptions that I think I make about religion is that religion does already transform over time and is already transforming all of the time as social conditions change. I come at, like, thinking about Judaism in particular from like a very reconstructionist lens, which is really based in this idea that the Jewish tradition has always been remaking itself, essentially. And I think you have a lot of contemporary thinkers with in Judaism. Benet Lapi stands out as like a really important

example who have basically said that, like, what's interesting about studying the history of the Jewish religion is that it's a history. of a religion that encounters what they call crashes. So, for example, the destruction of the Second Temple fundamentally destroys the way that Jewish religion is practiced. But in the wake of that destruction, there's a total transformation of the religion, which occurs through the redaction of the Mishina, recurs through the development of Talmud and the rabbinical tradition, such that Judaism as its practice today would be completely irreconizable to people who existed during the Second Temple period. And yet, we make this kind of

a claim to continuity within it. So I think religions are always in this transformational process to begin with. And when you're standing a long ways later from those shifts, like if we look back at rabbinic Judaism, we generally don't understand it as an intentional shift. We kind of understand the stories that the early sage is told about, oh, well, we're just writing down the oral tradition. We're not really innovating or adding anything new. But I think in reality, they certainly were. And I think in reality, there's always some level of intention. intentionality to these religious transitions that indicates that in moments of crisis, and I would certainly say we are living in a moment of many crises layered on top of each other, it is possible to apply some intentionality to the transformation of religious practice, to try to infuse it with new ideological meaning, and even new philosophical meaning in ways that can transform it. Personally, I think that's a worthwhile endeavor. I also think if you are irreligious and you have no interest in that, that's perfectly fine. It's not something you need to come to.

But I think for those of us who are religious, who are already engaged in religious practice and community, the ideological struggle offers that opportunity for the transformation of religious practice. And I do think it's something that we should do. Yeah. I love that. And the main thing you said that there, well, many things you said, but one of the things that's messed out to me is not only everything, you know, the dialectical worldview sees everything as process. Things aren't discrete, static things. There's no, and this is true in Buddhism, too, right? there's no fundamental essence of a thing that is permanent and abiding. Everything is in constant

change, and that change is propelled by contradiction, internal and external contradiction between different processes. And so if we understand that to be true, then we understand religion as that as well. And when we talk about transforming capitalism, and this speaks to Allison's other point about teasing out these elements, right, regardless of whatever tradition you're in, And you don't need to just go to a cave and rethink and reinvent the wheel and come up with the whole new religion and come down and hand it to people. No, just like you don't go into a hill and come up with a perfect utopia and then come down to the concrete world and say this is what we need to build. What does dialectics tell us that we have to do? We build out of the concrete conditions we're in.

We don't build socialism from ideas down. We build them from the material reality up. So the contradictions of capitalism is where we have to start. And so the contrary, if you're trying to do the same thing with a religious tradition, well, the contradictions of that tradition is where you need to start and you can operate within them. So this is the beautiful thing about this. Nobody is asking anybody to give up their tradition. Whatever tradition you're already embedded in, you can do this work in.

And that even includes atheism. And I'll get back to that as well. But, you know, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, these are all beautiful, gorgeous. traditions and they all have within them this these progressive elements politically socially progressive elements that we can tease out um they all have these contradictions within them and they all have these what we could call esoteric or mystical um practices philosophically monist as alison called them practices and now i want to make this point uh clear having already made that point i think i set that aside right we tease out what's actually existing to to to help the process of

evolution. We don't create things in our minds and try to impose them on reality. But the philosophical monism is interesting. So what is intellectual philosophical monism when it is viscerally experienced from first person subjectivity? We call that non-duality, right? And non-duality is roughly what we mean by enlightenment within the Buddhist tradition, is what the Christian mystics and mystics of other traditions have called becoming one with God, right? They're using their specific religious language to try to explain this experience they're having of monism, of the transcending of dualisms, and specifically the dualism between self and other, me and God, right, inside and outside. That is a, that is the actual experiential cashing out of an intellectual philosophical

position of monism, which we're talking about. And that's the beautiful thing about the sort of spirituality or religion that we're talking about is that it's theoretical and practical. There's a theory element and a practice element, as there must be in anything that is truly dialectical and transformative. And what does this new type of orientation look like compared to the old type? And, you know, and this old type is merely conceptual belief. It is premised in ego and separation. And that's where we get theocratic fascism. That's where we get dog. That's where we get dogmatism. That's where we get people saying that this is what God said we have to be but like and this is how they said we have to form our relationships. And if you're gay,

then that means you're not following God's commands. Obviously, that way of being religious is dead. It has to go. It is childish. It is infantile. But is that, like the atheist will claim, synonymous with the whole religious tradition? Absolutely not. That is the element of it that is regressive and has played out its part and needs to. be separated and everybody within their tradition can confront that element within their tradition better than an outsider can, right? If you're a Christian, you can confront that contradiction, that ego-separative, belief, dogma, you can confront that from within Christianity.

We don't need some Reddit atheists to come from the outside and tell us that this is what our whole religion is and this is why it's stupid, blah, blah, blah. That is absurd, and here's the funny part, atheists have this too. Atheists, you know, can solidify their position into an egoic, separate thing. I'm right. You're wrong. You don't understand enough about the world. You're stupid.

That's dogmatic. I believe these things. Here's my conceptual belief claim. And that belief claim is correct and yours is wrong. This is the dead end in all belief systems. So what's the other side? What's the progressive element? What about these traditions can be?

twofold. Experiential instead of belief-oriented. We are interested in experience, direct experience, rather than conceptual beliefs, because conceptual beliefs are products of compulsive thinking, of egoic separation, and of dogma. So what people are yearning for is not a new set of claims to believe, but a new way of interacting with the world, a new way of experiencing their life. That's real religion. And what's the other aspect? Is it transformative? And not only is it innerly transformative, which these spiritual practices are the technologies we can use to actively do the practice of inner transformation, but are they outwardly transformative? Does this religious orientation and these set of religious practices, this theory and practice dialectic within my religious tradition, does it also transform the outside world? because you can't transform the inner world without that leaking out into the outer,

and you can't transform the outer world without that having deep implications about who you are and the sort of being you are. And so real religion is experiential and transformative. It is not conceptual or egoic. And I think that is the core seed that we can play with. And Buddhism offers this interesting fault line because it can be practiced atheistically. So if you're an atheist and you're like, I would like to do this experiential and transformative spiritual work, yeah, Buddhism is right there for you. But also if you are a religious cultural Buddhist, it's also there for you as well.

And I do think there are other practices in other religious traditions, but they're a little bit more specific, right? If you're practicing Christian mysticism, it just will be, or Jewish mysticism or Islamic mysticism, like Sufism, it will be harder for an atheist to get into those. But there's also this other problem, this contradiction of bringing over Eastern traditions, atheizing them, scientizing them, psychologizing them, and neutering them in the process or turning them into something that is very conducive with the already existing ideology, which is what we don't want to do. So there's a bunch of speed bumps and errors there that can occur. But I just really wanted to stress this basic thing that philosophical monism is experienced, is non-duality, that is that is that is. is a visceral first-person subjective new way of experiencing reality and that the theory practice dialectic must be present in this new form of religion and that the core difference is it's experiential and transformative not conceptual and egoic and there's a lot we can explore there

but i think that's the the main claims i want to make can i ask a quick follow-up so you said you said like um you know in buddhism it might be easier for an atheist to engage in some of those practices I call myself a Christian atheist, so my immediate reaction is like, oh, we could do it in Christianity, too. It's no problem. But that's me, right? So do you, and I understand, and I get a lot of pushback from Christians and from atheists for that.

So while I do think that it is possible, because I do it, I recognize that you're probably right that it's, you know, there's a much greater stumbling block for like at least the Abrahamic faiths, for like someone who wants to practice. those faiths or those religions as an atheist. Do you think that's because in like Buddhist mysticism, do you think that it's because there are like structures in place that kind of allow for a more like what we might call atheistic engagement with those traditions?

Or do you think it's something to do more with like the philosophical underpinnings of that of Buddhism? I think that Buddhism has this incredibly practical, and especially when you get into like austere traditions like Zen Buddhism, where they just have no patience for conceptualization. And therefore, they have no patience for what your beliefs about the world are or your metaphysical speculations. They are always trying to bring you right back to direct experience in the here and now. And so that lack of metaphysical baggage, not to say there isn't metaphysical baggage in Buddhism, you can certainly find lots of it. And there's beautiful philosophy in Buddhism, absolutely. But there is an austerity. There's an austerity.

to the practice itself that you can engage in it. It's actually kind of a scientific exploration of subjectivity that does not require any extraneous beliefs. You can engage in these practices straightforwardly regardless of what you believe. And so atheists don't have to come in like, you know, to a religious tradition with a lot of that even linguistic baggage that can be off-putting to an atheist. You can get into the practice itself quite easily. But there's also a figure and I think this is a figure that might very well being in your lineage, Christian, that kind of balanced all of this incredibly well and was a big influence on me earlier on, which is Thomas Merton, right? He's a Christian who engaged

seriously with Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, and he integrated these practices of meditation into his Christian worldview and into his conception of Christian transformation in a beautiful way. So if there are people out there that are interested in that line of development, starting with Thomas Merton, I think, can be incredibly productive and gets to the heart of what you're saying, Christian. So, yeah, one more point I would like to make, too, very quickly about Allison's, you know, she mentioned this phrase of post-Atheism. And thinking about it in dialectical terms, you know, what does like the Enlightenment and materialism and atheism do? They come out of the Enlightenment. They come at a time when we're shifting from the feudal base of society towards through a mercantile,

and into a capitalist base. So you see the superstructure changing as the base is changing. And that gives rise to what we call the Enlightenment. That gives rise to scientific materialism and ultimately atheism. So what is a post-Atheism in dialectical terms? If atheism and materialism and science and the Enlightenment negated the old structures of religion that were dogmatic, that gave rise to rigid, suffocating social hierarchies, that were rooted in superstition, that gave rise to witch burnings and all forms of dastardly behavior,

it negated that by transcending it, then post-Atheism or the sort of spirituality we're talking about would be the negation of that negation. Having done its historical job, it is now time to see how can we return to the sacred at a higher level, having learned what we've learned through this interregnum. And I think that's what people are, you know, the modern person is really yearning for is, okay, I understand science. I understand religious superstition and dogma is bad. I'm kind of by default something like an agnostic atheist. I live my life in such a way that is pretty much an agnostic atheism. But I find something deeply lacking, right? It's like everything has been hollowed out and flattened. And there's still this deep thing within me that I want to experience awe. I want to experience. transformation. I want to have deeper engagement with my own life and with the natural world. And so there's still this yearning. And so I think post-Atheism,

which is broadly what we're pointing towards here, and this could even be encapsulated in post-Christianity within the Christian tradition, right? Is this negation of the negation and this evolutionary dialectical advance? And we're still kind of charting out and finding the vague outlines of what that looks like. This is the cutting edge, I think, of of human development um but i think that's what we're we're pointing to and all of these things

are deeply connected but i would love to hear your thoughts on thomas martin christian um yeah so i all i know i haven't um like read any works by thomas martin i know him um mostly for his like peace activism and his arguments for pacifism and like you said for for some engagement with um buddhism i think he visited the dalai lama in the 60s if i'm remembering right so um I don't, so I'm kind of weird. I didn't go through, most of my family was Roman Catholic. I know Merton was Catholic, but like I was not raised Catholic. My mom just kind of went off in her own like weird direction.

So while most of my family is Catholic, I was not raised in that tradition. So I did not start really learning about it until I was an adult, unfortunately. So I'm aware of Merton as like this important Christian figure in the same. 60s, but I haven't, like, done, like, a deep engagement. Cool, cool. Allison, did you want to add anything under that question, or if not, I have a follow-up? Yeah, I'll touch briefly on, I think, your original question about, like, is this easier in the Buddhist kind of tradition than in the Abrahamic traditions?

And I think I'll offer a slight defense of maybe it not being too hard within the Abrahamic traditions, which is mostly that I think, like, the distinction, and I really think Brett drew this out, is that it's easier to get at this in religious traditions that are practice-oriented over being belief-oriented, right? I think Brett really drove that home, and in my mind, that's what's really important. I was raised Christian, so I grew up with a very belief-oriented iteration of Christianity, where to be a member of the religion was essentially about affirming a certain set of beliefs. And there were implied ways you ought to live, but those are basically like negative obligations, right? You ought not engage in certain sinful forms of

living. That was kind of the main framing. But really what it came down to is you believe this thing and that's going to impact your actions, but the belief is really primary. And I don't think that's like universally true of the Abrahamic religions generally. And I don't even think it's true of Christianity generally, right? I think that's true of a very specific iteration of it. But in my mind, really what it comes down to is that any focus on practice is going to take you away from some of those difficulties with atheism. So I, you know, now work within the Jewish tradition. That is very much how I approach things. And even in like Jewish religious context, I am often finding myself praying alongside atheists, right, who would pretty unproblematically

describe themselves as atheists. And we will engage in religious ritual together. Last night for Arab Shabbat, I was at a protest where me and a bunch of other anti-Zionist Jews were facing down the Marines in Los Angeles and praying mourners Coddish for the victims of imperialism together, right? Like people there are not coming to that experience with, you know, the question of God being primary for them. It is the practice and the application of Jewish ritual in a specific political context that really is becoming central and meaningful in that context. So I think, you know, religion that becomes practice focused on the whole is something that people who may describe themselves as atheist or agnostic or just uninterested in the god question can engage with.

And it's why I think that practice is so important. For me, I mean, this is what I find very compelling about Judaism as a religious tradition. It is obviously, like, remarkably practice focused. If you're thinking about the mitz vote, you have these like 613 laws that are about doing and not doing in these very practical ways that often are like unbelievably detached from questions of theology, right? When I make my lunch and make a decision not to eat pork or shellfish, for example, it's not clear what that has to do with the existence of God, but it is this very, like, minute practical part of my life that is constantly infusing my life with religion in these various

ways. And so I think the practice focus makes the God question a little bit easier to get away from. And I think you do see this within, like, progressive Christianity as well. And I would say less so within Islam, although mystical strains of Islam complicate the idea of what God is in some interesting ways. But I do think in the Abrahamic traditions, where there is that emphasis on practice, you do find forms of religion that aren't necessarily so difficult to integrate with atheism. Great. Yeah, I align very strongly with all of that. I would just want to plug a book by David W. Congdon that came out recently called Who is a True Christian? And I think

it's a very good, it's very accessible, it's written for a popular audience, but it makes that argument very strongly that Christianity, you know, the way we define Christian should be focused more on practice than belief. Right. Okay. So, yeah, that's really great. And I should have even mentioned when we were talking about the atheism that, like, it's not super controversial in Judaism, too, you know, for someone to be an atheist and a Jew,

right? Like, that's very normal. And I think that Christianity does have, like, a much stronger focus on orthodoxy, which is definitely a stumbling block but it doesn't necessarily need to be right like we understand that religion like all social phenomena they change

they are subject to change they change they move they interact with other social phenomena and with the material base of society so do you one thing that occurred to me is that for most of

human history right these changes in the base in superstructure were not things that people were necessarily and I know that we touched on this earlier on like the I don't remember which one of you said it but you said I think Allison it was you that there's always some intentionality

in how we like iterate on our beliefs and on our traditions on our social structures our economic structures but it seems to me like Marxism represents a little bit of a flashpoint in human history where for the first time

people started to really think very seriously about like engineering of human society like hey this is how we got to this point and this is how we might steer the direction of future um like economic bases for example and i know that you know there to varying degrees there's this element of like deterministic marxism where some people would say like well we're not you know we're not necessarily creating socialism because we are trying to but it's it's inherent in the contradictions of capitalism that socialism will arise. I'm a little skeptical of like the hardline version of that idea because

capitalism and imperialism are still the dominant force in the world. So I don't think it's necessarily like a given that capitalism will give way to socialism and then communism. I think that it does require, you know, the active involvement and like determine it, not deterministic, but the um oh my god i'm blinking on the word i want to use but like it does require us to be deliberate in how we actually try to build that thing do you think um am i thinking about the question wrong am i being too like either or about it and uh how do you see that idea applying to this idea of like changing religions and new religious forms that go beyond the kind of egoic versions of religion that have been dominant in the west

So I think you're thinking about it exactly right. In my mind, Marxism does represent this true break. And this is like, you know, if you ever want to read something quite interesting, Ingalls wrote a eulogy for Marx's funeral, where he actually touches on some of this. And Ingalls basically says, like, just as Darwin was the person who allowed our species to become aware of the history of the development of species, Marx is the person who finally made us aware of understanding our own development and our development of society, right? There is a changing point.

So even if intentionality has always existed, that intentionality was always going to be hindered by lacking a scientific perspective on the development of history, the development of society generally. And so Marx, I think absolutely does make a fundamental break with everything that comes before. And I sound like so 20th and 19th century sciencey here, but like I really do defend this perspective that Marx is the person who discovers the laws that govern the development of human history. And given that, it is only once we have the ideas that Marx has given us that that intentionality can be guided and directed in a revolutionary direction and can actually be used in ways that are changing society, not just in like a blindly ideological manner, but an actually constructed man. manner, right? And so here, I am very impacted by like kind of the Maoist tradition within Marxism that insists that Marxism is a scientific approach to revolution and a scientific approach to understanding reality, and that it is the only way that we can actually advance beyond, you know, the existing realm of things. So I think Marxism does represent this break. And,

yeah, you know, the question of whether or not Marxism is deterministic about this, I think, is just kind of an unanswerable question, right? Like Marxism certainly argues that the seeds of socialism exist within capitalism, and that argument is in my mind actually the basis of Marxism, scientificity, right? It's the basis of rejecting utopianism, not just trying to impose something on the world, but to tease out what's already there. But obviously, I think, that requires actors and agents to engage with the world in a specific way. So there is this kind of determinism tension there. But I do think ultimately, we as subjects in the world and subjects within capitalist society experience some sense of agency, whether that's illusory or not, and can use that agency

combined with the theoretical perspectives of Marxism to try to engage in transformations that will change things in a revolutionary direction. And so in the context of religion, I think that means using Marxism to understand religion for what it is. So religion as a social technology and as an ideological terrain. Like, I really do think my understanding of religion comes very strongly from Marx's critique of religion, actually. And I am very sympathetic to that critique while also not wanting to use it as just like a pure non-dialatical negation of religion. But I think if we take that critique seriously, then we can ask ourselves, how is it that religion can be mobilized towards revolutionary ends? And I think you can see that in a lot of contexts. An example that I'll point to

very frequently is like the National Democratic Movement in the Philippines has organizations nested under it that specifically mobilize Catholic Filipinos under, you know, revolutionary politics as Catholics articulating a revolutionary Catholicism, essentially in favor of the National Democratic Movement more broadly and its aims. And so I think that's a good example of being able to, through this broader front that is the National Democratic Movement, create mobilization of religious communities in this very intentional way because you recognize that those communities are necessary for achieving the goals of social transformation. And that really only becomes possible when Marxism comes into play.

And that's why it wouldn't be sufficient to just be progressive and religious. You need the revolutionary Marxist component to it as well. Yeah, absolutely. And talking about the Marx quote on religion is a great doorway into this delineation that I think is important within Marxism between dogmatists and dialecticians, right? I always say dialectics is the cure to dogmatism. And a perfect example of using that quote dogmatically is to use it in an undialectical, static way, you know, Marxists that just quote monger, that use slogans as, as, you know, sledgehammers against an opponent, and just to pull that quote and to use it as a reason why religion is bad.

Okay, that's dogmatism, even though it's masquerading as Marxism. And that's, that's, that's sloganeering, that's just not really critically thinking. You're not engaging with things as process. You're seeing things as static. A dialectician is forced to think in the ways that I think we're trying to convey. This processual evolutionary way where you are constantly in engagement with an ever-changing social fabric that you must engage with through the framework of dialectical materialism and think deeply. And so that comes to a conclusion about religion that we're trying to talk about here that is antithetical to this simple-handed, just atheism forever, dismissive, smug, hubristic attitude.

So that's something that we can all start implementing in our own practice right now, as Marxists. Always keep that in mind. Allison said that, you know, she was sounding 19th century sciency. But the reason why we are pulling that forward is because that represents the progressive element at the time. That this is this really important work that Marx was doing that needed to. be done, but then we also realize as dialecticians that Marxism itself, like religion and like society, is a process. And so Marxism itself is not something that is statically contained

within 19th century German philosophy. It's a living, breathing process that we are actively developing. And to the question of determinism, and Allison basically said this, but just to reiterate the point, when you come from a dialectical, non-separative perspective, the determinism question kind of loses its thrust. Because the implicit implication of determinism is that there is a fundamental divide between people and our consciousness and structures in their development. And so, you know, Marxism is deterministic. What they're saying, what the implication is, is like, Oh, Marxism just thinks that, like, structures unfold in this way that is sort of, like, alienated from human activity, and that can give rise to the idea that people could just sit back and let history play out and that these structures in this abstract way will evolve in a certain direction. No, from a non-separative perspective, there is no structures versus us.

It's just one process, and we are a part of it. So, as Allison said, we are the vehicles through which, you know, history is going to manifest. And Marx himself didn't say that this was guaranteed to happen, that it's like some cold unfolding of the dominoes resulting in socialism and communism. It could very well result in what he called the ruin of the contending classes or what we might call civilizational collapse. And that's more real this century than ever before. Like this system, if it's allowed to continue to go on as is and is not revolutionarily transformed, will hit a fucking brick wall and result, if not a fucking brick wall and result, if not a. in full-on human extinction, than complete civilizational collapse, knocking us back centuries, if not millennia, in our technological and civilizational development.

So there is no separation there. We are the apparatus through which history manifests, and our conscious activity in the world is ultimately determinative about which way that world goes. And so that then becomes all of our existential responsibility to participate in this species defining moment of transformation. And finally, this feeds in perfectly with what Christian was saying, which is that historical materialism for the first time in history gives us conscious apprehension of the laws of social development. So now we understand that capitalism is an ephemeral mode of production that rose out of feudalism, which itself arose out of slave

society, that it had at the beginning, especially in contrast to feudalism, progressive elements, that resulted in the development of like medical science and technology and the incredibly robust growth of global wealth, but that now it is now playing a regressive, expired role in history. And if we allow the spoiled, if we keep drinking the spoiled milk, we're going to hurt ourselves. And it's time to get a new gallon of milk here. I'm sorry for the metaphor. But now it's time to move forward. And before that, the shift from slave societies into feudal ones or feudal societies into capitalist ones,

they were never apprehended consciously as laws of motion of history that could then be acted upon, right? And here's a great analogy, biological evolution. For all of human history, biological evolution via natural selection has been real. Those are the laws that have been determining the structure and evolution of organic life on this planet. But humans didn't know it. And so when humans didn't know it, it was just a force that was. opaque and was acting on us and every all other living forms but we had no apprehension and thus no control over it what happens after Darwin well all

the sudden humans now apprehend those laws and what does that mean we can responsibly intervene in the process we could also irresponsibly intervene in the process right you can imagine crisper gene editing only going to the rich and so they create super a class of super kids that are super athletic and smart and everybody all the poor and working people have to compete with them whatever there's there's and eugenics is a nasty disgusting um response to darwinian evolution and attempt to take that in a in a in a wholly regressive direction but it also gave rise to ecology it also gave rise to conservation it also helped us map the human genome and develop medical science so because of darwinian

because of darwin and other scientists in the biological realm pointing out the laws of biological evolution, humans could then take increasingly responsible control and make increasingly responsible interventions into that process that beforehand was just an opaque process acting on us we didn't understand. In the same exact way, Marx and Angles allowed us to see the laws of motion in the development of human societies, and that is why we're able to have this conversation today. They did for the evolution of human societies, what we call historical materialism, what Darwin did for biology and evolution via natural selection.

And we can think of the sciences more broadly, meteorology and climate science, right? Absolutely essential that we understand those things and that we make responsible interventions in them. Because if we did not understand climatology and we were living as we are now, we're just straight going for a seven degree, eight degree, ten degree warming of the planet, which is apocalyptic. But because we understand the laws of climatology, we understand. the cause and effect of the problem and we have a real shot at solving that problem. So that's what Marx did for the evolution of human societies. And I think everybody that degrades and dismisses that world historical discovery, I mean, it's just, it's laughable once you fully understand it.

Like, this is clearly, you know, more or less true. And now we have a responsibility to act on that knowledge. Beautifully said, and I think just to loop it back around to religion, I think what we're all three saying, I think we all agree on this, is that to do that, like, in the religious sphere, you have to look for the seeds of that newer form of religion that already exist and kind of cultivate them. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so I want to ask you both about, Allison, you mentioned the new Democratic movement in the Philippines, Right. And I also, this is not meant to be like a corrective, but just like to add on to that, I will say that they also have formations there for Protestant Christians. I've actually known some Christians in Protestant denominations who have like gone there to work with them. So it's not like just a Catholic thing, which I found very, very interesting. Because I think we, you know, liberation theology is especially associated with Catholicism. But there is a strong Protestant like through line of there especially. in, like, black churches, black Protestant churches.

So I want to ask about, like, that movement. We don't have to specifically talk about the Philippines. We can if you both want to. But I want to ask, like, concretely, how do these movements fit into, like, the right now current Marxist milieu and the organizing that we are doing as Marxists? So Red Star Ministry, I think, is kind of a... I don't want to say that it's completely novel, but I don't know of any, like, other organization that is, like, explicitly Marxist and explicitly religious, and we are trying to do more, like, organizing work, rather than just, like, philosophical or theological work.

So as we try to do that, I think we've been running into some challenges, which is, like, how do we do this? And the Philippines has been a really beautiful example to us, although, you know, the context. of an actual people's war is very different than the imperial core where we don't have anywhere near that advanced of a Marxist movement. So how would you both like to see organizations like Red Star or just like individual religious people who may be attracted to Marxism but have some stumbling blocks, you know, some Marxist organizations are like, well, we are atheistic, so you know, keep that, keep that shit out of here. What role do you think that we could play or should we play. Or maybe, you know, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should keep it separate.

Yeah, it's a good question. I think, you know, to gesture towards the question of the Philippines, you're right. You can't just copy paste what's happening in the Philippines to hear for many, many reasons, not the least of which that, like, the United States is not in the same kind of semi-feudal economy that the Philippines is. So strategies are going to vary. And obviously, when we talk about, like, the Christian organizations, especially within the broader national democratic front, this is organizations that exist with, than part of this broader three-part structure, right, of the National Democratic front, the CPP, and the NPA, right? You have this whole conglomerate that is part of this broader

national democratic movement and process. And so you can't just copy and paste that. I think that's very clear. One thing I will say is that I think it's worth noting in the context of the Philippines that the religious groups that are a part of the revolutionary struggle are external to the Communist Party itself, right? And I actually think that's a good thing. I think it is a good thing that they are nested under the broader National Democratic Front, because I do think within the Communist Party itself, you probably shouldn't have the kind of religious component necessarily, because I think that would ultimately become divisive within a party that ought to be approaching things outside of that context. So I do think we can learn from the nesting

of those religious organizations within the broader front. I think that is a useful thing to consider. But obviously, in the context of the United States, I don't think we have like very clear parallels to any of that. You know, left-wing religious organization in the U.S. often takes the form of, like, progressive liberalism, and obviously organizations that mobilize on those grounds will have varying levels of radicalism within them, right? Like, if you were to talk to Jewish Voice for Peace members, you would find a wide array of political ideologies of people who are within that organization, even though it operates

primarily as, like, a liberal pressure group, right? is largely the organizational model, I would say. And so I would say we don't have similar organizations now. And so if you are religious and you are sympathetic to communism and Marxism and you are trying to figure out, you know, what is it that I should be doing, I think there's two possible approaches. And I'm not going to be, you know, say that I know the answer. I think one is to go into those existing progressive groups,

try to find the advanced within them and to unify around more advanced principles. and have the impact that you can internally within them. That is an approach that I know many people are taking. And I think the other option is if you already know people who share that more advanced approach to things external to those groups, there is room for trying to start up your own organizations around this. And I think what's nice is if you're trying to start this kind of like revolutionary religious approach, you're not trying to found a party, you're not trying to found something super extensive.

You're trying to start something that is much more focused in its approach, I think that could be a, you know, good starting point. But it's tricky. I like struggle to point to any groups in the U.S., you know, what you all are doing really does kind of stand out Christian in that regard. I can't think of any groups that are really trying to take that revolutionary approach and a religious approach at the same time. There are sort of like these like neo-boondist movements in progressive Judaism

and anti-Zionist Judaism right now that draw on like socialist traditions in various ways, but also, like, it's hard to refer to boondism as, like, a religious movement at the same time. It's kind of a complicated tension there. So, you know, I can't really think of anyone else doing it at the moment. I will just say that there is, I don't know how active they are because I haven't seen, like, updates from them. But there is this group in, I believe they're based in New York City called the Nazarene Messianic Party, which I don't, you know, I don't know how, they call themselves a party. I don't know about that because I haven't, you know, I haven't met them in person, but we've corresponded.

That also has, like, this Christian communist and Marxist outlook, but, you know, they're, you know, they're a small group like Red Star. So, yeah. Brett, did you want to add anything on? Yeah, just quickly, just to add the idea, like, you know, instead of specific examples, like, if you were a Marxist in these religious traditions, You can, you have a responsibility, I think, to engage with your religious community as a member of that community while pushing, you know, liberatory frameworks or, you know, organizing religious communities to serve the people. That's another thing that you can do is within your religious community, you know, get it organized in such a way that it's going out into the public and meeting people's needs. But another thing that you can do when it comes to the ideological struggle within a religious tradition, because, of course, as a terrain of struggle, it will also. it will have ideological struggle within every religious community. And because of the liberal ideological hegemony in the United States and around the world, coming with Marxist politics

is already going to be something that people will be primed to be hostile to or to reject or to not understand. And I think within religious traditions, there's always and everywhere moral commitments that you can use to highlight the contradictions between the current society and people in your religious communities deeply felt moral commitments. You know, when we talk about Palestine, for example, it's also a discussion about imperialism and colonialism, how these structures of domination and oppression, regardless of what religious community you're a part of, they are directly hostile to hopefully everything you believe in, as a religious community.

The class society, the brutalities of it, the immiseration of so many people, the morally grotesque inequality that it produces, where some people, you know, have 17 homes and live lives of complete luxury and opulence, why other people are forced to sleep literally in the gutters of society, this should raise the moral hackles of anybody with sincere religious commitments. And you don't have to go in as a dogmatist and make everybody believe, you or be off-putting where you're just trying to force your ideas onto everybody. No, what do you do as a dilettician? You draw out these contradictions. You politically educate people. You uplift people. And in the process, you yourself are uplifted. This is not a situation where you go

into a community, even if it's your own community, and start dictating to people what reality is, you work with them where they are. And in the process of teaching and uplifting, you yourself, learn and are uplifted. This is the back. and forth dialectical process. But whether you're in a Buddhist community as I am, a Jewish community as Allison is, a Christian community as Christian is, or a Muslim community, an indigenous community, they all have already existing moral commitments that contrast sharply and violently with the whole structure of modern capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, socialism, which I just use as a hyphenated single term because they're all really different aspects of

the same process. And I think you can begin that. You can just raise people's moral consciousness through a pointing out of this system. Oh, yeah, this religious community, you know, Jewish voices for peace. We see what's happening in Palestine. We're morally repulsed by it. Yes, absolutely. Let's organize around that. And then let's also talk about the broader structures that make that genocide possible, right?

Because it's not just an acute one-off thing that happens and it's unfortunate that it happens. You'll go into like comment sections on this. People will be like, you know, humans are just so crazy. Why do they do this to each other? You know, this conflict's been going on for thousands and thousands of years. Correct that. Bring in structural analysis. Palestine, the genocide in Palestine is able to happen because imperialism and colonialism are structures in the world.

And if you want to stop this current genocide and prevent future ones, you cannot treat the symptoms of the disease. You have to strike at the root of the disease itself. You have to go, you have to actually solve the disease. and the structural disease is capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, colonialism. And make that argument in whatever sophisticated and subtle way you have to do to meet each and every single individual you're talking to where they're at, but make that argument. That's not easy.

It's going to require strategy and tactics. It's going to require being open and vulnerable and having uncomfortable conversations and learning yourself in the process. But that's your responsibility, and I think that's how we can operate as liberations. as Marxists in religious communities in a way that is not imposing anything that is not being hostile to people, but is taking the seeds of already existing moral commitments and showing them how they are already in conflict with the dominant structures of society and how a real thoroughgoing solution to those problems would require revolutionary transformation. And I think that's a great place to start. yeah i i um i love that i think that this is and this is by no means like limited to religious people but like western society right now and especially in the united states is so atomized people are so alienated from each other that i think it's very difficult for a lot of like leftists

i use that term in quotes but like the idea of like i know that a lot of people who reach out to red star they're not they don't go to any church because it's like, well, you know, I'm trans and there's no church within 500 miles of me that will not be like super transphobic or horrible or even put my life at risk, right? Or, you know, even if it's not like something direct like that, like, you know, I'm so out of step with the beliefs of the people and all the churches around me that I don't, I just don't go. I just can't. So like, we do have to find what communities we are able to, where we can engage with people on the level that Brett was just talking about, right? Like, we can't do this alone. Sometimes

those communities can be online, but I really do think we need to find and create in-person communities where these kinds of conversations can happen, where this kind of movement can kind of happen because it's, you know, it's not what we've been doing, the kind of like left book, 2016 to 2021-2-ish, like online activism. It's not moving the needle. You know? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the communities that we create, the real-life communities we create through organizing are prefigured elements for the societies we want to produce. Egalitarian structures of human beings coming together around shared values for a better world and struggling against systems of domination, oppression, and immiseration. So whether that is a religious community that you're already integrated in, or whether you have to just go to a straight-up Marxist organization and party,

That's totally great, probably both, if you possibly can. But in any case, do whatever you can to get into real-life community with other human beings. And I always say, like, when the shit hits the fan, as it seems destined to do in one way or another, it's not, as the individualist perspective, you know, assumes going to be food storage and land and ammunition and guns that are going to get you through it. It's going to be what it's always been since we were, since we were, you know, ancient humans on the, the savannas of Africa is going to be community. It's going to be your connections with people in real life that are going to actually be the final and, you know, most robust social safety net that we have in a collapsing society or in a society written by conflict or crisis. And so getting organized in your religious communities and political communities, having real life connections, people. people who have your back and whose back you have, that is actually the most robust protection

you could ask for to face anything that's coming in the next several years to decades. And so I really want people to internalize that. And that speaks to Christian's point of getting outside of these algorithmically structured corporate entities online all day where you're just frying your brain and your attention span and isolating yourself. That is counterproductive. They're a tool, and we can use social media and the internet as a tool, but when the tool starts using you, that's when you got to put the phone down. And that's easier said than done. I struggle with it, too. By all means, I'm not trying to act like I'm holier than now on this front.

It's a constant struggle, but it's something we really have to take deep, we have to take seriously and have deep responsibility about. Yeah, I think I'll build on that a little bit and just touch on this in like the Jewish context, because I don't know how true this is in other religious movements. But I do think in the U.S., like, there is this, like, very interesting political moment within Judaism right now and a very, like, open and lively discussion about, like, building new institutions outside of the traditional institutions of Judaism that reflect, like, progressive political values. And, you know, I think the most explicit call for this that I've read recently, Ariel Angel published an article in Jewish currents basically just like, here's the case for building new institutions. I'm a member of a synagogue that mostly does services online, but that is like this attempt at building like an anti-Zionist Jewish synagogue that's progressive at the same time. And there is just like this rebuilding of what does it mean to come together as Jews in religious contexts in ways that are not tied to support for genocide and Zionism and colonialism. And I think it's been really interesting to see how tied into the political moment that is, right? like during the encampments, I got the incredible opportunity to like participate in Shabbat and Havdala services in one of the encampments with other Jews who were there, putting themselves into like this very intense, risky political situation to stand up against genocide. We saw this not just at the encampments on this coast, but also at Columbia where these rituals got integrated into them. And I can tell you, there are communities that are spinning out of that. There are now, at least here in this city, there are Havdala, Shabbat, all.

of these different rituals being practiced in people's backyards and sort of informal context where maybe someone knows a rabbi who's sympathetic who shows up to do it, or maybe you just have 10 people and that's a minion and that's good enough. And this kind of moment of transformation in these building these new institutions, in my mind, presents an opportunity for especially, you know, for Jewish revolutionaries who are coming from the Marxist's perspective, to shape what those institutions are going to turn into, right? And to be able to, again, engage in the ideological struggle in this new, I think, kind of foundational stage of something new being born, another kind of moment of, again, what Benay Lappi calls like a crash for Judaism,

where there's this transformational period taking place. And I just think, yeah, if you're Jewish and a revolutionary, you should participate in that, right? You should be engaged in those struggles pushing forward what is the correct political perspective there. And there's just a lot of opportunity. Again, I don't know to what extent that similar change is happening in, like, Christianity, for example, but I do know in the context of Judaism, like, there's a very particular, and I think very important moment where intervention can be made right now. I'm so glad you brought up your synagogue. Just so by way of, like, full disclosure, I don't know if we want to, like, mention the name. My family and I are also members of that same synagogue because my wife is Jewish. So, like, we were members of that synagogue, I think, since 2018, well before the current

genocidal actions that Israel is taking in Gaza. So it's a community that's been around for a long time, but it actually, it's split over the issue of Zionism. It, you know, it called itself non-Zionist at first, and then even before October 7th, it had voted to be, to change non-Zionist to anti-Zionist. So I will say that like this specific community, which has grown enormously since I have been affiliated with them, they are not doing it like in reaction just to what is currently happening in Gaza. It's been, you know, they've been around since like 2015, something like that. I remember the first event that I went to before I joined was in 2017.

And it was like maybe 30 people crammed in this tiny little storefront church because they didn't even have their own space. and then just a couple years ago they were like packing enormous cathedrals and you know like in the online people all over the country so like i definitely see that that hunger in judaism and i will even say that like that organization has been influential on like how we conceived red star um as like trying to do that within christianity but i do think even though that organization has been around and has been growing since before more October 7th. I do think that like the current situation in Gaza and Israel and Palestine has like served as kind of a flashpoint where it's kind of making a lot of people ask these questions about their faith and like giving impetus to this, you know, call to restructure and to build new structures. Do you think that Christianity, for example, needs like something like that? Or do you think that maybe it's too big, there's too many denominational fractures that that maybe can't be replicated in the same way.

Yeah, so I'll answer, yes, I think it does, right? I have the interesting perspective of having been a member of two different religions in my life. So I come from a Christian background. I come from very much like an evangelical Baptist background, right? So kind of the forefront of right-wing Christianity in the United States. And one of the things that I know about that world, because I still know people who are involved in it, is that, and this really gets to what Brett gestured at, despite all of the evils in that world, and I would use that word to describe some of what comes out of that world.

There's also a lot of beauty and community and a strong moral core there that is really just being abandoned within the broader institutions there. And I do know people who exist within the world of like evangelical Christianity who dissent and are angry and don't understand why the religion they're a part of is tied to, I would say the American fascist political movement and are upset by that and at the same time are not willing to break. And, you know, in the context of like Judaism right now, we talk about this idea of like, as Jews, we have this special responsibility to really dissent right now because of the way that a genocide is being carried out in our name. But that's true of American

Christians too, right? Absolutely. What is being done? Yeah, there is a similar level of complicity, not just as Americans, but also, again, because of the extent to which, like, a particular horrific form of, like, dispensationalist in times theology within the U.S. has formed a foundational basis for Christian support for Zionism. And so I think, you know, if you're, like, a progressive Christian, I think you have to kind of wrestle with the same thing that progressive anti-Zionist Jews are wrestling with, which is, yeah, there is a genocide also being committed in your name. It's a little more complicated, the layering.

But a similar thing is happening. And I think, yeah, it's really necessary for you to start to create those fractures and start to question, how do we build a movement and even new institutions that don't just step back and say, oh, well, we don't care about this. We're non-interventionist about this, but actually enter these things on the side of justice and on the side of liberation. I think that becomes really necessary. And again, there are Christians who organize from Palestine. That's not a thing that, like, I'm going to pretend does it exist? But I do think, you know, I would argue that Christianity ought to learn from kind of this moment of crisis within progressive Judaism as well, because I do think the parallels are there. Yeah, I really love what you said there about because, you know, you see that the genocide in Palestine, clearly because of the nature of Zionism implicates all of Judaism, right, this attempt to tie this beautiful culture and history and religion to this grotesque political, settler, colonial project of extermination.

And so there's an obvious and direct implication, but yes, much of the support for Zionism in the U.S. actually comes from Christian, you know, Christian reactionaries and Christian Zionists, which directly implicates the entire Christian community in that way. So I think that's a really important point. And just building off of that, just one point I always like to make it. I know Allison likes to make this point, too, all of these religions, and this is certainly true in Buddhism and the way it manifests in the West, they can be retreats. and escapes from politics, right? There's a way in which these things can serve as selves, going back to the Marx quote, for engagement, escaping from having to engage with the messy reality of the world.

And you can see in spiritual communities that are centered around meditation communities, it's often seen as like a sign of spiritual development that you are unconcerned and unmudied by the dirty, messy realities of politics. But that's cowardice. That's escapism. That is a failure to live up to the responsibilities implicit in that religious tradition and all of these religious traditions.

So that's, I think, something we also have to agitate against that religion and the religious impulse is not separate from social and political development. And that actually, these are not places you go to retreat from the world. they're places you go to rejuvenate your energy to fight for a better world and that they are also always implicated in that struggle. And so that's another, I think, a consequence of non-separation is that these are not things where you just individually retreat into a sort of personal quietism to find your own zen and your own peace. You know, these are mechanisms by which you rejuvenate yourself in community,

you transform yourself and deepen yourself so that you're more able to go out in the world and implement your values. Yeah, I think, Brett, what you just talked about is like a big stumbling block for why I don't think we're seeing this very much in like the progressive Christian sphere because like to take Zionism as one example or transphobia as another one, which is like another huge like black mark on the current Christianity in the West, there are, there exists these like liberal progressive denominations, right? And they can be like, well, we're not Zionists and we're not transphobic.

So, like, it's not really a problem within Christianity. It's just a problem within those denominations. So we as mainline, you know, United Church of Christ Christians or, like, Episcopal Christians, we don't have to, like, really reckon with that. We, you know, we are the alternative structures. And in reality, they might exist, but they're not challenging, like, the dominance of the reactionary and fascist elements of Christianity. They're kind of just providing this, like, largely apolitical alternative to it. They would probably argue with the, like, apolitical designation that I just gave them, but I will stand by that.

So, like, how do you see, I guess, so for Christianity, for example, can or should Zionism be one of the issues that we use to, I don't want to use the word split, although Protestant denies. nominations love to split. They're like Marxists in that regard. But like can can or should Zionism be that issue or should that be something that maybe Christians kind of like like we've done enough damage and just stay away from it? Yeah, I mean, I think Zionism should be one of them. You know, if I were trying to think about this in the Christian context, I think there are a couple issues. One, I think broadly like, especially if you are within Protestantism, right? Because it gets complicated when you're talking about beyond the scope of Protestantism. And it's worth noting, like, Catholicism has the kind of social movements aspect of it that was never really

developed or reflected in Protestantism on the same kind of centralized manners. But speaking in Protestantism, I think, like, Protestant Christianity on the whole is fairly implicit in, you know, American nationalism to various degrees. And I think even like, you know, I used to go to like an Episcopalian parish, really appreciate a lot of things about it. But the American flag was front and center, and prayers for the president were still a part of the surface, right? Like, even in those kind of mainstream Protestant liberal denominations, you have that kind of tacit nationalism that is still present. And I think within the non-progressive parts of Protestantism, that is like a fervent Christian nationalism these days. So I think that should be one of the fracturing points.

And then, you know, maybe it's just because it's on my mind. But I also think in addition to that, immigration really ought to be a really big one. because I think, you know, Christians form the base of really a lot of the anti-immigrant politics in the United States, while also massive populations of the immigrants being deported are also Christians, right? In this kind of horrific relationship that is being set up there. And so I think immigration is really important. And I also think, you know, Christianity and really I think this is the Abrahamic traditions on the whole, have this like profound moral core about one's relationship to the stranger and the foreman.

foreigner, right, that are really built into them and become really foundational. Again, even in Judaism, like, that is one of the most common refrains about your obligations is to strangers and to foreigners who live among you. And so I think really hitting that would be valuable for progressive Christians, because again, I think right-wing Christians are so implicated in the anti-immigrant politics of our time. And there's so much in the religious tradition about how you treat a stranger. That could be really profound there. So I do think Zionism should be one of them. I think Christian- nationalism broadly, and then immigration. Those are kind of the three points I would really be hitting on for all three of them. Cool. That's, yeah, I agree with that big time. And those are obviously things that are very, you know, tensions that are very inflamed right now in U.S. politics. One other really quick thing, this kind of jumps back a little. It fits more in something we were talking about about 15, 20 minutes ago.

But like to take it back really quick to the Philippines in the United Front, one of the aspects, of the united front and uh this applies to to one degree or another to the the religious groups that organized there is that you know the purpose is that they are supposed to be kind of under the leadership and this can take multiple forms but they're supposed to be under the leadership of a communist party um i would argue that in the united states we don't have a communist party right now i know we have parties that call themselves like a communist party but like in like the leninous sense there's no vanguard right now so um do you do you guys see like uh maybe the genesis of that do you think i'm off base and kind of saying that we don't have that

right now and if if i am correct that like that doesn't exist right now how can these kinds of like superstructural formations uh how can they maintain a revolutionary orientation without the direction of a communist party you say we don't have an american vanguard party, but the American Communist Party is right there, guys. Come on. No, Alison, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I know we've talked about this quite a bit. Yeah, okay. Wow, this is the question in my mind. This is really the one that matters. So, yeah, I'll start with some kind of analysis. I don't think we have a communist party. I don't think we have anything worthy of calling itself vanguard in the United States. I think we have

a lot of people quite sincerely and urgently trying to build that, but I don't think it exists. And that poses this, like, fundamental problem. I think you're correct Christian for the whole conversation that we're having here, right? Because I think you make a really good point. In the national democratic front, that is under the leadership of the party. And so you have politics coming from, you know, emanating forth from the party and then being a guiding principle for the front on the whole. And there's just no parallel for that here. So I do think that that imposes like a fundamental limit on the kind of organizing.

that we're talking about and does mean that that type of organizing could be really prone to, like, straying from the revolutionary path. But I don't think that's unique to this type of organizing. Unfortunately, I think that's true of essentially all organizing in the United States without a party, right? I think that becomes true of labor organizing, tenant organizing, self-defense organizing. You know, it's funny. Like, people make fun of the Marxist unity group people in DSA, who I would not say I agree with on a ton, But there's this thing that I always hear the Marxist unity group people say, which is like, without a party, we have nothing. And there's like a level of truth to that, I think.

That is relatively hard to confront. The party in the Leninist conception is really the nucleus from which politics can exist at all, right? It is the basis on which ideological struggle can really be done in an intentional manner in relation to broader movements. And it's the way that we're able to transcend organizing that exists. just at the level of economism and raises a certain level of consciousness, but not yet a revolutionary consciousness. And I think, yeah, you're right. That imposes a limit on the kind of religious organizing that we're talking about, too. So I think, in my mind, that doesn't mean that all other forms of organizing in the U.S. are not relevant or are not worth engaging in. One of the real

tricky things is that I think a lot of people have been tempted to say, okay, so there's no party, so we shouldn't do any other form of organizing. Let's go build that party. And they go and they write a nice statement of principles, they document their beliefs, and they say, cool, we have a party now, but they don't have any mass base or any relationship or connection to the masses at all. Likewise, there's a lot of organizations that really sweat and toil building an incredible mass base and connection to the masses, but they never stop and develop the political line on top of it. They never solidify what the actual ideological and political basis is. And both of those are kind of like two sides of the same coin, I think. One is kind of falls into a sort of

do-somethingism, which is good because it develops social practice and it develops ideas through practice in a way that, you know, Maoism would kind of point to as being where knowledge comes from. But it misses the second step of the Maoist knowledge formulation, which is the reflective synthesizing of actual theory and actual politics and ideology based on those practices. And I don't know if I have the solution, right? Like it's really hard. In my time, I've been involved in groups that have that base but don't have that politics, and then groups that have the politics but don't have any base. And somehow a connection between those two things needs to happen here.

But I don't think we should just like abandon all these other forms of organizing, you know, just because we don't have a party. Again, how many small sects have tried to do that and basically ended up being a bunch of weirdos alienated from the masses? That's not a solution either. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I agree with every syllable of that. Like, that is there's nothing more to add than like that is the task of our time.

Like, that is clearly what is needed. And it's hard to imagine from here how we get there, given the hyper individualism, the fragmentation, the algorithmic silos on the left across the country. Yeah, the fragmentation of society by the Internet and is really an aspect of it. Yeah, the already existing cultural commitment to individualism. the fact that if anything were to arise on the left, that could be moving in that direction, there would be a chorus of people also on the left, tearing it down, pointing out its imperfections. Sometimes I think it's like, these things are forged through necessary battles. And until like something imposes itself so catastrophically upon us,

there's enough luxury and enough comfort for people that they're the impetus, that would drive forward that level of discipline and urgency doesn't seem to be there. So that's not to black pill anybody. As Allison says, there are many formations that are happening, and we all have a responsibility to get out and organize, because that's the only way that we're going to be able to work and build in the direction of a Vanguard party. But it really is the huge question mark hanging over the revolutionary anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist left in the Imperial Corps in particular.

And it is the problem that our generation has to rise and fulfill or not. And I'm not sure how we get there, but it is desperately, desperately needed. Because that's the only way, really, that as I always say on Red Menace and Rev. Left, that we can finally go on the offensive instead of constantly being on the defensive, which is the posture we've had for my entire life. Yeah, I really agree. I love that you brought up the defensive versus offensive. That's how I've been increasingly thinking about.

it is that like we need to find ways to go on the offensive and yeah I don't I think anybody claiming that they just know the answer right now is immediately suspect but we do have to we do have to keep throwing things at the wall at least for now um so we are coming up on two hours um I could keep going but I think we you know we said we're this is around when we kind of have to wind down um I want to ask you both as like this is something I'm trying to end all of our interviews with this is going to be like a thing from now on with this podcast. Do you have either what are you reading right now that you find interesting and want to just talk about or do you,

is there like something that you want to like one book or work that you want to just recommend to people that kind of touches on maybe some of what we've been having in this conversation or just, you know, in general. Yeah, this is a really good question. I was just thinking about this. I posted on my Facebook. You probably saw it Christian. continuity and rupture by Joshua Mufo and Paul is a book that's been on my mind a lot recently.

I think, you know, this is this book that came from this kind of like wave of Maoist organizing that happened in Canada and the U.S. And, you know, in the time got treated as this very partisan text in these like very, I think, kind of silly, like intramowist divides. But wow, do I think that book is valuable? I think that book presents a very clear case for the size. scientificity of Marxism, which we've talked about here. And I think it also presents a very clear case for the mass line. And there's this core idea in the book of like, you know, most of our organizers are petty bourgeois. We want to organize the proletariat. There seems to be a

contradiction there. How do we resolve that contradiction? And I, you know, did a little reading group with some people recently. And that contradiction really landed with people. They really were able to see, oh, I see that in the organizing work that I've done. And so I think that's a text that is really valuable. I would wish more study groups are kind of done on it with organizers because I think it really gets into some stuff that connects if you have ever done any kind of organizational work. So I'm just going to shout that out because I think I don't hear people talk about that text so much anymore, but I think it's really important. Oh yeah, we could like now I just want to get into a whole

conversation about that book. That book, I have a friend who said that that book like convinced them of Maoism, right? Like it is this very powerful book. I have also started integrating like just the idea of continuity and rupture into how I think about how religions change. You know, you could bring that up thinking about the different shifts that have happened in Christianity overall. Great book. Definitely read it. Brett, what about you? Yeah, that book is amazing and it really was transformative and really helped solidify in my mind the scientific aspect of Marxism. It made me much more comfortable defending it. So, you know, I really highly recommend that. You mentioned earlier our episode

on Dialectics of Nature. We just read Frederick Engels, which is the most recent thing I've read, highly recommend. If not the book, because the book is kind of difficult to get through sometimes, you can check out that episode. I'm actually in the process of writing a book for Iskra books, and so I've been read. Do you want to tell us about it? Sure, yeah, I've been reading a lot less, you know, which is a tradeoff I have to do. But yeah, the book is tent to called something like a letter to young revolutionaries, and the goal of it is to impress upon especially young people, but revolutionaries of any age, a certain orientation to life. It draws on existentialist philosophy, it draws on Buddhist philosophy, but it's centered around

political commitment and rejecting the dominant forms that society presents to you as meaningful lives, chasing wealth, success, narcissistic ego inflation, and highlights the spiritual and political aspects of committing your life to a cause bigger than your own self, and of focusing on an other orientation instead of a self-orientation in life. And it also delves into virtue ethics, et cetera. Really, in a lot of ways, it ties together some of the core strains that we talked about in this episode, about that integration between a revolutionary principle politic and the outer transformation it implies as well as the spiritual depth and inner transformation needed to take that politic to the next level. So that's what I'm working on now. And what I would

recommend to people instead of a book necessarily, because that book might not come about until, I mean, this winter or next spring, is I would challenge people to begin to take seriously control over their own attention, right? Take seriously the importance of stillness. and silence in an increasingly dazzling, dopamine-rich, distractive, algorithmically constructed society. And the three main ways that you can do that is to begin to create your own very simple meditation practice. Even something like 10 minutes every morning

can really get you on a firm footing of stillness and silence and bring you into the present moment. Deep reading is incredibly, important to keep your ability to focus and concentrate over long periods of time, and as well as the imagination that you construct in your head when you read a book and you create the scenes in your head, I think that really is an increasingly rare skill that things like AI chatbots and constant scrolling is just decimating, and also spending time alone in nature is a really, I think, a spiritual practice in and of itself. It gets you outside of the social confines of having

to play a social role, coworker, father, partner, you know, spouse, whatever, and allows you to let the rigidity of those social roles fall away for a little bit and get in tune with the natural rhythms of the natural earth. And what has arisen for me in that context when I'm allowed to do that when I have time to do that is just a deep, profound love for the natural world that rejuvenates my fight and my energy to fight to protect and to live more harmoniously myself with the natural order. Nature really is a refuge in and of itself. And when you have Spinoza's ideas of the imminence of God in the natural world, it even adds another dimension of experiential richness that I highly recommend. So protect your attention, deep read, create a meditation practice,

spend time alone in nature. And I think those things are rejuvenating and re-energizing things that you can do in your life that better equipped you to go out and bring the fight to the outside world. in other words touch grass touch grass all right thank you both so much for being on here with me it's really been great talking to you guys I really appreciate it

you too thank you so much for out of us thanks again to Brett and Allison for being on here with me the Red Star podcast is going to be taking a short hiatus probably just for the month of August the school year is about to start which means I'm going to be busy while I figure out what I'm going to be teaching

this year. For those who don't know, I am a public school teacher, and I don't really find out what I'll be teaching until the beginning of the year. So I'll be busy for the next few weeks, and then we'll get back to it in the fall. We'll have some good interviews and discussions and things like that for you. So look for a new episode in September. The Red Star Ministry official podcast theme song is Desert Rats by Dissociative Realism. As always, check them out on Bandcamp. And we will see you soon. As we say, glory to God, and power to the people.