Rev Left Radio - The Imperialist Chain, Decolonization, and The Mass Line

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

In this collaboration with Faith and Capital, Breht is interviewed on a wide range of subjects, including whether or not there is a contradiction between spirituality and Marxist materialism, the importance of decolonization in the fight for communism, marxism-leninism-maoism, the wages and pathology of whiteness, the material benefits of imperialism for the labor aristocracy, the importance of love on the revolutionary left, and much, much more! Follow Faith and Capital on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/FaithAndCapital Support Faith and Capital here: https://www.patreon.com/faithandcapital Outro Music: "Off You" by Big Thief (The Breeders) ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I'm presenting an interview I did as the guest with Chase from Faith and Capital, a great leftist podcast that also comes from a Christian direction and just an overall really great person, great interviewer. So in this episode, it'll be sort of him lobbying questions my way, me and answering the questions and then him giving his thoughts throughout. So it's sort of a back and forth, but I'm playing a different role than usual on Rev Left. But I really enjoyed this conversation.

We covered a lot of really interesting stuff from the mass line to Buddhism, to the role of decolonization and the struggle for communism and so much more. Great. He came up with all the questions. They're absolutely wonderful. And I really think people will get a lot out of this conversation. And if you like it, definitely check out and support of faith in capital. I think one of the roles of Rev. Left, having stumbled in to having a somewhat relatively sizable voice on the Marxist left in the media sphere, is to help uplift these other voices.

And we've always done that at Rev.F from day one. And we'll continue to do that. And Faith in Capital is a resource and a show that definitely deserves that bump. So if you like this conversation, go over and support their work over there. But without further ado, let's get into this wonderful conversation with Chase from Faith in Capital. on Marxism, Maoism, the mass line, decolonization, and so much more. Enjoy. All right, so Brett, a lot of folks today still believe materialist politics and ideologies like Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, are fundamentally incompatible, right, with any kind of spiritual or religious practice or orientation. But from what I can see, like, you are a deeply spiritual person yourself, right? You're a practicing Buddhist. And I really found your recent episode on Zen Buddhism.

social transformation to be really beautiful and informative. But you're also a historical materialist. So how does your Buddhist orientation inform your political analysis and practice? And how does your revolutionary communism shape your spirituality? And then finally, would you say that those two, this kind of spiritual and more materialist orientation and practice, do they form a non-intaginistic or an antagonistic? contradiction so great question one I get quite a bit one way I begin this conversation is to talk about frameworks for certain issues and problems so if if I think a lot of this comes from category mistakes like there has to be a contradiction between Marxism and this spirituality or religion because

Marxism is materialist and it's rooted in the here and now and the reality of like economic production and you're talking about you know things that aren't relevant to that but I'm like you're using the wrong framework. When it comes to understanding economics and politics, we use a political framework. When it comes to understanding existential questions, Marxism doesn't have anything to say about existential questions, about universal love and compassion, about dealing with your own emotions and your interior life, right? It's a political project aimed at the outward and the exterior. So not making that category mistake and understanding there are different frameworks for different problems in life is a good place to start. You know, and I,

I think that will clear up some initial confusion. As for the question about, and I'll get to the other parts, but the antagonistic or non-antagonistic contradiction, my position is that there need not necessarily be a contradiction at all. Sometimes there might, depending on, I guess, what spiritual or religious form one is interested in. It might have some contradiction with Marxism as an interpretive approach and a political approach. But the way I see it is that my spiritual engagement, my attempt to transform myself on the interior is actually in dialectical engagement with my attempt and my comrades' attempts and people's attempts around the world and through history to transform the social, the political, the economic. I think that the transformation that we want to see in the world on all fronts requires not just, the outward political, social, and economic transformation, though that is fundamental. But it also, I think, requires an evolution of the human being overall, and these spiritual

practices, whatever tradition you're talking about, have the capacity to let you engage with that interior transformation in a meaningful way that then can equip you to better address the exterior, the political, et cetera. So for me, Marxism, it imposes. and that word might come off a little harsh, but whatever synonym you'd like to use, a sort of social and political obligation. I'm conscious of myself as a historical being. I'm conscious of myself as a member of a certain class,

a working class, and I'm conscious of my obligation and duty to my fellow human beings to work towards liberation and social political economic transformation for a world in which oppressors don't exist, a world in which imperialism doesn't exist, colonization, the domination of one group of people over another, I want to work towards

that world and I understand human beings' freedom is tied up in that struggle. But Buddhism imposes on me a sort of ethical, emotional, and transpersonal obligation, or at least a clarity that makes me act differently in the world. And so those two things to me can be deeply united. The insights that I gained through my Buddhist practice, it makes me a better educator, a better communicator, a better father, a better friend, a better human being all around. I'm less susceptible, not wholly, by no means am I claiming any radical spiritual achievement, but through over a decade of spiritual work, I'm less prone to fits of egoism,

I'm more aware of when I'm overthinking about myself. My heart often spills over spontaneously with like genuine, deep love for other human, beings, which is a direct result of my spiritual practices. And that deep sense of love makes injustice even less tolerable than before. Another human being across the world, different skin, different culture, different language, I still see fundamentally, at least an aspect of myself in them, and I see them in myself. And so I can't turn away from that suffering. Now, that requires, if you want to actively solve that problem, outward political struggle. You can't just be content with like, wow, it feels my heart hurts when that person

suffers. I wish they didn't. It has that other dimension to it as well. And I think a lot of people in spiritual circles can miss that. They can see politics as too messy as sort of below them and that their entire job is simply to work on themselves, often in isolation from the messy, political, social, and economic world. I think that's a mistake made on the spiritual end. And then on the Marxist end, or just the left end or the political end more broadly, there is this suspicion or this dismissal of any need to do interior transformation or work on themselves. And so what we get is often pathological organizations, narcissists being able to work their way into organizations. Historically, we see leaders that don't have the best interest of other people in heart, the same old traumatized, greedy, egoic people filling roles. attempting to make a new world. And I think that provides not a complete prohibition, but a limit

on what the political struggle can possibly obtain. So these things are not in contradiction, antagonistic or otherwise. I think if done properly, they can be dialectical, sort of dialectical unity that bolsters both ends of that attempted transformation. And then it's just a side note quickly, because I know you're coming from a Christian perspective, although I'm in the Buddhist tradition, I really do get a lot of inspiration from other traditions and the Christian mystical tradition and just the Christian tradition in general has plenty to offer in way of not only political actors, liberation theology, reformers, revolutionaries all throughout history, but also mystics like St. Francis, for example, and his spiritual, mystical sort of admiration that I have

for him and his deep connection to ecology, right? That's informative for me. I'm on a spiritual path looking to another tradition and I see somebody like St. Francis. I see a brother on a similar path. And then Jesus and the promise of universal compassion is also deeply influential to me. I've felt deep loving universal compassion through my Buddhist practices. And that's transformed my view of Jesus as a monumental spiritual figure and commandments or dictates to love thy neighbor as thyself, it makes a lot more sense in a spiritual context in which the self is either being radically expanded to include more or negated so that there's a unity that follows from that. And so in that sense, Christianity has also played a really inspirational role in not only my

spiritual practice, but my politics. Yeah, that's really interesting. I appreciate you sharing that. A few points that you shared that I thought that kind of stuck out to me was first, is that you name that whether you're talking about your Marxism or your Buddhism, these are different kind of frameworks. And I've heard another way of saying it is basically that they're asking different kinds of questions. You know, theology, social or revolutionary science, philosophy, these are different practices that, again, are approaching different or even the same subjects with fundamentally different questions, I think. And Paul Tillick was really influential for me in, I think, undergrad, when I read his dynamics of faith, and he really gets at this need to understand that, listen, asking scientific questions or philosophical questions or theological questions, these are different kinds of questions, and we don't need to kind of make them all the exact same question. I think that was really helpful. And I hear that a little bit coming out from what you were saying. Another thing I really appreciated was your emphasis on

this like contradictory but dialectical unity between say the internal and the external, right? The social, the political and the personal, the spiritual and the material, right? They're not, they're not separated. You can't rip them apart. They're incredibly informative for one and the other. And yet they're also imbued, right? You can't really, you can't really fully separate. them. And two thinkers and two particular of their works that popped in my mind was, I remember reading Howard Thurman, the creative encounter. I don't think it's one of his more popular ones, but African-American theologian, who obviously was running in the black radical tradition in the mid-20th century, the creative encounter engages this question of the inseparability

and the interladenness between the personal and the communal. And then another person that pops in my mind is Dorothy Sol, who, or I don't know German, it could be like Darte Zerla, but Dorothy Soul and she wrote a book called The Silent Cry. And it's an incredibly, it's deeply entrenched in mysticism, but she's known for her feminist and liberation theology as well. So I think there's, there's a great witness of people who have said, listen, if we want to transform the world materially, we have to engage ourselves like deeply and meaningfully as persons, even in a spiritual sense and then vice versa right we're not interested in just kind of thinking of ourselves as these isolated autonomous individuals disconnected from everyone else and everything else but really

to understand ourselves as inseparable and you know in relation to all things just really quickly we just did an episode on a spinoza right the the famous 17th century jewish philosopher who really is a huge thinker in this realm philosophically of like breaking down the Cartesian dualism between mind and body as two separate things and pointing to the cosmos as a single substance with different attributes and the body and the mind in a Spinoza's framework come together and they're not separable. And so, you know, whether you tack it from the Buddhist, the mystical, the Marxist or the Spinozist or I'm sure there's a bunch of other different frameworks by which you get,

you're sort of getting at a very similar thing. and Cartesian dualism, this division between the body and the mind, it's taken for granted. It's an assumption in our culture and capitalism praise on it in the sense that we are autonomous, separate individuals, sort of looking out of the windows of our eyes at a world that is fundamentally not us. And I think a whole bunch of pathologies and suffering result from that confusion. Absolutely. And along those lines, Kelly Brown Douglas wrote a really influential, for me in my journey as well called what's faith got to do with it black bodies christian souls and that is another book i think that gets at what you're saying is this uh this dualism between

the mind and um the body um the spirit and the flesh and that has deeply both spiritual but very material and political consequences as well so i appreciate you sharing that another thing you um you pointed out there before we i know we got a lot a lot to have ground to cover actually majority of this conversation is going to be on communism, but I'll just stay here for a second. You also mentioned, I think you used the words development, and I've been thinking about how Maoism has this great emphasis on both like personal and kind of organizational, but also in terms of like analysis or even like waging in people's war, there's a sense of the need for development and stages. And I think that's really

key, I think, for myself and to think about how who we are as spiritual beings, who we are as a community, the world that we want to pursue and realize, right, these political struggles, that these things take development. They're not slogans or like, say, spiritual practices, right, that we can just kind of start doing today and end up there tomorrow. But there's this season or you know a plurality of seasons ahead of us and although we do need

you know good analysis as to what perhaps stage or season we are in that there's the sense of of this need and necessity of developing both spiritually or politically I didn't know if you had any more thoughts on that

yeah no I think that's what's incredibly well said this development this creative unfolding it's not a linear march in one direction. You can think of it more as like a spiral, and the development happens through the prism of contradiction. And, you know, dialectics, Marxists, we think of that contradiction in the social external sphere, but spiritually there's contradictions within the quote-unquote self that need to be worked out. And so I think applying that framework to intertransformation is just as bountiful in what it can provide as applying it to the external and the political. So, yeah,

development through the prism of contradiction is a really interesting concept on both fronts. Yeah, it's weird because I only hear that word in terms of like the economic sense, right? And it's usually like used by capitalists. But I wonder if there's something a little more meaningful, a little more actually life affirming than that crude capitalist economic sense of development. Anyways, so let's go ahead and move on. The rest of the conversation, as I said, is really kind of formed around kind of helping us understand a little more of. of communism, we've been diving into that conversation. So to get us rolling, what's the, what's the relation between the historical struggle for

communism and the decolonization of the world? So I think these things are inseparable. It's a singular historical struggle, if you will, because I see decolonization as sort of necessary prerequisite to the development of communism. You know, colonization in itself is the occupation, the oppression, the domination of one over the other, and communism is antithetical to that very notion. And so I think, and this is often not thought of or dismissed by certain leftist thinkers on the left in the imperial core for various reasons we'll get into throughout this conversation. But something I've come to recently that really helped. helps me think through the importance of decolonization as synonymous with the move towards

communism, is that capitalism, fascism, imperialism, and colonialism are all one, they can be seen as sort of one system historically, or like a four-headed dog, if you will. They are different faces of a same historical process. And there's a bunch of different connections you can make between these four things. Fascism, for example, as any good Marxist knows, is something that often happens when capitalism is in crisis, right? Lenin said fascism is capitalism and decay. It is capitalism with its teeth out. You know, it's been cornered and it's going to lash out and that lashing out takes the form of fascism. So far from fascism being a challenge to capitalism or something outside of it, it actually comes from within capitalism. It's a form

capitalism can take. So we understand that. Now, white supremacy and the Western chauvinism, which oftentimes undergirds fascism, which is how fascism often gets expressed, specifically in European, you know, sort of societies. That is part and parcel with imperialism, right? That's how imperialism gets patterned through what societies do we see as sort of Eurocentric and white and which ones are outside of that framing such that imperial domination of those countries become much easier to deal with. And then through colonialism, so literally the concepts of race that we have today with us, of anti-blackness, of white supremacy, those concepts, which are fundamental for fascism in the West, were forged through colonialism.

I kind of think of them as the ideological superstructure of the process of colonialism. So there's another connection. Now colonialism itself, as it's connected to capitalism, it was just the aspect of primitive accumulation. It was the primitive accumulation phase of capitalism. It needed cheap labor. It needed new resources. It needs new markets. It needs new land.

Colonialism is the solution to that problem as capitalism is developing and expanding. And then imperialism is sort of, as Lenin says, the highest stage of capitalism. It's just what monopoly capitalism looks like on the international stage. But I can also kind of see it as an evolved form of colonialism. It's like colonialism after capitalism has dominated the entire country. globe. So fascism, imperialism, colonialism, they are synonymous with capitalism. And if you try to fight capitalism or overthrow capitalism without, say, taking into account imperialism, we know you're not going to get anywhere. Your analysis, your premise is flawed. And, you know,

not understanding fascism as inherently connected to capitalism, your premise is flawed. And so you're not going to get anywhere. The same exact thing with colonialism. So understanding these four things is intimately tied in different faces of the same beast, I think is incredibly helpful in formulating a good understanding of the world, which is utterly necessary in formulating a strategy to combat the beast. So that's what I would say about that. That's really helpful. Yeah, Roxanne and Danbar Ortiz was really formative for me in connecting the socialist and communist struggle to the need for decolonization and indigenous struggles. Absolutely. And thinkers like Ames-Says-Ser,

France Fanon, W.E.B. Du Bois. The list is endless, but they really help update Marxism to take into account the colonialist process and the importance of decolonization. So those are all good thinkers to investigate if you're interested in this question. Excellent. So you mentioned Lenin earlier, and Lenin understood that Tsarist Russia, in imperial power itself, at the end of the 19th, the beginning of the 20th century, was a, quote, weakest link in the imperialist change. and quote of capitalism. So how did Lenin understand this revolutionary power of workers and peasants, right, or the Lumpin proletaria in the weakest links?

So this is really interesting, and I'm going to actually read a couple quotes by Trotsky because Trotsky's talking about Lenin's position on this, and I think it's sort of helpful. So Trotsky says, quote, this is from the Third International after Lenin. This is Lenin's splendid formula talking about the weakest link in the imperialist chain. Its meaning is that Russia was the most backward and economically weakest of all the imperialist states. That is precisely why her ruling classes were the first to collapse as they had loaded an unbearable burden on the insufficient productive forces of the country. Uneven, sporadic development, thus compelled the proletariat of the most backward imperialist country

to be the first to seize power. And in the history of the Russian Revolution, he says they, the Russian bourgeoisie and aristocracy, lived and nourished themselves upon their connections with foreign imperialism. They served it, and without their support, they could not have survived. To be sure, they did not survive in the long run, even with its support. The semi-comprador Russian bourgeoisie had world imperialistic interests in the same sense in which an agent working on percentages lives by the interests of his employer. So here is just Trotsky articulating Lenin's meaning behind that phrase. And then this is different because the sort of orthodox Marxist take up until that point was in a simplified sense that the most developed capitalist countries would be

where the first revolutions, proletarian revolutions, broke out. And so through the Russian revolution and subsequent revolutions, the Chinese revolution, the Cuban revolution, we've seen that that actually is not the case. And we're going to get in this conversation more into why that's not the case. But so this was a sort of break from Marxist orthodoxy, which helps us make sense of the weak points in the global order and where revolution is likely to break out and how that difference. from Marx, but there's actually a quote from a comrade on Twitter that I think is really helpful

in current times to continue to make sense of this idea. And the tweet is this. It's from Andre Demise on Twitter. He says, quote, socialism is going to manifest itself in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia long, long before it gets a toe in the door in the U.S., Canada, and U.K. The imperialist core is going to be dragged into modernity by the global south. And here we are squabbling about appealing to the white worker. So that's funny. It's dismissive. It's pithy.

But it also gets at this point. And I think at this point in history, there's no question that this is the case. The revolutions that are most likely to succeed, the ones that have the most mass support, are coming out of emanating out of the global south. We have communist movements all over, especially in India, in the Philippines. In Latin America, there's this new development. where there is the pink tide and this sort of reaction against it. And now you're starting to see more and more left-wing figures from Democratic Socialists to more Marxist types.

Gain power in these places. In Chile, for example, there's huge ongoing revolts against the neoliberal government in Chile, where neoliberalism was born and sharpened. In Haiti, we see similar movements. So I think that is sort of a historically settled. And then I think the question becomes, what does that mean for us in the imperial core, which we'll get to in a second. But do you have any other thoughts before we move on?

No, that's really interesting. And I think it's also really powerful. I love that vision of basically the imperialist core being dragged into socialism and communism. I hope that happens. That's a beautiful vision that I hope comes about. Yeah, especially with climate change. And who's on the front line of fighting climate change, the world over including in the imperial core? It's indigenous people.

so to solve climate change becomes synonymous with the supporting of indigenous self-determination and history is unfolding and making this very clear it's like see this is just objectively true and you can ignore that or disregard it for your own ideological reasons but that's just going to lead you into a corner of confusion and cut you off from these historical processes so yeah i think it's incredibly interesting to think of it in those terms excellent i've also heard linen's analysis used by the broad spectrum of leftists here, right, anarchists, and even communists, and the centers of imperialism and capitalism like the U.S. as a nihilistic rationalization, or even sometimes even like a lazy excuse,

for doing reformist work for reformists' sake, rather than intentionally trying to organize a revolutionary proletariat here in the belly of the beast. So, you know, supposedly for the masses of us in places like the United States, we're supposed to wait on the west of the world, right? We're waiting on everyone else to guide us into socialism and communism. So if you think Lenin's theory absolves people like ourselves in this particular settler colony from organizing for revolution, or where do you see us fitting in this theory that has proven historically true? Yeah, it absolutely does not absolve us. And it's sort of like exactly what you'd expect from Western chauvinists to come out the other end.

and suggest that we have no role to play, and we just can sit back and do absolutely nothing, meaning nothing to help the movements for decolonization, nothing to help the movements for anti-imperialism, as if we don't have our own brutal capitalist class, unequal societies that we have to deal with and fight, et cetera. And this idea, hopefully, has been proven again and again that we can use, like, the Democratic Party or the reform mechanisms to address these grievances is just increasingly absurd. We have this time limit put on us by climate change, and we see how the Democratic and Republican parties and the bourgeois system overall works, who it serves, et cetera. So this idea that our only job is to just, like, sort of get in there and make some tweaks around the edges is particularly absurd. The role that we have to play isn't going to be, like, leading the global revolution, but it is going to require that we take seriously the work of anti-imperialist and decolonial struggles in the imperial.

Corps to weaken the beast, and capitalism has this very interesting habit of entering crises over and over and over again. We've seen that several times now over just the past decade or two, and climate change is going to make that even more pronounced. So in those times of crisis, the capitalist system and the world order is particularly weak, and from inside the imperial core, we have to organize to put pressure on that system at its weakest times to assist and facilitate the development of other movements around the world. This is a global struggle, so to do the sort of thing of compartmentalizing people and say,

these people have the duty, these people can just sit back and wait, it's anti-dialectical, it's often chauvinist, it's on its face absurd. So those are important to remember. And then, as I say, like these historical moments, they come and they go, they represent shifts in power and points of weakness. we saw just with the pandemic, like the U.S. ruling class, become very sort of scattered and infighty and weak, and even new ideas are emerging in the wake of it

about a distribution of wealth and resources, et cetera. And so these moments can be used to shift, among other things, political consciousness and regular people's understandings of the world they live in in the system. And we've seen people get radicalized last summer, the Black Lives Matter uprisings all over the country, which became a global movement. we've seen a whole generation of people come up in that context with Trump and the revolutionary

energies that came out of that fighting against fascism so now there's a whole generation of people that are now understanding like imperialism state power white supremacy you know decolonization it's so that that builds our forces up and then you know sometimes I think it's really important to remember that the overthrow of the U.S. for example would represent represent the, and I'm not saying that this is likely to happen anytime soon, or who knows, you know, there's decades where nothing happens in weeks where decades happen, as Lenin says, but the removal of the U.S. would be the removal of the biggest boot on the throat of the global south, of proletarian movements, of decolonial movements. And so whether or not we can remove it in one go or we

can chip away at it and weaken it from the inside, that's our duty. And to sit back and wait for others to come to our safety is absolutely incorrect in every conceivable way. And this idea that the U.S., for example, is the biggest boot on the throat of the world, or that the U.S. is the capital of the imperial core and represents a uniquely troublesome, difficult, obstacle to overcome. Sometimes it gets met by certain elements on the left is like, oh, this is just inverted American exceptionalism. And all you're doing is taking American exceptionalism and turning it on its head, but you're still centering the U.S., etc. And all, it's just an objective fact that the U.S. ruling class is the richest.

It has the biggest, most powerful military. It is the first spearhead of all reactive movements to global South movements, to even like social democratic movements in the global south. The U.S. needs to be destroyed as it currently is. And that is going to happen historically. This cannot live forever. This idea that capitalism and the U.S. as the world's police can be a permanent state of affairs is anti-dialectical, anti-historical, and absurd on its face. So I just wanted to address that idea of inverted American exceptionalism just for a second.

But Chee has some interesting things to say about this. And I think there's some things that Che says that could be both sides of this issue. So there's that famous quote that people like to like the quote that says, Chee says, I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. you are fighting the most important fight of all you live in the belly of the beast now on some level that is true um but sometimes it can be interpreted as like oh it's the u.s left that's going to lead the revolution you need to topple the u.s and that's going to be the way forward but you know if you read more

of chay he discusses and we'll get into this as well but he discusses the unity between the labor aristocracy in the imperial corps and their own and our own bourgeoisie and he says quote the tendency of modern imperialism is to share with the workers the crumbs of their exploitation of other peoples. And that creates, it doesn't absolve the inequality. There's still brutal poverty, brutal racism, brutal inequality in societies. But it buys off large enough chunk of the proletariat to not allow it to consolidate into a power that can really challenge the bourgeois and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie itself. So there is, so on both sides of this, there's an important role we have to play. We are in the belly of

the beast. We need to see ourselves as in concert with the global movements, but at the same time we have to understand the limitations of that, how in the imperial core, the working class is divided. And as we'll get into, I think in the next question, how things like race are used to, and wealth, right, resources siphon from the global south, are used to placate enough of the imperial core proletariat to sort of divest our movements, split them up, and we're weaken us enough to where we can't really do anything in the Imperial Corps as of yet. Absolutely. I've been studying up on El Salvador and Nicaragua for a few upcoming episodes.

And one thing that is true throughout the 20th century, you know, if the U.S. backed regimes of, particularly, say, El Salvador, if the U.S. doesn't fund, if the U.S. doesn't militarize, the oligarchy and the new kind of emerging ruling capitalist class, the masses and the revolutionaries of El Salvador, guess what? They win, right? There's no doubt in my mind. But there's just this kind of endless funding and support and training from the U.S. So I think that's one example. Of course, it's not just happening in El Salvador at that time, right? You have Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Honduras and all these neighboring countries. But I think it's really helpful and important to emphasize that need for anti-imperialism.

and anti-colonialism as the basis for our socialist and communist struggles here. And everywhere in the world, especially since World War II, where there's been an attempt by people to reclaim their own resources, reclaim control over their own lives, fight against colonialism, overthrow fascist dictators. The U.S. has been the first sort of figure leading the fight to squash those movements often in blood. And that's just an historical fact. And the U.S., far from being a beacon of freedom and democracy, is the antithesis to freedom and democracy and is increasingly becoming the primary obstacle.

Humanity has to overcome to extend our species' lifespan into the future and allow us to evolve to the next stage. Excellent. So, as you had alluded to, you know, there are very real barriers to organizing here in the U.S. One of them being in the spirit of Du Bois, you know, the material and the psychological wages of settler colonialism, right, whiteness and imperialism that much, you know, not all, but much of the working class here do enjoy. So how are these, again, both material wages, but also these kind of like psychological wages, these privileges, in particular, used to undermine our solidarity with the most exploited and oppressed living in need. neocolonies and U.S.-backed regimes in concentrated regions of the world. Right. So materially, right, and we'll do psychologically in a second, materially, as, as Che alluded

to in the last section, it's this imperialist siphoning of the wealth and the resources from the global south, bringing those wealth and resources back into the imperial core, distributing them radically unequally, but enough to sort of placate large chunks of the working class here. So, you know, if you're an American, especially white worker, let's say you've managed to get into a union, you don't have any material interests in helping to overthrow the U.S. or show solidarity with people struggling in the global South. You are now, you are a direct material beneficiary of these systems of domination, exploitation, and siphoning of wealth and resources. And so materially, that's enough to really weaken the proletariat movement here.

and undermine solidarity with movements around the world. And then there is the psychological component, which sometimes I think is just as strong as the material component. There is whiteness. There is this sense that the hierarchies of race, even if you're not doing that great in the United States, at least you're white, right? Like, at least you're not one of them. At least you're not black or indigenous in the U.S.

or at least you're not one of those people somewhere else, those brown people I don't know anything about, at least I'm not them. They're sort of de facto dehumanized by the process of colonialism and imperialism. And the very conception of self that the average white person has in the imperial core is built on colonialism,

on the mystification surrounding colonialism, on the dehumanization of the non-white. That's centuries of European ideas. ideology. And of course, when you're going to take somebody's land or you're going to kidnap them and make them work for you for free, you first got to dehumanize them. You've got to say they're savages. They're less than us. They're three-fifths of a human being. And even when those formal structures of, let's say, chattel slavery are overcome, the psychological sort of vibrations of that century of ideological and psychological work lives on. And I mean, you don't

need to look any further than the last four or five years here in the U.S. to see how race shapes discourse, the reaction to black people saying, can you just not kill us? Right? The white reactionaries are like, don't tread on me. The government is as tyranny. And then like black people are saying, yeah, the government's actually like murdering us when we're unarmed and sleeping in our beds. And white people are like, shut the fuck up. Take it. White power. And so that is the psychological pathology of whiteness. And I really am increasingly seeing it as a pathology because whiteness is bringing our entire species to the brink of extinction.

And it would rather do that than say maybe we should equitably share their wealth and resources around the world or maybe we shouldn't bomb and invade that country or maybe black people are equal and they shouldn't be killed by cops just for being black in the United States. and so that is pathological there's a death drive in it and it's rooted in colonialism it's the superstructure of colonialism that continues to live on so on top of that there's also nationalism and in the imperial core like nationalism in a national liberation struggle is one thing that's positive that's progressive right think phenon wretched of the earth if you are a

colonized society nationalism can be a uniting force across differences to buck off the oppressor so That's one sort of nationalism. That's progressive and good. But then there's the nationalism of the Imperial Corps, which is just Western chauvinism, which is just white supremacy, and importantly, which obscures class. Because the average American growing up pledged allegiance to the flag every single day when they go to school. You know, 9-11, that ideology just got put in the super saying mode where it's like, yes, I'm not a member of the working class.

I'm an American. I have more in common with rich American politicians and millionaires. and billionaires that are born in this patch of land than I do with other working class people around the world, particularly in the global south. And the exact opposite is true. So when you're trying to divide the class, when you're trying to undermine solidarity, there's these wages of whiteness, there's the material aspect, but there's also nationalism comes in very good use, if that's your goal. And we see that all of the time. American nationalism is particularly pernicious and vile and venomous and there's a reason for that that that very nationalism

grows out of these processes of imperialism and colonialism and is sort of inherently fascist to to be in a white supremacist settler colonial society and to wave that flag with pride and to identify it with it is fundamentally sort of fascistic in and of itself and so on all those grounds, ideological, nationalistic, racial, and material, we see how these barriers are propped up. Yeah, that's really helpful. You know, I was raised. I've spent probably most of my life in religious and spiritual kind of circles and communities. And, you know, there is this kind of emphasis. There's this often kind of popular talk about love and compassion and even like a universal love. And even in this, you know, when when there is that moment of, of, of a

acknowledging that there is actually, we're a deeply divided world. The response to our dividedness along either class or race or region of the world or nation, it tends to emphasize, well, if you can kind of individually just practice compassion, that's the problem. It's just a lack of individual compassion. But what I hear you saying, what I think folks like Fanon and Dubois obviously bring to the table and many others in the tradition of Marxism is that there's actually material conditions and contradictions that produce both material privileges and wages and then also psychological kind of developing materials and wages and that kind of create these conditions where we fail to be in solidarity with those we should be and and I appreciate your emphasis on the

psychological right and the ideological constructs that are incredible materially historical forces right listening to Cherise Burns Deli and Nick Assis' recent conversation on imperialism if you haven't check those out

check out they've got two of them I think they're posted on the Red Nation podcast but they

mentioned Gerald Horns one of his books I think it's like the third of his trilogy

where he names christiany or perhaps religion I haven't read it yet I want to

as perhaps at the kind of historical roots playing some major role at least in the production

of racialization. And so whether it's like whiteness or nationalism or even kind of Christian identity, the sense of, I'm different, I'm superior, and whether they're Muslim or black or indigenous or Salvadoran, they're inferior. And that those kinds of ideological constructions lead us to supporting the worst atrocities that our species has ever committed. and yeah and so I think it's it's been helpful to think about how the material wages and privileges but also the psychological wages and privileges that keep us from truly living and supporting those who we should be in solidarity with across the world yeah yeah absolutely well said and like yeah I mean you go back to the western sieve versus the rest of the world I mean you go back to the crusades Christian identitarianism white evangelicals the role that the church has played in like nazi germany or in the colonialist process

um in the process of slavery people using the bible to justify slavery for example and like the idea of like hating other people in the name of jesus like you know that that is like the ideological like pour some nationalism pour some whiteness pour some western chauvinism and then pour some christianity and mix it up good jesus is now just completely lost from that mixture um and like there's a path a lot things talking about pathologies like american reactionary white christianity is is utterly pathological completely divorced from the actual history and philosophy of jesus christ and and the best parts of the christian church and they think that they are not only racially superior culturally superior but then you add christianity on top

and like we are like ontologically superior like god himself and You know, we're the chosen ones. And so that just adds an extra layer of, like, fanaticism to this already existing sense of superiority. And it's scary. I mean, honestly, it's scary. Yeah, it's definitely something for us to really consider here in the U.S. You know, the fact that the U.S., as, you know, as King said, is the greatest prevailing violence, but it's also like the greatest preventer of political, of social, of personal well-being,

of planetary well-being in the world, in my opinion, right? It denies not just democracy, but literally just the flourishing and the development of life amongst all creatures. And Christianity in the U.S. in particular has played a fundamental role to ensuring that that egregious, call it sin, call it violence, has been manifested. So really important for us, I think, as Christians in the U.S. to really wrestle with. Now, to take a little turn, you know, we talk about kind of colonialism and communism and communism, how those two things are related. I had a question when I was reading some of Joshua Mofahad Paul's work recently about class that I wanted to kind of hear your thoughts on. So is there a difference, would you say, between like the proletariat, right, or the working class and the revolutionary

proletary? So on one hand, is class in this particular class, the revolutionary proletariat, is it found or is it made? Yeah, so I love JMP, not exactly sure what you're pointing to, so I may diverge a little bit, let me know if I do. I highly recommend J. Mofawad Paul's work in general, a really important philosopher and thinker of the Marxist left. But generally, I think, like, you know, there is the working class,

and sort of using the found and made dichotomy, right? Like, there's the working class can be found as an objective sort of relationship to the means of production. Like, it's objectively true, that if you are whatever, you know, interwage labor job here, that you are in an objective relationship to the means of production, which puts you in an objective category that we've conceptualized as the proletariat or the working class.

So in that sense, it's like it's there, it's objective, it can be found. Now, I think the distinction with made comes as when can that sort of existing class in so much as it is one be turned into a, actual revolutionary force, and that is through the process of becoming aware of itself as a class and organizing itself as a class. So there are lots of working class people, and this is a tribute to ideology, that live paycheck to paycheck, or one paycheck away from losing everything, are objectively sort of working class, but their false consciousness has been shaped such that they envision themselves as the middle class or having more in common with the rich

in their own society than with the barely scraping by in other societies. So in the sense that the class can become a revolutionary force, it must be made into one through first an awareness of itself as a class, getting over some of those ideological obscurantisms, which sort of like, well, because you hear all American politicians, they rarely say the working class, like maybe Bernie and shit will, but like even Biden, so they talk about the middle class as sort of synonymous with the working class, but that's a weird conceptualization because that includes ostensibly somebody making 25K a year and somebody making $300,000 a year. And by doing that, by obscuring that, you can weaken the ability for the class to become conscious of itself as a class. And so the middle class is ultimately, in the final analysis, completely a mystification. It doesn't actually exist. And so I think, and let me know if you disagree, but I think that's the difference.

Like, it's found objectively as a relationship to the means of production. And then it's made into a revolutionary force through self-consciousness and then organization as a class. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. One of the things I think that stuck out to me early on in my engagement with Marxist analysis and politics was that, some folks have suggested that the contradictions and the conditions kind of inevitably lead to revolution or inevitably lead to the creation of a revolutionary force. And I think that's what

I've kind of increasingly stepped back on to say is that, listen, just because a particular class has it really, really bad doesn't mean that they're going to develop into a revolutionary proletariat. And I think that's been really key for me. And another thing, as you were saying, was the emphasis on the plurality of material and psychological wages, these privileges here in the U.S. I think they do need to be taken into consideration. It wasn't long ago when I was like, well, you know, if you make $20,000 for a family of four in the U.S. or if you make $90,000, you know, six digits in the U.S., I thought that, well, it doesn't matter because you're a worker, and so there's just like this essentially

same experience and condition, but while I do want to push back on that middle class identity, which I think is kind of inseparable from white identity, really, I do think that I wasn't taking the analysis of the conditions as seriously, right? The level of comfort and privilege that would deny people this any kind of real reason to say, oh, you know, I'm going to like support and wage revolution in my own imperialist country. And, and, And so, yeah, on one hand, I thought that language of both being found and made was interesting at first, but I find it more and more really, really important. So I live in the South. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And I do think when folks here are analyzing the contradictions and the conditions, we have to be thinking about, okay, who first is the proletariat, but then who, because of race, because of sexuality and gender, because of religion or. citizenship, right? How do these things play into the production of who will most likely become or participate in the revolutionary proletariat? And I think that's been really helpful and important for me. My understanding about my analysis of my own context in my own situation is that just because the vast majority of us are workers doesn't mean that workers of certain industries or workers of certain incomes or certain, yeah, privileges will be at all interested in even like organizing for a more democratic situation you know better even better social social programs here in the US yeah yeah does that make sense really interesting

it makes complete sense and like that's why these big terms need to also be broken down and made nuanced of because like for example like when you were talking something jumped to mind is like okay like an NBA all-star like a running back in the NFL right now these people are ostensibly in some cases, like millionaires, but like a lot of them, you know, come from even lump in proletariat or straight up proletariat backgrounds. And like a running back in the NFL, for example, you come out of a lump in proletariat background, you get into the NFL, you're running back average careers like, what, two or three goddamn years, and then you kicked out of the NFL, you know, your whole life experience, as well as

your race and your racial experience, prone you more to, to, to, you're a whole life experience, you know, taking the side of the proletariat proper, of the, of the oppressed, of the bottom classes, and say somebody who's never earned above 40K but is a hardcore Trump supporter and is bought into his own whiteness. So on the face of it, you'd say, oh, that guy who makes 35K, you know, as a mechanic or whatever, he is more likely to become a revolutionary subject than that millionaire running back, but zooming out, taking into consideration the psychological wages of whiteness, nationalism, their backgrounds, their experiences, you start to see how that becomes very quickly

complicated. And so even when we talk about the proletariat, I think it behooves us to have an even more nuanced, complex conversation of what we mean by that, and then breaking it down into like substrata can often also be helpful. So yeah, I completely agree with what you're saying. That confusion, I think, is very prevalent with people, especially as they first come to the left, and it's sort of our job as political educators to try to break that down and make more sense of it. Excellent. So one of the things I've been studying a lot is just different parties and different countries and the ways in which they've participated in struggles and revolutions. And Marxism, Linnitus and Maoism has brilliantly emphasized the need for the mass line as well

in relation to the party. So could you tell us a little bit about what is the mass line And what does it suggest about the agency of the masses of, say, workers and the unemployed, right? The criminalized. Those are the masses who are super exploited and impressed because of region of the world, you know, criminalization, race, gender, sexuality, ability, et cetera. And what I'm really wondering is, are the masses participants in the making of history for the mass line? And I ask that question because I think when people think of parties, they think of a small group of intellectuals who make all the decisions. decisions, completely unaccountable to the masses, and are, I mean, in the U.S., we've, you know, there's this language of authoritarian, right?

But yeah, I think for me, as a Marxist's letter in this matter, I think obviously the party is a necessity, and we have kind of forgotten why, but the mass line helps correct some of its failure. So, yeah, could you tell us a little bit about that, mass line and, yeah, the role of the masses? So I'll get to the mass line in a second and give a simple definition, but the role of the masses specifically is really important because it sort of undergirds the idea of the mass line and it is just true that far from like idealist or great man of history theories of history right like history is made through the ideas of brilliant people or through individual figures

the the sort of communist Marxist principle take is just the opposite it's the masses often nameless and faceless that are behind every successful revolution if it were just as easy as to get a couple really talented or really dedicated people together and start revolution. There'd be revolutions every two days. It has to come from the masses and the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution, the Cuban revolution, every revolution proletarian that you can think of. And even bourgeois revolutions depended on mass uprisings as their support. So while they might have had flagship thinkers, really important leaders, those leaders

and those thinkers are nothing without the support of the masses. themselves and that's just again objectively true if you look over history um and so the role of a vanguard party or of conscious revolutionaries is not to uh dictate to people what they should do or use the masses as pawns but is to immerse themselves in the masses um and build up that mass support for transformative action to even be possible and that's where the mass line comes in it's like okay how do we do that you know we have a group of really dedicated cadre, you know, we know what the problems are. We know that we need to overthrow this fascist or this puppet dictatorship or whatever the case may be. Well, how do we do it? And one of the

sort of world historical inventions of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, was to theorize the mass line. And the mass line is, in simplest terms, fundamentally an organizing strategy, whereby a group of committed revolutionaries go to the masses, the regular people, often in their communities, and say, what are your main problems, right? And then you'll get a bunch of responses. This person's

problem has to do with rent. This person's problem has to do with, like, racist police. This person's problem is like, we just want clean water. And then the role of the party becomes to take all of those or the cadre or whatever, take all of those suggestions, those material needs of the people that are

given to you organically. And And then formulate that into a political program where you can then go out and meet those needs. And then you launch a program, you go out, you attempt to meet those needs, you go back to the people. Is this meeting your needs? Did we do this right? Do we get the clean water solution? You know, and if so, what's a new problem? What's another problem that you face?

And then it's that I use this word a lot and it might turn some people off if they don't know what it means. We do a lot of work on Rev. I've trying to explain this, but dialectical engagement with the masses. so that you are not separate from the masses, either dictating to them or tailing them, which we'll get into in a second, but you are one with them. And here's a common example that's very easy to know for most people who have a cursory understanding of leftism in the U.S., the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party did not come from outside the black community and start telling them that we needed revolution, and here's historical materialism, and this is why you guys need to rise up.

They said, what are the real problems? Well, the kids don't get food before school. old ladies can't go out and get their groceries the cops are goddamn killing us every time we drive around our own block okay we're going to form police watch groups we're going to be armed and we're going to follow the cops make sure that they don't hurt our people we're going to start a kids breakfast program we're going to make sure old ladies get their food and their groceries delivered to their porch we're going to start a voluntary medical clinic so if you can't afford the absurd prices to enter racist hospitals we're going to take care of you for

free of charge meeting the people's needs and what does this do in return it gives the black panther party at the height of their effect efficaciousness true mass support the community supported them when their headquarters got blown up by the by the police the community came and cleaned up and helped rebuild you know in every revolution with like guerrilla warfare um you know mouse says like the gorilla must be able to swim amongst the masses as a fish swims in the sea you You know, in the Algerian revolution against French colonialists, you depended on the women, on regular people to hide you, to make sure that when the colonial forces were coming, you could get away from them, to deliver packages across town, the IRA against British imperialism, same exact situation. In all of these cases, it was the revolutionary's immersion and oneness with the masses that allowed them to make significant gains for their people and to meaning. confront the powers of oppression and reaction.

So the mass line is just that idea synthesized and theorized and put into action by organizations. And that is the most efficacious way to build mass support and to work towards our goals of liberation. Yeah, that's really well put. I really appreciate it. It makes me think about how, unfortunately, there's a lot of, like, leftist energy on Twitter right now, right?

And there's this emphasis, even in, like, in labor, in a lot of the labor communities. and unions in the U.S. right now, where there's this emphasis on social media, that if you can kind of just tweet or post enough of the slogan that the people will hear it, and then they'll be like, wow, I support, and I'm an alliance with you. But that's not how, that's not organization. That's not how that trust in that relationship is developed. Recently, I've been studying a lot about the Salvadoran struggles in the 70s and 80s, and kind of hearing you talk made me think about how, you know, you can't just go knock on a door, you know, whether you're in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2021 or El Salvador in 1975, right? You can't just go knock on someone's door

and say, listen, this is this kind of ideology, this kind of struggle would clearly, you know, make your life better and therefore you should join our organization, you should join the struggle, you should think like us. That has, that just never works. It's just not how we're, We function as human beings. But that great example you give us with the Black Panther Party, where the first thing what they did was they said, okay, what does this community mean? Oh, wait, they're hungry. They're fucking hungry.

So feed them. And then while we're feeding them, you know what, if they want to listen to a lecture on or some kind of conversation on capitalism and how capitalism is creating the conditions where our loved ones are starving or how capitalism and white supremacy are working together to create this reality where we're getting blisters on our fucking feet. These conditions, these needs, these concerns of the masses, we go to the people, we learn, we live with, and we form a political program based on those particular needs. I love that.

I love that how mass line is, mostly, it's universally applicable, but in particular situations. So it's not that you just kind of implement this single program around this single need in any part of the world. You have to scientifically investigate and live with and be formed by the people who you actually want and are trying to organize. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the conditions in New York City slum is going to be different than the conditions in a Bangladeshi slum is going to be different than, you know, a Russian sort of impoverished neighborhood, etc. And so the specificities will change, the specific demands and needs will change. but the program itself, the approach itself, is universally applicable. And that's the thing is, like, you're serving their material interests, first and foremost, you're leading with that.

And then you're showing how the very problem that needed you to come in and help with is connected to this broader system and how these seemingly disparate problems that you're facing, racist police, my high rent, my dirty water, actually have a common cause at the end of the day. And then by bringing those people in, they engage oftentimes with the movement that helped them. And I remember once tenant union, listening to some tenant union people at a left conference. And this guy was like, I didn't know anything about socialism or communism, but when I was being evicted and the slum lord was stealing my deposit, they showed up, they helped me fight. And now I'm joined as a top organizer in a socialist organization. because my material interests were met.

And when you're in desperate need, and it's the communists and the socialists that are grabbing your hand and feeding your kids and making sure you get your deposit back, that does a million times more to convince somebody to at least open their mind to these ideas than chattering to them online or trying to just convince them through persuasive speech.

But having said that, of course, political education is utterly essential, and it's a part of this. So the mass line requires political education. Political education is an important facet of this. And that's part, I think, of the connecting up and showing how these seemingly disparate problems have root causes, etc. So it's that meeting the material needs of people, not just leading with ideology that gets the job done. And that's why it's so effective and that's why it's universally applicable. Excellent, yeah.

And just from my own experience, some folks are like, well, you know, maybe you shouldn't start off with whatever saying that you're a socialist or communist. Maybe you should keep that in the background. But for my experience, in Charlotte alone, whether talking with, you know, co-workers or tenants, the fact is, is that nobody gives a fuck, whether you're a socialist or communist or a Marxist, what they care about is, and they'll realize you're genuine care about them, your love for them. So if you're there, if you're talking with them, if you're actually building a relationship with, again, co-workers or tenants or anybody, and you say that, you know, you want to know what's going on and their lives. Again, even in the imperialist court, in the United States, I have just had

overwhelming indifference towards whether I'm a communist or socialist. Nobody cares about that. What matters is whether we actually genuinely are committed to the masses. Yeah. And you don't need to beat them over the head with it, but just be honest. And here's another thing. The problem with, like, hiding it is like you're starting a relationship on deception. It's like I need to go out of my way to lie to you and try to conceive or deceive you into thinking that I'm something that I'm not. Just like you're already, that's 101 how to ruin a relationship from the get go. Just be honest, but say that's not really important. What's important is that we're here to help you. What do you need? And that speaks volumes. You don't need

to beat them over the head. You don't need to deceive it. Just be honest and open and help people and show that you love them. And at the very least, even sometimes online, like as like the low bars that can sometimes be, it just humanizes socialism and communism, especially for people who have been raised in a society to demonize and dehumanize socialist and communists and the Cold War propaganda, et cetera, is like, hey, I'm, I love you. I'm here to help you. I have kids. I'm worried about their futures, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm also a socialist and a communist. It becomes a lot harder to say, these are evil demons that we must destroy. It's like, no, my friend's a communist. He's a cool guy. And that can help a lot as well.

Yeah, so I think some folks have had legitimate concerns or critiques against the ways in which some parties have kind of like practiced Marxist Leninism or Marxist Leninism, Maoism. And so how have communist, socialist, and radical organizations and parties actually failed to follow the mass line, right? And what have been some consequences? And I think it's really important to kind of establish this culture of self-critique. So this is part of it. How have, actually, organizations or parties failed to follow mass line? And what are the consequences? So there's a bunch of things that happen when you don't organize in this manner.

And they take a bunch of different forms. One of the forms is subculturalism. So not being immersed with the masses, not worrying about serving their material interest, but kind of putting on radical garb as an identity. And then it's like, okay, we all get together at this day and listen to this music and wear these type of clothes. Okay, well, that's fine culturally. I hope you have fun, but you've now abandoned the masses. You're not moving the ball forward. You might convince some people through your aesthetics to join your subculture, but that's not going to lead to revolution. In fact, very easily co-opted by the forces of capitalism. Yeah, they'll sell you, they'll sell you your radical aesthetics right back to you, make a pretty penny off it and laugh all the way to the bank. Another option is adventureism, sort of impatience. um with the working class being like oh they're not worth it they'll never get it we have to take radical action now or like you know if i go and shoot this cop or blow up this building that will

show propaganda of the deed sort of thing right you're getting way ahead of people you're isolating yourself from them they look at the news and they see some crazy action and they don't relate to it they have no way to understand it other than criminality and does not make them feel safe or anything like that so you got subcultures you got adventurism you got opportunism um which is also electoralism or putting yourself, like I want to be a leader. I want to be known as have a reputation as being like a revolutionary figure or I want to enter politics and advance my career while ostensibly saying radical things. But what just happens is you become more and more defanged, more and more conciliatory to liberalism and you get subsumed into the

liberal apparatus itself. Before you know it, you're just another liberal, another obstacle to overcome. So, you know, opportunism, putting your own career and needs and wants and reputation and ego ahead of people. There's dogmatism where you're so entranced and hypnotized by your specific set of ideas that you're no longer willing to test them out in material reality. And when somebody comes to you and they don't see eye to eye, they're dismissed as a whatever, you know, not worthy. Because you've already made your mind up and you've now recoiled from having to test those ideas and just like the more you agree with me the better person you are and and we see dogmatism all the time online which is also subculturalism which is like this is just

an identity for me i'm a anarcho such and such and you know you're a stupid tanky and you have to agree with my exact views on this subject and that subject and that subject or else you're a bad person that needs to be written off and marxists do it too this is not just an anarchist thing by any means. There's eclecticism where it's also sort of an inverted form of dogmatism almost, where it's like, instead of like, here's the rigid set of ideas,

it's like, I just kind of pick and choose. Like, I like this philosopher and I like this radical thinker and this revolutionary was pretty good. Just picking and choosing ideas. Your tires, you're just spinning in place. You're not getting anywhere. You're not serving anybody. You've become sort of fascinated with different ideas

that more or less speak to your personal fancy. There's petty bourgeois. academia, which sort of fights out on the battle, on the battleground of ideas. You can write a good essay. You can, you can make points, but you're so divided and isolated from the masses themselves that you just sort of float away into abstract land. And you might have some good arguments. You might be very articulate, but it's so disconnected from anybody's material struggle that it's utterly irrelevant. You see that a lot. So I think on all of these fronts, from one side or the other, you're seeing an abandonment of the mass line, a refusal to engage in real politics, and a recoiling into different things, dogmatism, subculturalism, opportunism, et cetera.

And these are all errors along the path. That's excellent. Yeah, so just to kind of rename some of those things that you just listed off. And I'm thinking when we are in our organizing communities and when we're trying to follow the mass line, this list is really helpful, right? We have these subcultures, right, disconnected and unable to relate to or move at all the masses. And I think that's fairly materially obvious when we've created that subculture or adventurism, right? You talk about electoralism and opportunism, dogmatism, eclecticism, and then petty bourgeois academia. And then the last one that popped in my mind was also, you know, when we actually start to commit violence and destroy the masses themselves, I think that's a,

That's something that's historically happened from parties that have failed to follow the mass line. When maybe, you know, we believe that, listen, we know exactly what is for the masses, but we don't have that relation. And we have failed to yet organize masses where they're ready to take that revolutionary step. There have been moments in history where either parties or organizations have actually committed atrocities against the masses themselves. Exactly. But one of the challenges is to not fall into tail of them. So how might this mass line be different from tailism, right? Following just whatever the wins or wants of the, say, the poll, the latest poll from the Washington Post is, right?

If 70% say, well, they just want this, right, from the New York Times. Is that following the mass line? Or how is that different from tailism? Right. So I kind of think of this in, like, in Buddhist terms, if you will, as the middle way, right? The mass line representing the middle way. And in Buddhism, it's like the middle way is often described as like not aestheticism and not hedonism, right? You take care of the body, but you stay disciplined, et cetera.

But in the political realm, it's like not commandism and not tailism, right? And there's this quote from Mao that I think is helpful and basically lays out the definitions to help people. Mao says, quote, commandism is wrong in any type of work because in overstepping the level of political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle of voluntary mass action, it reflects the disease of impetuousness. Our comrades must not assume that everything they themselves understand is understood by the masses. Whether the masses understand it and are ready to take action can be discovered only by going into their midst and making investigations. If we do so, we can avoid commandism.

Taoism in any type of work is also wrong, because in falling below the level of political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle of leading the masses forward, it reflects the disease of deleteriousness. Our comrades must not assume that the masses have no understanding of what they do not yet understand. It often happens that the masses outstrip us and are eager to advance a step and that nevertheless our comrades fail to act as leaders of the masses and tail behind certain backward elements reflecting their views and moreover mistaking them for those of the broad masses.

So here we have neither commandism nor tailism, neither imposing, directing, taking over, you know, grabbing them by the scruff of their neck in pointing them, do that, or talism. We're like, well, I'm just going to wait for them to do it, and then I'll join. That often takes, if we see the tailism a lot in U.S. left politics, where there'll be like a spontaneous uprising because the masses are so fucking tired of something like last summer,

police murdering of black folks. And then you'll see these left organizations, and I don't even always blame them because they just don't have the level of organization and being a leftist in the U.S. after decades of Cold War propaganda, it's hard. I'm not making excuses. I'm just saying, But you'll see them just like join in, the spontaneous, but having no leadership role, having no connection to the masses, it fizzles out as spontaneous uprisings, if not formed into something more coherent, always do.

And so, you know, there is this tailism where you're just joining in, waiting for the masses to act, and then joining in, but you're just behind them. They're doing the thing, and then you join in, but you're not leading or cohering anything. And so it sort of falls apart again. And so neither commandism nor tailism, and I think more often than not, we see tailism on the U.S. left more so than we see commandism, but both are errors, right? Both are deviations from, quote, unquote, the middle way or the mass line, which is a way of staying right, staying right, but maybe just like a tiny step ahead, right? Like I said earlier, they'll give you, here's our problems, police brutality, rent, water, and then you go back and you formulate that into a program. that sense, you're not just like airing your grievances, right, which is just saying this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, but you are taking that half a step forward and saying, how do we now turn this into a political program? But you're not commanding them by going into their communities and saying, this is what you need and this is what I need from you, right? So it's that sort of

delicate balance that one has to strike to be effective. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm like halfway through Betelheim's first volume of the class struggles in the USSR. And I'm in this section when they're talking about the post-revolutionary relation between the party and the peasants, these different classes. They have the majority of the poorest peasants, the middle peasants, and then kind of the richer peasants who owned disproportionate most of the land. So there's this really interesting dynamic that has helped me think about and understand how hard the mass line and how complicated the mass line and kind of party leadership is.

It's, I guess as someone who's never actually been a part of a party or a revolutionary struggle, thinking it in theory is one thing. But then understanding the material conditions and contradictions of a particular context and struggle is a whole new thing. And, yeah, anyways, I think these things are really helpful to be engaging. But I think there's great challenges ahead of us as we try and put it into practice. Yeah, totally. And I think one more sort of bouncing off that, one more mistake that can often happen is like, if you're like a white organization from the better part of town, you know, your role is not to go into communities of color and start trying to sort of patronizingly necessarily do the mass line.

Like there are organizations within that community that you can assist and help with. But why don't you stay out in your suburbs and help radicalize and deconstruct the white, whiteness of the people in your community. And so that's not always true. And of course, you can come out of your community into another community and help an organization that already exists. You should do that. But there's also, I think, sometimes the chauvinist approach of like, we're going to go to this other part of town and try to tell them what to do. And even if you're ostensibly dressing it up as like, we're going to do the mass line. It's like, come on. Like, where are you really coming from? Like the Black Panthers? They didn't have to

go into another community, right? They were already of it. And that made the mass line much more easier to do out of the gate. That's not to say, again, that you shouldn't go and help organizations that aren't. But there's organizations on the ground from those communities that you can help with and get behind, not try to get in front of or overstep or push aside in favor of your ideas about what that community needs. Absolutely. Yeah, so to wrap up this conversation, it's been really great to have you. I've really appreciated all that you brought and shared with us.

But to trap up our conversation So thinking again from the beginning of our conversation This conversation, there is the relationship between the spiritual and the material, the personal and the communal Now what role might say genuine love and friendship with one another play for our organizations That are striving to deepen and expand consciousness and build organization in our own local communities? Yeah, great question, you know. Che says, it might sound silly, but I believe that the real revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. And when we're talking about spiritual practices, the dismantling of the ego, in the space created by the dismantling of the ego, love naturally flourishes.

In Buddhism, they talk about awareness as being sort of inherently tender-hearted. it's like you're not placing an emotion there or putting any there artificially but in the ground that is cleared out from these spiritual practices love and compassion for the other naturally arise because you stop seeing yourself as separate you see yourself in the other and the other in yourself more and more and it happens viscerally organically it's not an intellectual thing you're not going around imposing some conceptual apparatus on things like i'm one with you and i'm one with you that can be nice but uh you You know, through these spiritual practices, you build it from the ground up, and it naturally sort of comes out of you. So I think that's interesting, and thinking of hard, rigid egos as the opposite of love can be helpful and point towards the necessity for spiritual transformation. But on Rev. Left, we just did an episode on Alexander Collentai. And at the end of that episode, my guest, Kristen Godsey, talks about a eulogy that Collentai was giving for a comrade that had died and basically making the point. We call ourselves communists, but we're so quick to discard one another, to, because we have a disagreement, to throw you to the side and put you in the category of bad people. And on Twitter and on the left today, you see us all the time, like, assuming the absolute least charitable interpretation of what somebody else has said and using that as an opportunity to dunk on them performatively so that other people will like what you said and dislike what they said.

and that whole ego game is nauseating it limits what we can accomplish and this this colentai idea of like having love for one another being gentle with ourselves and with others giving each other the benefit of the doubt not to the extent where everybody can do anything and everybody's given a pass but to the extent like you you know what I know that your heart's in the right place I know that we have these disagreements let's actually engage as like human beings that care for each other. Because at the end of the day, Mr. Anarchist, we might not agree on the state and on this topic and the Vanguard party, but I love you and you want a world in which you and yours can live happily and where other people can be liberated and so do I. So let's focus on what we agree on

and see if we can have a comradly debate that brings us to a higher level. If I talk to somebody that has a good intention, that has a good heart and I treat them with respect, I might have some of my own positions meaningfully challenged or enlightened or elevated and vice versa. And that comes from a place of good faith and love and like we're aiming at the same thing. You're not a bad person if you disagree

with me. That can go a long way. And Colin Tai also, she pointed out how capitalism and the sort of incentive structures within it tears people apart, it makes us competitive, we're self-interested, we're afraid of the other. We don't want to get dunked on. We have to dunk on the other

in social media terms. And we internalize that psychology, and then we play it out on the left. And so if we want to build a different world and a new world, that also means building different relationships to ourselves, to others, to the natural world. It means transformation on all fronts, development on all fronts. And so in that sense, love, friendship, good faith, compassion, setting aside your ego, these things are fucking essential. if we want to build the sort of world that all of us, hopefully on the left, want to build,

a one of equality of egalitarianism, of anti-racism, of solidarity, et cetera. So it's absolutely crucial and it's something that gets overlooked too much. There's plenty of cruelty and egoism on the left. It's there just as much as it's in the center and the right. We fool ourselves if we think somehow being left makes you a good person automatically. we have to do the work we have to do the work socially politically economically we have to do the work spiritually existentially emotionally and and those two things feed off each other and strengthen one another so the role of love and friendship crucial the role of being a good person try your hardest

think about other people more than you think about yourself um you know put your ego aside when somebody criticizes you if it's in good faith and see what you can learn from the other and constantly having that open mind constantly understanding that you got to where you got based on different books, different mentors, different happenstances, different experiences. And so while you may have done a lot of work to formulate a really principled position, you can always still learn. And the learning never stops. The developing never stops.

So don't think that it does. And I think that gets us a long way, and it bolsters and strengthens our movements. Yeah, I can't agree more. So much of this world is constantly orienting us toward the ego and away from one another, but this love that you just talked about and our liberation necessitates our struggle against it. So Brett, I really appreciate you, your work and the spirit you shared with us today. Yeah, thank you, my friend. Hey, thank you so much for having me on. It's an honor and a pleasure and I would love to work with you again. Thank you so much for having me.