The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete and Aaron from Timeline Earth Read Vladimir Lenin's 'State and Revolution' - Complete

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

7 Hours and 21 MinutesSome Strong LanguageHere is the complete reading and commentary of Vladimir Lenin's "State and Revolution" by Pete, and Aaron from Timeline Earth.Timeline Earth PodcastPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on Twitter

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Yes, we are. How are you doing? I am fantastic. I am so happy to be here right now. I've never met anyone so excited about doing something like this as you are right now. I am a true communist through and through. It's mostly because I know that it's going to be like this whole thing is just probably way out of left field for a lot of, you know, audience and then like people that are you know sort of connected to your audience um that

that know about you they probably wouldn't be expecting this at all for me they'd they'd expect this they'd be like oh it's just Aaron being Aaron but yeah this one if you were going to try and do it on your show it would take like you know a few months because you'd have to you know you well I mean you guys aren't even doing the Friday episodes anymore so I don't even know what that is I'd have to learn how to read I'd have to do a hooked on phonics for at least at least a year or so. Yeah, it's, uh, this is going to be good because both of us are, you're more, um, you're,

you're more familiar with this work than I am, but I am familiar with this work. Uh, it's pretty amazing. Um, let me read the, well, go ahead. Oh, just, just, just as a background, um, I think me and you were reading this at the same time without even knowing it. And then we, we talked about it and we're like, oh, my God. just read that too. Yeah, I think that that's exactly what it. I think it was like, like, I think you may have started it and then like I started like in the middle while you were

and you just like at the ending of this year. Like, holy cow, this is amazing. Yeah. So, all right. Let me read the preface because it's short. The question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in theory and in practical politics. The imperialist war has immensely accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the working people by the state, which is merging more and more with the all-powerful capitalist associations, is becoming increasingly monstrous. The advanced countries, we mean that they're hinterland, are becoming military convict prisons for the workers. Stop me at any time. The unprecedented

horrors and miseries of the protected war are making the people's position unbearable and increasing their anger. The world proletarian revolution is clearly maturing. The question of its relation to state is acquiring practical importance. He's talking about World War I, right? I think he's writing this in late 18, 1918, early 1919. Yeah. The elements of opportunism that accumulated over the decades are comparatively peaceful or comparatively or decades. of comparable peaceful development have given rise to the trend of social chauvinism, which dominated the official, which dominated the official socialist parties throughout the world. Yeah, one sec.

For your audience, social chauvinism is basically putting nationalism over class interest. That's a very, very simplified version of the definition of social chauvinism. Okay, cool. this trend socialism in words and chauvinism in this trend socialism in words and chauvinism in deeds plekinoff petresov bresovskovskaya schaya rubanovitch and in slightly veiled form sara lettie chernoff and company in russia shiedman legion dav david and others in in Germany, Renaudel, and Velvdine, in France, and German, and Belmont and the Fabians, in England, etc. is conspicuous for the base, servile adaption of the leaders of socialism to the interest,

not only of their national bourgeoisie, but of their state for the majority of the so-called great powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations. and the imperialist war is a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty. The struggle to free the working people from the influence of the bourgeoisie in general and of the imperialist bourgeoisie in particular is impossible without a struggle against opportunist prejudices concerning the state. And he puts the state in quotes. First of all, we examine the theory of marks and angles of the state and dwell in particular detail

on those aspects of this theory, which are ignored or have been distorted by the opportunists. Then we deal especially with the one who is chiefly responsible for their distortions. Karl Kowtsky, the best-known leader of the Second International in 1889 to 1914, which has met with such miserable bankruptcy in the present war. Lastly, we sum up the main results of the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905, and particularly of 1917. Apparently, the latter is now, early August 1917, okay, completing the first stage of its development, but this revolution as a whole can only be understood as a link in a chain of socialist proletarian revolutions being caused by the imperialist war. The question of the religion of the socialist proletarian revolutions of the state, therefore, is acquiring not only practical political importance, but also the significance of the most urgent problem of the day.

The problem of explaining to the masses what they will have to do before long to free themselves from capitalist tyranny. So that's the preface, and it might sound like a lot of gobbledy gook and commie shit. But as we go through this, you have to bear in mind that everything Lenin wrote, he was writing to other communists. He was a polemicist. So he trashes on Karl Kautzky. Carl Kowski is actually a very good read if you want something approachable. He's a guy that wrote to the common man, at least the common man today that can understand what he's talking about.

But as far as Lenin goes, he is writing to other elites within the broader communist movement. And he's also writing as a polemic. And it's very contextual. So everything he mentions is within the context of when he wrote this, 1917, 1918, niche and a World War I. So bear in mind as we read that. That's why Lenin's kind of hard to read because you have to, it's kind of like reading Mises.

You have to have a dictionary with you. All right. So part one, the state, a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. You ready to begin to this one? Oh, yeah. What is now happening to Marxist theory has in the course of history happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them,

received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous, unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hollow their names to a certain extent for the consolation of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. One sec. What was the first name that comes to mind?

When I'm reading, oh, you mean that they did this too? Yeah, like revolutionaries that they basically commercialized, commoditized, and repackaged. Yeah, Shea. Yeah. Yeah. First one. Yeah. So, yeah. And that's, if people realize that after just reading this little bit, they start to realize this isn't like an apologetic for democratic socialism. Yeah. All right. Today the bourgeois, today the bourgeoisie and the opportunist within the labor movement concur in the doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure and distort the revolution. side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and a stole what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social chauvinists are now Marxists. Don't

laugh. And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking to the national German Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war. A predatory war. Yeah. So Lenin was actually very, very, he admired the German social Democrats a lot in the early 1900s. Because despite living under Otto von Bismarck, the German labor movement took the fight to him and won. He got all kinds of concessions from the Prussian government, which if you know anything about Prussia, they,

they valued a centralized state and a nominally all-powerful bureaucracy. And to have a labor movement come in that was blatantly against, blatantly against the ruling Juncker class. And to make as much progress as it did, Lenin saw that as something to be emulated and adapted to just the more backwards Russia. What's funny is I'm reading in here, all or at any rate, all the most essential passages in the works of Marxist's subject on the subject of the state must by all means be quoted as full. No, no, wait a minute.

I'm sorry. They push to the foreground and stall what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. You see that. That's like Beltway libertarians, left libertarians, beltway libertarians and appealing to the state. left libertarians in appealing to like trans rights activists and Black Lives Matter activists who they don't realize are the state. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive.

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Are married to the state. They're not revolutionaries. Yeah. Martin would not consider them revolutionaries. Yeah. They were at one point. And now they're, they're, they're, being subsumed into the status quo, into, you know, the plastic activism. In these circumstances, in view of the unprecedented widespread distortion of Marxism, our prime task is to reestablish really taught on the subject of the state. This will necessitate a number of long quotations from the works of Marx and angles themselves. Of course, long quotations will render the text cumbersome and not help at all to make it

popular reading, but we cannot possibly dispense with them. All, or at any rate, all the most essential passages in the works of Marx and Engels and the subject of the state must by all means be quoted as fully as possible so that the reader may form an independent opinion of the totality of the views of scientific socialism and of the evolution of those views, and so that the distortion by the Krautskiism now prevailing may be documentarily proved and clearly demonstrated. Let us begin with the most popular work of Engels works. Let's begin with the most popular of Engels works, the origin of the family, private property, and the state. The sixth edition of which was published in Stuttgart as far back as 1894.

We have to translate the quotations from the German originals to Russian translations, while very numerous, are for the most part either incomplete or very unsatisfactory. Summing up his historical analysis, Engels said, the state is, therefore, by means, a power forced on society from without, just as little it is the reality of the ethical idea, the image and reality of reason, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of a society at a certain stage of development. It is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has slid into irreconcilable antagonisms, which is, it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes which with conflicting economic interests might not consume themselves in society and fruitless struggle, it became necessary

to have a power seemingly standing above society would alleviate the conflict and keep it from the bounds of order. And this power arisen out of society but placing itself above it and alienating itself more and more from it is the state. Yep. That seems reasonable to me. If you didn't know that Engels said that, I think it would give a lot of libertarians pause to think of things in the context of historical epochs

and development stages. This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regards to the historical role in the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifest incisilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism, objectively cannot be reconciled. And conversely, the existence of the state proves that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. It is on this most important fundamental point that the distortion of Marxism proceeding along two main lines begins. Let me keep going.

Yeah, so far so good. On the one hand, the bourgeois and particularly the petty bourgeois ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class struggle, correct marks in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes. From what the petty bourgeois and Philistine professors and publicists say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it appears that the state does not reconcile classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another. It is the creation of order, which legalizes and perpetually. This oppression by moderating the conflict between classes. In the opinion of the petty bourgeois politicians, however, order means to reconciliation

of classes and not the oppression of one class by another. To alleviate the conflict means reconciling classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors. Seems like something, you know, if you just take that paragraph by itself, seems like something Rothbard could have wrote. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people don't realize that I think that Rothbard and, well, we know, Hoppa, derived so much inspiration from a lot, from this. Yeah.

I mean, this is where, this is where libertarian, right libertarian theory was derived from. It was just made to be right. Yeah, dialectic. I mean, that's, that's all this is, is just dialectic, distilled into, you know, the conditions of 19, 18 and earlier. All right. Where are we at? Okay. For instance, when in the revolution of 1917, the question of the significance and all of the state arose in all its magnitude as a practical question demanding immediate action, and moreover, action on a mass scale, all of the social revolutionaries and Mensheviks descended at once to the petty bourgeois theory that the state

reconciles classes. Innuble, resolution. Doesn't that sound like left libertarians and trans rights and, you know, just basically appealing to, you know, where they, they don't realize they're abandoning positive rights. And then you're, no, no, I believe in negative rights. Um, in numerous. And also with the, the whole um, Beltway type when they're saying, well, we don't think it should be mandatory, but it's definitely a good idea. Yeah. That's, that's the reconciliation and action. Yeah. Inumerable resolution articles by politicians of both these parties are thoroughly saturated with this petty bourgeois and Philistine reconciliation theory. That the state is an organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipod, the class opposite to it. It is something the petty bourgeois Democrats will never be able to understand. Their attitude to the state is one of the most striking manifestations of the fact that our socialist revolutionaries and many, Bolsheviks are not socialist at all, the point that we Bolsheviks have always maintained, but petty bourgeois

Democrats using near-socialist phraseology. On the other hand, the Kautzkyite distortion of Marxism is far more subtle. Theoretically, it is not denied the state as an organ of class rule or that class antagonism is irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or glossed over is this. If the state is the product of the irreconcilable irreconcilability's killing me, irreconciability of class antagonisms. If it is a power standing above society and alienating itself more and more from it, it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible, not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power, which was created by the ruling class, which is the disembodiment of this alienation.

As we shall see later, Marx very explicitly drew this theoretically self-evident conclusion on the strength of a concrete historical analysis of the tasks of the revolution. And as we shall show in detail further on, it's a conclusion that Kautzky has forgotten and distorted. So like I said, Lenin was a polemicist writing to the elite of the communist world. at the time. So he has a lot to say about Kautzky. And I, I've read a little bit of Kautzky, mostly from references from what is to be done. But yeah, I mean, I find Kautzky kind of enjoyable to read, to be honest. All right. Part two, special bodies of armed men, prisons,

etc. Angles continues, as distinct from the old Gentile tribal or clan order, the state first divides its subjects according to territory. This division seems natural to us, but it costs a prolonged struggle against the old organization according to generations or tribes. Again, Engels. The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special public power is necessary, because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible since the split into classes. This public power exists in every state.

It consists not merely of armed men, but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which Gentile clan, of which clan society knew nothing. Is that something that I think we all can agree on? That is powerful. Yeah. I mean, who can argue with that? I don't know a libertarian can argue with that. They can only argue with the source.

Engels elucidates the concept of the power which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men. men having prisons, et cetera, at their command. We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men because the public power, which is an attribute of every state, does not directly coincide with the armed population, with its self-acting armed organization. Like all great revolutionary thinkers, Engels tries to draw the attention to the class-conscious

worker, to what prevailing Philistinism regards as least worthy of attention. That is it, Philistinism. Yeah, Philistinism. Good work. As the most habitual thing. Judaism. Yeah, basically, yeah. As the most habitual thing hollowed by prejudices that are not only deep-rooted, but one

might say petrified. A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power. but how can it be otherwise? We found out. From the viewpoint of the vast majority of Europeans at the end of the 19th century whom Engels was addressing and who had not gone through or closely observed a single great revolution, it could not have been otherwise. They could not understand at all what a self-acting armed organization of the population

was. When asked why it became necessary to have special bodies of armed men place above society and alienating themselves from it, police in a standing army, the West European and Russian Philistines are inclined to utter a few phrases borrowed from Spencer to Mikhailovsky to refer to the growing complexity of social life, the differentiation of functions, and so on. Wow, that sounds like conservatives when you ask them why we need the police. Yeah.

Interesting. There needs to be something. Such a reference seems scientific and effectively lulls the ordinary person asleep by obscuring the important and basic act, namely the split of society into irreconcilable and antagonistic classes. Were it not for the split, the self-acting armed organization of the population would differ from the primitive organization of stick-wielding herds of monkeys or primitive men or men united in clans by its complexity, its high technical level, and so on. such an organization would still be impossible. It is impossible because civilized society is split into antagonistic and moreover irreconcilably irreconcilable antagonistic classes, which self-acting arm-arming would lead to an arm struggle between them. The state arises, a special power has created special bodies of armed men and every revolution by destroying the

the apparatus shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create an organization of this kind capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploitors. Yes. So this is also anathema to libertarianism. It's, what he's getting at is that the special bodies of armed men should serve our class interests and should subjugate them instead of the other way around. And where libertarians kind of, how do I put this without pissing people that I actually like off? What libertarians don't understand, and this is going to sound cliche, is that you need some type of security force.

Private security isn't on the menu right now. It's just not. Maybe in some localities, I'd love for it to be. But it's looking more and more like community security would fill that vacuum should a vacuum ever arise. Yeah. It's like I've been saying. If people want to state, give them a state, just make the state look like what you wanted to look like. Yeah.

And also, when he's saying that the state, whenever there's. a revolution, it lays bare those irreconcilable class antagonisms. You can see that, especially in urban areas, where the state isn't a factor at that particular place in time. You see it in like riots and looting and just any area that isn't, that's a soft target. Ireland's largest award-winning light show experience is back.

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Talk to a friendly professional at Frank Heen Volkswagen today and see if upgrading your car is the right prescription for you. Look at who is looting who. So the video I posted on my timeline earlier, it's a bunch of poor black people looting a cell phone store. that's the most probably the lowest class looting the what he mentioned earlier the petty bourgeoisie like that that business owner for that store um Lenin would I don't think he I don't think he did encourage it as a means of revolution but he would he would diagnose that as you know that's

that's laying bare class antagonisms yeah yeah I think something that I'm sure there are libertarians and a lot of people have said this. Well, if if the right and the left and everyone in the center could just come together, just understand when you're saying that you're basically using, you know, you're invoking like a communist paradise. Like a, yeah. So there you go. That's also a form of opportunism as well.

when you're on the cusp of winning something, whether it's, you know, a propaganda victory or whatever. And then in the middle of it, you're like, well, let's just all come together. Let's stop fighting. We need unity. That's a form of opportunism as well. All right. Where are we? Such a reference seems scientific and effectively lulls the ordinary person to sleep by obscuring the important and basic fact, namely the split of society is a

reconcilable and antagonistic classes. Were it not for this split, the self-acting armed organization of the population would defer to the primitive. Did I already read this? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Where am I at? It is impossible because civilized society.

Okay. There we go. It is impossible because civilized society is split into antagonistic and moreover, irreconcilable antagonistic class, irreconcilably. Oh, wait. We already read this too. Next one. In the above argument, Engels raises theoretically the very same question which every great revolution raises before us in practice palpably end what is more on a scale of mass action,

namely the question of the relationship between special bodies of armed men and the self-acting organization of the population. We shall see how this question is specifically illustrated by the experience of the European and Russian revolutions. But to return to Engel's exposition, he points out that sometimes in certain parts of North America, for example, this public power is weak. He has in mind a rare exception in capitalist society and those parts of North America in its imperialist days where the free colonists predominated. But that generally speaking, it grows stronger. If the public power grows stronger, however, in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute

and as adjacent states become larger and more populous, we have only to look at our present-day Europe, where class struggle and rivalry and conquests have turned up in the public power to such a pitch that it threatens to swallow the whole of society and even the state. This was written not later than the early 90s of the last century, Engel's last preface being dated June 16, 1891. This turns towards imperialism, meaning the complete domination of the trusts, the omnipotence of the big banks, a grand scale colonial policy, and so forth, which was only just beginning

in France and was even weaker in North America and in Germany. Since then, rivalry in conquest has taken a gigantic stride, all the more because by the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century, the world had been completely divided up among these rivals in conquest, i.e., among the predatory great powers. Since then, Military and naval armaments have grown fantastically, and the predatory war of 1914 to 1917 for the domination of the world by Britain or Germany for the division of the spoils has brought the swallowing of all forces of society by the rapacious state power close to complete catastrophe. Angles could as early as 1891 point to rivalry in conquest as one of the most important distinguishing features of the foreign policy of the great powers, while the social chauvinist scoundrels, have ever since 1914 when this rivalry many, when this rivalry, many time intensified, gave rise to an imperialist war, been covering up the defense of the predatory interests of their own, of their own bourgeois with phrases about defense of the fatherland, defense of the republic and the revolution, etc. So there's an example of social chauvinism. When your when your great power country is at war with another great power country,

Instead of putting your interest as a worker, your international interest as a worker, ahead of your nationalist interest. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.

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Part three, the state, an instrument of the exploitation of the oppressed class. The maintenance of the special public power standing above society requires taxes and state loans. I assume he's quoting Engels here. Having public power and the right to levy taxes, Engels writes, the officials now stand as organs of society above society. The free voluntary respect that was accorded to the organs of the Gentile clan constitution does not satisfy them even if they could gain it. Special laws are enacted proclaiming the sanctity and immunity of the officials. The shabbiest police servant has more authority than the representative of the clan,

but even the head of the military power of a civilized state may well envy the elder of a clan, the unrestrained respect of society. The question of the privileged position of the officials as organs of state power is raised here. The main point is indicated, the main point indicated is, what is it that places them above society? We shall see how this theoretical question was answered in practice by the Paris commune in 1871 and how it was obscured from a reactionary standpoint by Kautzky in 1912. Fucking roasted Kautky. All right. So quoting here, because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in some

check, but because it arose at the same time in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which through the medium of the state becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus requires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. The ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs. Likewise, the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labor by capital. By way of exception, however, periods occur in which to warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power as a ostensible mediator acquires for the moment a certain degree of independence of both. Such were the absolute

monarchs of the 17th and 18th century, the Bonapartism of the First and Second empires in France and the Bismarck regime in Germany. Hoppa enters the chat. You know, the one time where they weren't completely fucking it up was absolute monarchy. Such we may add is the Kerenzky government in Republican Russia since it began to persecute the revolutionary proletariat at a moment when, owing to the leadership of the petty bourgeois Democrats, the Soviets have already become impotent while the bourgeois Z are not yet strong enough, to disperse them. In a Democratic Republic, Angles continues, wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely. I mean, can anybody, I mean, does that sound familiar? First, by means of

direct corruption of officials, America. Secondly, by means of an alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange, France and America. Ouch. Yeah, America and France and America, for those who are listening, are in parentheses. I didn't just throw those in there. They're actually in there. At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have developed into an exceptional art, both, have developed into an exceptional art, both these methods of upholding and giving effect

to the omnipotence of wealth in Democratic republics of all descriptions. Since, for instance, in the first months of the Russian Democratic Republic, one might say during the honeymoon of the socialists' SRs and Mensheviks joined in wedlock to the bourgeoisie in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky obstructed every measure intended for curing the capitalists and their marauding practices, their plundering of the state by means of war contracts, and since they're on, Mr. Palchinski, upon resigning from the cabinet, and being, of course, replaced by another. quite similar, Palchinsky, was rewarded by the capitalist with a lucrative job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per annum. What would you call that? Direct or indirect bribery? An alliance of direct or indirect bribery? An alliance of the government and the syndicates or merely friendly relations. What role do the churnoffs serolete, serilatilatil. Saratiles. Saratelis.

Avv Avsendios and Scobelov's play. Are they the direct or only the indirect allies of the millionaire treasury looters? So those are all Mensheviks and moderate

social Democrats he's talking about. Another reason why the omnipotence of wealth is more certain in the Democratic Republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A Democratic Republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, through the Polchinsky's

churnoffs, serotonies, and company, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly that no change of persons, institutions, or parties in the bourgeois Democratic Republic can shake it. We call that an oligarchy. Yes. We got it. We must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage as well as an instrument of, we must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage as well, an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, obviously taking account of the long experience of German social democracy is, quoting Engels here, the gauge the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-based state. Yes. You can really tell where your lower and lower middle class is by the election cycle. What are their interests? What are they pissed about? And most of the time, it's just really depressing.

even with how convoluted our system is where you only get to choose between two assholes. Like the issues voters are very interesting to see like what the issue is and where the majority of that type of demographic, the lower class demographic, how they voted. That's all voting demographic should be like he said is just a gauge. the petty bourgeois Democrats, such as the socialist revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the sole chauvinists and opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this more from universal suffrage. They themselves share and instill into the minds of the people the false notion that universal suffrage in the present-day state is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization. Yeah. Going back to you have a choice between a douche and a shit sandwich.

Well, yeah. And when they do that, when they control who it is, you're always, you're kind of going to be forced to vote against class. Yeah. Every time. Yeah. Especially if they mandate voting. Here, we can only indicate this false notion. Only point out the angle's perfectly clear statement is distorted by every step in the

propaganda and agitation of the official, i.e. opportunist socialist parties. A detailed exposure of the utter of the utter falsity of this notion which Engels brushes aside here is given in our further account of the views of Engels and Marx on the present-day state. Angles gives a general summary of his views in the most popular works in the following words. The state has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did, without it. They had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production

in which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as they arose. at an earlier stage. Along with them, the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong into a museum of antiquities by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe. We do not often come across this passage in the propaganda and agitation literature of the present-day Social Democrats. even when we do come across it, it is mostly quoted in the same manner as one bows before an icon,

i.e., it is done to show official respect for angles, and no attempt is made to gauge the breadth and depth of the revolution that this relegating of the whole machinery of a state to a museum of antiquities implies. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person.

So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4.Northwest. Ireland's largest award-winning light show experience is back. Wonderlights is now open in three spectacular locations, Malahide Castle and Gardens, and Marley Park in Dublin, and Photo House and Cork. Follow the enchanting walking trail that will captivate all ages

as the night comes alive with dazzling displays and unforgettable moments. Who will you Wonderlights with? For dates and bookings, visit wonderlights.com. In most cases, we do not even find an understanding of what Engels calls the state machine. So this is just reminding you that

that Lenin is a communist and his ultimate end goal is a classless, stateless society. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck with that. Part four, the Wuthering Away of the State and Violent Revolution. Engel's words regarding the withering away of the state are so widely known, they are often quoted and so clearly reveal the essence of the customary adaption of Marxism to

opportunism that we must deal with them in detail. We shall quote this whole argument from which they are taken. Okay, this is all going to be angles right here, I believe. I think at the bottom. Here you can during. Revolution and science. And it's anti-During. Okay, that's, no, this is going to be angles, but that's a footnote of somebody that he's

going to be smacking down. down in here. Okay, so, all right, angles. The proletariat seizes from the state power and turns the means of production into state power to begin with, but thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of particular exploiting classes for the maintenance of the external conditions of production, and therefore, especially for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class and the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production, slavery, serfdom, or bondage,

wage labor. The state was the official representative of a society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state as it was the state of that class, which itself represented for its own time, society as a whole. In ancient times, the state-owning, the state of slave-owning citizens in the Middle Ages of the feudal nobility and our time of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative, the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy and production, with the collisions and excesses

arising from the struggle, are removed. Nothing more remains to be held in subjection, nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as a representative of the whole of society, the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous. Superfluous. Oh, my God, I'm dying here.

And then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and by the conduct of processes and productions. The state is not abolished. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase a free people state, both as to justifiable use for the long term from an agitational point of view and as to ultimate scientific insufficiency and also of this so-called anarchist demand that the state be abolished overnight. All right, I'm going to let me go to the next paragraph and then it is safe to say that of this argument of angles, which is remarkably rich in ideas, only one. one point has become an integral part of socialist thought among modern socialist parties, namely that according to Marx, the state withers away. As distinct from the, this sounds like friggin, and caps.

It's just going to, if we just, if get enough people to read Rothbard, it's going to go away, man. As distinct from the anarchist doctrine of the abolition of the state, to prune Marxism to such an extent means reducing it to the opportunism for this interpretation. interpretation only leaves a vague notion of a slow, even gradual change of absence of leaps and storms, of absence of revolution. The current, widespread, popular, if one may say, conception of the withering away of the state undoubtedly means obscuring, if not repudiating revolution. Yeah. So basically, any socialist thinker that is skewed revolution was in Lenin's eyes, a traitor, an opportunist. and shouldn't be taken seriously. Am I wrong? And I know Andrew just wrote it in the comments,

but I was thinking it too. I mean, agorists, I mean, you can, this whole paragraph by angles, I mean, you can rework a couple things

and it just be agorism. Yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, doesn't make agorism. bad, it just might make it

in the long view a little bit naive. The idea that Bitcoin is going to displace the dollar in our lifetimes at least. I know a lot of people, that's a very contentious point to disagree with, but it's not looking, Bitcoin's

been around for what, 12, 13 years-ish? 2000 Yeah, 2009. Yeah, and granted it hasn't entered popular consciousness for, let's say, I don't know, seven or eight years now. It's when people really, it's when it started, you know, getting to us normies. But I don't know. I'm not, I'm not fully convinced of the, like the, if agorism divides itself into stages of history, I'm not fully convinced.

that the last stage of history for agorism is a complete melting away of the state in favor of productive forces. Just like I'm not fully convinced of communism's point that the state will melt away in favor of productive forces. Yeah. I think there's a way, like I said before, there's always going to be a state just a matter of what it looks like. And that's why getting it as local as possible is probably the best idea. And it doesn't mean that you should ever stop trying to downsize it, trying to subvert and undermine it.

This is like the post-anarchist idea that the state will always exist and it's going to be a struggle for the rest of the rest of human existence, basically. But is a struggle worth doing? All right. Such an interpretation, however, is the crudest distortion of Marxism. advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. In point of theory, it is based on disregard for the most important circumstances and considerations indicated in, say, Engel's summary argument we have just quoted in full. In the first place, at the very out-his argument, Engel says that in seizing state

power, the proletariat thereby abolishes the state as state. It is not done to ponder over the meaning of this. Surely, it is either ignored altogether or it is considered to be something in the nature of Hegelian weakness on Engel's part. As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly expressed the experience of one of the greatest proletarian revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, of which we shall speak in greater detail in its proper place. As a matter of fact, Engel speaks here of the proletariat revolution abolishing the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution. According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not wither away, but it is abolished by the proletariat

in the course of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state. Secondly, the state is a special coercive force. Angles gives this splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost lucidity. And And from it follows that the special coercive force for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie of millions of working people by handfuls of their rich must be replaced by a special coercive force for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is precisely what is meant by abolition of the state as state. This is precisely the act of taking possession of the means of production in the name of society. and it is self-evident that such a replacement of one bourgeois special force by another proletarian special force cannot possibly take place in the form of withering away. Thirdly, in speaking of the state withering away and the even more graphic and colorful dying down of itself, Engels refers quite clearly indefinitely to the period after the state has taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole of society.

that is after the socialist revolution. We all know that the political form of the state at that time is the most complete democracy, but it never enters the head of any of the opportunists who shamelessly distort marks that Engels is consequently speaking here of democracy dying down of itself or withering away. This seems very strange at first sight, but it is incomprehensible only to those who have not thought about democracy also being a state and consequently also disappearing when the state, disappears. Revolution alone can abolish the bourgeois state. Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning

to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person, so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com. north-west. Ireland's largest award-winning light show experience is back. Wonderlights

is now open in three spectacular locations, Malahide Castle and Gardens and Marley Park in Dublin and photo house in Cork. Follow the enchanting walking trail that will captivate all ages as the night comes alive with dazzling displays and unforgettable moments. Who will you

Wonderlights with? For dates and bookings, visit wonderlights. the state in general, the most complete democracy, can only wither away. Fourthly, after formulating his famous proposition that the state withers away, Engels at once explained specifically that this proposition is directed against both the opportunists and the anarchists. In doing this, Engels puts it in the forefront that conclusion drawn from the proposition that the state weather's away, which is directed against the opportunists.

He's just explaining to the layman what Engels is trying to say because there's a lot of people trying to take what Engels says out of context and, you know, use it for their own opportunistic ends and say, well, Engels agrees with me. And Lenin is saying, no, actually, he doesn't. This is basically just when in putting out a flyer, putting out a fucking fire tweet against somebody that he hates. one can wager that out of every 10,000 persons who have read or heard about the withering away of the state, 9,990 are completely unaware or do not remember that Angles directed his conclusions from that proposition, not against anarchists alone. And of the remaining 10, probably 9 do not know the meaning of a free people state or why an attack on this slogan means an attack on opportunist.

This is how history is written. This is how a great revolutionary teaching is imperceptively falsified and adapted to prevailing Philistianism. The conclusion directed against the anarchists has been repeated thousands of times. It has been vulgarized and rammed into people's heads in the shallowest form and has acquired the strength of prejudice, whereas the conclusion directed against the opportunist has been obscured and forgotten. The Free People State was a program demand and a catchword current, a moment. the general social Democrats in the 70s. This catchword is devoid of all political content, except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous Philistine fashion.

Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a Democratic Republic, angles were prepared to justify its use for a time from an agitational point of view. You want to mention, you want to say anything about that? So during the 1870s, there was a lot of civil unrest in the Prussian Empire. And it got so bad that and the Prussian prince, Wilhelm Friedrich, either the third or the second, one of the Wilhelm Friedrichs had absolutely no clue as to what was going on outside that he like, he went out on his palace door. went out in like his palace and expected to be like greeted by the people. And it was like a mob throwing things at him and burning down Berlin. And it was only after a lot of concessions that,

that he restored peace. And then he was beloved by everybody. But that's that's what Lenin's talking about. That whole, that whole time that the German social Democrats and the labor movement in Germany. made a lot of gains, but also squandered them. It was an opportunist catchword for it amounted to nothing more than petrifying bourgeois democracy and was also a failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of the state for the proletariat under capitalism.

But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people. people, even in the most democratic bourgeois, even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a special force for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not free and not a people state. Marx and Engels explain this repeatedly to their party comrades in the 70s. Fifthly, the same work of Engels whose argument about the withering away of the state everyone remembers also contains an argument of the significance of violent revolution. Engel's historical analysis of its role becomes a veritable penigeric on

violent revolution. This no one remembers. It is done in modern socialist parties to talk and even think, it is not done in modern socialist parties to talk or even think about the significance of this idea. And it plays no part whatever in their daily propaganda. and agitation among the people, and yet it is inseparably bound with the withering away of the state into one harmonious whole. Here is Engel's argument. Quote, that force, however, play yet another role, other than that of a diabolical power in history, a revolutionary role, that in the words of Marx,

it is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one, that it is the, it is the instrument with which social movements force its way through and shatters the dead fossilized political forms. Of this, there is not a word in erudering. It is only with size and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economy based on exploitation. Unfortunately, because all use of force demoralizes, he says, the person who uses it. And this is in Germany where a violent collision, which may, after all, before some people, would at least have the advantage of wiping out the servility, which has penetrated the nation's mentality following the humiliation of the 30 years war. And this person's mode of thought,

dull, insipid, and impotent, presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary part that history has ever known. How can this- talking about the German Social Democrat Party during the 1870s. And going, he mentions the 30 years war. The 30 years war was from 1619 to 1639 and just basically destroyed Germany, forever altered its landscape and also gave kind of paved the road for the rise of the Prussian monarchy and which also gave rise to just a German national, German national sentiment,

which was still pretty new and exciting in the time of the 1870s, all the way up to Lenin. How can this penegyric on violent revolutions, which Engels insistently brought to the attention of the German social Democrats between 1878 and 1894, i.e., right up to the time of his death, be combined with the theory of the withering away of the state to form a single theory. Usually the two are combined by means of eclecticism, eclecticism, by an unprincipled and

sophisticated selection made arbitrarily or to please the powers that be of first one, then another argument, and in 99 cases out of 100, if not more, it is the idea of the withering away that is placed in the forefront. dialectics are replaced by eclecticism that is that is the most usual the most widespread practice to be met with in present-day official social democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new. It was observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunistic fashion, opportunist fashion, The substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people.

It gives an illusory satisfaction. It seems to take into account on all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality, it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all. We have already said above and shall show more fully later that the theory of Marx and angles of the inevitability of the violent revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, through the process of the withering away, but as a general rule only through a violent revolution. The panegyric angles sang in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx's repeated statements, see the concluding passages, of the poverty of philosophy and communist manifesto, with their proud and open proclamation of the inevitability of violent revolution. See what Marx wrote nearly 30 years later in criticizing

the Gotha program of 1875 when he mercilessly castigated the opportunist character of that program. The Spaniagoric is by no means a mere impulse, a mere declamation or a polemical sally. That's a good word, man. Whatever, Lenin. I'm not just being a polemicist. I'm not just out here trying to hurt my political opponents. The necessity of systematically imbueing the masses with this and precisely the view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social chauvinists and,

Nikotskyites trends expresses itself strikingly in both of those trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation. The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletariat state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e. of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of withering away. A detailed and concrete elaboration of these views was given by marks and angles when they study each particular particular revolutionary situation when they analyze the lessons of the experience of each particular revolution. We shall now pass to this, undoubtedly the most important part of their theory. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest.

We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. have your say online or in person so together we can create a more reliable sustainable electricity supply for your community find out more at airgrid.i4 slash northwest employers rewarding your staff

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They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause. Make your awards more rewarding. Visit optionscar.i.e. today. So anything on that? Yeah, so what he's saying is the state doesn't magically wither away. The conditions have to be in place for it to weather away, meaning the right people have to control the state in order for their, to be any chance that the state ever goes away.

And I think us post-libertarians, right-wing anarchists, that's kind of how we diagnose our grand strategy, I guess, for our end goal of a stateless society, would be if the state ever is to abolish itself, if it ever is to wither away. And it may never, but if we ever want a chance at it, then we might have to be the ones in control of it. And that's that's going to make a lot of people go re.

But like that it's either that or you just get a continuation of the same people being in charge of it. And then it's really never going to happen. It's only ever going to get stronger. Yeah, it's only going to escalate. And my other, my other critique of that argument is would it be worse? the same or better if we right-wing populist libertarians or whatever were to be in charge, then if we just continued to let the conservatives and the liberals and the two-party establishment or even worse, the progressives, would it be the same better or worse if those people were to

maintain their tug of war? Well, I mean, a lot of people are just going to say that it's going to be impossible and that, you know, the revolution in Russia just proves that everything's going to, all the intentions that you had from the start are going to fall apart. Yeah. It'll turn into something even worse than the czar. Yeah. And that's, and it's, it's hard to, it's very hard to take. to learn anything from the Russian Revolution because even the people leading the Russian Revolution knew that that entire revolution was

happened based on luck on the fact that Russia was a backwards country. It was a very specific set of conditions that led to the Russian Revolution. And that can't, those conditions weren't present in any other country. And also everyone at the top knew who was financing it. I think it bothered Trotsky the most who was financing it more than anyone else. Those yonkers I mentioned earlier. All right. Part two, or this chapter two, the eve of revolution, part one, the eve of revolution. The first works of mature Marxism, the poverty of philosophy and the communist manifesto appeared just on the eve of the revolution at 1848.

For this reason, in addition to presenting the general principles of Marxism, they reflect to a certain degree the concrete revolutionary situation of the time. It will therefore be more expedient perhaps to examine what the authors of these works said about the state immediately before they drew conclusions from the experience of the years of 1848 to 1851. In the poverty of philosophy, Marx wrote, The working class in the course of development will substitute for the old bourgeois society an association which will preclude class and their antagonism. And there will be no more political power groups since the political power is precisely

the official expression of class antagonism in bourgeois society. Do you agree with that? I think so, yeah. What's your take on that? I mean, that political power is precisely the official expression of class antagonism. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's comparable to Lenin's time, but that, that statement very generally, I think is true.

You know, your blue-haired tranny HR department heads will always vote against the people that they manage. And the workers in general, if given the opportunity, will always vote in their interest, which is expressly antagonistic to the people in charge of them. I mean, I'll always vote for a raise. I'll always vote for better benefits, and that's expressly against the people that pay me. It is instructive to compare this general exposition of the idea of the state disappearing after the abolition of class with the exposition contained in the Communist Manifesto written by Marx and Engels a few months later in November of 1847, to be exact. In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil,

war raging within existing society up to the point where the war breaks out into open revolution and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. January 6th. All I can think of is January 6th. Man. I wish. We have seen above the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise

a proletariat to the position of the ruling class. to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to rest by degree. Go. Winning the battle of democracy. That's not just in national politics. That's in your school boards. That's in your local elections.

You have to win that battle first. It doesn't matter what you campaign on. It doesn't matter what you say to get there, what you do to get there. That battle has to be won. That's why, like, principal libertarianism hasn't ever seized power. because they're going into it wanting to abolish that power instead of wielding it to punish their enemies, basically, to punish and predate off their enemies. You have to predate off your enemies in order to get rid of them, to take away their power.

That's just how it works. Where are, where am I? Where am I? Okay. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to rest by a degree all capital from the bourgeoisie to centralize all instruments of production into the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class, and to increase the total productive forces

as rapidly as possible. All right. So, dating on your enemies, taking away their capability to mount a reaction. So that's what he's, that's what marks, that's what angles,

that's what Lenin's saying. And that's what Lennon did. Yeah, I mean, this is a, it's an example you already used, just used, is if there are six seats on your local school board, you get six of your people, you get six of your people into them. Yep. And you write the rules so that people that disagree with you or that want to undo whatever policies you institute can can never attain those seats again. Yeah. And yeah. And you, yeah, you rewrite everything.

so that you don't lose those seats. And that is a, that is revolutionary. That's not reform. That's a revolution. You are changing the system dramatically from the inside so that it's no longer recognizable. Yeah. And it's not something, I mean, libertarians would say that it is unfair.

It is unfair. They would actually use the term unfair. Yep, it's intolerant. And, you know, we've all heard of the paradox of tolerance. usually some Antifa, uh, lady boy or trannies talking about the paradox of tolerance, how you can't have fascists in your society in a tall, in a tolerant society because fascists are intolerant.

Well, that also applies to, it also applies to communists. You can't have communists in your society because eventually everything goes right and everything, everything drifts left and, you know, you get closer and closer to communism and hopper knew this. Yeah, I mean, that's why most, why a lot more people are coming to the conclusion that liberalism failed.

Because liberalism allows for Marxists to gain power and all those principled people going, well, we can't do anything. I mean, they've got the numbers. And principal libertarians then basically turn into fans of democracy. Yeah. Liberal democratic capitalism is simultaneously. provides the best conditions for the poor class, the poor and middle class, but also provides the best conditions to take over, for one of those classes to take over. It doesn't have to be the proletarian, doesn't have to be the kings, but it's just a battleground of class warfare.

The best battleground of class warfare, I should say. Here we have a formulation of one of the most remarkable and most important ideas of Marxism on the subject of the state, namely the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Marx and Engels began to call it after the Paris commune, and also a highly interesting definition of the state, which is also one of the forgotten words of Marxism, the state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class. That's some bold shit right there, man. Yeah. Yep. The definition of the state has never been explained in the prevailing propaganda and agitation literature of the official social democratic parties. Maybe we should stop here and just flip those words and we have Democratic Socialists today. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest.

We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid. your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. Employers, did you know you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1,500 euro and gift cards annually completely tax-free?

and even better. You can spread it over five different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try OptionsCard. OptionsCard is Ireland's brand new multi-choice employee gift card packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy, easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.compti.e. today. Yeah. Lennon would look at those people as basically canon fodder. Oh, yeah. I mean, he he went from admiring the German social Democrats in the early night pre-Russian revolution to just thinking that they are the biggest pieces of shit, like the most inept, incompetent pieces of shit out of all of the, well, besides the English workers movement, out of all of them, because they failed to capitalize on their gains and they regressed back into, you know, let's let's be national. nationalists instead of, you know, actually seeking, you know, working class power. Okay. I'm going to say that sentence again and keep going. The definition of the state has never been

explained in the prevailing propaganda and agitation literature of this official social democratic parties. More than that, it has been deliberately ignored for it is absolutely irreconcilable with the, with reformism and is a slap in the face for the common opportunist prejudices and Philistine allusions about the peaceful development of democracy. The proletariat needs the state. This is repeated by all the opportunists, social chauvinists, and Kautzkyites, who assure us that this is what Marx taught. But they forgot to add that in the first place, according to Marx, the proletariat needs

only a state which is withering away. A state so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately and can and not but wither away. And secondly, the working people need a state, the proletariat organized as the ruling class. The state is a special organization of force. It is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class. What class must a proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e. the bourgeoisie. The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression, can carry it out. For the proletariat is the only class that is consistently revolutionary, the only class that

can unite all the working and exploited people in the struggle against the bourgeoisie and completely removing it. Now, if you take into consideration current conditions in America in 2021, who would you say is the most revolutionary class? in today. I mean like literally like would be close to doing this. Yes.

I mean, it just seems like it's the progressives. Yes. Yep. It is. It's the, it's the, the four horsemen, the Ayanna Presley's, the Alexander, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They, if, if they could just steamroll through

whatever they wanted, they would be, you know, objectively, the most revolutionary um revolutionary leaders imaginable and even their their their contemporaries on the right don't even hold a candle yeah and the right would be you know when you when you ask that question i immediately thought of the progressives but then i went to the right and i went to like the

trump right and i'm like they're not willing to do what it takes no they're just not willing to do what it takes yeah they're it's they're operating on reaction and and usually weak reaction and late reaction. And that's about it. So they do have the potential to be more revolutionary. There's just, you know, people like you and Phil Bishop and all these right-wing thinkers just haven't yet found a way to light a fire under their ass. And there probably isn't a universal way.

But they need to be elevated to the position of revolutionaries somehow. Not violent. I'm not saying violent revolutionaries to all you NSA agents listening. But just people that don't seek to hit the reset button, but to fundamentally change the system in such a way that is unrecognizable. Yeah. Well, we also, we need elites, too. Yeah.

We need elites. That's something that we've been looking back through history and American history and looked at the Jacksonian period. And there were some impressive elites then. Yeah. The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation, i.e. In the selfish interest of an insignificant, insignificant minority against the, the vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation,

i.e., in the interest of the vast majority of people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave owners, the landowners and capitalists. Before we go any further, when he's talking about capitalists here. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.

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packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy, easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.i.e. today. I mean, he's not taught. eventually he's basically talking about, you know, like the Koolock or some, you know, the person who owns a store or something like that. The petty bourgeois. Yeah, I guess they're petty bourgeois.

But the, I mean, there's a pretty good history in Europe and in America at this point of, you know, what libertarians want to call crony capitalism and is basically what always. happens when a state exists. That business and the state are going to become entwined. Yeah. So the petty bourgeois Democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion, not as the overthrow of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority, which has become aware of its aims.

The petty bourgeois utopia, which is a very important, which is a very important, which is a bit of inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes led in practice to the betrayal of the interest of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871 and by the experience of socialist participation in bourgeois cabinets in Britain, France, Italy, and other countries at the turn of the century. All his life marks fought against this petty bourgeois socialism, now revived in Russia by the socialist revolutionary and Menshevik parties. He developed his theory of the class struggle consistently down to the theory of political power of the state. The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat,

the particular class whose economic conditions of existence prepare it for this task and provide it with the possibility of the power to perform it. It's just basically any libertarian who's like, well, you know, if the people just decided to rise up and everything, they'd have all the power. How many are there, where there are two thousand, two million government employees in the United States and there's 330 million of us? Basically, it's the same kind of idea. Yeah. And this idea that you can reconcile with them after any successful seizure of power or that your seizure of power has to take into account their interests and have to include them. that's that's what lennon's railing against as well is uh it's been done before like all of these um

all of these wishy-washy centrist revolutionaries that um that know that the system needs to change but want to include the the people that already are in charge of the system in that process of change uh they get exactly what what they deserve and that's just a return to you know the conditions prior to that revolution. It's just, it's a paint job. We say that all the time now, all these fake revolutionaries, all these economists and, you know, mostly neoliberal, left-leaning economists that, you know, oh, we need to, we need to fix capitalism. They're not talking about changing capitalism.

They're talking about giving it a paint job. The underlying, the underlying exploitation or whatever you want to call it, the oppression. the injustice of this system will still exist. It'll just be kind of moved around here and there and, you know, given, you know, fancy names and marketed in a way that, in a way that feels good. Yeah, the, I had something and I lost it. All right, let me move on.

While the bourgeoisie break up and disintegrate the peasantry and all the petty bourgeois groups that, They weld together, unite and organized proletariat. Only the proletariat, by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production, is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeois exploit, oppress, and crush, often not less but more than they do to the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation. The theory of class struggle, applied by Marx to the question of the state and the socialist revolution,

leads as a matter of course to the recognition of the political rule of the proletariat of its dictatorship, i.e., of undivided power, directly backed by the armed force of the people. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeois, and of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system. one of the articles that Yarvin wrote like right after the election last year talked about, you know, like a takeover, a right-wing takeover of the United States and exactly what you would do with the left. You know, and his idea was make them comfortable. Just make sure that they don't have any power. Yeah.

You know, you talked about how, you know, there were still as early as like 15 years of, ago, SS officers collecting a pension from the German government. Yeah. So, yeah. So, okay. But yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. It's like, well, these people have been hating us and punishing us for so long. It's hard not to want to win and then do something equally evil to them.

Oh, it can go. I'm up for either one, either neutering them or, you know, just. destroying them. Either one's fine. I guess it would depend. Yeah, it just goes, what do you say? Like, Menon's saying that only this revolution has to be done specifically and exclusively by a certain class, by the proletarian in this case. But that problem, to apply that to today, yeah, any revolution.

or even reform has to be led by only a specific class of people. Otherwise, you're going to get those opportunists. You're going to get that reaction afterwards, that subsuming of your interests by people that already have power. The whole point is that we don't have power. We want to take power from them. We can't include the people that we're taking power away from in the process of taking power.

So we did have a super chat back here. The shenanigans with Sam says really enjoying these series that y'all do. Let's see if there's anything else here that's interesting. Nope. All right. No, then, no, there was. I just want to get through part. The revolution summed up and then we'll call it a night and do the next step.

Save it for the next episode. All right. The theory of class struggle applied by Mark, no, we did that one. The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force and organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population, the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie and semi-proletarians in the work of organizing a socialist economy. By educating the Workers' Party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeois and against the bourgeois. By contrast, the opportunism now prevailing trains the members of the Workers' Party to be the representative of the better paid workers who lose touch with the masses, get along fairly

well under capitalism, and sell their birthright for a mass of pottage, i.e. renounced their role of revolutionary leaders of the people against the bourgeoisie. Marxist theory of the state, the proletariat organized as the ruling class is in, the ruling class is inseparably bound up with the whole of his doctrine of the revolutionary role of the proletariat in history. The culmination of this rule is the proletarian dictatorship, the political rule of the proletariat. But since the proletariat needs the state as a special form of organization of violence against the bourgeoisie, the following conclusion suggests itself. It is conceivable that such an organization can be created without first abolishing, destroying the state machine created by the

bourgeois for themselves. The Communist Manifesto leads straight to this conclusion. And it is of this conclusion that Marx speaks when summing up the experience of the revolution of 1848 through 1851. Anything? Let me keep going? Yeah, just, you know, it's when he talks about edging the Workers Party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat. Who are the vanguard of the proletariat? The vanguard, the revolutionary workers, the class conscious workers, the people that have Red Theory, have understand their place in the social strata, understand that their interests are in direct conflict with the interests of the people of, say, their bosses, the investors in their

company, the CEO, the HR department, you know, to bring it into today's context. The people that, as a very foundation, have that understanding. their brains that my interests are in direct conflict with the people that with the people that are above me. Do you want to do one more section or do you want to leave it where an hour and a half in? Let's leave it in an hour and a half. Okay. Cool. I got to wake up early tomorrow because I'm a, I'm a semi-proletariat wage slave. Well, let me ask you this. Can you do like a real quick summary so far of what of what his arguments are so far? So first and foremost, the nature of the state as an organized armed, armed enforcement

mechanism for class interests, which I think we can all agree on. How we define those classes might be a point of contention, but that's something I've been harping on for a while. and I haven't made any progress. But what else? Oh, any revolutionary movement has to be directed by the people in that oppressed class. It can't be inclusive of the oppressing class or even people near the oppressing class. And you have to have your end goal in mind.

If our end goal is an anarchist society of Covenant Communes, we have to take. take that end goal and our strategy has to has to bear that end goal in mind how does how does doing X get us to covenant communes in a stateless society this keeps going and it um it only gets better you know it's one of those things that it's very easy to dismiss until you realize you know first of all you listen to a lot of it and you're like well i mean a lot of this is easy to look at and see the, where a lot of libertarian thinkers have, where they can agree on. I mean, Hapa even saying that 90% of Marx is right. Yeah.

And except for the foundation that, uh, that wage labor is universally oppressive or that profit is universally oppressive. I forget what he said and what, what must be done. Yeah. Yeah. And even Hapa has his own kind of class theory. I think good thinkers should have a class theory. I mean, even Konkin has class theory that is, that's acceptable. Yep. Yeah. But I think that there is more that a lot of people don't realize when they look at the Trumpers and they look at the progressives and they look at the neoliberals and they just see them. as

what's called different political ideologies it's also very easy to see them as different classes as well Yeah I mean I think even petty bourgeois From going back to Lenin's time Like what constituted the petty bourgeois

The shop owners The small business owners The artisans and craftsmen That sell their shit on like Etsy and eBay And stuff But employ people even they should get some scrutiny because we as libertarians, we're all in favor of that. But when it comes down to it, if there ever is a revolution and we do demand better material

conditions or at least the conditions that give like us wage slaves or whatever a little more collective bargaining power or anything like that, they're probably not going to be in favor of that because they want to maximize profits, understandably. And that's in direct conflict with me maximizing my income. Yeah. All right, man. So timeline, earth, when you show up. I showed up last episode.

It was a good one. It was a good one. But yeah, man. So I guess we'll pick this up again on another day. I'm probably going to have to break this up during at some point during the holidays. But if we can get through this, I mean, this really isn't that long. This is, I don't believe it's as long as Ted's manifesto. So we might be able to, might be able to plow through this.

And what? I want to put it out to your audience, to your listeners right now. I'm looking for a guest spot on Boys Town with Aaron. I want to get, I want to get an episode. Airgrid. Operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com.i.4. Northwest. On the many nights of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee Christmas nights at gravity. This Christmas, enjoy a truly unique night out at the Gravity Bar. Savour festive bites from Big Fan Bell, expertly crafted seasonal cocktails and dance the night away with DJs from love tempo. Brett take infuse, amazing atmosphere, incredible food and drink.

My goodness, it's Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at giddlestorhouse.com. Get the Faxby Drinkaware, visit Drinkaware.com. Done, at least in the next, I don't know, six or seven days. Cool. Cool. So hit me up. All right, DM me.

Take care if they can find your account. Yeah. You know what to DM me. Take care, man. Have a good evening. I'll see it. Part two, man. You ready for this?

Ready as I'll ever be. Yeah. So we're getting into, let's see. So the first section of essentially B chapter two is called the eve of revolution. And now we're getting into the revolution summed up. Let me make sure that, yep, there we are. We're live. Cool.

Just want to make sure. All right. Let me tweet out that we're live now and put it in another place. and then we can start doing this. Waiting for the proverbial. Why are you doing this on YouTube? You should be doing it on someone that. Just kiss my ass.

Until you get kicked off, this is probably the easiest option. Much. I mean, I have like six channels, so it's not like I can, you know, I can do this. Yeah,

we're talking about somebody that utilized every apparatus that was specifically built against him into into something wonderful. Pretty much, that is the goal. So, all right, one more little one out here. And boom. All right, man. I'm just going to jump in because, you know,

it's the Sunday before Christmas and all that crap. I'm sure people are busy and just appreciate anyone who can show up on a Sunday night. I really do. All right. So the revolution summed up. Mark sums up, Marks sums up his conclusions from the revolution of 1848 to 51 on the subject of the state we are concerned. On the subject of the state we are concerned with in the following argument contained in the 18th premier of Louis Bonaparte. But the revolution is throughgoing.

It is still journeying through purgatory. It does its work methodically. It does its work methodically. By December 2nd, 1851, the day of Louis Bonaparte's coup d'auta. It had completed one half of its preparatory work. It is now completing the other half. First, it perfected the parliamentary power in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has attained this, it is perfecting the executive power, reducing it to its purest expression. isolating it, sending it up against itself as the sole object, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has done this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exultantly exclaimed, well-grubbed old mole. Anything? Yeah. Actually, this whole emphasis on parliamentary. as part of as part of like as a stage and early stage of a revolution um it's not something we really think about today because like parliamentary oratory isn't really like isn't like a hot thing today um for it had like a spark of greatness i forget what his name was but uh there was that

guy that would just roast anybody that was uh getting like questioned by congress uh what the fuck was his name he was like Doc like a kind of a handsome skinny dude Republican he I think he's out of Congress now this is like early Trump era from one of the Carol

oh shit I can't remember I can't remember his name either but hopefully you know who I'm talking about he fucking roasted people and uh to a Marxist that's an example of indicting the system

And that's the whole purpose of like parliamentary oratory for a party is to have a platform from which to indict the system and to raise class consciousness and all that shit. You know, expose corruption, whistleblow, use all your resources on the bottom to filter it up top and then put it out on the highest stage possible, which at the time was parliament. Cool. Oh, I just wanted to say something from the last episode. A couple people commented that there was nothing more bourgeois than you being able to hear you vape during the, during this. Yep. This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its vast and ingenious state machinery, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half million, this appalling parasitic body, which, which, you know, which, you know, meshes the body of French society and chokes all its pores sprang up in the days of the

absolute monarchy with the decay of the feudal system, which had helped to hasten. The first French Revolution developed centralization, but at the same time, it increased the extent, the attributes, and the number of agents of governmental power. Napoleon completed this state machinery. The legitimate monarchy and the July monarchy added nothing but a greater division of labor. Finally, in its struggle against the revolution, the parliamentary republic found itself compelled to strengthen, along with the repressive measures, the resources and centralization of government power. All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor.

The 18th premier of the liberal power. Yeah, yeah, okay. In this remarkable argument, Marxism takes a tremendous step forward compared with the communist manifesto. In the latter, the question of the state is still treated in an extremely abstract manner, in the most general terms and expressions. In the above-quoted passage, the question is treated in a concrete manner, and the conclusion is extremely precise, definite, practical, and palpable. All previous revolutions perfected the state machine, whereas it must be broken, smashed. Keep going? Yeah, I mean, I think that speaks for itself.

All revolutions perfect the state machine. Yeah. I've used this. I think I used this when we were talking about Uncle Ted. Who was it who said it? The guy who used to write speeches for Nixon, who Carl Hess. He said there's never been a real revolution, only a change in manager. So the conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the state.

And it is precisely this fundamental point, which has been completely ignored by the dominant official social democratic parties and indeed distorted, as we shall see later, by the foremost theoretician of the second international Carl Kowtsky. Man, he hates Kowtsky. It's crazy because if you read, if you read any like, dissertations on what is to be done. He fucking loves Kowski. He quotes them all the time.

He looks up to him as like a mentor. But that was before the Russian Revolution, the October Revolution. And now Kautzky is just kind of, you know, he's actually criticizing Lenin. So welcome. The Communist Manifesto gives a general summary of history, which compels us to regard the state as the organ of class rule and leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the bourgeoisie without first winning political power, without attaining political supremacy, without transforming the state into the proletariat organized as the ruling class,

and that this proletarian state will begin to wither away immediately after its victory, because the state is unnecessary and cannot exist in a society in which there are no class antagonisms. The question as to how, from the point of view of historical development, the replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is to take place is not raised here. This is the question Marx raises and answers in 1852. True to his philosophy of dialectical materialism, Marx takes as his basis the historical experience of the great years of revolution 1848 to 1851. Here is everywhere else. His theory is summing up of experience. illuminated by a profound philosophical conception of the world and a rich knowledge of history. The problem of the state is put specifically. How did the Bouchoir state, the state machine necessary for the rule of the Bougoir, come into being historically? What changes did it

undergo? What evolution did it perform in the course of bourgeois revolutions and in the face of the independent actions of the oppressed class? What are the tasks of the proletariat in relation to this state machine? The centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions most characteristic of the state machine are the bureaucracy and the standing army. Anybody want to argue with that? I think we're getting into the Enlightenment was a mistake territory. Yeah.

In their works, Marx and Engels repeatedly showed. that the bourgeois are connected with these institutions by thousands of threads. Every worker's experience illustrates this connection in an extremely graphic and impressive manner. From its own bitter experience, the working class learns to recognize this connection. That is why it so easily grasped and so firmly learns the doctrine which shows the inevitability of this connection, a doctrine in which to petty bourgeois Democrats usually either a doctrine in which to petty bourgeois Democrats either ignorantly or flippantly deny or still more flippantly admit in general while forgetting to draw appropriate practically conclusions. And that just sounds to me like he's describing like either Beltway libertarians or, I mean, like the worst of the worst lawberts.

Yeah, you can bring you can bring up all of these, you know, the arguments that we used to have when we were kind of making our transition away from capital l libertarianism and pointing out all of its flaws and faults um they they will either uh deny them despite you know us arguing in earnest or they'll say well yeah i mean it's that's not universal you know it's it's whatever yeah all right where was it where is i okay Okay. The problem, was this? Got it. The centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall. Wait a minute. I read that, right? Yeah. Yep. Next one. All right. The bureaucracy and the standing army are a parasite on the body society, a parasite created by the internal antagonisms which run that society, but a parasite which chokes all its vital pores. Kautzkyite opportunism now prevailing.

in official social democracy considers the view that the state is a parasitic organism to be the peculiar and exclusive attribute of anarchism. It goes without saying that this distortion of Marxism is a vast advantage to those Philistines who have reduced socialism to the unheard-of disgrace of justifying and purifying the imperialist war by applying it to the concept of defense of the fatherland, quote unquote, but it is unquestionably a distortion, nevertheless. You get the idea that a lot, I mean, I mean, we already know we've discussed at length privately that, you know, we believe that not only Murray Rothbard, but probably, well, most definitely Hoppa stole a lot of his dialectic from, from the communists.

I mean, that last paragraph could be, could have been written by a libertarian who wasn't, didn't really care what other people thought. Yeah. Yep. Just considering the state and the standing army a parasite in general, it, Lenin, in this paragraph, it's cool because he calls the bureaucracy in the standing army a parasite, but a parasite that the bourgeois knows is a parasite. but they just don't understand, they don't understand why, and they think they can, you know, perfect it. The development of the strengthening of the bureaucratic and military apparatus proceeded during all the numerous bourgeois revolutions, which Europe has witnessed since the fall of feudalism. In particular, it is the petty bourgeois who are attracted to the side of the big bourgeoisie and are largely, subordinated to them through this apparatus, which provides the upper sections of the peasants,

small artisans, tradesmen, and the like with comparatively comfortable, quiet, and respectable jobs raising the holders above the people. Consider what happened in Russia during six months following February 27, 1917. The official posts, which formerly were given by preference to the Black hundreds have now become the spoils of cadets, Mensheviks, and social revolutionaries. Nobody has really thought of introducing any serious reforms. Every effort has been made to put them off until the Constituent Assembly meets and to steadily put off its convocation until after the war. But there has been no delay, no waiting for the Constituent Assembly in...

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with DJs from love tempo. Bread take infuse, amazing atmosphere, incredible food and drink. My goodness, it's Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at giddlestorhouse.com. Get the facts be drinkaware, visit drinkaware.com. in the matter of dividing the spoils of getting the lucrative jobs of ministers, deputy ministers, governors generals, et cetera, et cetera. The game of combinations that has been played in forming the government has been, in essence, only an expression of the division and redivision of the spoils, which has been going on above and below out the country in every department of central and local government. The six months between February 7th and August 27th, 1917, can be summed up,

objectively, objectively summed up beyond all dispute as follows. Reform shelved, distribution of official jobs accomplished, and mistakes in the distribution corrected by a few redistributions. You want to talk about what, like the March Revolution? Well, I mean, for those of you that aren't familiar with like the history of the Russian Revolution. Just think of this like every election cycle. You know, the first year, you have all these campaign promises. But, you know, in the first year, the second year, maybe even moving on to the third year, what you're seeing is literally a redistribution of the spoils and packing all of those open posts with people that you like. Like that's all it is. And, you know, this happened at a much larger scale.

Is that led by Kerenzky? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was also in, he was also the one who was basically became like the chief bureaucrat. Yeah.

So he, like, like Lenin said, he gave preference to pretty much every faction that was involved with the March revolution. Like put them in a bureaucratic posts and leadership. positions, salaried positions. And when it came time to actually do what the revolution promised to do, it was always, well, let's wait on that. Let's wait on that. And you know, you can see the parallels with our electoral system today. It's just a, it's a, it's a grab. But the more the bureaucratic apparatus is redistributed among the various bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties among the cadets, socialist revolutionaries, and Mensheviks in the case of Russia,

the more keenly aware the oppressed classes and the proletariat at their head become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of bourgeois society. Hence the need for all bourgeois parties, even for the most democratic and revolutionary democratic among them, to intensify repressive measures against a revolutionary proletariat to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e. the state machine. This course of events compels the revolution to concentrate all its forces of destruction against the state power and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it. Can I hit on this?

Please. This is why it is so important for people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to present herself as, you know, just a bartender that wound up in Congress. You know, she, she's exactly like you guys because as time goes on and you see all of these old rich uh old rich like white women and white men uh you know having power over the course of our generation of the last generation you start to get more and more detached from having any any any type of uh sense of commonality or uh common interest with them and so when somebody like aOC comes in who's nominally at your economic level it's very invigorating very energizing to

to that particular base because they finally find they they have their uh they have their linen you know even though lennon himself wasn't really uh wasn't really a no proletariat so i had this question about how some people come out of the military and like someone like Danny Scherz and Matthew Ho and a lot of these people, they go into the military and maybe they're Democrats, maybe they're socially conservative and, you know, what I'm talking about. But when they come out, they're revolution. They have this revolutionary spirit because of everything that they've experienced and they seem to run to being commies. And really, I've tried to think about it.

I mean, I talked to Danny Scherz, and I've never talked to Matthew Ho, but I've talked to Danny Scherz on multiple occasions. And the only thing that I can really get is that, well, we want to do something and these people are talking about actually doing something. You know, these people, even if they're not doing anything, they're talking about doing something where I'd love for them to come over on our side. But I mean, here, here's an economics book. Yeah.

I mean, at the end of the day, just the mind bug that is, you know, a free market will inevitably lead to what we have right now. They look at us like where, like, well, they look. look at libertarians, like, all you want to do is hit the reset button. Like, uh, Fuente said it in, in the debate the other night, like, look, it seems like all you want to do is hit the reset button and then arrive at the very same, or no, I might have been Dave Smith, uh, talking about like, you know, deporting all the Mexicans and having a white ethno state. All you're doing is hitting the reset button and winding up in the same

place 300 years later. And, uh, that's what communists look, look at us like, you know, if I am a libertarian. So I and I kind of sympathize with them a little bit. But you know, just like Dave Smith and Nick Fuentes, you and me and

hardcore Marxist Leninists that have seen, that have seen shit, we all have this common enemy. And, you know, once if they can just break down the wall of like CIA adult woke politics, then, you know, that that would be a pretty good stepping stone.

Yeah. I was going to go in opposite direction about that debate, but we could get tangenty. I didn't, I didn't not like it. I thought both sides made good points, but I thought Dave made one really good point that just went right past him and it was about localism. It's like, look, if you want to take over a government, do it locally. Yeah. Yeah, I think he doesn't hear it because he thinks he, it's never, I don't know that that's

ever been presented to him or he just, he's a megalomaniac who thinks that, you know, if he gets control of, of the reins of power, he could do what Trump did. Oh, what? Nothing. Yeah. And then, you know, talking about Lenin and. communism. A lot of people are in that state of mind where any any ideology that they ascribed to, one requirement is that it has to be universal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the

God. Don't get me sorry. I'm libertarian universalist. It was not logical reasoning, but actual developments, actual experience of 1848 to 50 that led to the matter being presented this in this way. The extent to which Marx held strictly to the side ground of historical experience can be seen from the fact that in 1852, he did not yet specifically raise the question of what was the state machine to be destroyed. Experience had not yet provided material for dealing with this question, which history placed on the agenda on in 1971. In 1852, all that could be established with the accuracy of scientific observation was that the proletarian revolution had a the task of concentrating all its forces of destruction against the state power of smashing

the state machine. Here the question may arise. Is it correct to generalize the experience, observation, and conclusions of marks to apply them to a field that is wider than the history of France during the three years of 1840 and 51? Before proceeding to deal with this question, let us recall a remark made by angles and then examine the facts. In his introduction to the third edition of the 18th Broomer, Engels wrote, France is the country where, more than anywhere else, the historical class struggles were each time fought out to a finish

and where, consequently, the changing political forms within which they move and in which their results are summarized have been stamped in the sharpest outlines. The central of feudalism in the Middle Ages, the center of feudalism in the Middle Ages, the model country since the renaissance of a unified monarchy based on social estates, France demolished feudalism in the Great Revolution and established a rule of the bourgeoisie in a classical purity unequaled by any other European land. And the struggle of the upward striving proletariat against the ruling bourgeoisie appeared here in an acute form unknown elsewhere. I agree with everything in there. And that's why France has to be, that's why they still want to do. That's why they still want to

the French to this day and French culture to this day. And they just do. The last remark is out of date in as much as since 1871, there has been a lull in the revolutionary struggle of the French proletariat. Although long as this law may be, it does not at all preclude the possibility that in the coming proletarian revolution, France may show herself to be the classic country of the class struggle to a finish. Keep going on.

A lot of what he said can. be, can also be applied to the American Revolution. The American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, like bar none. But, I mean, France is when you, when you look at the history of France, I mean, you want to talk about, like, a nationalism? I mean, just look, go back in the history of France and see how nationalistic they were at one point. And they've just been utterly, that culture. that that French mystique has just been utterly destroyed.

Yeah, got it out. Yeah. Let us, however, cast a general glance over the history of the advanced countries at the jury. We shall see that the same process went on more slowly in more varied forms in a much wider field. On the other hand, the development of parliamentary power both in the Republican countries, France, America, Switzerland, and in the monarchies, Britain, Germany, to a certain extent,

Italy, the Scandinavian countries, etc. On the other hand, a struggle for power of the various bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties which distributed and redistributed the spoils of office, with the foundations of bourgeois society unchanged. And lastly, the perfection and consolidation of executive power of its bureaucratic and military apparatus. There is not the slightest doubt that these features are common to the whole of the modern evolution of all capital states in general. In the last three years, 1848 to 51, France is laid in a swift, sharp, concentrated form, the very same processes of development, which are peculiar to the whole capitalist world.

Imperialism, the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies of the development of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism has clearly shown an unprecedented growth in its bureaucratic and military apparatus in connection with the intensification of repressive measures against the proletariat, both in the monarchical and in the freest Republican countries. World history is now undoubtedly leading on an incomparably large scale than in 1852 to the concentration of all forces of the proletarian revolution on the destruction of the state machine. What the proletariat will put in its place is suggested by the highly instructive material furnished by the Paris common.

So the longer that the bourgeois has state power, the more perfect the state becomes. I don't mean perfect in a good way. I mean, it will perfect every instrument at its disposal, the standing army, the bureaucracy, the police state, the intelligence apparatus. As it goes along, like right now, I know that we say like, you know, America's an oligarchy, America is a, you know, some Trump, like Trumpers will say it's a dictatorship. No, it's our, our entire system is designed to benefit like the upper middle class, like, credentialed class population.

It's, it was kind of started out that way. And it's, as it's gone further and further along, all of those, all of those wet, like, all of those issues. that those upper middle class affluent people care about, like security and, you know, the flow of oil, their stock portfolios. Our system is designed to perfectly preserve all of those, all those things for those people. All right. Presentation. Sorry. At least that would be the, that would be what a communist would tell you and they would be very persuasive in telling you that. The presentation of the question by Marx in 1852. Which question?

Hmm. Is it the J? Never mind. In 1907, Maring in the magazine, New Ziet, published extracts from Marx's letter to Weidermeyer dated March 5th, 1852. This letter, among other things, contains the following remarkable observation. And now as to myself, No credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them.

Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. your say, online or in person, so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee a visit filled with festivity. Experience the story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at

the Guinness Storehouse. Enjoy seven floors of interactive exhibitions and finish your visit with Brett taken views of Dublin City from the home of Guinness. Live entertainment, great memories, and the gravity bar. My goodness is Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts. Be drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.com. Development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists,

the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove, one, that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular historical phases in the development of production, it gives a German name there that I am not doing, that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, that this dictatorship itself only continues to transition to the abolition of all classes into a classless society.

In these words, Mark succeeded in expressing what striking clarity first, the chief and radical difference between his theory and that of the foremost and most profound thinkers to the bourgeoisie, and second, the essence of his theory of the state. It is often said in that the main point in Marxist theory is the class struggle, but this is wrong, and this wrong notion very often results in an opportunist distortion of Marxism and its falsification and a spirit acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the theory of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and, generally speaking, it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie.

Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxists. They may be found to be still within the bounds of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound distinction between Marxist and the original petty as well as big bourgeois. This is the touch, you want to stop?

Sure, one sec. Go ahead. Yeah, I know you can. Next time you see a Shea shirt, just remember. If you see a Shea shirt, you're wondering what class they belong to. Just remember, they would die. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism should be tested. It is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a problem. The issue will vacillate between reformism and Marxism proved to be miserable feelings and petty bourgeois Democrats

rebeating the dictatorship of the proletariat. Kowski's pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, published in August 1918, long after the edition of the present book, It is a big bourgeois distortion of Marxism and base section of it of it in deeds, while hypocritically recognizing it in words. See my pamphlet, the proletarian revolution in the Kowice, Petrograder Scout. Opportunism today, as represented by its principal spokesman, the ex-Marxist Karl Kautzky, with Marxist characterization of the bourgeois position, quoted here, for the opportunism limits recognition of the question of relations. Within this sphere, within its framework, not a single educated liberal will refuse to recognize the class struggle in principle.

Or not a single educated liberal will refuse to recognize the class struggle and then in quotes, in principle. Opportunism does not extend recognition of the class struggle to the cardinal point. unprecedented violent class in unprecedented acute forms and consequently during this period the state must be the state the state has been mastered on those who realizes the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class

in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from classless society from communism. Bouchois states are most varied in form, but their essence is the same. All these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis, are the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous of political forms, but the essence will be inevitably, but the essence will inevitably be the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yeah, I think. Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying earlier, you know, for the American government system. You know, it might look a lot different from any country in Europe. It might look a lot different than, yeah, any country in Europe, basically. But it is designed from the ground up to benefit, you know, a certain class.

And that is not you or I. It might be. I don't know. All right. I might be petty. I might be petty bourgeois. All right. This is experience for the Paris commune of 1871. But when, in March 1870, upon the workers and they accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx greeted the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm in spite of unforgivable arguers.

Marx did not persist in the pedantic attitude of condemning an untimely movement, as did the ill-famed Russian renegade from Marxism, Pekinoff, November 1905, wrote encouragingly about the workers and peasant struggle. But after December 1905 cried liberal fashion, they should not have taken up arms. Marx, however, not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the communards, who, as he expressed it, stormed heaven. Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aims, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programs and arguments. Marx endeavored to analyze this experiment to draw tactical lessons from it and re-examine his theory in the light of it. The only correction Marx thought it necessary to make to the Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Commune. The last preface to the New German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24th, 1872. In the preface, the authors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,

say the program of the Communist Manifesto has in some details become at a date and go on to say, one thing especially was proved by the commune, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes. The authors took the words that are in single quotation marks in the passage from Marx's book The Civil War in France. The Marx and Engels regarded one principle and fundamental lesson of the Paris, as being of such enormous importance that they introduced it as an important correction into the communist.

Want me to keep going? Canada, Aaron. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Okay. Most characteristically, it is this important correction that has storted by the opportunists and its meaning probably is not known to nine-tenths, if not 99-100s of the readers of the communist messesto.

We shall deal with this distortion. more fully farther on in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. Here it will be sufficient to note that the current vulgar interpretation of Marx's famous statement, just quoted as, just quoted is that Marx here allegedly emphasizes the idea of slow development and contradistinction to the seizure of power and so on. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is the case. Marx's idea is that the working class must break up smashed a ready-made state machinery and not confined itself merely to laying hold of it. On April 12th, 1871, just as the time of the commune, Marx wrote to Cougalman,

if you look up the last chapter of my 18th Bremere, you will find that I declare that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer as before to transfer the bureaucratic military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it. Marx is italics. And this is the precondition for every real people's revolution on the continent. And this is what our heroic party comrades in Paris are attempting. The words to smash the bureaucratic military machine briefly expressed the principal lesson of Marxism regarding the tasks of the proletariat during a revolution in relation to the state. And this is the lesson that has been not only completely ignored, but positively distorted by the prevailing Kautzkyite

interpretation of Marxism. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com. forward slash northwest. Imagine gifting the choice of 17 luxury hotels across Ireland,

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TMR Hotel Collection gift cards, 17 luxury hotels, endless memories. Interpretation in quotes. Fucking shit, Lord. As for Marx's reference to the 18th Brumair, we have quoted the relevant passage in full above. It is interesting to note in particular two points in the above quoted argument of Marx. First, he restricts his conclusion to the consonant. This was understandable in 1871 when Britain was still the model of a purely capitalist country but without a militarist clique and to a considerable degree without a bureaucracy. Marx therefore exclude Britain, where a revolution, even a people's revolution, that then seemed possible and indeed was possible without the precondition of destroying ready state machinery.

Today in 1917, at the time of the first great imperialist war, this restriction made by Marx is no longer valid. Both Britain and America, the biggest in the last representatives in the whole world of Anglo-Saxon liberty and quotes, in the sense that they had no militarist cliques and bureaucracy, have completely sunk into the all-European filthy, bloody morass of bureaucratic military institutions which subordinate everything to themselves. and suppress everything. Today in Britain and America, too, the precondition for every real people's revolution is the smashing the destruction of the ready-made state machinery. In parentheses,

made and brought up to the European general imperialist perfection in those countries in the years, 1914 to 1917. Another agreement we have with Lennon, World War I, getting involved with World War I was a mistake. Yeah. And when did they get involved in? When did the United States get involved in World War I? During the middle of a stalemate, which would have resulted in, you know, just a return to the status quo. Nope. We had to add Hitler. On the bright side, we got Hitler.

Yeah. Got Hitler. We got Stalin. Yeah. Great after that. I mean, wasn't it great to just smash any remaining form of monarchy and get, you know, a central? of 250 million murdered by their own governments. Frigan awesome. Secondly, particular attention should be paid to Marx's extremely profound remark that the destruction of the bureaucratic military state machine is the precondition for every real people's revolution. This idea of a people's revolution seems strange coming from Marx so that the Russian

Plekanavites and Mensheviks, those followers of Drew, who wished to be regarded as Marxist, might possibly declare such an expression to be a slip of the pen on Marxist part. They have reduced Marxism to such a state of wretchedly liberal distortion that nothing exists for them besides the antithesis between bourgeois revolution and proletarian revolution, and even this antithesis, they interpret an utterly lifeless way. Jesus. If we take the revolutions of the 20th century, as examples, we shall, of course, have to admit the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions are both bourgeois revolutions. Neither of them, however, is a people's revolution, since

and neither does the mass of the people, their vast majority, come out actively, independently, with their own economic and political demands to any noticeable degree. By contrast, although the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1905 to 1907 displayed no such brilliant successes at a time as at a time fell to the Portuguese and Turkish revolutions. It was undoubtedly a real people's revolution since the mass of the people, their majority, the very lowest social groups, crushed by oppression and exploitation, rose independently and stamped out the entire course of the revolution, the imprint of their own demands, their attempt to build in their own way a new society in place of the old society that was being destroyed.

So if you're wondering what what constitutes a revolution, that's it. You don't have to be a communist to think that. That's just what a revolution is. Okay. I said, um, Fubidu said I'm getting choppy. Yeah. I have all bars. Weird.

Okay. Let me know, Aaron, let me know if I, if I start getting choppy again. Check your texts. Oh, did you text me? Yeah, it was somebody, somebody got me. Oh, I am. Oh, yeah, I am, there is something going on here. Huh.

Fiber internet. Let's go. Okay, I'm green right now. If we take the revolutions of the 20th century as examples, we shall, of course, have to admit that the Portuguese and the Turkish revolutions are both bourgeois revolutions. Neither of them, how, did I read that one? Air Grids. Operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest.

We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com.i.4.Northwest. Imagine gift. the choice of 17 luxury hotels across Ireland, from the tranquil setting of Farnham Estate,

to the world-famous welcome of Harvey's Point. With the TMR Hotel Collection gift card, your loved ones can enjoy indulgent spa experiences, dining, golf, family fun, or time away together. TMR Hotel gift cards are also perfect for corporate gifting. Buy online at TMRHotelCollection.com, the gift of unforgettable Irish hospitality. TMR Hotel Collection gift cards, 17 luxury hotels, endless memories. Yep. Okay. In Europe in 1871, the proletariat did not constitute the majority of the people in any country on the continent. A people's revolution, one actually sweeping the majority into its dream, could be such only if it embraced both the proletariat and the peasants. These two classes then

constituted the people. These two classes are united by the fact that the bureaucratic military state machine oppresses, crushes, exploits them. To smiths, smash this machine to break it up is truly in the interest of the people of their majority of the workers and most of the peasants is to precondition for a free alliance to the poor peasant and the proletarians whereas without such an alliance democracy is unstable and socialist transformation is impossible they didn't really care lenin and they they really look down upon the poor peasants especially in russia you agree yeah i absolutely agree i mean russia prior to 1917 and even you know after 1905 was still

very much uh feudal you know when you when you get outside of the city limits you're it's feudalism and the chief difference between peasants and the proletariat is that the proletariat at least i mean i know there's not much difference between renting a shitty flop house and like you know using your food that you grow on a farm as rent. But I mean, they want, for whatever reason, they defined a difference. Probably because they hate the peasants. As is well known, the Paris commune was actually working its way towards such an alliance, although it did not reach its goal owing to a number of circumstances, internal and external.

Consequently, in speaking of a real people's revolution, Marx, without in the least discounting the special features of the petty bourgeois, he spoke a great deal about them and often, took strict account of the actual balance of class forces in most of the continental countries of Europe in 1871. On the other hand, he stated that the smashing of the state machine was required by the interests of both the workers and peasants. That is that it united them, that it placed them before, that it placed before, that it placed before, them the common task of removing the parasite and of replacing it by something new. But by what exactly? Anything to finish up that section? Yeah, I mean, we would probably take issue immediately

with replacing it with anything. But remember, they're they're using the framework of like, we want this to be permanent, like we want this classless, stateless thing to be the permanent condition forever. So that's why there's talk of replacement. Okay. It's all part of the plan. Part two, what is to replace the smash state machine? In 1847 in the Communist Manifesto, Marx's answer to the question was as yet a purely abstract one. To be exact, it was an answer that indicated the tasks, but not the ways of accomplishing them. The answer given in the Communist manifesto was that this machine was to be replaced by the proletariat organized as the ruling class by the winning of the battle of democracy. Marx did not indulge in utopias. He expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question as to the specific forms at organization of the proletariat.

I don't know why am I why I'm getting I mean I'm hardwired here this doesn't make any sense I'm green again Marx did not indulge in utopias he expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question

as to the specific forms of the organization of the proletariat as the ruling class would assume and as to the exact manner in which the organization would be combined with the most complete most consistent winning of the battle of democracy.

Marx subjected the experience of the commune, meager as it was, to the most careful analysis of the civil war, to the most careful analysis of the civil war in France. Let us quote the most important passage of this work. Hold on a second. Yeah, remember, in 1847, 1848, this was pre-revolution of 1848 in France. That's when Napoleon the third was basically slapped down. And it was a, I don't want to say a workers takeover of Paris, but it was like a coalition of workers and small businessmen and all.

And like that group taking over Paris for, I think, three years and then kind of getting, getting their asses beat. Yeah. All right. All right, let me go back to this. Mark subjected the experience of the commune, meager as it was, to the most careful analysis in the Civil War in France. Let us quote the most important passages of his work.

All of the following quotes in this chapter, with one exception, are cited. Originating from the Middle Ages, they're developed in the 19th century, the centralized state power with its ubiquitous organs of Standing Army, Police, bureaucracy, clergy, and, wow, I don't know this word, judicature. I mean, I know what it means, but wow. With the development of class antagonisms being capital and labor, state power assumed

more and more the character of a public force organized for the suppression of the working class of a machine of class rule after every revolution, which marks an advance in the class struggle, the purely coercive character of the state power of the state power stand out in Boulder and Boulder relief. After the revolution of 1848-49, state power becomes the national war instruments of capital against labor. The Second Empire consolidated this. The direct antithesis to the empire was the commune. It was the specific form of a republic that was not only to remove the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. It was the specific form of the proletarian socialist Republic, what was the state it began to create. The first decree,

the commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army and the substitution for it of the armed people. This demand now figures in the program of every party calling itself socialist. The real worth of their program, however, is best shown by the behavior of the social revolutionists and Mensheviks, who right after the revolution of February 27, refused to carry out this demand. You do a little polemicism. Yeah, yeah. The commune was formed of the municipal councillors chosen by universal suffrage in the various

words of the town responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The police which until then had been the instrument of the government was at once stripped of its political attributes and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable. and at all times revocable agent of the commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the commune downwards,

the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests. The judicial functionaries lost their sham in dependence. They were thence forward to be elective, responsible, and revocable. The commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state

machine only by fuller democracy, abolition of the standing army, all officials to be elected and subject and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact, this only signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of quantity being transformed into quality. Democracy introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy, from the state, a special force for the suppression of a particular class.

into something which no longer the state proper, which is no longer the state proper. You want to say anything there? Yeah, like when they talk about universal suffrage, they don't mean actually requiring people to vote. They're saying getting as many of the lower classes to vote as possible because that will inevitably win the battle of democracy against the less fewer petty bourgeois, bourgeois, and capitalist class. It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the commune, and one of the reasons for his defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population and not a minority,

as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself surpasses the suppressors, a special force for suppression is no longer necessary. In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority, privileged official dim, the chiefs of the standing army, the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole,

the less need there is for the existence of this power. Oh, people are starting to get this. In this connection, the following measures of the commune emphasized by Marx are particularly noteworthy. The abolition of all representation allowances and of all monetary privileges to officials to reduction of the remuneration of all servants to the state to the level of workman's wage. This shows more clearly than anything else to the turn from bourgeois to proletarian democracy, from the democracy of the oppressors to that of the oppressed classes, from the state as a special force for the suppression of a particular class,

to the suppression of the oppressors by the general force of the majority of the people, the workers, and the peasants. And it is on this particularly striking point, perhaps the most important as far as the problem of the state is concerned, that the ideas of Marx have been most completely ignored. In popular commentaries, the number of which is legion, this is not mentioned. The thing done is to keep silent about it as if it were a piece of old-fashioned naivete, just as Christians after their religion had been given the status of state religion, forgot the naivete of primitive Christianity with its democratic revolutionary spirit.

Ouch. Yeah. The reduction of the renew. Hey, one sec. How does that sound? Taking away all the representatives pay, no more permanent judicial positions, everybody's subject to be recalled at any time.

How does that sound so far? Yeah. Sounds like a vast improvement. You might not like it, but it's a vast improvement. Yeah. Let me see here. I'm down. Yeah.

One thing. here. Okay. All right. Next. All officials without exception elected and subject to recall at any time. Did I read that one? Or do I need to read the one before it?

Okay. The reduction of the remuneration of high state officials seems simply a demand of naive, primitive democracy. One of the founders of modern opportunism, the ex-social Democrat Edward Bernstein, has more than once repeated the vulgar bourgeois jeers at primitive democracy. Like all opportunists and like the president-countyites, he did not understand at all that, first of all, the transition from capitalism to socialism is impossible without a certain reversion to primitive democracy, or how else could the majority and the whole population without exception proceed to discharge state functions? And that,

Secondly, primitive democracy based on capitalism and capitalist culture is not the same as primitive democracy in prehist historic or pre-capitalist times. Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc. And on the basis, the great majority of the functions of the old state power have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing and checking that they can be easily performed by every literate person can quite easily be performed for ordinary workmen's wages.

And if the functions can and must be stripped of every shadow of privilege or every semblance of official grandeur. All officials without, you want to say something about that? Because that's... Yeah, imagine telling, imagine putting forth the idea that like every school admin, administrator should be stripped of all positions of privilege. Like, you should have no privileges. If you're a college professor, which is basically a state functionary, you shouldn't have any

privileges, just approaching, approaching any, any attack on, you know, the people that we hate as stripping them of privileges. I wonder what that would look like. Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person.

So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. You hurl your hearts out. For the people who know you inside out, Giants on the football pitch make everyone who knows them feel 10 feet tall. When you put the ball over the bar, you put the parish on the map. And one man's 60 minutes can be a whole town's finest hour. Because when it's club, it lives forever.

This is the AIB-GAA Club Championships. GAA, where we all belong. Probably be pretty easy. All officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time their salaries reduced to the literary workmen's wages. These simple and self-evident democratic measures, while completely uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism to socialism.

These measures concern the reorganization of the state, the purely political reorganization of society, but of course they acquire their full meaning and significance only in connection with the expropriation of the expropriators, either bring accomplished or in preparation with the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into social ownership. The commune Marx route made the catchword of all bourgeois revolutions cheap government a reality

by abolishing the two greatest sources of expenditure, the army and the officialdom. From the peasants, as from other sections of the petty bourgeoisie, only an insignificant few rise to the top. Get on in the world in the bourgeois sense. Come either well-to-do bourgeois or officials in secure and privileged positions. In every capitalist country where there are peasants, and there are in most capitalist countries, the vast majority of them are oppressed by the government and long for its overthrow,

long for cheap government. This can be achieved only by the proletariat, and by achieving it, the proletariat at the same time takes a step towards socialist reorganization of the state. Yeah, so take heed, monarchists. All right. Part three, abolition of parliamentarianism, a parliamentarism. That looks weird to me. All right. The commune, Marx wrote, was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative

at the same time. Instead of deciding once in three to six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress the people in parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people constituted in communes as individual suffrage serves every other employer in this search for workers, foreman, and accountants for his business. I mean, counting on universal suffrage, I mean, what he says universal suffrager, he's talking about basically allowing everyone to vote. Not just allowing, but like, whatever you have to do to make the conditions that people want to vote, that, you know how we have like a 52% participation rate? So, like, he would look into how to bring that up to get those, like, the non-voters to vote.

and that that might be painful but um you know even if it's just like right now you could frame it in such a way that it wouldn't take a genius to frame it in a way that like you know um if you don't vote your kids will be blue-haired obese trannies in like two generations your grandkids or whatever and that would kind of spur this population to vote and then you go and say like you know if you don't vote um you're not going to have your your Xbox Live membership is going to quadruple in the next year. And then that would spur that population to vote. So, like, that's what he means by universal suffrages, whatever it takes to get as many,

as many of the lower and middle lower classes to vote in their interest as possible. Okay. Owing to the prevalence of social chauvinism and opportunism, this remarkable criticism of parliamentarism made in 1871 also belongs now to the forgotten words of Marxism. The professional cabinet ministers and parliamentarians, the traitors to the proletariat and the practical socialists of our day, have left all criticism of parliamentarism to the anarchists, and on this wonderfully reasonable ground, they denounce all criticism of parliamentarism as anarchism. It is not surprising that the proletariat of the advanced parliamentary countries disgusted with such socialists as the Scheidman's, David's, Lejons, Sembats, Renaldens, Henderson's, Vandervild's, Art Vanderbilt, Staunings, Brantings, Bisalitis, and Company have been with increasing frequency giving its sympathies to anarcho-sindicalism in spite of the fact that the latter is merely the twin brother of Opportunity.

Yikes. Yeah. Lennon has a whole thing on, you know, against the anarchism, the infantile disorder. He talks about anarcho-sindicalists and how all it is is just petty capitalism. You know, you still have classes within, within syndicates that predate on each other. For Marx, however, revolutionary dialectics was never the empty, fashionable phrase. the toy rattle which Plekinoff, Kautsky, and others have made it. Marx knew how to break with anarchism ruthlessly for its inability to make use of the pigs of the

pigsty of bourgeois parliamentarianism, parliamentarism, especially when the situation was obviously not revolutionary, but at the same time, he knew how to subject parliamentarism to genuinely revolutionary proletarian criticism. To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush to people through parliament, this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics. But if we deal with the question of the state, and if we consider parliamentarism as one of the institutions of the state, from the point of view of the task of the proletariat in this field, what is the way out of parliamentarism? how can it be dispensed with? Once again, we must say the lessons of Marx based on the study of the commune

have been so completely forgotten by the present-day Social Democrat, i.e. present-day traitor to socialism, really cannot understand any criticism of parliamentarism other than the anarchist or reactionary criticism. He can't help himself. Like, that didn't need to be in there, but he can't fucking help himself. So good. The way out of parliamentism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the elective principle,

but the conversion of the representative institutions from taking, from talking shops into working bodies. The commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. Quoting, I think it was Marx, not angles. A working, not a parliamentary body. This is blow straight from the shoulder at the president. day parliamentarian country from America to Switzerland, from France to Britain, Norway, and so forth. And these countries, the real business of state is from behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancellries, and general staffs. Parliament is given up to talk for the special

purpose of fooling the common people. That sounds. Yeah. Sounds kind of familiar. This is so true that even in the Russian Republic, a bourgeois Democrat Republic, all these sins of parliamentarism come out at once, even before it managed to set up a real parliament. The heroes of rotten Philistinism, such as the Skobolev's and Cerateles, the Chernoffs and Avsenkovs have even succeeded in polluting the Soviets after the fashion of the most disgusting bourgeois parliamentarism in converting them into mere talking shops. In the Soviets, the socialist ministers are fooling the credulous rustics with phrase-mongering and resolutions. And the government itself, a sort of permanent shuffle is going on in order that, on the one hand,

as many socialist revolutionaries and Mensheviks as possible may in turn get near the pie, the lucrative and honorable posts, and that, on the other hand, the attention of the people may be engaged. Meanwhile, the chancelries and army staff do the business of the state. Yeah. Is it a four-card? They're playing four-card Monty with the public while in the background business is getting done. Man. Dielo Neroa, the organ of the ruling socialist revolutionary party recently admitted in a leading article with the matchless rankness of a people of good society, in which all are engaged in political prostitution, that even in the ministries headed by the socialists, save the mark, the whole bureaucratic apparatus is, in fact, unchanged, is working in the old

way and quite freely sabotaging revolutionary measures. Even without this admission does not the actual history of the participation of the socialist revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the government prove this? It is noteworthy, however, that in the ministerial company of the cadets, the Chernovs, the Russov, and Zenzinov's, and other editors of Diello Neroda, have so completely lost all sense of shame as to brazenly assert, as if it were a mere bagatelle, that in their ministries, everything is unchanged. Revolutionary democratic phrases to gull the rural simple Simons and bureaucracy and red tape to gladden the hearts of the capitalists.

That is the essence of the quote, unquote, honest coalition. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com.i.4. Northwest.

You hurl your hearts out For the people who know you inside out Giants on the football pitch Make everyone who knows them feel 10 feet tall When you put the ball over the bar You put the parish on the map And one man's 60 minutes Can be a whole town's finest hour

Because when it's club It lives forever This is the AIB-GAA Club Championships GAA where we all go Man, he's going hard in the paint. The commune substitutes for the venal and rotten mentorism of the bourgeois society institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion do not degenerate into deception for the parliamentarians themselves have to work, have to execute their own laws, have themselves to test the results

achieved in reality, and to account directly to their constituents. Representative institutions remain, but there is no parliamentary. here as a special system, as the division of labor between the legislative and the executive, as a privileged position for the deputies. We cannot imagine democracy, even proletarian democracy, without representative institutions, but we can and must imagine democracy without parliamentarism. If criticism of bourgeois society is not mere words for us, if the desire to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie is our earnest and desire and sincere desire, and not a mere election cry for the catching workers' votes, as it is with the Mensheviks and socialist revolutionaries,

and also the Scheidemens and Lesions, the Splatz and Vandervelds. Yeah. I mean, when people, when any politician promises a revolution, and unfortunately, you know, we didn't get to see with Ron, but usually any politician that promises revolution or radical reform. It is exactly that. It's a campaign rally and cry. And then his business as usual. I mean,

I think Obama is probably the greatest example, at least in my lifetime. I remember people were flipping the fuck out when he got elected. Like, oh my God, everything is going to change. It's going to be a completely new paradigm in America. The America I know is gone.

And then eight years later, I mean, what's really changed? It's a continuation and an advantage. advancement in the direction that we were going already. Trump, too. Trump too, exactly. It is extremely instructive to note that, in speaking of the function of those officials who are necessary for the commune and for proletarian democracy, Marx compares them to the workers of, quote unquote, every other employer, that is, of the

ordinary capitalist enterprise with its workers, foreman's, and accountant. There is no trace of utopianism in Marx. That's the second time he said that. You got to make sure you understand. It's not utopian. Communism is not utopian. There is no trace of utopianism in Marx in the sense that he made up or invented a new society. No, he studied the birth of the new society out of the old and forms of transition from

the latter to the former as a mass proletarian movement and tried to draw practical lessons from it. He learned from the commune, just as all the great revolutionary thinkers learned unhesitatingly from the experience of great movements of the oppressed classes and never addressed them with pedantic homilies, such as Placinoffs. They should not have taken up arms or Surrattelli's. A class must limit itself. Jesus, he just can't. He just has to.

Rufless. Abolishing the bureaucracents everywhere and completely is out of the question. Take a copacetarians. Yeah. Abolishing the bureaucracy. at once, everywhere and completely, is out of the question. It is a utopia, but to smash the old bureaucratic machine at once and to begin immediately to construct a new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy, this is not a utopia. It is the experience

of the commune, the direct and immediate task of the revolutionary proletariat. Capitalism simplifies the functions of state administration. It makes it impossible to cast bossing aside and to confront, the whole matter to the organization of the proletarians as the ruling class, which will hire workers, foremen, and accountants in the name of the whole of society. We are not utopians. We do not dream of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution

until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now with people who cannot dispense with subordination control and foreman and accountants. Start going hard on the anarchist pretty soon. The subordination, however, must be the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working people, i.e. to the proletariat. A beginning can and must be made it once overnight to replace a specific bossing of state officials by the simple functions of foremen and accountants, functions which are already fully within the ability of the average town dweller and can be performed for workmen's wages. We, the workers, shall organize large-scale production on

basis of what capitalism has already created, relying on our own experience as workers, establishing strict iron discipline backed up by the state power of the armed workers, Yeah. If you would have mentioned anything about getting rid of guns, you know, we got to get guns out of the hands of like the common people. Yeah. I don't know how some people on the far left can even say that today. It's because the far left has been so completely infected with progressivism, which is in and of itself like bourgeois. like created, designed, and made for bourgeois white women that's like that's just in their

brains now. They can't help it. And we can't help them, unfortunately. Okay, let's start over again. We the workers shall organize large scale production on the basis of what capitalism is already created, relying on our own experiences workers, establishing strict iron discipline backed up by the state of the armed workers. We shall reduce the role of state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions

as responsible, revocable, modestly paid foreman and accountants, of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types, and degrees. This is our proletarian task. This is what we can, can and must start with in accomplishing the proletarian revolution. Such a beginning on the basis of large-scale production will of itself lead to the gradual withering away of all bureaucracy to the, the gradual creation of an order, an order without inverted commas, an order bearing no similarity to wage slavery, an order under which the functions of control, which the functions of control and

accounting, becoming more and more simple, will be performed by each in turn, will then become a habit and will finally die out as out as the special functions of a special section of the population. He says that we don't believe in utopianism, and yet, he writes that paragraph. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's, although it's not hard to imagine like putting the muzzle of a pistol up to some

HR department head, like back of his skull and saying, no, you will do this. This will be in the employee handbook and you will implement it. And then pointing the gun at your like at the, at the director of operations or something. No, you're going to do this. A witty German Social Democrat of the, let me see, yeah, a witty social democrat of the 70s of the last century called the Postal Service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At the present, the Postal Service is a business organized in the lines of state capitalist monopoly.

Imperialism is gradually transforming all trusts into organizations of a similar type, in which, standing over the common people who are overworked and starved, one has the same bourgeois bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have overthrown the capitalist, crushed the resistance of these exploiters with the iron hand of the armed workers, and smashed a bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, we shall have a splendidly equipped mechanism freed from the parasite, a mechanism which can very well be set going by the United Workers, themselves who will hire technicians, foreman, and accountants, and pay them all as indeed all state officials in general workmen's wages. Here is a concrete practical task which can

immediately be fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfillment will rid the working people of exploitation, a task which takes account of what the commune has already begun to practice, particularly in building up the state. To organize to hold a whole economy on the lines of the Postal Service so that the technicians, foreman, and accountants, as well as all officials, shall receive salaries no higher than a workman's wage, all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat. This is our immediate aim. This is what will bring up what? Imagine all of those people like earning whatever the national hourly rate is. I think we'd be all right with that.

Yeah. They wouldn't want the job. I wonder why. Yeah. This is what we'll bring about the abolition of parliamentarism and the preservation of representative institutions. This is what will rid the laboring classes of the bourgeoisie's prostitutes. of these institutions. I think we're going to stop it for there.

Stop it right there for the week. You got any summary? Got anything to say about we're starting to get into, starting to talk about violence. Yeah, starting to get into the meat and potatoes. This gets better as this gets better as it goes along. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, I think the next section, the next section he's going to talk about fuck I forget it's been what a year and a half since we read this yeah but yeah I remember it gets better and better as it goes along and you know if you're

a history nerd definitely look into like you know even Wikipedia the Paris commune and like what went into that and how that pretty much it was a fundamental shift in Marx and in you know the world

the world world communism pretty much. They looked at that as like a, as a test case and, you know, recorded all the data they could. You know, what they did right,

what lessons learned and all that. And, you know, I'm looking forward till, till the day that we have something like that, you know, especially with, Andrew,

I don't know if Andrew's listening right now, but, you know, when he, what he talks about his, uh, his very practical real world non-utopian plans are and how they could be attained, I can't wait for the test case.

Yeah. Even if it fails and even if we lose, there's still utility and failure and loss. Hopefully if we lose, we still keep our heads. Well, yeah. No, I mean, we have to approach this just like, just like Lenin did, strategically and in kind of a detached, you know, data-driven way. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, if you were, you know, it's like I was saying with the Dave, the Dave debate with, with Fuentes. He like, he gave Fuentes the answer. He said, you're not going to get this white ethno state. You're not going to. take over the 202 area code and get to white ethno state, you're going, if you want this, go do it somewhere. Yeah.

Pick a location. Pick a locale. And the second you even get close, you're going to get a bullet in the head. I mean, he, that's the thing that always, you know, I understand that when, when I talk about, like, a great man. like a monarch coming to save us and everything, that that's as utopian as anything we've read here. And it's as utopian as Ancapistan,

as utopian as anything else. You know, but I talk about it because I think that it forces people to talk about elites. And, you know, we want natural elites. You want the people, the people that are around us who are natural leaders. And it's,

it's kind of a, it's kind of an antagonism, like a class antagonism, but we need the elites to come from a ground swell from the bottom. You know what I mean? Like no fundamental shift in anything can occur without the participation of the people that are most down bad right now. And I'm not really that down bad. I don't think you're down bad, but a lot of people are. And, And of course, our situations could change at any second. And in that sense, we're all down bad because at any second, we could find out that we don't have a job. We could, you know, a lot of us have already found out that maybe our family ties aren't as strong as they should be.

They're not as resilient and resistant to political influences as they should be. And, you know, we are in generally a lot, a lot better, a lot materially better off than, say, the average Russian factory worker in 1917. But that's one of the, one of the most strenuous disagreements I have with Marxism in general is that it's, it's not all about material, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Air grid.

Operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com.i. 4.S. Northwest. You hurl your hearts out.

For the people who know you inside out. Giants on the football pitch make everyone who knows them feel 10 feet tall. When you put the ball over the bar, you put the parish on the map. And one man's 60 minutes can be a whole town's finest hour. Because when it's club, it lives forever. This is the AIB-GAA club championships. GAA, where we all belong. Localism, to try any of this out, localism is the way.

And you know, you were talking about the test case. That's what, you know, I've had Andrews been on the show numerous times and, you know, he was on with Dave last time. And I thought that was a good talk. He'll be on my show next, next episode I drop. He'll be on there. Cool. And that's why he, he, um, set up Mises GOP. Like, and, um, everybody just laughs at the name because it's like, oh, you're just taking, taking the name from the Mises caucus.

This is, where did the Mises caucus take that name from? I don't know. But, yeah, I mean, I think that a caucus, a group, I mean, I don't even know what we call, what it's properly called, but a group that a group that their only intention is to get people elected locally. and in the most red areas to implement, to implement things that, to implement ideas that can start moving us towards that kind of Hans Herman Hoppa, hopper-ish ideal of 10,000 Liechtenstein. It's got to start with one Liechtenstein.

And in the interim, one thing we can glean from this, what we're doing right now, is that the role of the political, party and especially the elites within the political party is to kind of guide and direct all of those you know all of all of the underlings to accomplish certain tasks you know how do we do this how do we how do we how do we take over the school board i mean rinda we have the internet right now but when you're talking about localism like going going to a meeting go um you know

hearing what your local chapter president has to say with any organization. It doesn't have to be a party. But when I go to work, I look to my boss to kind of guide me and direct me and what I need to be doing in order to provide the most value

or in order to accomplish a goal. A political party has to be kind of that nexus point for action. You know? I don't know. I don't know if you've been following any of those tweets today, but he's at, I guess he's following, or he's at, I think he's just following at the Turning Point USA is having their convention this weekend. And he said there's, he's actually

been very impressed by some of the things that didn't come out of there, talking about homeschooling, talking about taking over school boards in your local area, things like that. So, yeah, he had a list of stuff. If you want to see, go to Tho Bishops, uh, Twitter feed and he's keeping abreast of that. Of course, I'm sure there's a lot of Israel philating, but we take what we could.

Take in what's useful, get rid of what's useless. Fubu Badoos said he's there. He posted a picture from the crowd. Oh, yeah. But yeah, so Timeline Earth, and you said you have an episode coming out with Andrew, that's great.

Yeah, episode with a episode of Boys Town will be dropping next Friday, I hope. I might have that wrong. I'm going to drop it whenever I feel like. Oh, Christmas Eve present. But if you like the idea of getting local politicians elected with the intent of influencing and not taking over because that's impossible. I mean, maybe it could be possible, but it's impossible. But working locally to at least make one. where you are more free than Mesa's GOP is a place to drop a couple dollars every month. And it's only going to go towards getting people elected.

And that's getting hand-picked people elected. Believe me, we're not going to run anyone unless we know exactly what's on there. True believers. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be, you're going to be ideologues. All right, man. Well, um, next week, I'm, I'm sure both of us are going to be busy. I'm going to be out of town.

Um, so I guess try and pick this up in a couple weeks. Christmas night. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it Christmas Eve, dude. Uh, well, thank you very much again for having me on and for doing this. Uh, this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. And I'm so happy to, that, um, you know, we're, we're spreading spreading, spreading consciousness. Well, and as I'm reading this more and more, and yeah, Andrew from Popular Liberty says when comes to the GOP Meeces caucus, nobody's taking salaries.

This isn't where this wasn't started to get anybody a full-time job. This is to get people elected. But as I was saying, as I read this more and more, getting a lot of good ideas. Yeah, there's so much to pull from. You know, you read it once and you're going to miss some stuff. You're just going to space out on some parts and everything. So reading this again, it's like, ah, that's right. There.

That's the praxis. Yeah. Yep. All right, man. Thanks. Thank you very much. Welcome back to the Pete Kenyana show. We are alive.

What is up, Aaron? How's going? Doing good, man. Let's get part three of this. going. Part two, the last thing we left off with was there was a section. I think it was the end of parliamentism. So yeah, let me just tweet out that we're live now and we'll start getting into it. Let me see what we got here. All right. So section four of chapter three is organization of the unity of the nation.

So in a rough sketch of national organization, which the commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the commune has to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet. That sounds smart, huh? Yeah. Yeah, something that you want, something that you'll be able to,

it's more manageable. That's for sure. Yeah, absolutely. The communes were to elect the national delegation in Paris. The few but important functions, which still would remain for a central government, were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by communal and therefore strictly responsible agents. the unity of the nation was not to be broken, but on the contrary, to be organized by the communal constitution and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power, which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of and superior to the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excrescence, excresence, hey, good word. While the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority, usurping preeminence over society itself,

and restored to the responsible agents of society. Who would the responsible agents of the society be? So in terms of the Paris Commune? Yeah. So one of Lenin's main critiques of the Paris Commune was that it was not a work movement. This was kind of Marx was around and he was commenting on it, but Marxism wasn't really fully fleshed out yet. So the responsible agents of society were, I mean, what Lenin would say, mostly petty bourgeois. Okay. Let's go then. To what extent the opportunists of present-day social

democracy have failed to understand, or perhaps it would be more true to say, did not want to understand, these observations of Marx is best shown by the book of Harris-Hiristradian fame of the renegade Bernstein, the premises of socialism, and the tasks of social democracy. It is precisely in connection with the above passages from Marx that Bernstein wrote that this program, in its political content, displays in all its essential features the greatest similarity to the federalism of Prudon, in spite of all the other points of difference between Marx and the petty bourgeois Prudon, Bernstein places the words petty bourgeois and quotation marks in order to make it sound ironical. On those points, their lines of reasoning run as close as could be.

Of course, Bernstein continues the importance of the municipalities. Of course, Bernstein continues, the importance of the minimum. municipalities is growing, but it seems doubtful to me whether the first task of democracy would be such a dissolution of the modern states and such a complete transformation of their organization as is visualized by Marx and Prudon, the formation of a national assembly from delegates of the provincial or district assembly, which in turn would consist of delegates from the communes. So that the whole previous mode, of national representation would vanish completely.

And this is from Bernstein Premises, German Edition, 1899. To confuse Marx's views on the destruction of the state power, the parasitic excrescence with Prudone's federalism, is positively monstrous. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com.i. 4.N. Northwest. Have you recently purchased a new vehicle from Frankenen Volkswagen? If so, you may be at risk for an exciting condition known as New Car Joy. Symptoms may include spontaneous smiling, sudden increases in confidence and uncontrollable urges to take the scenic route. If you experience any of these symptoms, don't worry.

The only known treatment is enjoying your new vehicle. Side effects may also include great value and exceptional customer service. Talk to a friendly professional at Frank Heen Volkswagen today and see if upgrading your car is the right prescription for you. But it is no accident, for it never occurs to the opportunist that Marx does not speak here at all about federalism as opposed to centralism, but about smashing the old bourgeois state machine which exists in all bourgeois countries. The only thing that penetrates the opportunist mind is what he sees around him in a society petty bourgeois Philistinism and reformist stagnation, namely only quote unquote municipalities. The opportunist has ever forgotten how to think about proletarian revolution. It is ridiculous,

But the remarkable thing is that nobody argued with Bernstein on the point. Bernstein has been refuted by many, especially by Plekinoff in Russian literature and by Kowtsky in European literature, but neither of them said anything about this distortion of Marx by Bernstein. To such an extent has the opportunist forgotten how to think in a revolutionary way and to ponder over revolution that he attributes federalism to Marx and confuses him with the founder of anarchism. Prudon. And Kautzky and Pekinov, who claimed to be Orthodox Marxists and defenders of the doctrine of revolutionary Marxism, are silenced on this point. Herein lies one of the roots of the extreme vulgarization of the views concerning the difference between Marxism and anarchism, which is characteristic of the Kautzkyites and of the oneness, and which we shall yet discuss later. Marx's above-quoted observations on the experience of the commune, not a trace of federalism.

Marx agreed with Prudon on the very point that the opportunist Bernstein failed to see. Marx disagreed with Prudon... One second. Sorry. Marx agreed with Prudon on the very point that the opportunist Bernstein failed to see. Marx disagreed with Prudon on the very point on which Bernstein found a similarity with them. Marx agreed with Prudon in that they both stood for the smashing of the present state machine. The similarity of views on this point between Marxism and anarchism, both Prudon and Bakunin,

neither the opportunist nor the Katskyites wished to see because on this point they have departed from Marxism. Anything on this so far? Yeah, he's going to start railing into anarchists now. And it's just, again, him being polemic. At this point in time, when he's writing this, Kautsky has fallen out of his grace, if you couldn't tell from the last couple readings. And he has never had anything good to say about anarchists. So, yeah, that's about it so far.

All right. But precisely the question. of federalism. Marx disagreed with Prudona, with Bukun and precisely on the question of federalism, not to mention the dictatorship of the proletariat. Federalism as a principle follows logically from the petty bourgeois views of anarchism. Marx was a centralist. There is no departure whatever from centralism in his observations just quoted.

Only those who are imbued with the Philistine, superstitious belief in the state can mistake the destruction of the bourgeois state machine for the destruction of centralism. All right. So just to recap, what he's saying is what the French did by organizing into communes down to the lowliest hamlet and basically democratizing, getting rid of the old French Congress and making this kind of republic-esque, like the communes send a guy to a central. central branch of, you know, the only branch of government, and then they vote on things, that is centralization.

It's, you know, that central French commune, that government body that replaced the old state machinery is actually more centralized than this, than the old state machinery. That's basically what he's saying, and what he's saying that Bernstein got wrong. And also, to put a finer point on it, the reason why Lenin and Marx argued with people like Crudon and Bakun was precisely because any revolution, in terms of Marxism, it has to be led by workers. It cannot be led by petty bourgeois or any class other than workers. where Christmas magic comes alive. As winter approaches and families gather, take our magical train to Santa's Grand Manor.

Make a wish on the tree, see the magical lights, with fun fur spins and festive delights. Bring your loved ones for the most magical time of the year. Book your tickets now at santashouseexpress.i.e. And this is something that the French commune, like I said earlier, the French commune didn't do. It was led by like shopkeepers and artisans and politicians and shit. It wasn't really a worker-led revolution.

It wasn't the dictatorship of the proletariat. That was never its goal. And Lenin will go on in this writing and then in other writings to say that's pretty much why it ended up falling apart. Okay. Onward. But if the proletariat and the poorest peasantry take state power into their own hands, organize themselves quite freely in communes and unite the action of all the communes in striking capital, in crushing the resistance of the capitalists, and in transferring the privately

owned railways, factories, and so forth to the entire nation, so the whole of society. Will that not be centralism? Will that not be the most consistent democratic centralism? And proletarian centralism at that? Bernstein simply cannot conceive of the possibility of voluntary centrism of the voluntary amalgamation of the communes into a nation, of the voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes for the purpose of destroying bourgeois rule and the bourgeois state machine. Like all Philistines, Bernstein can imagine centralism only as something from above to be imposed and maintained solely by the bureaucracy. very click. That's amazing. Marks, as though foreseeing the possibility of his views being distorted, purposely emphasized the fact that the charge that the commune wanted to destroy, purposely emphasize the fact that the fact that the charge that the commune wanted to destroy

the unity of the nation to abolish the central authority was a deliberate fake. Marx purposely used the words the unity nation was to be organized so as to oppose conscious democratic proletarian centralism to bourgeois military bureaucratic centralism. But there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. And the very thing the opportunists of present-day social democracy do not want to hear about is the destruction of the state power, the amputation of the parasitic excres. So the proletarian takes over the state machine. It organizes into communes.

And the entire purpose of those people that those communes send to the central governing machine or organization, their whole goal is to extract everything they can from their enemies, the capitalists, you know, to nationalize or socialize, however you want to say it, railroads, factories, all those things. Their whole one singular-minded goal is to do that. And that's pretty much why Marxism says that, you know, the state withers away. Because once they get done with that and everything's owned by the communes, then there's, then there's really nothing to fight over and the state becomes kind of irrelevant. The state is a tool to extract from capital.

And all of this is in theory. In theory, yes. Just like Ancapistan is in theory. All right. Abolition of the parasitic state. We have already quoted Marx's utterances on this subject and we must now supplement them. is generally the fate of completely new historical creations, he wrote, to be mistaken for the counterfeit of older and even defunct forms of social life to which they may bear a certain resemblance.

Thus, this new commune, which breaks the modern state power, has been mistaken for a reproduction of the medieval communes for a federation of small states, Montesquieu and the Girondins. exaggerated form of the ancient struggle against over-centralization. The communal constitution would have restored to the social body of all the forces hitherto by the state parasitic feeding upon and the clogging the free movement of society. By this one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France. The communal constitution brought the rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their districts, and they're secured to them in the working men, the natural trustees of their interests. The very existence of the commune involved, as a matter

of course, local municipal liberty, but no longer as a check upon the now superseded state power. quote-unquote breaking of the state power, which was a quote-unquote parasitic excrescence, it's quote-unquote amputation, it's quote-unquote smashing the now superseded state power. These are the expressions marks used in regard to the state when appraising and analyzing the experience of the commune. All this was written a little less than half a century ago, and now one has to engage in excavation as it were, in order to bring undistorted Marxism to the knowledge of the masses. Thank God he's there. Thank God he's there to set the record straight.

It's like correcting libertarians on what Mises actually believed. Look, he didn't want to do this. He just feels an obligation. The conclusions drawn from the observation of the late Great Revolution, which Marx lived through. I'm such a bourgeois having a pet dog. The conclusions drawn from the observation of the last great revolution which Marx lived through were forgotten just at the moment when the time for the next proletarian revolutions had arrived.

The multiplicity of interpretations to which the commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favor, show that it was a thorough expanse political form while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government. The produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor. Except on this last condition, the communal constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. And here we start getting into it.

The utopians busied themselves with discovering political forms under which the socialist transformation of society was to take place. The anarchists waived the question of political forms altogether. Imagine that. The opportunists of present-day social democracy accepted the bourgeois political forms of the parliamentary democratic state as a limit which should not be overstepped. They battered their foreheads praying before this model and denounced as anarchism all desired to smash these forms.

They battered their foreheads. It's so good. So good. Marx deduced from the whole history of socialism and of the political struggle that the state was bound to disappear and that the transitional form of its disappearance, the transition from states to non-state, would be the proletariat organized as the ruling class. But Marx did not set out to discover the political forms of this future stage. He limited himself to precisely observing French history,

to analyzing it, and to conclusion to which the year 1851 had led that matters were moving towards the smashing the bourgeois state machine. And when the mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat bursts forth, Marx, in spite of the failure of that movement, in spite of its short life and its patent weakness, began to study what forms it had discovered. The commune form at last discovered by the proletarian revolution under which the economic emancipation of labor can take place. The commune is the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state machine, and it is the political form at last discovered by which to smash state machine can and must be replaced. We shall see further on that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in different circumstances

and under different conditions continue the work of the commune and confirm the historical analysis given by Marx that product of business. Well, I can argue with that. Yeah. So that's basically what Lenin is trying to synthesize. It's taking. It's taking all the good that the French commune showed everybody and saying, look, his only mistake was that it wasn't a working class revolution. But if we just look at Marx, we can take everything we know from the French commune,

everything we know from Marx, Marx's critique of it, and apply it to the conditions, the very unique conditions in Russia. Yeah. And he's saying that he did that, basically. I mean, that's what any quote unquote revolutionary has to do, right?

If you are in 2022 advocating for, say, a revival of the paleo method, you have to look at what happened with the paleo movement when it existed and pick out what was right, what they did right, and what they did wrong. And also you have to look at what that time was and look at what this time is and you have to figure out, you really have to take the temperature of the time. Yep, exactly. And, you know, this might be Lenin, but all you have to do is kind of invert, you know, communism to, you know, what we want, just, you know, paleo-libertarianism.

And the, you can glean, I mean, that's why we're doing this. You can glean so much useful praxis from that to, to test. in the real world. Mouser Guy says, love these readings, been watching them since Uncle Ted. Oh, come on, Fubidoo, I love you. Don't go after Ace like that. We love Ace. Both Aaron and I love Ace.

He sure loves me. Well, you guys are a lot more intimate than I am. So we are. So, yeah. But, all right. Chapter 4, continuations. Supplementary explanations by Engels. Marx gave the fundamentals on the subject of the significance of the

experience of the commune. Engels returned to the same subject repeatedly and explained Marx's analysis and conclusions, sometimes elucidating other aspects of the question with such power and vividness that it is necessary to deal with his explanation. nation separately. This is the part where he just goes into fillating angles like endlessly. One, the housing question. In his work, the housing question 1872, angles already took into account the experience of the commune and dealt several times with the tasks of the revolution in relation to the state. It is interesting to note that the treatment of this concrete subject clearly revealed,

on the one hand, points of similarity between the proletarian state and the present state, such as give grounds for speaking of the state in both cases and, on the other hand, points of difference between them or the transition to the destruction of the state. I guess we're quoting angles here. How is the housing question to be solved then? In present-day society, just as any other social question is solved by the gradual economic adjustment of supply and demand, a solution which ever reproduces the question itself anew, and therefore is no solution.

How a social revolution would solve this question not only depends on the particular circumstances in each case, but is also connected with much more far-reaching questions, one of the most fundamental of which is the abolition of the antithesis between town and country. and it is not our task to create utopian systems for the arrangement of the future society. It would be more than idle to go into the question here. But one thing is certain. There are already in existence sufficient buildings for dwellings in the big towns to remedy immediately any real housing shortage. Given rational utilization of them.

This can naturally only take place by the expropriation of the president. present owners, that is, by quartering in their houses, the homeless and workers excessively overcrowded in their former houses. Immediately, the proletariat has conquered political power such a measure dictated in the public interest will be just as easy to carry out as are other expropriations and billetings by the existing state. I'd be all right with that. I can name a few people that have, I don't know, live in probably.

probably six-bedroom, five-bathroom, three-acre mansions, and, you know, probably aren't utilizing their space rationally. So you're going to go directly to Eusefruct. If they're not using it, all you have to do is put used to it, and it's yours now. The change in the form of the state power is not examined here, but only the content of its activity. expropriations and buildings take place by order of the present state. From the formal point of view, the proletarian state will also order the occupation of houses and expropriation of buildings.

But it is clear that the old executive apparatus, the bureaucracy, which is connected with the bourgeoisie, would simply be unfit to carry out of the proletarian state. Quoting angles again, it must be pointed out that the actual seizure of all the instruments of labor, the seizure of indisture of indisceres of industry, the seizure of indisting, as a whole by the working people is the exact opposite of the Prudonist redemption. Under the latter, the individual worker becomes the owner of the dwelling, the peasant farm, the instruments of labor. Under the former, the working people remain the collective owners of the houses, factories, and instruments of labor, and will hardly permit their use, at least during a transitional period by individuals or associations without compensation for the cost.

Just as the abolition of property and land is not the abolition of ground rent, but its transfer, although in a modified form, to society. The actual seizure of all the instruments of labor by the working people, therefore, does not at all exclude the retention of the rent relation. We shall discuss the question touched upon in this passage, namely, the economic basis for the withering away of the state in the next chapter. Engel expresses himself most cautiously, saying that the proletarian state would hardly permit the use of houses without payment, at least during a transitional period. The letting of houses that belong to the whole people to individual families presupposes the collection of rent a certain amount of control and the employment of some standards in allotting the houses.

All this calls for a certain form of state, but it does not. at all call for a special military and bureaucratic apparatus with officials occupying especially privileged positions. The transition to a state of affairs when it will be possible to supply dwellings rent-free is connected with the complete withering away of the state. Speaking of the conversion of the blankwist of Marxism after the commune and under the influences of its experience, angles in passing formulates these principles as follows. Necessity of political action by the Politariat and of its dictatorship as to transition to the abolition of classes and of with them the state. And with them of the state.

Addicts to hair splitting criticism or bourgeois exterminators of Marxism will perhaps see a contradiction between this recognition of the abolition of the state and the repudiation of this formula as an anarchist one in the above-quoted passage from Anci during. It would not be surprising if the opportunist stamped angles too as an anarchist, for now the practice of accusing the internationalist of anarchism is becoming more and more widespread above the social show. It's amazing. People actually used anarchism as a slur back then?

That's a badge of pride. Sold to you on a t-shirt for 2999 at Hot Topic. We got a bunch of people jumping in right now. Cool. Tell them to get the fuck out of here. Poppy Lib says Lenin is 100% correct. Archotropic marginal incentive always points towards centralization, not federalism. Yep.

What form that centralism takes or, centralization takes, you know, is what he's talking about. In view of the fact that failing social democratic doctrine completely distorts the relation of Marxism, anarchism, on the question of the abolition of the state, it will be particularly useful to recall a certain conversation in which Marx and Engels came out against the anarchists. Hey, part two. controversy with the anarchists. Now we're getting good.

The controversy took place in 1873. Marx and Engels contributed articles about the Prudonists, autonomous, and anti-authoritarians to an Italian socialist annual, and it was not until 1913 that these articles appeared in German in New Zeite. If the political struggle of the working class assumes revolutionary forms, wrote Marx, ridiculing the anarchist for their repeat, of politics. If the workers set up their revolutionary dictatorship in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,

they commit the terrible crime of violating principles for in order to satisfy their wretched, vulgar, everyday needs in order to crush the resistance to the bourgeoisie, they give the state a revolutionary and transient form instead of laying down their arms and abolishing the state. It goes against their principles. so they shouldn't do it. Guys, we just need to have principles and stick to all. It was solely against this kind of abolition of the state that Marx fought in refuting the anarchists.

And just saying, anyone who's listening to this, that sentence ends with an exclamation point. So let me read it properly. It was solely against the kind of abolition of the state that Marx fought in refuting the anarchist. He didn't. He did not at all combat the view that the state would disappear when classes disappeared or that it would be abolished when classes were abolished. He opposed the proposition that the workers should renounce the use of arms of organized violence, that is the state, which is to serve to crush the resistance to the bourgeoisie. You want to explain that, Aaron? Sure.

Yeah. He's just clarifying that, you know, Marx's end goal. the state weathering away. That class is disappearing and, what is it? Fuck, I lost it. Yeah, he's not repudiating organized violence. He's not repudiating armed, armed insurrection. He wants, Marx fully encourages you to use the violence of the state in order to arrest control from the bourgeoisie.

Right. And he seems to be implying here that the anarchists would be against that. Oh, yeah, they would. Absolutely. Which is, you know, this was post. At least the Prudunians and the Bacunaites, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And they were against it in the Russian Revolution in 1917. And, you know, the state won. The people that controlled the state won. To prevent the true meaning of his struggle against anarchism from being distorted, Marx purposely emphasized the revolutionary and transient form of the state which the proletariat needs. The proletariat needs the state only temporarily.

We do not at all disagree with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that. To achieve the aim, we must temporarily make use of the instruments, resources, and methods of state. power against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the abolition of the classes. Is this at all sound familiar to you? Knowing what we know now, we can probably give a little bit of criticism to this approach by Lenin.

You know, in hindsight, it would have been interesting if he didn't die in 1924. Yeah, I mean, if he would have kept going, if he would have stayed alive and stopped. wouldn't have taken over. It had been interesting to see where the state would have gone because, well, it would have been interesting, too, because Trotsky would have been there as a bigger, as a bigger influence. Because Stalin hated Trotsky and Trotsky was gone very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Straight to Mexico. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest way of stating his case against the anarchist. after overthrowing the yoke of the capitalist should the workers lay down their arms or use them against the capitalist in order to crush their resistance. But what is the systematic use of arms by one class against another class, if not a transient form of state?

Let every social Democrat ask himself, is that the way he has been treating the question of the state in controversy with the anarchists? is that the way it has been treated by the vast majority of the official socialist parties of the second international. Engels expounds the same ideas in much greater detail and still more popularly. First of all, he ridicules the muddled ideas of the Prudonists who, yeah, I think I said Prudonians earlier, who called themselves anti-authoritarians repudiated every form of authority, every form of subordination, every form of power. These people really hated their dads. Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, set angles.

Is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments based on the employment of machinery and the plan cooperation of many people could function without a certain amount of subordination and consequently without a certain amount of authority of power? quoting anger. Checkmate anarchists. Yeah. I mean, seriously. I mean, come on. Yeah, especially left anarchists. This is where, you know, we, we in the nominally libertarian right sphere are exactly correct in that natural hierarchies are, you know, you can still have the abolition of the state and still retain natural hierarchies. So, all right. Quoting angles here. When I submitted it. arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following. Yes, that's true. But here it is not a case of authority which we confer on our

delegates, but of a commission entrusted. These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things, they have changed the things themselves. I mean, it's going to be private police. We're getting, never mind. having thus shown that authority and autonomy are relative terms, that the sphere of their application changes with the various phases of social development, that it is absurd to take them as absolutes, and adding that the sphere of the application of machinery and large-scale production is constantly expanding. It passes from the general discussion of authority to the question of the state. Again, quoting English.

Go ahead. Oh, yeah. And again, this is something like when you're arguing, I mean, if anybody here ever argues with left anarchists or and comms or whatever, large scale production and industrialization, they don't have an answer to it. And coincidentally, these hardcore ANCAPs, they don't really have an answer to it either. That doesn't look a lot like a state. Yeah, I think that the one person who I think would call himself a left libertarian or a left anarchist, or at least leaning in that direction, Per Beeland, I think he's probably the closest one to an answer for this in his writings and in his books. So, all right, so quoting Engels, if the autonomous, he wrote, confined themselves to saying that the social organization of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable,

we could understand each other. But they are blind to all facts to make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the word. Why do the anti-authoritarian not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All socialists are agreed that the political state and with it political authority will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be abolished at one stroke. Even before the social conditions they gave birth to it had been destroyed.

They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen, have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is. It is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannon. Authoritarian means, if such there be at all. And if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.

Would the Paris commune have lasted a single day if it had not made of this authority of the armed people against a boy? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it fully enough? Therefore, either one of two things, either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion, or they do know, and in that case, they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case, they serve the reaction. It's one of my favorite angles excerpts. What is a revolutionary? What is the revolution, but one side imposing its will and another by use of rifles, bayonets, and cannon?

It's like I get, it's like you want to almost scream that when you're like reading it, you know? Oh, man. All right. Oh, it's, I remember the first time I read that. I was, I had goosebumps. I have goosebumps right now. All right. This argument touches upon questions, which must be examined in connection with the subject of the relation between politics and economics during the withering away of the state. The subject is dealt with in the next chapter. These questions are the transformation of public functions from political into simple functions of administration and the political. state, and political state is in quotations, Sarah. This last term, one particularly liable to cause misunderstanding, indicates the process of the withering away of the state. At a certain stage of this process, the state which is withering away can be called a non-political state.

Again, the most remarkable thing in this argument of angles is the way he states the case against the anarchists. Social Democrats, claiming to be disciples of angles, have argued on this subject against the anarchists millions of times since 1873, but they have not argued as Marxists can and should. The anarchist idea of the abolition of the state is muddled and non-revolutionary. That is how Engels puts it. It is precisely the revolution in its rise in development with a specific task in relation to violence, authority, power, the state that the anarchists do not wish to see. and this just brings me to when I read this, any ideas of collapsitarianism, just withered away.

Yeah. Yeah. The usual criticism of anarchism by present-day social Democrats is boiled down to the purest Philistine banality. We recognize the state, whereas the anarchists do not. naturally such banality cannot but repel workers who are in the least capable of thinking and revolutionary. What Engel says is different. He emphasizes the fact that all socialists recognize that the state will disappear as a result of the socialist revolution. He then deals concretely with the question of the revolution, the very question which, as a rule,

the social Democrats, because of their opportunism, evade and leave, so to speak, exclusively for the anarchist to work out, quote. And when dealing with this question, Engels takes the bull by the horns, he asks, should not the commune have made more use of the revolutionary power of the state, that is, of the proletariat armed and organizing as the ruling class? Prevailing official social democracy usually dismissed the question of the concrete task of the proletariat in the revolution, either with a Philistine sneer at best, at best, with a sophisticated evasion, wait and at best, with a sophisticated evasion, wait and see.

And the anarchists were thus justified in saying about such social democracy betraying its task of giving the workers a revolutionary education. Yeah, one sec. Yeah. So, Lenin was a social Democrat. He was, at his, at his core, he is a social Democrat that incorporates Marxism. into how he goes about bringing about social democracy. Most social Democrat, non-Marxist social Democrats at the time, just wanted to achieve social democracy within the sphere of whatever state machinery they had at the time.

It would be like today, Bernie Sanders. He's not going to change the size or he's not going to change the scope of the government, the machinery of it. He's not going to change the Constitution that much. He's going to bring social democracy to its highest potential and then stop once he reaches his max potential within this government that we're in now. And that's because he's a non-Marxist social Democrat. Lenin being a Marxist wants to smash all that to bring about more potential. I just had to share that.

Yeah. That's good. I'm reading it. I'm like, wait a minute. What the fuck is that? Got me. All right. Let her speak.

Hashtag let her speak. Last sentence before section three. Engels draws upon the experience of the last proletarian revolution precisely for the purpose of making a most concrete study of what should. be done by the proletariat and in what matter in relation to both the banks and the state. So section three is called a letter to Babel. One of the most, if not the most remarkable observations on the state in the works of marks and angles is contained in the following passage in Engels letter to Babel dated March 18th through 28th, 1875. This letter, we may observe parenthetically, was, as far as we know, first public

by Babel in the second volume of his memoirs, which appeared in 1911, 36 years after the letter had been written and mailed. Engels wrote to Babel criticizing the same draft of the Gotha program, which Marx also criticized in his famous letter to break. Referring particularly to the question of the state, Engels said, the free people state is transformed into the free state, taken in its grammatical sense, a free state is one where the state is free in relation to its citizens, hence a state with a despotic government. The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the commune, which was no longer a state, the proper sense of the word. The people state has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists to the point of desuss,

although already Marx's book against Prudon and the later the Communist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle in the revolution in order to hold down one's adversaries by force. It is pure nonsense to talk about people's state. So long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interest of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries. And as soon as the same as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interest of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries. And as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist.

We would therefore propose to replace state everywhere by the word community. A good old German word, the word is Gemmen Weissen, a good old German word which can very well represent the French word commune. Does that seem like a pretty good little tidbit of knowledge to take with you after this? that if we are to be in the political game, to get involved in the functions of the state, that those functions that we get involved in should only be to take power away from our enemies. That seems all right to me. And to suppress them. Yes.

And to make sure that they don't get power back ever. A lot of people don't like that idea. Yeah, well, it's not principled, so we shouldn't do it. Well, I think just a lot of people don't realize that we actually have enemies and that you can actually point to them. Yeah. I was going to use another phrase, but it should be borne in mind that this letter refers to the party program, which Marx criticized in a letter dated only a few weeks later than the above. And that at the time, Engels was living with Marx in London. It's probably the other way around.

consequently when he says we in the last sentence, Engels undoubtedly as well as in Marx's name, suggested the leader of the German Workers Party that the word state be struck out of the program and replaced by the word community. What a howl about anarchism would be raised by the leading lights of present-day Marxism, which had been falsified for the convenience of the opportunists, if such a rectification of the program was suggested to them. Let them howl. This will earn them the praises of the bourgeoisie. And we shall go on with our work. In revising the program of our party, we must then failing with take the advice of angles and marks into consideration in order to come nearer the truth to restore Marxism by purging it of its distortions to guide the struggle of the working class for its emancipation more correctly.

Gee, isn't it amazing how some ideologies just get to? distorted over time. Yeah. Yeah, who, and the people that do those distortions are known as opportunists, and there are a lot of them, and they need to be fucking kick, kick the fuck out. Certainly no one opposed to the advice of Engels and Marx will be found among the Bolsheviks. The only difficulty that may, perhaps, arise will be in regard to terminology. In German, there are two words meaning community of which angles use the one which does not denote a single community, but their totality, a system of communities. In Russian, there is no such word, and perhaps we may have to choose the French word commune, although this also has its drawbacks.

They have to even, they had to quibble over language. The commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. From the theoretical point of view, this is the most. important statement angles makes. Say that again. The commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. After what he has said, after what has been said above, this statement is perfectly clear. The commune was ceasing to be a state insofar as it had to suppress, not the majority of the population, but a minority, the exploiters. It had smashed a bourgeois state machine in place of a special repressive force. The population itself came on the scene. All this was,

was a departure from the state in the proper sense of the word. And had the commune been firmly established, all traces of the state in it would have withered away of itself. It would not have been necessary for it to abolish the institutions of the state. They would have ceased to function in that they ceased to have anything to do. The people's state had been thrown in our faces by the anarchists. In saying that, well, this is a quote, the people's state had been thrown in our faces by the anarchist. In saying this, Engels above all has in mind Bakunin and his attacks on the German Social Democrats. Engels admits that these attacks were justified insofar as the people state was as much an absurdity and as much a departure from socialism as the free people state.

Engels tried to put the struggle of the German Social Democrats against the anarchists on right lines to make the struggle correct in principle to purge it of opportunist prejudices concerning the state. Alas, Engel's letter was pigeonholed for 36 years. We shall see further on that even after the letter was published, Kautsky obstinately repeated what in essence were the very mistakes against which Engels warned. Babel replied to Engels in a letter dated September 21st, 1875, in which he wrote among other things, that he fully agreed with Engel's criticism of the draft program and that he had reproached leap-necked for his readiness to make concessions. But if we take Babel's pamphlet, our aims, we find their views of the state that are absolutely wrong.

The state must be transformed from one based on class rule into a people state. This was printed in ninth edition of Babel's pamphlet. It is not surprising that so persistently repeated opportunistic views that the state were absorbed by the German social democracy, especially as Engels' revolutionary interpretations had been safely pigeonholed, and all the conditions of life such as to wean them from revolution for a long time. So I got people taking the original intent of Marx and Engels, burying it and replacing it with something else. Hmm. And then even when it's discovered that they were wrong, they still go on saying that no, my, my interpretation is more convenient, therefore correct. All right. Let me see. Wow, that was crazy. All right. Anything going on there? Okay. All right. Criticism of the draft. This is part four. Criticism of the draft of the Erfurt program. In examining the Marxian teaching on the state, the criticism of the draft of the Erfitt program. I'm going to read the footnote here.

The Irfitt Program of the General Social Democratic Party was adopted in October 1891 at the Erfitt Congress to replace the Gotha Program of 1875. The errors in the Erfitt program were criticized by Engels in his work on the critique of the Social Democratic Draft Program of 1891. All right, so start again. In examining the Marxian teaching on the state, the criticism of the draft of the Erfitt program sent by Engels Tchautsky on June 29, 1891, and published only 10 years later in New Ziet, cannot be ignored, for it is precisely the opportunistic views of social democracy on questions of state structure that this criticism is mainly concerned with. We shall note in passing that Engels also makes an exceedingly valuable observation on questions of economics, which shows

how attentively and thoughtfully he watched the various changes being undergone by modern capitalism, and how for this reason he was able to foresee to a certain extent the tasks of our present, the imperialist epoch. Here is the passage referring to the word planlessness used in the draft program as characteristic of capitalism. Engels writes, When we pass from joint stock companies to trust, which assume control over and monopolize whole branches of industry, it is not only private production that ceases, but also planlessness. Here we have what is most essential in the theoretical appraisal of the latest phase of capitalism, i.e. imperialism, that capitalism becomes monopoly capitalism. The latter must be emphasized

because the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism but can already be... Oh, are you calling me bourgeois? Go back. The latter must be emphasized because the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can already be termed state socialism or something of that sort is most widespread. Things haven't changed at all.

No, no. You know, and it's like whenever you- It's not real capitalism, bro. Yeah. And there are certain members of like the, I guess the term, I hate the term, but Loser Brigade that will like wait for you to like say, imply that anything the government does. it is like socialism and then it'll just attack you you don't know what socialism is there

maybe you need to settle the fuck down why do you have 20 followers all right the trust of course never produced do not now produce and cannot produce complete planning but however they but however much they do plan however much the capitalist magnets magnates calculate in advance of volume of production on a national and even on an international scale, and however much they systematically regulate it, we still remain under capitalism. Capitalism in its new stage, it is true, but still undoubtedly, capitalism. The proximity of such capitalism to socialism should serve the genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving the proximity, facility, feasibility, and urgency of the socialist revolution, and not at all as an

argument in favor of tolerating the repudiation of such a revolutionary and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, an occupation in which all the reformists are engaged. So are the reformists saying now that because the state is sort of, you know, is involved in the means of production that, well, this can look like socialism. and it might be socialism. Yeah, I mean, that's what we have now. I mean, you look at the push for like free health care. All they want to do is just redirect funding or just increase funding to an apparatus

that is already at max capacity. Like, they're not, that's why they're reformists. All they want to do is just put a paint job on the prehist. pre-existing institutions. The Josh Ham, the Josh Ham's gone, real capitalism has never been tried, bro. Real anarchism has never been tried.

Realitarianism has never been tried. But let us return to the question of the state. In this letter, Engels makes three particularly valuable suggestions. First, as regards the Republic. Second, as regards to the connection between the national question and the structure of state. And third, as regards local self-government, as regards to Republic, Engels made that the center of gravity of his criticism of the draft of the Erfittford Program. And when we recall what importance the Earth Fruit Program acquired for the whole of international social democracy, that it became the model for the whole of the Second International, we may state without exaggeration that Engels thereby criticized the opportunism of the whole Second International.

The political demands of draft Engels, writes, have one great fault. What actually ought to be said is not there. Engels put that in italics, his own. And later on, he makes it clear that the German constitution is but a copy of the highly reactionary constitution of 1850, that the Reichstad is only, as William Liebnik put it, the fig leaf of absolutism, and that to wish to transform all the instruments of labor into public property on the basis of a constitution which legalized the existence of petty states and the federation of petty German states is an obvious absurdity. To touch on that is dangerous, however, Engels adds,

knowing full well that it was impossible legally to include in the program the demand for Republican Germany. But Engels does not rest content with just this observation, with this obvious consideration which satisfies everybody. He continues. And yet somehow or other, the thing has got to be attacked. How necessary this is is shown precisely at the present time by the inroads which opportunism is making in a large section of the social democratic press. For fear of a renewal of the anti-socialist law and from recollection of all manner of premature utterances which were made during the reign of that law, they now want the party to find the present legal order in Germany adequate for the carrying out of all

demands of the party by peaceful means. Engels particularly stresses the fundamental fact that the German social Democrats were prompted by fear of a renewal of the anti-socialist law and without hesitation calls opportunism. He declares that precisely because there was no republic and no freedom in Germany, the dreams of a peaceful path were absolutely absurd. Angles is sufficiently careful not to tie his hands. He admits that in republic or very free countries, one can conceive, only conceive, of a peaceful development towards socialism. But in Germany, he repeats, in Germany, where the government is almost omnipotent and the Reichstag and all other representative bodies have no real power to proclaim such a thing in Germany, and moreover, when there is no need to do so,

is to remove the thing from absolutism and become oneself a screen for its nakedness. Paints a great picture there. What? No, just the idea that as so long as that there are representative bodies, there is a peaceful means to achieve revolutionary ends. I mean, I think that's a good thing to take from this. The great majority of official leaders of the German Social Democrat Party who pigeonhole this advice have indeed proved to be a screen for absolutism.

Quoting angles. Ultimately, such a policy can only lead one own party a show. They put general, abstract, political questions into the foreground, thus concealing the immediate concrete questions, the questions which at the first great events, the first political crisis, put themselves on the agenda. What can result from this except that at the decisive moment the party is suddenly left without a guide, that unclarity and disunity on the most decisive issues reign in it because these issues have never been discussed. This forgetting of the great main standpoint for the momentary interests of the day, the struggling and struggling for the success of the moment without consideration for the latter consequences, the sacrifice of the future of the move for its present may be. honestly meant, but it is and remains opportunism and honest opportunism, if perhaps the most

dangerous of all. If one thing is certain, it is that our party and the working class come to power under the form of the Democratic Republic. This is even the specific form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the great French Revolution has already shown. Angles repeats here in a particularly striking form, the fundamental idea which run like a red thread through all of Marx's works, namely that the Democratic Republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat. For such a republic, without in the least abolishing the rule of capital and therefore the oppression of the masses and the class struggle, inevitably leads to such an extension, development, unfolding, and intensification of this struggle that as soon as there arises the possibility of

satisfying the fundamental interests of the oppressed masses, this possibility is realized inevitably and solely through the dictatorship of the proletariat, through the leadership of those masses by the proletariat. These two are forgotten words of Marxism for the whole of the second international. In fact, that they have been forgotten was demonstrated with particular vividness by the history of the Menshevik Party during the first half of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Damn. Got some more Engels here. On the subject of a federal republic in connection with the national composition of the population, Engels wrote,

what should take the place of present-day Germany with its reactionary monarchical constitution and its equally reactionary division into petty states, a division which perpetuates all the specific features of Prussianism instead of, dissolving them in Germany as a whole. In my view, the proletariat can only use the form of the one and indivisible republic. In the gigantic territory of the United States, a federal republic is still on the whole a necessity, although in the eastern states it is already becoming a hindrance. It would be a step forward in England where the two islands are peopled by four nations, and in spite of a single parliament, three different systems of

legislation exists side by side even today. In little Switzerland, it has long been a hindrance tolerable only because Switzerland is content to be a purely passive member of the European system. For Germany, federalization on the Swiss model would be an enormous step backwards. Two points distinguish a union state from a completely unified state. First, that each separate state forming part of the union, each canton, has its own civil and criminal legislative and judicial system. And second, that alongside of a popular chamber, there is also a federal chamber in which each canton, large and small, votes as such. In Germany, the union state is the transitional stage to the completely unified state and the revolution from above of 1866 and 1870 must not be reversed. but supplemented by a movement from below.

I did a break. Want to say anything? No, I like that he's talking about the history of Prussia. I'm actually in the process of rereading a book about Prussia from its beginning to its end in 1944. All right. Far from displaying it, when did it end? No, 45.

are. Forty-six, I guess. Was it really Prussian up until that point? Certainly had Prussian characteristics. Far from displaying indifference in regards to the forms of state. Engels, on the contrary, tried to analyze the transitional forms with the utmost thoroughness in order to establish in accordance with the concrete, historical, specific features of each separate case. from what and into what the given transitional form is passing. Approaching the matter from the point of view of the proletarian revolution, angles like Marx upheld democratic centralism, the Republic, one and indivisible. He regarded the Federal Republic either as an exception and a hindrance to development

or as a transitional form from a monarchy to a centralized republic as a step forward under certain special conditions. And among these special conditions, the national question comes to the front. Although mercilessly criticizing the reactionary nature of small states and the screening of this by the national question in certain concrete cases, angles like Marx never betrayed a trace of a desire to brush aside the national question. A desire of which to Dutch and Polish Marxists are often guilty as a result of their perfectly justified opposition. opposition to the narrow Philistine nationalism of their little states. Even in regard to England, where geographical conditions, a common language in the history of many centuries would seem to have put an end to the national question in the separate small divisions of England, even in regard to that country, Engels reckoned with the patent fact that the national question was not yet a thing of the

past and recognized in consequence that the establishment of a federal republic would be a step forward. of course there is not the slightest hint here of angles abandoning the criticism of the shortcomings of the Federal Republic or that he abandoned the most determined propaganda and struggle for a unified and centralized democratic republic. Yeah, I love that sentence right there. That's like, you know, when an anarchist like breaks character and he goes, well, I mean, the way we could, the way we could fix this in the real world is by doing this. But of course, we need to abolish whatever this is. But angles did not at all understand dematuralism in the bureaucratic sense in which the term is used by bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideologists, anarchists among the latter. His idea of centralism did not in the least preclude broad local self-government, as would combine the voluntary defense of the unity of the state by the communes and districts with the complete abolition of all. bureaucracy and all ordering from above.

Enlarging on the program views of Marxism on the state, Engels wrote, So then in a unitary republic, but not in the sense of the present French Republic, which is nothing but the empire established in 1798 without the emperor. From 1792 to 1798, each department of France, each commune, enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is what we, too, must have. how self-government is to be organized and how we can manage without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the First French Republic and is being shown even today by Canada, Australia, and the other English colonies. And a provincial and local self-government of this type is far freer than, for instance, Swiss federalism under which it is true, the Canton is very independent in relation to the union, i.e. the federated state as a whole, but is also independent in relation to the district and the commune.

The cantonal, the cantonal governments appoint the district governors and prefects, a feature which is unknown in English-speaking countries and which we shall have to abolish here just as resolutely in the future, along with the Prussian ledrant. And I'm not going to pronounce that. But it's basically commissioners, district police chiefs, governors, and in general, all officials is appointed. from above. Accordingly, Engels proposes the following wording for the self-government clause in the program. Complete self-government for the provinces. Districts and communities drew officials elected by universal suffrage. The abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state.

Do you want to say anything about him talking about universal suffrage? And universal suffrage is whatever conditions are necessary to make 90 plus percent people participate in the vote. So whatever you need to do to get people to go out to vote, that's what universal suffrages. It has nothing to do with like women's suffrage or like making people giving the vote to people. it's just whatever you need to do to encourage people to vote or legitimately give people their best self-interest is to vote. That's what he means. Okay.

All right. We're going to finish up this section and then get out of here. I already had occasion to point out in Pravda, number 68, May 28, 1917. which was suppressed by the government of Kerensky and other socialist ministers, how on this point, of course not on this point alone, but by any means, our pseudo-socialist representatives of pseudo-revolutionary pseudo-democracy have made absolutely scandalous departures from democracy. Naturally, people who have bound themselves by a coalition with the imperialist bourgeoisie

have remained deaf to this criticism. So he's such a good writer. Such a good polemicist. It is extremely important to note that Engels, armed with facts, disproves by a most precise example, the prejudice which is very widespread, particularly among petty bourgeois Democrats, that a federal republic necessarily means a greater amount of freedom than a centralized republic. This is not true. It is disproved by the facts cited by Engels regarding the centralized French Republic of Central. 1792 to 98 and the federal Swiss Republic. The real democratic centralized republic gave more freedom than the federal

republic. In other words, the greatest amount of local provincial and other freedom known in history was accorded by a centralized and not by a federal republic. Insufficient attention has been paid and is being paid in our party propaganda and agitation to this fact as indeed to the, the whole question of the federal and the centralized republic and local self-government. I think we can, uh, I think we can stop there and then come back next time. I like it.

Got to the, uh, got to some of the good parts. Uh, in this one. Yeah. My favorite parts. That's for sure. Shitting on anarchists and sucking Engels dick. What is, what does poppy lips say here? What Lenin doesn't realize there is that's an excellent argument for monarchy, not dictatorship.

Yeah. Well, to a communist, a federal republic would be preferable to a monarchy, only because monarchies are kind of built to last. And federal republics, not so much. there are a lot there are a lot for a popular movement a federal republic is is easier to peacefully transition into uh communism see if we got anything else here that's a joke because every rebel here has served with yes yeah the um the great part thing about this section is not only uh part about the anarchist not only the part about what real revolution would look like and what it would take.

But also all the arguments for real, insert whatever you want to put, insert whatever ideology you want has never been tried. Yeah. Yeah. And just the Marxist principle that revolution has to be led by, led by the class that's going to be taking power. exclusively by the class that's going to be taken power, and that the end result of that revolution

has to be a dictatorship by that class with the sole purpose of expropriating their enemies. That's something that I, you know, I think we kind of dance around, but that's the end game. Like for right-wing libertarians or pay alibiatarians or praxians or whatever you want to call us, that has to be the end game. We're not like, if we need to talk about liberty and frame it in that way to appeal to certain,

you know, certain demographics, then fine. But make no mistake, like, we're out to take power and keep it. Yeah. Andrew had said way back here a little bit ago, um, what actually. causes peace as one dude who owns nearly all of the means of power and thus is unchallengeable. If he can't be challenged, then he doesn't have to work hard to exercise his predation and can afford a low time preference for power as a means of maximizing value for himself. And he says, it's it's the, he goes, I just love how he calls them Philistines.

It's the exact same attitude the left has for libertarians because libertarians are utterly primitive and clueless when it comes to understanding power. What does you say? The idea that you can abolish economic value, the equal opposite fallacy of libertarianism. Basically that libertarians think they can abolish archa tropic value and make people only believe. in economic value, Communists believe they can abolish economic value and make people only believe, and make people only believe in economic value. Is that what you meant, Andrew?

Equal opposite mistakes because they're both wrong because you can't abolish people's subjective opinions. And that's true. No, but you can put them in a ditch for having them. when Lenin is arguing we only we only need the state to hold down the capitalists until they go away at that point the state withers subjective opinions yeah he says yeah he says they argue that communists argue that um economic value they don't believe in economic value um what was it what was it again because i think okay Communists believe they can abolish economic value and make people only believe in archotropic value.

So, yeah. This is definitely eye-opening because I think if there is anything that any one of us would, I think would want to take out of this is the fact that the idea, if you want to suppress your enemies, you're going to need power. Yeah. And there is really, as of right now, there's really only one legitimate power. And also the fact that it's probably going to take a couple generations to arrive at the point where you're secure in your power, that your enemies are completely defeated and unable to mount any type of comeback. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, take for example, like, we're not super religious, but putting prayers in schools. Like, the goal isn't to make kids more religious. It's because when you put prayer in school, you can't possibly teach CRT, you know? So you're, like, our criticism of progressives is that they're indoctrinating our kids. Well, you know, truth be told, I'm about indoctrination too, only indoctrinating them. in inoculating them against their indoctrination. Correct. And the, um, doing prayer in school is not only a way to fight against CRT.

It's also a way to just tell them, fuck you. Exactly. Yeah. If you can, if you can implement that. If you can implement that. And I, I don't know of any cases where, where, where prayer has been re-implemented or or implemented from nothing. But it would be interesting to see, like, the voting trends of, you know, kids that graduate

and grow up in that school system. Yeah. What their, what their proclivities are. Well, I think, I think Jeff Dice said, you know, you basically, what you do is you start teaching prayer in school. And then if the feds come in, you stop. And then as soon as they leave, you start. allowing prayer in school again.

And you just, so, okay, you know, you're going to come in here with guns. We're just going to, we'll stop. And,

yeah, okay. Oh, you left? Oh, there we go. All right. They're not looking.

That's it. Indctrinate them in hop, but not DiAngelo. That's for sure. Got anything to plug? Um, yeah, you can,

uh, find me, on Timeline Earth and also Boys Town with Aaron, which I'll be releasing an episode sometime this month. Maybe. I noticed that what's funny is I remember when I was having lunch with Bird in January 2020. And he's saying, you know, we're getting out of the Friends Against Government business and we're going into the Timeline Earth business.

And each one of us is going to have an individual. show on Fridays and everything. And I'm like, that's not going to last. That's not going to last. I know, you know what? To their credit, I'm pretty sure we haven't had that many deviations. Well, I should say, none of my other co-hosts have had that many deviations. It's just been me. Oh, no. I've been the fucking stick in the wheel. Cars, cars came out on Wednesday of this week. I know. Yeah, that was a, that was him slapping us with his dick. Yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one.

Even when I don't, even when I don't agree with car, I listen. Yeah. Yeah. Like when he's talking. Yeah. Like every time he talks. Oh, I want to hear. I just, I value his opinion, so I want to hear it.

Yeah. He's a solid dude. Yeah. All right. Let's get out of here. Thanks, everybody for tuning in. And until the next time. See you on the timeline.

Maybe. So we've already had one joke on Twitter about, gee, Aaron's late for a podcast. I can't believe that. I know. You've never been late for a podcast at me. You've always been on time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I've been sucking this week. It's been fucking rough. I'm 60 hour work week and I'm on call, so I'm doubly fucked. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. And you just explains me what the problem was and just laughing my ass off because it's like, sure yeah you know just sounds like the north yeah in winter was it uh jim nolton here says picked up a full lamb

from the butcher today straight to the freezer fuck yeah what on your back deck seriously all right so um where we left off last time was the let's see last thing that we read was the letter to the criticism of the draft of the Erfurt program. And now we are going to get into the 1891 preface to Marx's, the Civil War in France. All right. So I'll start reading. It is preface to the third edition of the Civil War in France, dated March 18th, 1891, angles, in addition to some interesting incidental remarks on questions connected with the attitude

towards state gives a remarkably vivid summary of the lessons of the commune. This summary rendered more profound by the entire experience of the 20 years that separated the author from the commune and directed particularly against this superstitious belief in the state so widespread in Germany may justly be called the last word of Marxism on the question under consideration. Superstitious belief in the state, I don't think only Marxists use that language, do they? Hmm. Yeah.

That sounds familiar. Yeah. In France, Engels observes, the workers emerged with arms from every revolution. Therefore, the disarming of the workers was the first commandment for the bourgeois, who were at the helm of the state. Hence, after every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle, ending with the defeat of the workers. This summary of the experience of the bourgeois revolutions is as concise,

as it is expressive. The essence of the matter, also, by the way, on the question of the state, has the oppressed class, has the oppressed class arms, is here remarkably well grasped. It is precisely this essence of the matter which most often ignored both by professors who are influenced by bourgeois ideology and by petty bourgeois Democrats. Still rings true to this day. In terms of disarmament, yeah. Oh, man, I was seeing it on the timeline today.

Mises and someone at Mises Institute, Mexico in their, in their bio arguing for open borders. And calling me a status when I say, if you're encouraging people to go over the borders and they get thrown in the cage, that's your fault. And you're not going to be in the cage with them. And they're like, that's status. That's the most statist thing I've read all day. Yes. Me telling you, me warning against people going to jail, that's very statist. Yeah, how dare you?

In the Russian Revolution in 1917, the honor of babbling the secret of bourgeois revolutions fell to the Menshevik, also Marxist, Saratelli. In his historic speech of June 11th, Saratelli blurted out the bourgeois, blurted out that the bourgeois was determined to disarm the petrored workers, presenting, of course, this decision as his own and as a matter of necessity for the state in general. Petrograd is, by the way, is what we call St. Petersburg today, just for people listening who aren't familiar with that city. Saratelli's historic speech on June 11th will, of course, serve every historian of the Revolution of 1917 as one of the most striking illustrations of how the Socialist Revolution and Menshevik Block, led by Mr. Sarateli, deserted to the bourgeois against the revolutionary proletariat. man another incidental remark of angles also connected with the question of the state deals with religion it is well known that german social democracy as it decayed and became more and more opportunist slipped more and more frequently into the philistine misinterpretation of the celebrated formula

religion is to be proclaimed the private matter this is the formula was twist that is the formula was to mean that religion was a private matter, even for the party of the revolutionary proletariat. It was against this utter betrayal of the revolutionary program of the proletariat. Jeez, that went quick. That Engels vigorously protested. In 1891, he saw only the very feeble beginnings of opportunism in his party, and therefore he expressed himself extremely cautious, angle speaking. As almost only workers or recognized representatives,

representatives of the workers sat in the commune, its decision bore a decidedly proletarian character. Either these decisions decreed reforms which the Republican bourgeois had failed to pass solely out of cowardice, but which provided a necessary basis for the free activity of the working class, such as the realization of the principle that in relation to the state religion is a purely private matter, or the commune promulgated decrees, which were in the direct interest of the working class, and in part cut deeply into the old order of society. So this is, you know, obviously we, we right now are okay with the religion. We even encourage it, particularly Christianity and, you know, the system of ethics that

that should be enforced. But it's the idea that, you know, in order to be a fully revolutionary in character, any movement cannot tolerate this live and let live, this live and let live outlook. Because right now the religion that we're fighting against is the religion of progressivism. It's just as much of a religion as anything else. It has its, you know, its sacraments and its form of worship and prayer. And so this live and let live in terms of the religion of progressivism, your preferences, that also cannot be tolerated.

And this whole live and let live thing is not only comes out of what we would consider liberalism and associate that with the left in the United States. But it also comes out of classic liberalism. Yeah, yep. And that's what allows communists to take over the academy. Yeah. Hey, there you go. So Brian Milhollen here said,

can't wait until I get to move out of California back into the United States. Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Pete. You gave me the hope and motivation to move out of California, just closed escrow in a house in Tennessee. Excellent. Amazing, man. You're going to love Tennessee. I don't know where you're going to be, but most of the places I've been, as long as it's not too close to Nashville, you should be all right. All right. Angles deliberately underlined the words in relation to the state as a straight thrust at the German opportunism, which had declared religion to be a private matter in a relation to the party, thus degrading the party of the revolutionary proletariat to the level of the most vulgar, free-thinking, Philistinism, which is prepared to allow a non-denominational status, but which renounces the

party's struggle against the opium of religion which stupefies the people. There's a lot there. Wow. I mean, I'm sure at the time he felt very strongly and had very strong, I mean, communists in general, like the communist elite in general felt very strongly about this. Just as we feel very strongly that the religion of progressivism, is an opiate for the masses. That's, you know, a one-for-one exchange. Yep. The future historian of German social democracy in tracing the root causes of a

shameful bankruptcy in 1914 will find a good amount of interesting material on this question, beginning with the evasive declarations in the articles of the party's ideological leader Kautzky, which opened wide the door to opportunism and ending with the attitude of the party towards the leave the church movement in 1913. I'm not going to try and pronounce the German there. But let us, because that is German, yeah. But let us see how, 20 years after the commune, Engel summed up its lessons for the fighting proletariat.

Here are the lessons to which Engel attached prime importance. It was precisely the oppressing power of the former centralized government, Army, political police, bureaucracy, which Napoleon had created in 1798, and which since then has been taken over by every new government as a welcome instrument and used against its opponents. It was precisely this power, which was to fall everywhere, just as it had already fallen in Paris. From the very outset, the commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine. That in order not to lose again, it's only just conquered supremacy.

This working class must, on the other hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against itself and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials by declaring them all without exception subject to recall at any moment. Smart. Yeah. Engels emphasizes again and again that not only under a monarchy, but also in the Democratic Republic, the state remains a state, i.e., it retains its fundamental characteristic feature of transforming the officials, this quote unquote the servants of society, its organs,

into the masters of society. Engels again, against this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from servants of society into masters of society, an inevitable transformation in all previous states, the commune made use of two infallible means. In the first place, it filled all posts, administrative, judicial, and educational by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, higher low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the commune to anyone was 6,000 francs.

In this way, an effective barrier to place hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to delegates to representative bodies, which were added besides. I don't think that sounds like a bad idea at all. No, it's, you know. Like, I think that, you know, any government position should be minimum wage. Yeah, yep. And subject to recall it.

Anytime. All right. Where are we got? Okay. Engels here approaches the interesting boundary line at which consistent democracy, on the one hand, is transformed into socialism. And on the other hand, demands socialism. For, in order to abolish the state, the functions of the civil service must be converted into the simple operations of role and accounting that are within the capacity and ability

of the vast majority of the population and subsequently of every single individual. And in order to abolish careerism completely, it must be made impossible for honorable, that's in quotes, though profitless posts in the public service to be used as a springboard's a highly lucrative post in banks or joint stock companies, as constantly happens in all the freest capitalist countries. Oh, man. Yeah. It's a private company, bro. They can do whatever they want. It's hearing angles from the right in being like, well, a broken clock is right twice a day.

We've got any comments here. Jim Nolten says every government job should be minimum wage with no taxes taken out of it since we are paying those taxes anyway. Brian says he's going to be two hours away from Nashville. Oh, man, you're going to love it. Tennessee is, oh my God, it's another country. It really is. I love that he used the country because it really is. All right. But Angles did make the mistake some Marxists make in dealing, for example, with the question of the right of nations to self-determination when they argue that this is impossible under capitalism and will be superfluous under socialism. Such a seemingly clever but actual, actually incorrect statement might be made in regard to any democratic institution, including moderate salaries for officials, because fully consistent democracy is impossible under capitalism and under socialism, all democracy withers away. Well, I mean, it kind of, it kind of did.

Yeah, it did become something else. It is a sophistry like the old joke as to whether a man will become bald if he loses one more hair. Oh, you get to kick me in the nuts like that. To develop democracy to the utmost, to seek out the forms for this development, to test them by practice and so forth. All this is one of the constituent tasks of the struggle for the social revolution. Taken separately, no kind of democracy will bring socialism. But in actual life, democracy will never be taken separately. It will be taken together with other things.

It will exert its influence on economic life, will stimulate its transformation. And in its turn, it will be influenced by economic development and so on. Such are the dialectics of living history. Engels. Go ahead. I mean, he's kind of right. I mean, our form of democracy or representative government, whatever you want to call it, started off as something and then was extremely influenced by historical development, you know, in every context, cultural, economic. I mean, and it's taken this fucking whatever you want to define this form that we have right now.

And that's in direct relation to how all those other aspects developed. you know, we're a managerial oligarchy with democratic characteristics. Yeah. And if you look back, I mean, before 1861 or 1865, you can see, you can see a lot of liberty, but you can see stuff creeping in. But, I mean, after that, after this experiment in self-government was just stopped in its tracks because there would be nothing more in line with self-government than secession. Everything went to shit after that.

I mean, I do think that Woodrow Wilson was the worst president in American history, but what Lincoln did was just put us on it. I mean, somebody could have stopped it. You know, Wilson could, a great man could have stopped it. But Wilson just took it and said, okay, we, we, we. going to put this right into the ditch. John Wilkes Booth. Too little too late. Sorry, buddy.

Come on. Quoting more angles. The shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a new and truly democratic one is described in detail in the third section of the Civil War. But it was necessary to dwell briefly here once more on some of its features. Because in Germany, particularly the superstitious belief in the state, has been carried over from philosophy into the general consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even of many workers. According to the philosophical conception, the state is the realization of the idea

for the kingdom of God on earth, Ronald Reagan, translated into philosophical terms the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or shall be realized. And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with it, which takes root the more readily since people are accustomed from childhood to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its lucratively positioned officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the Democratic Republic.

In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the Democratic Republic, no less than in the monarchy. And at best, an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heat. And there's not a lot I can argue with there. I don't know how much I can argue against there. What do you think? You there? You there?

Okay. Aaron's having audio issues. I'm going to keep going. Engels warrant Well, and, you know, what's he going to comment on there? I mean, good to go. Yeah. I mean, really, what's to comment on there? I mean, how much of that do you do with? I mean, maybe some of the language. Yeah, that's, yeah.

All right. Angles warned the Germans not to forget the fundamentals of socialism on the question of the state in general in connection with the substitution of a republic for the monarchy. His warnings now read like a very. lesson to the Messrs. To the Messrs, Saratelis, and Chernovs, who in their coalition practice here revealed the superstitious belief in and a superstitious reference for the state. He literally just called them statists. It's amazing.

Two more remarks. One, the fact that Engels said that in a Democratic Republic, no less than in a monarchy, the state remains a machine for the oppression of one class against a number. another, by no means signifies that the form of oppression is a matter of indifference to the proletariat as some anarchist teach. A wider, freer, and more open form of the class struggle and of the class oppression enormously assist a proletariat in its struggle for the abolition of classes in general. Yes. So oppression in and of itself isn't bad. It depends on who is being oppressed. And that is something that, you know, me and you have kind of realized out of, out of

necessity from the last two years. And I hope that's something that we can kind of make other capital L and lowercase L libertarians realize as well that, you know, we're not going to achieve Ancapistan. And, you know, the state is a tool for the oppression of one class to another. So I was just told that when you were having audio issues, they could hear you, but I could. They could you. I couldn't hear you. Yeah, my output got fucked up.

Yeah, I'm sure you would just cursing up a storm anyway. And then he's number two, why will only a new generation be able to throw the entire of state on the scrap heap? This question is bound up with that of the overcoming democracy, which we shall deal, which we shall deal now. Engels on the overcoming of democracy. Engels had occasion to express his views on this subject in connection with the fact that the term social Democrat was scientifically wrong.

Didn't you call yourself a social Democrat? Yeah. In a preface to an addition of his articles of the 70s on various subjects, mainly on international questions, dated January 3, 1894, written a year and a half before his death. Engels wrote that in all his articles, he used the word communist, and not Social Democrat, because at that time, the Produnists in France and LaSalleans in Germany called themselves Social Democrats. Engels speaking. For Marx and Me, continues Engels,

it was therefore absolutely impossible to use such an elastic term to characterize our special point of view. Today, things are different, and words Social Democrat may perhaps pass muster, however, inexact or unsuitable. It still is for a party. whose economic program is not merely socialist in general, but directly communist and whose ultimate political aim is to overcome the whole state and consequently democracy as well. The names of real political parties, however, are never wholly appropriate. The party develops while the name stays. You know what's funny? That is, that's Burnham right there. Burnham makes that point in suicide of the West that a political ideology starts and there's this ideology.

And if it ever gets into practice, it's never with that ideology. It always changes over time, but always claims the ideology. Yeah. The name stays the same. And he was a former Marxist, wasn't he? He was a Trotskyite. Yeah. Yeah.

He was a hardcore Trotskyite. He was president of a Trotsky organization in New York or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So he probably read this. I mean, that's why he's the best to read. Yeah, it's all of those old right paleo-lib, paleo-con people that came from Marxism are always 100% all the time. I know.

It's crazy, too, because except you, I mean, they immediately hated. the neocons. Because, I mean, the term neoconservative was there like right from, I mean, soon after he wrote Machiavellians. So, yeah, he always hated them, even though they were former Trotskyites, but they never pretended to be right. They never pretended to be, oh, we're, you know, we're taking up the mantle of, um, of the real right ideology. But they did, but guys like Burnham and Francis and people after that. It's just amazing to me that, like, those guys wrote for National Review. Yeah. Because it's just like, okay. There was no self to write. You probably won't find any references to him nowadays, but. Yeah. If they talk about Burnham,

I'm sure it's like burning of an effigy. All right. The dialectician angles remains true to dialectics to the end of his days. Marx and I, he says, had a splendid scientifically exact name for the party, but there was no real party, no mass proletarian party. Now, at the end of the 19th century, there is a real party, but its name is scientifically inexact. Never mind, it will pass muster if only the party develops. If only the scientific inexactness of its name is not hidden from it and does not hinder

its development in the right direction. So you have to conquer labels. Gee, I wonder who's, I wonder who said that. I don't know. All right. Perhaps some wit would console us Bolsheviks in the manner of angles. We have a real party. It is developing splendidly.

Even such a meaningless and ugly term as Bolshevik will pass muster, although it expresses nothing whatever, but the purely accidental fact that at the Brussels, London Congress of 1903, we were in the majority. He was there, right? Lenin was, I think Lenin was there. And if I'm not mistaken, Trotsky was there, too. 1903, yeah, that would make sense. They were, they were okay with each other then. Well, yeah, and Stalin was in jail at that time. Yeah, for robbing trains or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Being a badass. Perhaps, perhaps now that the persecution of our party by Republicans and revolutionary petty bourgeois democracy in July and August has earned the name

Bolsheviks such a universal respect. Now that, in addition, this persecution attest to the tremendous historical progress our party has made in its real development, perhaps now even I might hesitate to insist on the suggestion I made in April to change the name of our. Perhaps I would propose a compromise to my comrades, to call ourselves the Communist Party, but to retain the word Bolsheviks in brackets. But the question of the name of the, it's incomparably less important than the question of the attitude of the revolutionary proletariat to the state.

I'm, yeah, I don't really care what somebody calls himself. I care what their ideology is. And I've pretty much gotten to the point in the last two years that I don't care what you call themselves. I don't care if you're on the left. Do you want me dead? Yeah. it's pretty much it. Yeah, and we don't even have that luxury. It's do you want some semblance of the

same people that we want dead, dead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was, I had a long conversation on the phone the other day with somebody who some people might know and would be really shocked that we pretty much agreed on everything except economics. Oh, I would jizz in my pants if that was a certain, a certain Marxist Leninist. Yeah, this is a guy who's more on the progressive left, but he's completely, he understands just how insane

the woke bullshit is. Yeah. Because they're equally as fucked as the right is. The old left, I mean, the, the left, the actual left is equally as fucked as the actual right is. Yeah. And, yeah,

there's room for cooperation and at least conversation. there. That's why I don't troll fucking Marxist. In the usual arguments about the state, the mistake is constantly made against which angles uttered his warning and which we have in passing indicated above. Namely, it is constantly forgotten that the abolition of the state means also the abolition of democracy, that the withering away of state means the withering away of democracy. At first sight, this assertion seems exceedingly strange and incomprehensible. Indeed, some

Someone may even begin to fear that we are expecting the advent of an order of society in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. For democracy means the recognition of just that principle. At least you got democracy right. Yeah. Everything else. I mean, no. No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes a subordination of the minority to the majority, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one section of the population against another.

And tell me we are not seeing that post-Jas. That's post-January. And like even before this, even before this whole thing, like I would be screaming at like these Bernie Sanders types that like, you know, you can democratize everything. It's still a state. Like, or not Bernie Sanders types, but like the mutualists and the left comms and all that. No, like democracy is still a state. Well, now, back in my, back in my lowercase L libertarian principled days. We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against man in general.

We do not expect the advent of an order of society in which, the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. But in striving for socialism, we are convinced that it will develop into communism, and hence that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another and of one section of the population to another will vanish all against. People will become accustomed to observing elementary conditions of social life without violence and what's out subordination. So this is where kind of the language gap exists between, you know, the authoritarian left and everybody else.

Communism is the condition that happens after socialism. When they say they're communists, they're expressing their preference. They're not, you know, they're not, they don't view the Soviet Union as communism. They view like the Soviet Union and all these other communist bloc states. as progressing towards communism. And that's why they call themselves communist. It's not that they're living in a stateless society right now. That's just, I don't know, just throwing that out there for like when you're interacting

with these people, trying to understand their language. Okay. In order to emphasize this element of habit, Engel speaks of a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, which will be able to throw on the script, which will be able to throw on the scrap heap the entire lumber of the state of every kind of state, including the Democratic Republic state. In order to explain that it is necessary, in order to explain this, it is necessary to examine the question of the economic basis of the withering away of the state. Here's where it gets tough to read.

It's like, oh, man. I mean, literally at this time, but by this time, Bumauerk has absolutely destroyed Marxist's second comics. Yeah. Sorry about all the coughing. Geez. Corona, you got it. Well, I think I had earlier this week, but I hit it with HCQ and zinc.

And I started getting back pain and someone was telling me that that was part of it. And it was like the third day of taking HCQ, it was gone. I've had like seven exposures just in the, past month and I think I was sick for like three days. Tested negative, but who knows? Who the fuck knows? I had symptoms for like two days, but I'm still taking, still finishing the five days of HCQ.

Horse based. Chapter 5. The economic basis of the weathering away of the state. Oh boy. All right. Marx explains this question most thoroughly in his critique. of the Goethe Program, which was not published until Letter to Brachy, May 5th, 1875, which was not published until 1891, when it was printed in New Zeit, Volume 9, 1, issue 1, and which has

appeared in Russian in special edition. The polemical part of this remarkable work, which contains a criticism of LaSalleanism, has, so to speak, overshadowed its positive part. namely the analysis of the connection between the development of communism and the withering away of the state. Section 1, presentation of the question by Marx. From a superficial comparison of Marx's letter to Brachey, with Engel's letter to Babel, which we examined above, it might appear that Marx was much more of a champion of the state than Engels and that the difference of opinion between the two writers and the question of the

state was very considerable. Engel suggested to Babel that all the chatter about the state be dropped altogether, that the word state be eliminated from the program altogether, and the word community substituted for it. Engels even declared that the commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. Yet Marx even spoke of the future nature of the state of communist society, i.e. as though he recognized the need for the state even under communism. But such a view would be fundamentally wrong. A closer examination shows that Marx and Engels views on the state, and it's withering away were completely identical and that Marx's expression quoted above refers precisely to this state in the process of withering away. Clearly, there can be no question of defining the exact moment

of the future withering away, the more so since it will obviously be a lengthy process. The apparent difference between marks and angles is due to the fact that they dealt with different subjects and pursued different aims. Angles set out to show Babel graphically, sharply, and in broad outline the utter absurdity of the current prejudices concerning the state, shared to no small degree by LaSalle. Marx only touched upon this question in passing, being interested in another subject, the development of communist society. The whole theory of Marx is the application of the theory of development in its most consistent, complete, considered in pithy form to modern capitalism. Naturally, Marx was faced with the problem of applying this theory both to the

forthcoming collapse of capitalism and to the future development of future communism. On the basis of what data then can the question of the future development of future communism be dealt with? On the basis of the fact that it has its origin in capitalism, that it develops historically from capitalism, that is the result of the action of a social force to which capitalism gave birth. There is no trace of an attempt on Marx's part to conjure up a utopia to make idle guesses about what cannot be known. Marx treats the question of communism in the same way as a naturalist to treat the question of the development, say, of a new biological variety. Once he knew that such and such was its origin and such and such the direct

such and such the exact direction in which it was going. Marx, first of all, brushes aside the confusion, the Gotha program brings into the question of the relationship between state and society. He writes, this is Marx. Present-day society is capitalist society, which exists in all civilized countries, more or less free from medieval admixture, more or less modified by the special historical development of each country more or less developed. On the other hand, the present-day state changes with a country's frontier.

It is different in the Pruso-German Empire from what is in Switzerland. It is different in England from what it is in the United States. The present-day state is therefore a fiction. I mean, he's running in circles to get to that logic, but he's actually from the argument. and it's actually true. I mean, you can't say there's a present-day state when every state is different. Yeah, and this is something that, like, our intellectual leaders within our movement should take heed of just this approach of detached objective analysis of your movement. How is it developing?

How is it evolving? What are the characteristics of, you know, all the subcultures and subgroups involved? And it's it just boils down to like self-awareness only in the context of a dissident movement. And I think that's that's been woefully lacking in, you know, modern, modern dissidents. Well, I mean, you see what happens when somebody starts to question orthodoxy and, you know, how praxis, how this would work from a praxeable standpoint. then you have people screaming that, well, it's an ought, not it is. Well, it's just the approach of like, I want feedback, not validation. Like, I can get my dick sucked at home.

I don't need to get it sucked on the timeline or at work or like in my work as a dissident. Sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I sent some archa tropic, some of a couple of, Andrew's archa tropic articles to David Gordon and waiting to hear back from him because I want to hear what the smartest man on the planet, as Murray Rothbard called him, has to say about it. Yeah, just having feedback and, you know.

Figure out your audio because I'm not hearing you right now. I'm going to continue reading. Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilized countries, in spite of their manifold diversity of form of this in common, that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential features in common. In this sense, it is possible to speak of the present-day state, in contrast with future in which its present root bourgeois society will have died off. I can hear you again. I'm going to keep up reading. Yeah, I'm trying to plug my microphone, or my headset,

in because it's dying, but it should be fine for the rest of the episode. Okay. The question then arises, what transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present functions of the state? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word people of the word people with the word state.

So a thousandfold combination of the world, saying don't mix the word people with the word state. Something that I say all the time. When I say the United States is a country, I don't mean, probably I mean the people. Yeah. So having thus ridiculed all talk about a people state, Marx formulates the question and warns us, as it were, that a scientific answer to it can be secured only by using firmly established. scientific data. The first fact that has been established with complete exactitude by the whole theory of development, by science as a whole, a fact that was forgotten by the utopians and is forgotten by the present-day opportunists who are afraid of the socialist revolution,

is that historically there must undoubtedly be a special stage or a special phase of transition from capitalism to communism. Part two, the transition from capitalism to communism. Quoting Marx again. Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Marks bases this conclusion on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society on the data concerning the development of this society. And on the irreconcilability of, I love that, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Previously, the question was put in this way. In order to achieve its emancipation, the proletariat must overthrow the bourgeoisie when political power and establish its revolutionary dictatorship. You anything to say about that? Yeah, I mean, they got some of that. They got some of what they wanted. You know, the proletariat did overthrow the bourgeoisie. It's just everything that followed kind of. And again, like, it may be the fact that Lenin died in 1924 and he wasn't around to kind of run things.

And Stalin was a fucking a barbarian. Yeah. Stalin was just a, he was not a petty criminal. but he was a criminal. Absolutely. Now the question is put somewhat differently. The transition from capitalist society, which is developing towards communism, to a communist society is impossible without a political transition period. And the state in this period can only be a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

What then is the relation of this dictatorship to democracy? We have seen that the communist manifest simply places side by side the two concepts. to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class and to win the battle of democracy. On the basis of all that has been said above, it is possible to determine more precisely how democracy changes in the transition from capitalism to communism. In capitalist society, providing develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the Democratic Republic. but this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains in reality a democracy for the minority only for the property classes only for the rich um i think what we can kind of glean from that is that democracy will always be you know

for some class other than you know every class yeah i mean they let us have property but then they tax it out the ass. Yeah. And it's not so much the property classes and the, you know, the ownership class. It's right now it's, you know, from, from Burnham. It's the managerial class, the credentialed class. Yeah. And a lot of that managerial class, we don't know their names. It's easy to talk about Soros and Bezos and Gates and all these people, but those people who have been working in the Pentagon for 30, 40, 50 years who have outlasted every president. Remember what? Remember what? when I forget, I think it was Hannity who ran with the deep state was Obama holdovers. Yeah, which goes a lot.

It's a little, it's a little, he's on the right track, but, you know, limiting it to just Obama holdovers. I mean, you probably have fucking. There'll be J holdovers. Yeah. Getting that fucking, what do you call it, the infant brains. Drina Chrome. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics.

Freedom for the slave owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that cannot be bothered with democracy. They cannot be bothered with politics. In the ordinary peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is disbarred from participation in public and political life. But, I mean, if you get to go to the polls, then, you know, you're doing something. You have some power, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All we need is debate access. Yeah. Debate access would be great. We get up on the stage, we just prove that heroin should be legal. Hashtag, let her speak.

The correctness of this statement is perhaps most clearly confined by Germany, precisely because in that country, constitutional. constitutional legality steadily endured for a remarkably long time for nearly half a century, 1871 to 1914. And during this period, social democracy there was able to achieve far more than in other countries in the way of utilizing legality and organized a larger proportion of the workers into a political party than anywhere else in the world. And that was, so basically his standards for like what the social Democrats could do in Germany, given its conditions. Like, you have, you have fucking Bismarck in your way to any,

to making any progress. And what they were able to accomplish, which in the end wasn't very much, but they managed to fucking take that, take that constitution that everybody demanded. And that, you know, the, the Kaiser was basically like at gunpoint

forced to fucking, forced to accept. And they still managed to utilize that legal system, that constitutional. to make significant gains. And again, what they did afterwards sucked. They ended up losing in the end, but, you know, all things considered, they did pretty well.

Let's see. Just looking at some comments here. Okay. All right. What is the largest proportion of politically conscious and active wage slaves that has so far been observed in the capitalist society? 1 million members of the Social Democratic Party out of 15 million wage workers, 3 million organized in trade unions out of 15 million. Democracy for an insignificant majority, democracy for the rich, that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we shall see everywhere in the petty, supposedly petty, details of the suffrage, residential qualification, exclusion,

of women, et cetera, in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly, public buildings are not for beggars. In the purely, they're not, in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, et cetera, et cetera, we shall see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known once himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed class in their mass life. And nine-tenths, if not 1999s, of the bourgeois publicists and politicians are of this category. But in their sum total, these restrictions exclude and squeeze

out the poor from politics from active participation in democracy. Here's the thing, is anyone who knows anything about Marx is that smacks Marx right in the face too. Yeah. Yeah. And like applying it to nowadays, if you look at the entire progressive movement, it's affluent white people that have never been to the ghetto that have, you know, have maybe like one or two token black friends and like make it their entire identity. Dude, progressives live like white nationalists. Yeah. Yeah. They live in the nicest, in the nicest white neighborhoods, and most of them work on campuses, which are majority white. I mean, yeah, I can tell you from growing up in New England, that is universally the case. MPA says surrogate activity. Bengals win 2619 against the Raiders.

I know, this is cutting into the Pats game. You chose this time. I did, yeah. Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when in analyzing the experience of the commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representative of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament. Nailed it. It's perfect. Is everyone a Marxist now? But from this.

capitalist democracy that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes the side of the poor and is therefore hypocritical and false to the core, forward development does not proceed simply, directly, and smoothly towards greater and greater democracy, as the liberal professors and petty bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No forward, no, forward development, i.e., towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat and cannot do otherwise for the resistance of the capitalist exploitors cannot be broken by anyone else in any other way. If we were to game that out, he would be absolutely correct in a vacuum. But it's funny because, like, Marx, like, Lenin's so good at describing, like, to a T,

the evolution of capitalism as time goes on, like all the phases, the evolution of democracy in all phases, but not so much the evolution of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, Socialism. Sure. And you should be able to because all of those are theoretical anyway. Yeah. Yep. They're not happening like that.

It's all theoretical. Yeah. I think it's one of my goals in life is to help libertarians understand that this is all theoretical. And none of it is going to work out like you think it's going to. Yeah. I mean, there is something to breaking ideological progress or breaking, breaking history down into phases when viewed in an ideological. lens. Like if liberalism were to be an ideology, like what its starting point is and what its inevitable endpoint is and where we are, you know, at the time. I think that's a, it's kind of

a worthwhile endeavor. It helps you, it helps you develop praxis that way. Maybe not the right praxis, but it's definitely a useful tool. Our buddy, Nolan Harris here is saying that Pulpo is lining up a shot to post balls at malice. And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for

the money bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposed. a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery. Their resistance must be crushed by force. It is clear that where there is suppression, where there is violence, there is no freedom, and no democracy. There's your Fed post.

Yeah. The people has expressed this splendidly in his letter to Babel when he said, as the reader will remember that. the proletariat uses the state not in the interest of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries. And as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state as such seeks to exist. Listen to that libertarians. Yeah. Listen. Not exactly as this as he's advertising, but listen. It's just a, that's a really good, just little bit of a little fucking, uh, mindworm to planting your brain.

Yeah. Does that one think about that one all the time? Democracy for the vast majority of the people and suppression by force, exclusion from democracy of the, of the exploiters and the oppressors of the people. This to change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism. Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalist has been completely crushed, When the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes, when there is no difference between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production, only then the state ceases to exist and it becomes possible to speak of freedom. Only then will there become possible and only then will there become possible and be realized a truly complete democracy.

democracy without any exceptions whatsoever, and only then will democracy begin to whither away, owing to the simple fact that freed from capitalist slavery from the untold horrors, savage, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities, and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copybook maxims. they will become accustomed to observing them without force, without compulsion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for compulsion, which is called this. It's like exactly 50% amazing and super based and exactly like, that didn't happen.

And it's also, it won't happen because here and you look, people will gradually become accustomed to, they won't. No. They're not going to become accustomed to. to being equal with the person neck of them because inevitably, I am going to look at my neighbor and go, I'm better than them. I should have more. I should have more than them. That is the fundamental flaw, the foundation of Marxism that, you know, and to some degree libertarianism, too, is that everybody is just a temporarily inconvenienced millionaire. I mean, I honestly believe that there are a lot of followers in society that will

follow you down the path, but there are going to be people there who are going to fight back and fight back violently. And what are you prepared to do to stop them? They're already there. Yeah. What are you going to do? I mean, we, we to some degree are them as far as their relation to us. We are those people. I mean, of course, not violently, but yeah. Yeah. The expression, the state withers away, is very well chosen, for it indicates both the gradual and the spontaneous nature of the process. Only habit can, and undoubtedly will, have such an effect. For we see around us on millions of occasions how readily people become accustomed to observing the necessary rules of social intercourse when there is no exploitation, when there is nothing that rouses indignation, nothing that evokes protest and revolt and

creates the need for suppression. That almost sounds like when, like, Malice says, well, 90% of our interactions are anarchist. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of. Unless your actions are entirely subverted by, you know, this thing, this great fiction of the state. Thus, in capitalist society, we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false,

a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition. to communism will for the first time create democracy for the people for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the minority, the exploiters. Communism alone is capable of giving really complete democracy. And the more complete it is, the more quickly will it become unnecessary and wither away of itself. Again, exactly 50% based and 50% like, eh.

In other words, under capitalism, we have a. state in the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another, and what is more, of the majority by the minority. Naturally, to be successful, such an undertaking as a system, the systematic suppression of the exploited majority by the exploiting minority calls for the utmost ferocity and savagery in the work of suppressing. It calls for seas of blood through which mankind has to wait in slavery, serfdom, and wage labor.

It was a little hyperbole, but yeah. You just go way overboard with that one. But I mean, I'm rather disgruntled at my job, too. So. But I mean, there were some, when you start reading about Chicago in the 1800s. Yeah. People just go into work one day and not coming home. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Conditions were just so. And especially like industrial Russia. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And even today, like you have, you know, we, we talk to that ANCOM that, like, lives in an apartment and, like, knows people that just, like, eat rice for, like, 10 minutes and then go to work for, you know, 23 hours and 50 minutes. Well, he was saying that there were people who actually lived in the factories they worked in. Yeah. Yep. So, I mean, it still happens today.

Yeah. Furthermore, during the transition from capitalism to communism, suppression is still not. necessary, but it is now the suppression of the exploiting minority by the exploited majority. A special apparatus, a special machine for suppression, the state is still necessary, but this is now a transitional state. It is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. For the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of the wage slaves of yesterday is comparatively so easy, simple and natural a task that it will entail far less bloodshed and the suppression of the risings of the slave serfs or wage laborers, and it will cost

mankind far less. So he's not saying there's not going to be no bloodshed. There's just going to be less. Makes sense to think. Yeah. Technically, it's less blood per volume. And to just bring this up again, and I know it gets brought up all the time. But yeah, Marx, angles, Lenin, when you hear about,

leftists today, even people who say they're far left or they're socialist or they, I'm a communist, but I hate the Bolsheviks. A lot of these people are anti-gun. These people were not anti-gun. These people were. Not only were they pro-gun, they're a pro-bullet. Yeah. The, that marks quote. I throw that up every once in a while just to like trick new people. The hell, yeah. It's like, oh, quote marks. What? And it is compatible with the extension of democracy to such an overwhelming

majority of the population that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear. The exploiters are naturally unable to suppress the people without a highly complex machine for performing this task. But the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very simple machine, almost without a machine, without a special apparatus, by the simple, organization of the armed masses, such as the Soviets of workers and soldiers, deputies, let us remark anticipating somewhat. Yeah, there you go right there.

And that's kind of what was happening at this time. Russia was organized into Soviets, into Duma's, which were the governing body. The Soviets were like the physical location. The Duma's were like the governing bodies. And that's kind of what happened. All right. Let's go on. Okay. Lastly, only communism makes the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is nobody to be suppressed, nobody in the sense of a, in the sense of a systematic struggle against a definite section of the population. We are not utopians and do not in the least deny the possibility inevitably and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons or the need to suppress such exes. But in the first place, no special machine, no special apparatus of suppression is needed for this. This will be done by the armed people itself. As simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, interferes to put a stop to a scuffle or to prevent a woman from being assaulted. And secondly, we know that the fundamental social causes of excess, which consists in the violation of the rules of social intercourse, is the exploitation of the masses.

their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, with this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to wither away. We do not know how quickly and in what secession, but we know that they will wither away. With their withering away, the state will also wither away. Without indulging in the utopia, as Marx defined more fully, what defined now regarding this future, namely the difference between the lower and higher phases of communist society. And bombar work has entered the chat. Yeah.

All right. The first phase of communist society. In the critique of the Gotha program, Marx goes into detail to disprove LaSalle's idea that under socialism, the worker will receive the undiminished or full product of his labor. My Austrian sense is tingling. Mark shows that from the whole of the social labor of society, there must be deducted a reserve fund, a fund for the expansion of production for the replacement of the wear and tear machinery and so on. Then from the means of consumption, there must be deducted a fund for the expenses of administration for schools, hospitals, homes for the age, and so on. So taxation. Yeah.

No, it's a deduction from the social production. Sounds like taxation. That's wrong because taxation is theft. And this is clearly not theft. Instead of LaSalle's hazy, obscure general phrase, the full product of his labor to the worker, Marx makes a sober estimate of exactly how socialist society will have to manage its affairs. Marx proceeds to make a concrete analysis of the conditions of life of a society in which there will be no capitalism and says. What we have to deal with here in analytical,

in the program of the Workers Party is communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Poetic. It's so poetic. It's poetic, but it's just like, ugh. Wrong, but poetic.

And it is this communist society, a society which has just emerged into the light of day out of the womb of capitalism and which in every respect bears the birth marks of the old society that marks terms the first or lower phase of communist society. The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society performing a certain part of the socially necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done such and such an amount of work. Papers, please.

Show your papers. Yeah. No, that's your labor voucher. You know. It's, yeah. And with this certificate, he receives from the public stores of articles of consumption, a corresponding quantity of products. Yes.

After the deduction is made of the amount of labor, which goes. to the public fund, every worker for receives from society as he is given to it. What do you mean? I wrote 10 poems. It took me, it took me, that took me 10 hours. I expect to get fed for the day. Is this why Lenin lived in the, in the biggest house in Petrograd? That's purely coincidental. I think I'll set up shop here. No reason. apparently reigns supreme. But when LaSalle, having in view such a social order, usually called socialism, but turned by Marx, the first phase of communism, says that this is equitable distribution, that this is the equal right of all members of society to an equal product of labor.

LaSalle is airing and Marx exposes his error. Equal right, says Marx, we indeed have here, but it is still a bourgeois right, which, like every right, presupposes inequality. Every right is an application of an equal measure to different people who in fact are not alike, are not equal to one another. That is why equal right is really a violation of equality and an injustice. All right. It's so funny. They oscillate from like, you know, being, like just being so cringe to speaking my exact language. Indeed, every man having performed as much social laborer.

as another receives an equal share of the social product. And you lost me. But people are not alike. One is strong, another is weak. One is married and another is not. One has more children. Another has less. And so on.

And the conclusion Marks draws is, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another. One will be richer than another and so on. To avoid all these defects right now, instead of being equal would have to be unequal. And bear in mind, the whole context of this is the transitional state, you know, the lower

phase of communism. This is how they, this is how they would handle it for the audience. Hence, the first phase of communism cannot yet produce justice and equality. Differences and unjust differences in wealth will still exist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible. because it will be impossible to seize the means of production, the factories, machines, land, et cetera, as private property. While smashing LaSalle's petty bourgeois confused phrases about equality and justice in general, Marx shows the course of development of communist society, which is compelled to abolish at first only the injustice of the means of production,

having been seized by individuals, and was unable at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of articles of consumption, according to the amount of labor performed and not according to needs. It's so funny because like post-libertarian praxianism, it really is just Marxism that's corrected all the economic mistakes. Yeah. Or I should say Bolshevism that's corrected the economic mistakes that Marx made and substitute them for, you know, right things.

Yeah, but, you know, making things. tweaks here and not calling for violence oppression there. Yes. Yes. I would never. Let's just make sure people understand that. The vulgar economists, including the bourgeois professors and our Tugin among them, our Tugin among them, constantly reproached to socialists with forgetting the inequality

of people and with dreaming of eliminating this inequality. Such a reproach as we see only proves the extreme ignorance of mess. What is that? Messrs. So that's like a misters. Misters, okay, of Misters, the bourgeois ideologists. Marx not only most scrupulously takes account of the inevitable inequality of men, but he also takes into account the fact that the mere conversion of the means of production into the common property of the whole of society, commonly called socialism,

does not remove the defects of distribution and the inequality of bourgeois, right, which continues to prevail as long as products are divided according to the amount of labor performed. Continuing, Marx says, but these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Wright can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development condition thereby. So he left the Soviet Union.

and out. You know, they, they never emerged from the first phase of communism. That's it. Well, but it makes it almost sound like a sociology experiment, too, where people just can't, people who are used to getting more for working harder, just can't be thrust into an equal situation where there's equality. They're going to have to learn over time. time. They're going to have to have that expectation engineered out of them. The new Soviet man. And so, in the first phase of communist society, usually called socialism, Boiswaw right is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e. only in respect to the means of production. Boiswe right

recognizes them as the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common property. To the extent, and to that extent alone, bourgeois right disappears. However, what? He's essentially just saying like, look, scarcity is still going to exist and is going to cause problems. That's, you know, in a nutshell. However, it continues to exist as far as its other parts, other part is concerned. It continues to exist in the capacity of regulator, determining factor, in the distribution of products and the allotment of labor among the members of society. The socialist principle, he who does not work, neither shall he eat, is already realized. The other socialist principle, an equal amount of products for an equal amount of labor,

is also already realized. But this is not yet communism, and it does not yet abolish bourgeois right, which gives to unequal individuals in return for unequal, really unequal amounts of labor, equal amounts of products. I like how, you know, he who does not work, neither shall he eat, just basically lifted from the New Testament. Yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah, I think it's lifted from first current, I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and that's, that's why like, that's, you know, when, um, when you hear socialists say like, you know, everybody deserves, you know, universal basic income, free health care, like, as a, as a bottom point, point them to this, you know. And there's no other standard than that original.

Okay. And there is no other standard. Am I going to this defect or is there? And there is no other standard? I think we read this as a defect. Okay. And there is no other standard than that of bourgeois right. To this extent, therefore, there still remains a need for a state, which, while safeguarding the public ownership of the means of production, would safeguard equality and labor inequality in the distribution of products.

It's a fancy word for central planning. That's dancing around that. Yeah. The state withers away insofar as there are no... no longer any capitalists, any classes, and consequently no class can be suppressed. But the state has not yet completely withered away since there still remains a safeguarding of bourgeois right, which sanctifies actual inequality. For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary. So you want to jump into this or you want to dip out?

I think my head my headset's about to die anyway. So this is actually a perfect end point. All right. Cool. So next time we'll jump into the higher phase of communist society. So all right. So what have you um, this is meat and potato stuff. I mean, this is, you know, even after my favorite section is when he's talking about what exactly revolution is. But this gets into showing people exactly what. communism is all about. It's not, or what socialism going into communism is all about. It's not about, you know, what a lot of people who call themselves communist or socialism, what timelines say it is. Yeah. And it's also not what even I'm guilty of saying the government did this and that's

communism or something like that. Yeah. It's like from this section, you can glean a lot of useful tidbits to incorporate it to, you know, your preferred flavor of dissidents. Mainly, you know, that whole trope that the state is a means of one class to oppress another. You can kind of take this section and analyze actual, you know, self-identifying communists and socialists and Marxists and see if they're actually, you know, see if they know their shit. Yeah. If you can internalize some of the section at least. And when you do find those real Marxists that you do find that common ground with,

they usually have this particular section down pat in their language and what they advocate. Yeah, the real ones, not the ones who. I hate the Bolsheviks. Yeah. It's like you hate the ones who won, huh? Yeah. non-Marxist socialists are like the worst. Come on.

But anyway, let's get out of here. Anything to, surrogate activity, Bill 7, Pat's not, pad zero. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Dick. But plug Timeline Earth,

whatever you want to plug. Let's do it. Yeah, I'll be on, I'll be on Timeline Earth. I will eventually put out content this month. Probably late as I was here. but it'll happen. And I appreciate it.

We will pick this up again. Try to do it next week. We'll see if we're, I think we can finish it. We're at page 100 of 128. Oh, yeah. So this doesn't go. Let's see.

I'm trying to see there. Yeah. So it only goes to URL. Yeah, we should be able to, we should be able to knock it out next time. Cool. Sounds good. All right. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Take care. Well, Aaron's walking here. He's on a walking tour of his house. I'm mobile. Oh, man. Hey, everybody. Let me just throw this out on Twitter. It should

interesting test to see if this is going to actually go to Twitter and Facebook. Yeah. And what's hilarious is I'm totally signed out of Twitter. So I'm not going to worry about that. I literally just signed into my alt like right now to do this. Oh, okay. I've been like just using my phone on it, taking kind of a vacation from Twitter. I'm making some moves and meet space. Oh, it is live on Twitter right now.

Oh, sweet. That's pretty wild. And let me see if I, let's see about Facebook, too, by my old, my 2008 Facebook account. My one good Facebook account got destroyed. Hey, it is live on Facebook now. This is pretty wild. All right. Cool.

All right. So let me. All right. So the last thing that we covered was the lower phase of communist society. Yep. And then Marx decided he was going to get into the higher, we get into the higher phase or the, where we start getting seriously theoretical. Yeah. And right. Yeah. I'm going to start reading. All right. Part four, the higher phase of communist society. Marx continues, in a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor and therewith all the antithesis between, mental and physical labor has vanished. After labor has become not only a means of life, but life's prime want, after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the

individual and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly, only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners from each according to its ability to each according to his need. You know, like the first three quarters of that, it sounds very, uh, conkin-esque. Like, you know, like his whole, like he, like he's sweating. Well, yeah. And eating a sandwich. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, aside from that, because clearly communist can't eat, but like it's, uh, this very, um, I don't want to say utopian because I was going to piss off the agorists or the people that have affinity to agorism, which which includes myself. But in agorist class theory, he kind of visualizes that, you know, everybody, everybody will be in charge of their own means of production, you know, parallel to the state and, you know, the state withers away from that. but you know you get into like to each according to his ability to each according to his need and um con can definitely excuse that yeah yeah yeah um papa too in his class theory yeah yeah so all right

only now can we appreciate to the full to the full the correctness of angles remarks in which he mercilessly ridiculed the absurdity of combining the words freedom and So long as a state exists, there is no freedom. When there will be freedom, there will be no state. The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high stage of development of communism that the antithesis between mental and physical labor disappears when there, consequently, disappears one of the principal sources of modern social inequality. A source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production. into public property by the mere expropriation of the capitalists. All right.

So what he's saying is like, if you take your most advanced socialist condition of a state or a culture or whatever, that was still not even close to the highest stage of communism. Communism, like he said, communism isn't just making things public property. It's literally doing away with the differentiation between labor and capital. This expropriation will create the possibility of an enormous development of the productive forces. And when we see how incredibly capitalism is already retarding this development, when we see how much progress could be achieved on the basis of the level of technique now already attained, we are entitled to say with the fullest confidence that the expropriation,

of the capitalist will inevitably result in an enormous development of the productive forces of human society. But how rapidly this development will proceed, how soon it will reach the point of breaking away from the division of labor, of doing away with the antithesis between mental and physical labor, of transforming labor into the prime necessity of life, we do not and cannot know. That's convenient. That is why we are entitled to speak only of the inevitable withering away of the state, emphasizing the protracted nature of this process and its dependence upon the rapidity of development

of the higher phase of communism and leaving the question of the time required for or the concrete forms of the withering away quite open because there is no material for answering these questions. And when you, I mean, there isn't, there isn't. It's like when my girlfriend keeps asking me, what am I getting a ring? When am I getting a ring?

I'll just say, soon, soon. It will become possible for the state to wither away completely when society adopts a rule from each according to his ability to each according to his needs, i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse, and when their labor becomes so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability. I think everybody watching this just collectively sighed. And that's communism.

The narrow horizon of bourgeois right, which compels one to calculate with the cold-heartedness of a shy lock, whether one has that. Yes. Everything has to be so anti-Semitical like that. The narrow horizon of bourgeois right, which compels one to calculate with the cold-heartedness of a shylock, whether one has not worked half an hour more than somebody else, whether one is not getting less pay than somebody else, this narrow horizon will then be crossed.

There will then be no need for society to regulate the quantity of products to be received by each. Each will take freely according to his need. Because it'll just be so much of a Black Friday sale. Yeah, like a Black Friday sale. Yeah. There'll be so much abundance like Best Buy on Black Friday. From the point of view, it is easy to declare that such a social order is sheer utopia

and to sneer at the socialist for promising everyone the right to receive from society without any control over the labor of the individual citizen, any quality of truffles, automobiles, pianos, etc. Even to this day, most bourgeois savants confine themselves to statured, sneering in this way, thereby displaying both their ignorance and their mercenary defense of capitalism. Guess I'm a bourgeois savant, huh? Yeah, now he's fucking turning the turn of the gun towards us.

Ignorance, for it has never entered the head of any socialist to promise that the higher phase of the development of communism will arrive, whereas the great socialists in foreseeing that it will arrive presuppose not the present productivity of labor. and not the present ordinary run of people who, like the seminary students in Pamilovsky's story, capable of damaging the stocks of public wealth just for fun and of demanding the impossible. Until the higher phase of communism arrives, the socialist demand the strictest control by society and by the state of the measure of labor and the measure of consumption. but this control must start with the expropriation of the capitalists,

with the establishment of workers' control over the capitalists, and must be exercised not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed workers. You know, just when he was losing me. Reeled me right back in. Just what I was at. He pulled me right back in. Let's see if we got any comments here.

Poppy lives is going nuts. I'm going to keep reading because we've got to feel. finish this to know. Let me expound upon this. By strictest control by society and by the state, you can arrive at this higher stage of communism where nobody has any want. It just requires a lot of engineering of people's base expectations. And that's, you know, Lenin brilliantly gives himself all the time in the world to arrive. at that when you know there's there's an abundance of like you know stale bread and uh you know cardboard boxes to live in you know you can find them you can go anywhere you want find them

and if you're engineered to believe that um you know that constitutes food and shelter then uh you know that's that's your that's your end goal of communism. Poppy Lib said yeah let's get rid of personal responsibility for property what could go wrong And then he says, with that statement, one can't say whether it's libertarian or communist. Because neither believes in personal responsibility. Many such cases. And Jason Booth, for seeing, it's happening, bro. We just got to keep telling people about it.

The mercenary defense of capitalism by the bourgeois ideologists and their hangers on, like the ministers, the Territallis. Chernoffs and Company, consists precisely in that they substitute controversies and discussions about the distant future for the vital and burning question of present-day politics, vis-à-vis the expropriation of the capitalist, the conversion of all citizens into workers and employees of one huge syndicate, the whole state, and the complete subordination of the entire work of this syndicate to a genuinely democratic state, to the state of the Soviet, to the state of the Soviet to the state of the Soviets of workers and soldiers deputies. I'm rock hard right now.

When a learned professor and following him the Philistine and following him, Mr. the Saratelis and Chernovs talk of unreasonable utopias of the demagogic promises of the Bolsheviks of the impossibility of introducing socialism, it is the higher stage or phase of communism they have in mind, which no one has ever promised or even thought to introduce because it generally can't be introduced. That's, yeah. And this brings us to the question of the scientific difference between socialism and communism, which Engels touched on in his above-quoted argument about the incorrectness of the name Social Democrat. politically, the difference between the first or lower and the higher phase of communism will

in time probably be tremendous, but it would be ridiculous to take cognizance of this difference now under capitalism, and only individual anarchists, perhaps, could invest it with primary importance if there still remain people among the anarchists who have not learned nothing from the Plekinovite conversion of the Carpockins, the Grace, and the Trakinawis, and the Cornelian, Cornelisans and other stars of anarchism into social chauvinists or a narco-trenchist as G. One of the few anarchists who have still preserved the sense of honor and conscious has put it. Huh.

Just any chance to go after the anarchist. I'd like to, I'd like to learn a little more about this G-or-G guy. Yeah. If Lenin, if Lenin fucking gives him a pass. He's got to be interesting. A narco-trenchist. Interesting. But the scientific difference between socialism and communism is clear.

What is usually called socialism was turned by Marx, the first or lower phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word communism is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communist. This goes into the linguist. that trip everybody up except for people that are except for Marxists. So like when you're, that's what I say like when you're arguing with Marxists, like you need to read Marx because you're speaking two different languages. When they say communism, when they say socialism, like Lenin's telling you right now what they mean.

It's like you're watching a movie with a bunch of different timelines and having to piece it together. It's like, I mean, in a very simplistic way, the lower, the lower, the, lower phase of communism, which would be socialism, would be like minarchism, and the higher phase to us would be like a narco-capitalism. Yeah. Yep. It's, I mean, which would be communism to them. So, I mean, that's clumsy and not even close to accurate, but it's something to think about. Decent analogy. Yeah. The great significance of Marx's explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialistic dialects.

the theory of development and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, concocted definitions, endless disputes about words, what is socialism, what is communism, Marx gives an analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic ripeness of communism. In its first phase or first stage, communism cannot as yet be fully ripe economically and entirely free from traditions and traces of capitalism. Hence, the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains the narrow horizon of bourgeois right.

Of course, bourgeois right in regard to the distribution of articles of consumption inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state. For right is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the standards of right. It follows that under communism remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie. Yeah. I mean, it's like historical materialism is all about transitions.

And, you know, you have a before the transition, during the transition, and then after. And much, much like most communists now, it's all about transition. But it falls. Jesus. I know. Oh, man. But I know. I was,

I was making a comment or else, you know, it was like, I didn't. Yeah, that's, that's basically, what he's,

what he's getting at is, you know, you can't really assign, you know, communism to any, any condition within that transition until that transition fills out. Right.

This may sound like a paradox or simply a dialectical conundrum of which Marxism is often accused by people who do not take the slightest trouble to study its extraordinarily profound content. Jerk yourself off a little harder. But as a matter of fact, remnants of the old surviving in the new confront us in life at every step, both in nature and in society. And Marx did not arbitrarily insert a scrap of bourgeois right into communism, but indicated, what is economically and politically inevitable in a society emerging out of the womb of capitalism. I do like that Marx is poetic and a lot of when he comes up with things like out of the womb, phrases like out of the womb. Yeah, I'm sure like the translation from German is like just insane. Yeah.

The, like, the Communist Manifesto is doesn't have the kind of flowery language or, or even the kind of impact that I think like the German ideology has or something like that. Yeah. Because the, I mean, basically the communist manifestos just attract, basically. Yeah, it's written for the peasants who, you know, would be like, you know, you talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded if you were right, like how he normally writes. Democracy is of enormous importance to the working class and its struggle against the capitalist for its emancipation. but democracy is by no means a boundary not to be overstepped.

That's a really, was it double negative there? Jeez, that's pretty awful right there. But democracy is by no means a boundary not to be overstepped. It is only one of the stages on the road from feudalism to capitalism and from capitalism to communism. Democracy means quality. It's not what that means at all. The great significance.

Hear them out. Here them out. Yeah. The great significance of the proletariat's struggle for equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes. So there you go. But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is equality of labor and equality of wages, humanity will inevitably, be confronted with the question of advancing farther, from formal equality to actual

equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. By what stages, by means of what practical measures humanity will proceed to this supreme aim, we do not and cannot know. But it is important to realize how infinitely menditious is the ordinary bourgeois conception of socialism as something lifeless, petrified, fixed once and for all, whereas in reality, only socialism will a rapid, genuine, really mass forward movement embracing for the majority and in the whole of the population commence in all spheres and personal life. Democracy is a form of the state.

one of its varieties. Consequently, it, like every state, represents on the one hand the organized, systematic use of violence against persons, but on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens the equal right of all to determine the structure of and to administer the state. So I think something we can take away from this is that democracy is a form of a state, and democracy is also a phase in the transition to another version. So that's coming from Marx, coming from Lenin, coming from Engels.

But it's probably true because we're seeing it right now where we had this quasi, closer to Lisez-Faire capitalism, you know, back in the early 1900s, 1800s. and maybe less close to democracy, but now we're closer to democracy, way further away from Lysay's Fair than we were. And it's this gradual transition into, I don't know, what I would say is a administrative state, managerial state, whatever you want to call it, probably not transitioning to communism.

You're not transitioning to monarchy, but it's a transition to something else. And much like they do not know how it's how and when it's going to happen. I don't think we know how and when it's going to happen. Yeah. Because everything is changing day to day. This, in turn, results in the fact that at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welts together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism.

The proletariat and enables it to crush, smash to Adams, wipe off the face of the earth, the bourgeois, even the Republican bourgeois, state machine, the standing army, the police, and the bureaucracy, and to substitute for them a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the armed masses of workers who develop into a militia in which the entire population takes part. Here, quantity turns into quality. Such a degree of democracy implies overstepping the boundaries of bourgeois society, the beginning of its socialist reconstruction. If really all take part in the administration of the state, capitalism cannot retain its whole.

And the development of capitalism, in turn, itself creates the premises that enable really all to take part in the administration of the state. Some of these premises, universal literacy, which has already been achieved in a number of the most advanced capitalist countries, then the training and disciplining of millions of workers by the huge complex socialized apparatus of the Postal Service, railways, big factories, large-scale commerce, banking, et cetera, et cetera. That's right. Every facet of the state machine needs to be controlled and then administered. Given these economic premises, it is quite possible after the overthrow of the capitalists and the bureaucrats to proceed immediately overnight to supersede them in the control of production and distribution

in the work of keeping account of labor and products by the armed workers by the whole of the armed population. This is in parentheses. The question of control and accounting should not be confused with the question of the scientifically trained staff of engineers, agronomists, and so on. These gentlemen are working today in obedience to the wishes of the capitalists. They will work even better tomorrow in obedience to the wishes of the armed workers. Yep. You're right. read that in a couple ways.

They better. See if we got any comments here. Okay. Let's go. Accounting and control, that is the main thing required for arranging the smooth working, the correct functioning of the first phase of communist society. All citizens are transformed here into hired employees of the state, which consists of the armed workers.

All citizens become employees and workers of a single nationwide state syndicate. all that is required is that they get is that they should work equally do their proper share of work and get equally paid the accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by capitalism to the extreme and reduced to the extraordinarily simple operations which any literate person can perform of supervising and recording knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic and issuing appropriate receipts now let me ask you this does any of that sound praxiologically

incompatible with anything that say we'd like we'd enjoy seeing happening in the short term or permanently?

In the short term? No. I agree. Okay. You know, taking the people that you kind of raise the consciousness

of radicalizing them, taking control of the state, having them be employed by the state, having them all be paid equally, expecting them to do their fair share of the work in this transition to, you know, maybe something we would like to see. I think that's kind of like a universally acceptable path. Except to some like extreme autists. Well. But then, but you know, that's why we're armed. When the majority of the people begin independently and everywhere to keep such accounts and maintain such control over the capitalists, now converted into and over the intellectual gentry who preserve their capitalist habits, this control will really become universal, general, popular, and there will be no way of getting away from it. There will be nowhere to go. The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of labor and equality of pay. But this factory discipline, which to proletariat, after defeating the capitalists, after overthrowing the exploiters, will extend to the whole of society is by no means our ideal or our ultimate goal.

It is but a necessary step for the purpose of thoroughly purging society of all the infamies and abominations of capitalist exploitation and for further progress. So once again, he's talking about making this change permanent and then progressing from there. And I think that's something that I think just viewing any type of social revolution in terms of phases, even if it is dialectical, even if you don't like dialectics, it's certainly a helpful tool when kind of gaming out, you know, long-term strategy. from the moment all members of society or even the only or even only the vast majority have learned to administer the state themselves have taken this work into their own hands have set going control over the insignificant minority of capitalists over the gentry who wish to preserve the capitalist habits and over the workers who have been profoundly corrupted by capitalism from this moment the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment approaches when it becomes unnecessary. The more democratic the state, which consists of the armed workers, and which is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word, the more rapidly does every form of state begin to wither away. For when all have learned to administer and actually do independently administer social production, independently keeping accounts and exercise control over the idlers, the gentlefolk, the swindlers, and such like guardians of capitalist traditions,

the escape from this popular account and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by such a swift and severe punishment. This is parenthesis, for the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them, that the necessity observing the simple fundamental rules of human intercourse will very soon become a habit. Once again, rock hard. Literally changing people's constitutions by force. No, but think about it this way.

Like, let's say the impossible happens and we have this like paleo-libertarian, paleo-conservative revolution that sweeps the country. and becomes ingrained in our base culture. We will have this kind of, I mean, we already, we all kind of have this collective memory about how bad things were beforehand. We're probably going to have a lot of, a lot of pipe swinging niggas out there making sure that, like, we never regress back to progressivism.

now I'm rock hard. And then the door will be wide open for the transition from the first phase of communist society to its higher phase, and with it the complete withering away of the state. Chapter 6. The vulgarization of Marxism by the opportunists. The question of the relation of the state to the social revolution and of the social revolution to the state, like the question of revolution generally, Trouble the leading theoreticians and publicists of the Second International very little. But the most characteristic thing about the process of the gradual growth of opportunism, which led to the collapse of the Second International in 1914, is the fact that even when these

people actually came right up against this question, they tried to evade it or else failed to notice it. In general, it may be said that evasiveness as regards the question of the relation of the proletariat revolution to the proletarian revolution to the state, and evasiveness which was the advantage of opportunism and fostered it, resulted in the distortion of Marxism and in its complete vulgarization. To characterize this lamentable process, if only briefly, we shall take the prominent the origins of Marxism, Plekinov, and Kautzky. Section 1. Plekinoff's controversy with the anarchists.

Here we go. Plekinoff wrote a special pamphlet on the relation of anarchism to socialism, entitled Anarchism and Socialism, and published in German in 1894. In treating this subject, Plotkinoff contrived completely to ignore the most urgent, burning, and politically most essential issue in the struggle against anarchism, the relation of the revolution to the state, and the question of the state in general. Two sections of his pamphlet, yeah. Can you imagine?

Two sections of his pamphlets stand out. One of them is historical and literary and contains valuable material on the history of the ideas of Sterner Pradun and others. The other is Philistine and contains a clumsy dissertation on the theme that an anarchist cannot be distinguished from a bandit. The first one was pretty good. The second one was complete shit. Just skip it. Oh, man. Oh, there we go.

All right. A most amusing combination of subjects and most characteristic of Plykinoff's whole activity on the eve of the revolution and during the revolutionary period in Russia. Indeed, in the years 95 to 1917, Pleckinoff revealed himself as a semi-doctrinaire and semi-Philistine who, in politics, trailed in the wake of the bourgeoisie. We have seen how, in their controversies with anarchists, Marx and Engels, with the utmost thoroughness, explain their views on the relation of the revolution to the state. In 1891, in his forward to Marx's critique of the Gotha program, Engels wrote that we, that is, Engels and Marx, were at the time hardly two years after the Hague Congress of the First International engaged in the most violent struggle against Bakunin and his anarchists. The anarchists had tried to claim the Paris commune as their own, so to say, as a corroboration of their doctrine, and they utterly failed to understand its lessons and Marx's analysis of these lessons. Anarchism has failed to give anything even approximating a true solution of the concrete political problems. Must the old state machine be smashed and what should be put in its place?

Yeah, that's Yeah, we can, yeah. No, politics isn't real, man. It's all in your mind. It's a style. Yeah. Dude, authority? Authority's so fake. Yeah.

Smash the hierarchy. I hate my dad so much. But to speak of anarchism and socialism, while completely evading the question of the state and failing to take note of the whole development of Marxism before and after the commune meant inevitably slipping into opportunism. For what opportunism needs most of all is that the two questions just mentioned should not be raised at all.

That in itself is a victimism. Katsky's, part two, Katsky's controversy with the opportunists. Undoubtedly, and an immeasurably larger number of Kowtsky's works have been translated into Russian than into any other language. It is not without reason that some German social Democrats say in jest, that Kowski is read more in Russia than in Germany. Let us say parenthetically that there is a far deeper historical significance in this jest than those who first made it suspect. The Russian workers, by advancing in 1905 an extraordinarily great and unprecedented demand for the best works of the best social democratic literature in the world, and by receiving translations and additions of these works in quantities unheard of in other countries transplanted, so to speak,

at an accelerated pace, the enormous experiencing of a neighboring more advanced country to the young soil of our proletarian movement. That was all in parentheses. Hefter Kowtsky has read more in Russia than in Germany. Yeah, you could have skipped it. Besides his popularization of Marxism, Kowdke is particularly known in our country for his controversy with the opportunists and with Bernstein at their head. but one fact is almost unknown, one which cannot be overlooked if we set ourselves the task of investigating how Kautzky drifted into the morass of unbelievably disgraceful confusion and defense of social chauvinism during the supreme crisis of 1914 through 15. The fact is the following.

Shortly before he came out against the most prominent representatives of opportunism in France, Millerand in Jorpe, and in Germany, Bernstein, Kautzky betrayed very considerable Kowtsky betrayed very considerable vacillation. The Marxist journal Zerai, which was published in Stuttgart in 1901 and 1902, and advanced revolutionary proletarian views, was forced to enter into controversy with Kautzky to characterize as elastic the half-hearted evasive resolution, insulatory towards the opportunists that he proposed at the International Socialist Congress in Paris in 1900.

Kowtsky's letters published in Germany reveal no less hesitancy on his part before he took the field against Bernstein. Of immeasurably greater significance, however, is the fact that in his very controversy with the opportunist, in his formulation of the question and his manner of treating it, we can now observe as we investigate the history of Kowtsky's latest betrayal of Marxism, his systematic gravitation towards opportunism precisely on the question of the state. Let us take Kowski's first most important work against opportunism, his Bernstein and the Social Democratic program. Kowtskowski refutes Bernstein in detail, but here is a characteristic thing. Bernstein, in his premises of socialism of Harrisian fame, how is that pronounced? Herastradian. Herastradian fame accuses Marxism. of blankism and an accusation since repeated thousands of times by the opportunists in liberal bourgeois in Russia against the representatives of revolutionary Marxism, the Bolsheviks.

In this connection, Bernstein dwells particularly on Marx's The Civil War in France and tries quite unsuccessfully, as we have seen, to identify Marx's views on the lessons of the commune with those of Proudon. Bernstein pays particular attention to the conclusion which Marx emphasized in his 1872 preface to the Communist Manifesto, that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes. It's pleased Bernstein so much that he repeated it no less than three times in his book, interpreting it in the most opportunist sense.

As we have seen, Marx meant that the world class must smash, break, shatter the whole state machine. But according to Bernstein, it would appear as though Marx, in these words, warned the working class against excessive revolutionary zeal when seizing power. A cruder and more hideous distortion of Marxist idea cannot be imagined. How then, how then did Kautzky proceed in his most detailed refutation of Bernsteinism? He refrained from analyzing the utter distortion of Marxism by opportunism on this point. He cited the above-quoted passage, from Engel's introduction to Marx's Civil War and said that according to Marx, the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machine. But that generally speaking, it can lay

hold of it, and that was all. Not a word does Kautzky utter about the fact that Bernstein attributed to Marx, the very opposite of Marx's real views about the fact that since 1852, Marx had formulated the task of the proletarian revolution as being to smash the state machine. the result was that most essential difference between Marxism and opportunism on the subject of the tasks of the proletarian revolution was slurred over by Kautsky. Can I say something real quick? Think of Kautzky and Bernstein as like your Ben Shapiro and like, I don't know, your standard, I don't know, I hate to pick on them because I love him, but Todd Higopian. when people like us start talking about, you know, accelerating and, you know, getting into the school boards and, you know, just causing as much of a ruckus as we can in laying the groundwork to seize power, there will always be those types of people there to try to moderate anybody that's on the fence that's, you know, maybe willing to, maybe willing to listen to. to what people like us say, but also not quite ready to go that far.

And they're looking for anybody that they respect to kind of reel them back in. And that's what Kowski and Bernstein were to, on Marx and Lenin. Yeah. Well, when you were saying that, I was thinking that not only would, they'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not very libertarian. they'd like take something out of context that like Rothbard said and just keep repeating it over and over again. Exactly. Yeah.

The nap. The nap is a perfect example. The nap certainly allows for radical, even violent action if you're aggressed upon and then you get into, you know, well, are we really being aggressed upon, though? What is aggression? And that's how they, that's how everybody's kind of reeled back in. Yeah. Yep. We can safely leave the solution of the problem of the proletarian dictatorship to the future, said Kautzky, writing against Bernstein. This is not a polemic against Bernstein, but in essence a concession to him, a surrender to opportunism.

For at present, the opportunist asks nothing better than to safely leave to the future all fundamental questions of the tasks of the proletarian revolution. That's not a polemic against Bernstein. This is a polemic against Bernstein. from 1852 to 1891 for 40 years Marx and Engels taught that the proletariat taught the proletariat that it must smash a state machine yet in 1890 Katsky confronted with a complete betrayal of Marxism by the opportunists on this front fraudulily substituted for the question of whether it is necessary to smash this machine the question of the concrete forms of which it is to be smashed and then sought refuge behind the indisputable and barren Philistine truth that concrete forms cannot be known in advance. He had a perfect opportunity to Fed Post, and he just fucking saved it in his drafts. A gulf separates Marx and Kautzky as regards their attitudes towards the proletarian party's task of preparing the working class for revolution.

Let us take the next more mature work by Kowdsky, which was also to a considerable extent devoted to a refutation of opportunist errors. This is his pamphlet, The Social Revolution. In this pamphlet, the author chose as his special theme, the question of the proletarian revolution and the proletarian regime. In dealing with it, he gave much that was exceedingly valuable, but as for the question of the state, he avoided it. Throughout the pamphlet, the author speaks of the state.

power and no more. That is, he chooses a formula which makes a concession to the opportunist in as much as it admits the possibility of power being seized without destroying the scene. That very thing which marks in 1872 declared to be obsolete in the program of the Communist Manifesto is revived by Kautzky in 1902. A special paragraph in the pamphlet is devoted to the forms and the weapons of the social revolution. Here, Kowd, He speaks of the mass political strike of civil war and of the instruments of the might of the modern large state such as to bureaucracy and the army, but not a word does he say about what the commune had already taught the workers. Evidently, it was not without reason that Engels issued a warning, particularly to the German socialists, against superstitious reverence for the state. Kowtsky treats the matter as follows.

the victorious proletariat will carry out the Democratic program, and he goes on to formulate its clauses. But not a word does he utter about the new material provided by the year 1871 on the subject of the supersession of bourgeois democracy by proletarian democracy. Kautzykowski disposes of the question by uttering such solid banalities as, quote, in Kav. Still, it goes without saying that we shall not achieve supremacy under the present conditions. revolution itself presupposes a long and deep-going struggle, which, as it proceeds, will change our present political and social structure. That is a banality. It doesn't say anything. It is.

Not that there. Undoubtedly, this goes without saying, just as does the truth that horse is eaten and that the vulva flows into the caffeine sea. Only it is a pity that an empty and bombastic phrase about deep-going struggle, is used as a means of avoiding a question of vital interest to the revolutionary proletariat, namely, wherein has expressed the deep-going nature of its revolution in relation to the state and relates to democracy as distinct from previous non-proletarian revolutions. By avoiding this question, Kautzky, in practice, makes a concession to opportunism on this most essential point, although in his words he declares stern war against it

and emphasizes the importance of the idea of revolution. How much is this idea worth when one is afraid to teach the workers to concrete lessons of the revolution? Or says revolutionary idealism before everything else and announces that the English workers are now hardly more than petty bourgeois. The more varied forms of enterprises, bureaucratic trade union, the most varied form of enterprises, bureaucratic trade unionist, cooperative, private, can exist side by side in social society. Kautsky writes, there are enterprises which cannot do without a bureaucic organization, for example, the railways. Here, the Democratic organization may take the following shape.

The workers elect delegates who form a sort of parliament, which draws up the working regulations and supervises the management of the bureaucratic apparatus. The management of other enterprises may be transferred. to the trade unions, and still others may become cooperative enterprises. The reasoning is erroneous. It is a step backward compared with the explanations of Marx and Engels gave in the 70s, using the lessons of the commune as an example. As opposed to the necessary bureaucratic organization is concerned,

there is no difference whatever between railways and any other enterprise in large-scale machine industry, any factory, large store, or large-scale capitalist agriculture. agricultural enterprise. The technique of all such enterprises makes absolutely imperative the strictest discipline, the utmost precision on the part of everyone in carrying out his allotted task, for otherwise the whole enterprise may come to a stop or machinery or the finished product may be damaged. In all such enterprises, the workers will, of course, allow delegates who will form a sort of parliament. But the whole point is that this sort of parliament will not parliament in the sense in which we understand bourgeois parliamentary institutions. The whole point

is that this sort of parliament will not merely draw up the working regulations and supervise the management of the bureaucratic apparatus as Kautzky, whose ideas do not go beyond the bounds of bourgeois parliamentism imagines. In socialist society, the sort of parliament consisting of workers, deputies will, of course, draw up the working regulations and supervise the management of the apparatus, but this apparatus will not be bureaucratic. The workers, having conquered political power,

will smash the old bureaucratic apparatus. They will shatter it to its very foundations. They will shatter it to its very foundations. They will just show its very roots, and they will replace a new one consisting of the very same workers and office employees against whose transformation into bureaucrats, the measures will at once be taken, which were specified in detail by Marx and Eggles. One, not only election, but also recall at any time.

Two, pay not exceeding that of a workman. Three, immediate introduction of control and supervision by all so that all shall become bureaucrats for a time, for a time, and that, therefore, nobody may be able to become a bureaucrat. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's that's pretty far and away from the the idea of a bureaucracy that that we, you know, even even now in 2022 that we kind of think of as being a bureaucratic institution or a parliament, parliamentary institution. Katsky has not reflected at all on Marx's words. The commune was a working, not a parliamentary body, legislative and executive at the same time. Kowtsky has not understood at all the difference between bourgeois parliamentism,

which combines democracy, not for the people, with bureaucracy against the people, and proletarian democracy, which will take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy down to the roots, and which will be able to carry out the measures to the end, to the complete abolition of bureaucracy, to the introduction of complete democracy for the people. Kowtsky here displays the same old superstitious reverence for the state and superstitious belief in bureaucracy. Let us now pass on to the last and best of Kautsky's works against the opportunists. His pamphlet, The Road to Power, which I believe has been translated into Russian for his own, blah, blah, blah, blah. This pamphlet marks a considerable step forward in as much as it does not deal with the revolutionary program in general, as in the pamphlet of 1899 against Bernstein, or with the tasks of the social revolution, irrespective of the time of its,

occurrence as in the 1902 pamphlet, the social revolution. It deals with the concrete conditions which to recognize that the era of revolutions is approaching. The author definitely points to the intensification of class antagonisms in general and to imperialism, which plays a particularly important part in this connection. After the revolutionary period of 1789 to 1871 in Western Europe, he says a similar period began in the East in 1905. A world war is approaching with menacing rapidity. The proletariat can no longer talk of premature revolution. We have entered a revolutionary period.

The revolutionary era is. These declarations are perfectly clear. The pamphlet of Kowtsky's should serve as a measure of comparison between what German social democracy promised to be before the imperialist war and the depth of degradation to which it, Kowtsky himself included, sank when the war broke out. The present situation Kowski wrote in the pamphlet, we are examining, wrote in the pamphlet we are examining is fraught with the danger that we, German social democracy, may easily appear to be more moderate than we really are. It turned out that in reality, the German Social Democratic Party was much more moderate

and obvious that it appeared to be. Yeah, World War I, like it disappeared in World War I. Like this whole thing about social chauvinism, all that really. really is, is like, when World War I happened, the German socialist movement said, okay, we can either have solidarity with the proletariat across the world, or we can be Germans. And they chose to be Germans. And a lot of people in Russia did too. And it caused a lot of fissures and schisms in the worldwide socialist movement. The more characteristic is it, therefore, that,

although Katsky so definitely declared the era of revolutions had already begun, in the pamphlet which he himself said he was devoted precisely to an analysis of the political revolution, he again completely avoided the question of the state. These evasions of the question, these emissions and equations inevitably led in their sum total to that complete swing over to opportunism, which we shall now have to deal. German social democracy in the person of Kowtsky seems to have declared, I adhere to revolutionary ideas, 1819. I recognize, in particular, the inevitability of social revolution of the proletariat, 1902. I recognize the advent of a new era of revolutions 1909. Still, I'm going back on what Mark said as early as 1852, now that the question

of the tasks of the proletarian revolution in relations to the state is being raised, 1912. It was precisely in this direct form that the question was put in Kowtsky's controversy with Panachek. Kowtsky's controversy with Panicak. On opposing Kowtsky, Panicak came out as one of the representatives of the left radical trend, which counted in its ranks, Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Rattick, and others. Advocating revolutionary tactics, they were united in the conviction that Kowtsky was going over to the position of the center, which wavered in an unprincipled manner between Marxism and Tunism. Man, we see a lot of that today, don't we?

Yeah. The correctness, I mean, in any liberalism, neoliberalism, on the right, the dissonant right to you. I mean, it's everywhere, libertarianism. The correctness of this view was fully confirmed by the war when this central, wrongly called Marxist trend or Kautzkyism revealed itself in all its repulsive wretchedness. In an article touching on the question of the state entitled Mass Action and Revolution, Panachek described Kowski's attitude as one of passive radicalism as a theory of inactive expectancy. Kowtsky refuses to see the process of revolution, wrote Panicke. In presenting the matter in this way,

Panicak approached the subject which interests us, namely the task of the proletarian revolution to the state. The struggle of the proletariat, he wrote, is not merely a struggle against a bourgeoisie for state power, but a struggle against state power. The content of the proletarian revolution is the destruction and dissolution of the instruments of power of the state with the aid of the instruments of the power of the proletariat. The struggle will cease only when, as the result of it, the state organization is utterly destroyed. The organization of the majority will then have demonstrated its superiority by destroying the organization of the ruling minority. Let me ask you this. Other than the word proletariat, does any of that seem objectionable as far as long-term theory goes? Nope.

No. No. I see it clearly. The formulation of which Panicak presented his idea suffers from serious defects, but its meaning is clear nonetheless,

and it is interesting to note how Kautzky combated it. Up to now, he wrote, the difference between the social Democrats and the anarchists has been that the former wish to conquer state power while the latter wished to destroy it. Panickech wants to do both.

I, well, you can't do one. Although Panachek's exposition lacks precision and concreteness, not to speak of the other shortcomings of his article, which have no bearing on the present subject, Kautzky sees precisely on the point of principle raised by Panekek. And on this fundamental point of principle, Kowtsky completely abandoned the Marxian position and went over wholly to opportunism. His definition of the difference between the social Democrats and anarchists is absolutely wrong, and he utterly vulgarizes and distorts Marxism. The difference between, okay, hold on to your hats, guys. The difference between the Marxists and the anarchists is this.

The former Marxists, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognize that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution as the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter went to abolish the state completely overnight, failing to understand the conditions under which the state can be abolished. Two, the Marxists recognize that after the proletariat has conquered political power, it must utterly destroy the old state machine and substitute for it, a new one consisting of an organization of the armed workers after the type of the commune. The latter, the anarchists, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have absolutely no clear idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionaries should use the state power.

They deny its revolutionary dictatorship. The former, the Marxists, demand that the proletariat be prepared for this revolution by utilizing the present state. The anarchists reject this. we just have to end the state man we just have to end the state i mean you don't there's so much in there that you know we don't want but yeah maybe a third of it maybe a third of it we find like i don't know dumb but like the the other two thirds are like yeah i mean that's universally applicable well it's the whole thing of the um the collapsitarian view yeah the collapses you know the state just collapses man everything will be

fun. And everybody becomes ANCAPs overnight. Yeah. But the problem is, is that 99% of the population is going to be begging for those people who ran the state or, in our case, probably the Bezos and the musks of the world to save them. Yeah. To fill the void. Yeah. I mean, that's what the French commune did. It didn't abolish the state. It smashed the old state apparatus. but set up a new one really quickly that favored, you know, the workers, the people that helped them, and then punish severely the people that didn't. Jim Nolton commented. I'll put this up on the screen.

Watching how Florida destroyed the COVID regime by simply being the control group shows a clue on, of how to break them. Yeah. Yeah. My only concern with Florida is that. that they're, and actually Tho Bishop kind of, kind of soothed my concerns as, you know, is it, um, is it going to go away if DeSantis loses or, you know, if, like, how resilient is it to succumbing to, I guess, what would, what could be called in Florida reaction, progressive reaction. Yeah.

And we know that the progressives are better at power than the right is. I mean, the right is starting to show some power, you know, but starting to show willingness to wield it. But they have a ways to go before they can actually match what the left and progressives are willing to do. It's this weird, this weird kind of diametrically opposed state of progressivism being in its death throws, but not because like we're winning. but because just normal neoliberalism is kind of still the hegemony. Yep. Yeah. All right.

In this controversy, it is not Kautzky, but Panekek, who represents Marxism, for it was Marx who taught that the proletariat cannot simply conquer state power in the sense that the old state apparatus passes into new hands, but must smash, break this apparatus and replace it by a new one. Kowtsky abandons Marxism for the state apparatus. the camp of the opportunist for this destruction of the state machine, which is utterly unacceptable to the opportunist, completely disappears from his argument. And he leaves a loophole for them in that conquest may be interpreted as a simple acquisition of a majority.

That's, I mean, isn't that pretty much what, what Kerensky's counsel did when they took over in March? Yeah. Yeah. They just bait, yeah. They tried to be a, um, just a council of, And, yeah, he had to wait to October. And it took him a few times, too.

It's like, okay, revolution. Oh, damn it. All right. Hold on. To cover up this distortion of Marxism, Kowski behaves like a textman. He puts forward a quotation from Marx himself. In 1850, Marx wrote that a determined centralization of power in the hands of the state authority was necessary. And Katsky triumphantly asked, does Panekek want to destroy

centralism. This is, I know it's, as that trick. So this is simply a trick, similar to Bernstein's identification of the views of Marxism and Prudunism on the subject of federalism as against centralism. Kautsky's quotation is neither here nor there. Centralism is possible with both the old and the new state machine. If the workers voluntarily united, unite their armed forces, this will be centralism. but it will be based on the complete destruction of the centralized state apparatus, the standing army, the police, and the bureaucracy. Kowtsky acts like an outright swindler when he ignores the perfectly well-known arguments

of Marx and Engels on the commune and plucks out a quotation, which has nothing to do with the case. This is Kowtsky. Perhaps Panakek, one of the state functions of the officials, but we do not get along without officials, even in the party and the trade unions, much less than state. administration. Our program does not demand the abolition of state officials, but that they be elected by the people. We are discussing here not the form the administrative apparatus of the future state will assume, but whether our political struggle abolishes literally dissolves the state power before we have captured it, Kautzky's italics, which ministry with its officials could be abolished.

I remember back in the day when, like, I'd tell somebody that I was an anarchist, like, oh, you think rape shouldn't be illegal? It's just that. Yeah. Then follows an enumeration of the ministries of education, justice, finance, and war. No, not one of the present ministries will be removed by our political struggle against the government. I repeat, in order to avoid misunderstanding, we are not discussing here the form of the future state will. be given by victorious social democracy, but how the present state is changed by our opposition. This is an obvious trick. Panicak was the question of revolution. Both the title of his article

and the passages quoted above clearly indicate this. In skipping to the question of opposition, Kautsky replaces the revolutionary by the opportunist point of view. What he says means, at present we are in opposition at what we shall be after we have captured power that we shall see revolution has vanished and that is exactly what the opportunists wanted they're not willing to they're not willing to go far

they're not willing to go far all right guys we had our revolution let's pack it up we're done here what is that issue is neither opposition nor political struggle in general but revolution Revolution consists in the proletariat destroying the administrative apparatus and the whole state machine, replacing it with a new one consisting of the armed workers. Kowdsky displays a superstitious reverence from ministries, but why can they not be replaced, say, by committees of specialists working under sovereign, all-powerful Soviets and soldiers deputies? The point is not, what?

Oh, hey, guys, we made it into the Capitol. All right, we're done here. Oh, man. The point is not at all whether the ministries will remain or whether committees of specialists or other institutions will be set up. That is quite unimportant. The point is whether the old state machine,

bound by thousands of threads to the bourgeoisie and permeated through and through with routine and inertia shall remain or be destroyed and replaced by a new one. Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in the class smashing the machine and commanding governing with the aid of a new machine,

Kautsky slurs over this basic idea of Marxism or he had utterly failed to understand it. He's actually given him an out there. His question about officials clearly shows that he does not understand the lessons of the commune or the teachings of Marx. We do not get along without officials, even in the party and the trade.

unions. We do not get along with out officials under capitalism under the rule of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat is oppressed. The toiling masses are enslaved by capitalism. Under capitalism, democracy is restricted, cramped, curtailed, mutilated by all the conditions of wage slavery and poverty and misery of the masses. This and this alone is the reason why the functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted, or more precisely tend to be corrupted by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e. privileged persons, divorced from the masses, and standing above the masses. Is Lenin writing this? Is he writing this from the biggest house in Petrograd? This is the essence of bureaucracy. And until the

capitalists have been expropriated and the bourgeoisie overthrown, even proletarian functionaries will inevitably be bureaucratized to a certain extent. A question. According to Kowtsky, since elected functionaries will remain under socialism, officials will remain, bureaucracy will remain. This is exactly where he is wrong. It was precisely the example of the comments used to show that under socialism, functionaries will cease to be bureaucrats to be officials. They will cease to be so in proportion as, in addition to the principle of election of officials, the principle of recall at any time is also introduced, and as salaries are reduced to the level of the wages of the average work. and two, as parliamentary institutions are replaced by working bodies, legislative, and executive at the same time. In essence, the whole of Kowalski's argument against Panachek, and particularly

the former's wonderful point that we do not get along without officials, even in our party, and trade union organizations, is merely a repetition of Bernstein's old arguments against Marxism in general. In his renegade book, the premises of socialism, Bernstein combats the idea of primitive democracy, combats what he calls doctrinaire democracy, imperative demands, unpaid officials, impotent central, representative bodies, etc. To prove that this primitive democracy is unsound, Bernstein refers to the experience of the British trade unions as interpreted by the webs. Seventy years of development in absolute freedom, he averts,

convinced the trade unions that primitive democracy was useless and they replaced it with or very democracy. Parliamentarism combined with bureaucracy. As a matter of fact, the trade unions did not develop an absolute freedom, but in absolute capitalist slavery under which it goes without saying a number of concessions to the prevailing evil, violence, falsehood, exclusion of the poor from the affairs of the higher administration cannot be avoided. Under socialism, most of the primitive democracy will inevitably be revived since for the first time, in its history of civilized society, the mass of the population will rise to the level of taking an independent part, not only in voting in elections, but also in the everyday administration of affairs. Under socialism, all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.

You got anything? No, I mean, go back up a little bit, talking about trade unions. I mean, yeah, trade unions started off as a primitive democracy. when they were, you know, when people were out striking and throwing bricks and forming them. And then inevitably, they became just, you know, complete slaves of the current system, you know, call it capitalism or whatever. And that kind of, then they haven't developed as anything else since. They've only gotten deeper into this, this like bourgeois apparatus that they, that they

really are, exclusionary bourgeois apparatus. Marx's critical and analytical genius perceived in the practical measures of the commune, the turning point, which the opportunists fear and do not want to recognize because of their cowardice, because they do not want to break irrevocably with the bourgeois and which the anarchists do not want to perceive, either because they are in a hurry or because they do not understand that all conditions of great social change. just through that dart and hit everyone. Yeah. We must not even think of destroying the old state machine. How can we get along without ministries and officials, argues the opportunist who is completely saturated with Philistianism and who at bottom not only does not believe in revolution in the creative power of revolution, but lives in mortal dread of it, like our Mensheviks and socialist revolutionaries? We must think only of destroying the old machine. It is no use probing into the concrete lessons of the earlier proletarian revolutions and analyzing.

I mean, this is like straw man city. It's just, this is amazing. We must think only of destroying the old state machines. It is no use probing into the concrete lessons of earlier proletarian revolutions and analyzing what to put in the place of what has been destroyed and how, argues the anarchist. well, maybe it isn't a straw man. The best of the anarchists, of course, and not those who following the Mrs. Potkin and company trail in the wake of the bourgeoisie. Consequently, the tactics of the anarchists become the tactics of despair instead of the ruthlessly bold revolutionary effort to solve concrete problems while taking into account the practical conditions of the mass movement.

Man, it's just knocking it out of the park. If you want to apply it, take it and apply some of this to today and movements that you might be familiar with. Marx teaches us to avoid both errors. He teaches us to act with supreme boldness and destroying the entire old state machine. And at the same time, he teaches us to put the question concretely. The commune was able in the space of a few weeks to start building a new proletarian state machine by introducing such and such measures to secure. cure wider democracy and to uproot bureaucracy. Let us learn revolutionary boldness from the communards.

Let us see in their practical measures the outline of urgently practical and immediately possible measures and then pursuing this road. We shall achieve the complete destruction of bureaucracy. The possibility of this destruction is guaranteed by the fact that socialism will shorten the working day, will raise the masses to a new life. He lost me. The possibility of this destruction is guaranteed by the fact that socialism will shorten the working day, will raise the masses to a new life, will create such conditions for the majority of the population, as will enable everybody without exception to perform state functions. And this will lead to the complete withering away of every form of state in general.

The object of the mass strike, Katsky continues, can never be to destroy the state power. its only object can be to ring concessions from the government on some particular question or to replace a hostile government by what would be more yielding to the proletariat. But never under any conditions can it, that is the proletarian victory over a hostile government, lead to the destruction of the state power. It can lead only to a shifting of the relation of forces within the state power. The aim of our political struggle remains as hitherto the conquest of state power. by winning a majority in Parliament

and by converting Parliament into the master of the government. We do this by voting harder. This is nothing but the purest and most vulgar opportunism, repudiating revolution and deeds while accepting it in words. Kautsky's thoughts go no further than a government that would be more yielding to the proletariat,

a step backwards of Philistinism compared with 1847, when the Communist Manifesto proclaimed the organization of the proletariat as the ruling class. Kowski will have to achieve his beloved unity with the Shiedmans, Plechnovs, and Vandervilds, all of whom agree to fight for a government that would be more yielding to the proletariat. But we shall break with these traitors to socialism, and we shall fight for the complete destruction of the old state machine, in order that the armed proletariat itself shall become the government. These are two vastly different things.

Kowski will have to enjoy the pleasant company of the legions and David's, Pleckinoffs, Patrasovs, Saratelis, and Chernoffs, who are quite willing to work for the shifting of the relation of forces within the state power for winning a majority in Parliament and converting Parliament into the master of the government, a most worthy object, which is wholly acceptable to the opportunist, and which keeps everything within the bounds of bourgeois parliamentary republic. Yeah. The system that's designed by the bourgeois is still untouched.

You're just putting different people in it. Yep. But we shall break with the opportunists and the entire class conscious proletariat will be with us in the fight, not to shift the relation of forces, but to overthrow the bourgeois, to destroy bourgeois parliamentism for a Democratic Republic after the type of commune or Republic of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers, deputies for the revolutionary dictatorship of the Territ. To the right of Kautzky and international socialism, trends such as the socially in Germany, the followers of Jois and Vanderfeld in France and Belgium, Turiti, Trives,

and other representatives of the right wing of the Italian Party, the Fabians and Independence, in England and the like. All these gentry who play a tremendous, very often a predominant role in the parliamentary work and the press of the party repudiate outright the dictatorship of the proletariat and pursue a policy of unconcealed opportunism. In the eyes of these gentry, the dictatorship of the proletariat contradicts democracy. There is really no essential difference between them and the petty bourgeois Democrats. And the thing I love about that paragraph is everyone who's like, well, the Fabians were, you know, socialist, communists and look what they're doing. No, they weren't.

Yeah. That wasn't their goal at all. No, it's, it's to selectively insert egalitarianism in any space in which they can gain power. Yep. Yeah. Which turned out to not be a bad idea. They're doing great. Yeah.

They're actually doing really good. in a lot better than the frigging Bolsheviks at this point. Taking this circumstance into consideration, we are justified in drawing the conclusion that the second international, in the case of the overwhelming majority of its official representatives, has completely sunk into opportunism. The experience of the commune has not been only forgotten but distorted. Far from inculcating in the workers' mind the idea that the time is nearing when they must take action, smash the old state machine, replace it by a new one, and in this

way make their political rule the foundation for the socialist reconstruction of society. They have actually preached to the masses the very opposite and have depicted the conquest of power in a way that has left thousands of loopholes for opportunism. The distortion and hushing up of the question of the relation of the proletarian revolutions of the state could not but play an immense role at a time when states, which possess a military apparatus, expanded as a consequence of imperialist rival. have turned into military monsters which are exterminating millions of people in order to settle the issue as to whether England or Germany, this or that finance capital, is to rule the

world. Yep. That was basically World War I in a nutshell. And that is it. Cool. Did everyone like that? Did you learn anything? Did I learn anything?

Oh, yeah. Well, I was asking the audience. but yeah, I mean, I think you and me read it at the same time and like it kind of blew our mind. And I know it kind of overloaded me with like praxeological concepts. But yeah, I like I became a Marxist Leninist. Yeah, you became a Messasian leninist. Yeah, it's the thing about it is that if you, if you go into it with an open mind, You know, like when we first started reading this, the very first episode, there were people in the, um, making comments that this is, this might as well be Japanese as gibberish and everything like that. And it's like, okay. But then once you start reading it, and you say, wait a minute, that's a really good idea. Yeah. Once you get over the, the linguistic and vocabulary hurdles, like, you can extract so much good shit.

And you really have to, like, lower your standards coming from like a Misesian perspective, knowing about like basic economics and like knowing history and how it ended up going. You kind of have to like kind of put that to the side and just acknowledge that there are things that you can extract from this that are universal truths no matter what, no matter what ideological perspective you're taking. Yeah. Yeah. And there are so many, you're reading that on the screen. It's a compliment.

Yeah. The, the fact that, I mean, anyone who's smart, anyone who's not just ideologically possessed can listen to that and go, oh, okay, I can see how that's happening today. I can see how we can actually do that right now. A modified form of Bolshevism. That's kind of what I got out of it in a nutshell. That's kind of what needs to happen. Yeah. And it's just that the anarchists, the voluntarists, the voluntarists,

the ones who realize that just sitting around and, I mean, there's only so many books that people are willing to read, that this can be applied, that you can actually, that the idea of gaining a little bit of power and using it. I was, so I'm listening to this book about Steve Bannon. It's called War for Eternity. And it got me to watching his documentary from a couple years ago called The Brink. and at one point in it he says this and I think I might have to go back into into the signal chat

but he like he sounds like an anarchist and he not only sounds like an anarchist but he sounds like a he sounds like a Bolshevik too where he basically says he goes he goes I wanted to destroy the state. We can't do that right now. We have to teach people how to take power. And with that power, then they can use it to accomplish what we need to accomplish. And he's basically implying, and he said this clearly. It says it in the book that he talks about, we need to destroy the state so that we can build something else. And that's a really odd thing. I don't think most people would think about that coming from Ben. but if you really think about like some of the stuff that he was trying to do when he was Trump's advisor

I mean the Muslim ban he didn't that wasn't done because they hate Muslims that was done for the reaction yeah that was done to cause chaos and people just don't get that people don't they don't realize how if you actually gain a little bit of political power and it doesn't even have to it doesn't have to be at the national level. It doesn't even have to be at the state level. You can really cause people to just lose their shit to the point when, where they have, they lose, they fuck up. You can do exactly to them what they do to us every day, just like the smoke and mirrors, distraction and while you're actually getting work done.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're just freaking out over, oh my God, they don't want mussels. Muslims to come in from the seven countries that Obama bombed for the last eight years. I wonder why that. They wouldn't want that. And it even kind of like it even it even benches the people that agree with you that have no potential because now they're, now they're arguing. They're kind of like your, your foot soldiers on the ground like rolling around and the shit. And the people that kind of realize what you're doing can can rise to the top. And the people in power can recognize that.

And those become, you know, the, the soldiers deputies and the workers. council members, all that shit. You know. Yeah. It's, I'll tell you, man, this. So this is the third time I've gone through this book. And you just, you get something that new every time. You see something new every time.

But the ones that always stick out to me are what a revolution really is. And his critique, obviously his critiques of anarchism, of the anarchists. But, you know, also how. just what they were able to achieve because they weren't scared. They weren't scared of politics. Yeah. And, you know, what kind of did it for me with Marxism was thinking of everything in terms of phases. And, you know, they might have gotten the, you know, they definitely got some predictions wrong.

But this whole idea of transitioning from one phase to another and how that's kind of constantly happening. I kind of took that to heart in how I analyze how things are going. And also just like what the state is, you know, I have this idea from kind of Rothbardian anarchist tradition of what the state is. And from Lenin, there's not a whole lot of difference that they're fully compatible. And the only difference is what do you do with it? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that Rothbard was really starting to figure that out in the last 10 years of his life.

Yep. Yeah. And you start, especially, especially as he saw the wall come down. It took. How old was he when he died? Like he was like 93, wasn't he? No, no. He was like 70.

Oh, okay. So yeah. Can you imagine like going like however long, he went 40 years or whatever. And seeing how little progress you make and how frustrating that must be. Well, all that frustration that he felt. we got condensed into the last two years for us. Yeah. Yeah, I think that I put that in, let me see, he was, so, yeah, he was 70, 75, 74.

I thought he was older. Yeah, me too, but he's, yeah, unfortunately. So yeah, I put this in the, I put this in our private chat today. And it speaks to what you were talking about. I said, coming up with the libertarian ideology, when the worst example of government was one on the other side of the world would certainly dictate how the ideology was shaped. Sure, the U.S. was doing terrible shit, but I have to believe someone trying to systematize the libertarian ideology over the last 24 months would have made concessions for radical political

participation and other actions. I'd really like to see how the nap would have been described in the context of the last 24 months. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a shame that people kind of cling to the nap as a means to eskew political action. Yeah. Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. Oh, just, I guess Jordan Peterson posted up a picture of himself today with Dan Crenshaw.

That's pretty cringy. Yeah. Good old eye patch. Yeah. Eye patch is pretty tall because Jordan's pretty tall. and it's not towering over. Yeah, and he's a good example of like those opportunists that are on the right, that, you know, you're a Dan Crenshaw Republican think like getting very, like that

maybe just lost your job or went through a nasty divorce or whatever, you're prime for radicalization. And you want and you start looking at other things like maybe Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever. And, you know, you're still a fan of Dan Crenshaw and he's kind of moderating you and halting progress. And that's the kind of opportunism that Lenin, just as you can see from this whole series, like, works tirelessly to destroy and to just discredit and turn into a joke. And that's, you know, that's another thing that I kind of got from this is like, you know, anybody that's holding us back, give them some time to develop because it does take time.

But when it's pretty clear that they're going to be in the same place and holding your progress back and keeping you from persuading people, then it's time to go to war. But I think calling Peterson an opportunist is actually something that works too. Peterson doesn't want to destroy the university system. He wants to reform it. Yeah. Yeah. He wants to reform it so he can have a place in it again. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, he's no different than a, a progressive right now that thinks the university system is racially biased and inequitable and all that. That's all they want to do too. They just want to seize it and keep the system as it is, but just put different people in it. You want to plug anything and get out of it. Yeah, this is probably, I knew this is going to be our longest one. Yeah. Yeah, you can catch my episode with Nate on the Realty's Our's podcast that should be dropping soon. I don't know if he's released to you. To be honest,

I've been kind of off Twitter. I'm making some moves in meat space. You know, I'm going to be self-employed pretty much. I'm going to be a 1099 for a small boutique real estate development team. And I'm going to have, I'm going to be part of that managerial state. And, you know, I'm not going to own it, but I'm going to control it. And stepping up, stepping up to, you're at the top of petty bourgeois. I really am.

Yeah. You're getting up there, man. Yeah, it's, now I get to see kind of what I can do with it and, you know, what the limitations are. No. Thanks, man. Yeah. I appreciate it. We'll do something again in the future.

We'll pick something that's probably shorter. Yeah, I know. I was going to say, what are we doing next? But, yeah, thank you very much. much and thank you to the audience for dealing with me. And I enjoyed this a lot and I can't wait to do it again. Cool. Take care. Take care.