Upstream - [TEASER] China Pt. 6: The Long Transition Towards Socialism w/ Gabriel Rockhill

Starting point is 00:00:00 A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely could not do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and to provide most of our content for free so that we can continue to offer political education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you, comrades. Hope you enjoy this conversation. The project of socialism kind of giving birth to an egalitarian society out of an un-egalitarian

Starting point is 00:00:54 society means that ultimately the socialist project is one that's trying to do the impossible. The whole project is trying to shift from a class-based society to the possibility of a classless society. And to get there, you need a period of transition. You can't just wish it overnight and make it happen. But to do that, you can't only do it ideologically or at a political level. You need to do it at the level of this socioeconomic base.

Starting point is 00:01:23 This is one of the reasons that what China, with the reform and opening up, but also some of these other examples like Vietnam, are so interesting, is because the real focus is on economic development and breaking the chains of imperialism as the primary contradiction in order to create South-South forms of development that reconfigure the global architecture. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The transition to socialism is not going to be an overnight project. And no amount of willing it to be so can change that.

Starting point is 00:02:12 No, the transition towards socialism is going to be a long and winding road, traveled with fits and starts, peppered with retreats and losses. But despite it not being an overnight project, it's still a project that is being undertaken with a degree of passion and discipline that should give us hope that its outcome, perhaps not guaranteed, is at least a real possibility that's worth fighting for. And China, despite what imperialist propaganda wants you to think, is on this path towards socialism. In fact, it's leading it. And our guest for

Starting point is 00:02:52 today's episode, part six of our series on China, makes a very compelling case to support this thesis. Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic, and activist teaching philosophy and global interdisciplinary studies at Villanova University. He runs an educational non-profit called the Critical Theory Workshop. He is the editor of multiple books including Western Marxism, How it was Born, How it Died, How it Can Be Re reborn, by the Italian Marxist Domenico Lisserto. Western Marxism was the focus of our conversation with Gabriel in October of last year. Gabriel is also the author of the upcoming book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism,

Starting point is 00:03:38 Volume 1 of The Intellectual World War, Marxism vs. the Imperial world war, Marxism versus the imperial theory industry, which is forthcoming in December of 2025 and published by Monthly Review Press. In this conversation, we talk about what Gabriel refers to as the intellectual world war waged by imperialists against the rest of us, and how this pertains to anti-China propaganda. We discuss socialism as a process that unfolds over time versus a utopian vision that we can achieve instantly. We explore what China learned from the Socialist Project of the USSR, the connections between China and the alliance of Sahel states,

Starting point is 00:04:22 the limits of liberal identity politics, and China's strategy of spreading socialist economic development throughout the Global South. Along the way, we dispel the myth that China is imperialist and reveal that myth as propaganda by the imperialists themselves to disparage and discredit China. We look at the distinction between tactics and strategy in the context of the dialectics of socialism, and finally, what the rising tensions between China and the United States mean for the global world order in the coming decades and beyond. And just a quick announcement before we get started.

Starting point is 00:05:02 So Della is a new mom, And so as she is immersed in the exciting and exhausting endeavor of being a brand new mom, she's gonna be taking a little bit of time off of the show. And so I'll be filling in for anything that we have not had a chance to pre-record. So congratulations to Della. And for the rest of you, I'm very sorry, but you're gonna be stuck with me presenting my own interviews for a little while.

Starting point is 00:05:28 And so now, here is my conversation with Gabriel Rocker. Gabriel, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me on. So for anyone who may have missed our episode with you last year, which was on Western Marxism, or who might just need a sort of refresher on who you are, I'm wondering if you could just start with a quick introduction and maybe just talk a little bit about the work that you're doing. Yeah, so I'm a philosopher, cultural critic. I'm involved in various activist initiatives. I direct the Critical Theory Workshop, which is an educational nonprofit. We run a summer school.

Starting point is 00:06:19 We do regular webinars. We have a YouTube channel with recordings of kind of our educational materials. I also teach philosophy and global interdisciplinary studies at Villanova University. I've been researching for quite some time, so I have I guess about 12 books that I've either authored or edited. Most recently, as you mentioned, Domenico Losorto's Western Marxism, as well as a co-authored book with Emmerich Monville called, it's in French, but it's in English, would be Requiem for French Theory that is forthcoming from Monthly Review Press. And as far as the kind of work that I do as a philosopher in the kind of sense that people

Starting point is 00:06:58 understand this term within the dialectical and historical materialist tradition, I'm really interested in the social totality and how everything fits together. A global perspective on history, how to situate ourselves in the present, what's possible and what the future might have in store. Within that overall framework, though, my most recent work has really concentrated on what I call in a forthcoming trilogy with Monthly Review Press, the intellectual world war, meaning the ways in which through the course of the long 20th century, there has been an ideological war waged over the most important weapon of class struggle from below, namely Marxism. And I look at both sides of that war, meaning the capitalist interests and national security state forces that were driving the attempt to demolish Marxism or to repackage Marxism

Starting point is 00:07:55 as a kind of commodifiable Western form that was accommodationist towards capitalism and imperialism and ultimately anti-communist. But I also look at, and I think this is an important part of likely things that we'll discuss today, the way in which Marxism has not just been the victim, but it's also been the principal force behind social estate building projects around the world. And so I don't come off as many Western Marxists would saying that, ultimately, Marxism has been defeated by the forces of capital and the bourgeois states. On the contrary, I think that the bourgeois

Starting point is 00:08:31 states and capital are fighting a war that proves extremely difficult to win because they are fighting a war that is not in the interest of the overwhelming majority of the planet. Therefore, one of the things that we need to do in our particular historical conjuncture is uplift the powerful forces operative within the dialectical and historical materialist tradition that chart a path forward. So that is in a nutshell, the kind of current work that I'm doing and a little bit about my background. Yeah, absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for that. And so we are here today to talk about China. And so I wanted to give a little bit of a preview for your upcoming book, which you know, I'm hoping we'll

Starting point is 00:09:12 have you back later on this year to discuss that book and get much more granular on. But like you mentioned, the book is partially at least about the forces behind imperialist propaganda and the the forces spreading disinformation about communism. And so there are many projects right throughout the world that have attempted to lay the foundations for socialism which have been impacted by that imperialist propaganda and that of course includes China. And so one thing I wanted to touch on right off the bat is that the amount of disinformation and hostility towards China,

Starting point is 00:09:50 particularly here in the US right now is probably higher than it's ever been, right? And at least in recent history. And so I think this applies most importantly to the left and liberals, not just the right. And yeah, so I'm wondering maybe just to launch us off here, if you could talk a little bit about your upcoming book and maybe drawing any connections to the conversation around China and disinformation and the sabotaging of socialist movements. For sure. And I appreciate the question. So the book that's going to be out in December 2025

Starting point is 00:10:27 is entitled, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? And as I just mentioned, this is the first in a trilogy called The Intellectual World War, Marxism versus the Imperial Theory Industry. And the first half of that book is really an introduction to the trilogy as a whole. And that introduction is a deep dive into imperialist propaganda. The structures that frame it, how it operates, and the extent to which the

Starting point is 00:10:55 capitalist ruling class and the national security state have worked hand in glove with the cultural apparatus, meaning the entire framework of cultural production. This is the mass media, but it's also the intelligentsia, it's cultural producers, writers, artists, etc., in order to try to manage the mindscape of the masses. In that regard, a lot of the book, although the title is Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, really half of it is on the kind of architecture of imperialist propaganda, if you will. And there's a lot of different facets to this, but one of the key aspects is what I refer to as the kind of military-industrial-academic complex.

Starting point is 00:11:39 Military indexing the state, industrial indexing the capitalist forces, and intellectual referring to the academic world. And I think what I demonstrate very clearly is that these three nodal points have functioned as a kind of organic system in order to try to push an ideological agenda that is quintessentially anti-communist. And that framework, or I should that that kind of complex, the military industrial academic complex has led to a very vast and intense forms of psychological warfare and propaganda that when you get into the details, I think, boggle the mind of most

Starting point is 00:12:23 people and even myself as a researcher who's been doing this for decades, I've been surprised at times of the reach of imperialist propaganda. I could go into some examples of that, but I think maybe in the interest of time, I'll focus more specifically on, well, I'll touch maybe just on one thing, and that is that Frank Wisner of the Central Intelligence Agency was very intent on setting up what he referred to as the mighty Wurlitzer. A Wurlitzer was a kind of jukebox. What he wanted was to be able to push a single button in Langley, Virginia at CIA headquarters

Starting point is 00:12:56 and have the same propaganda tune play in all of the CIA's media assets around the world. And the CIA had media assets in every capital and even was invested in buying up journalistic outlets. They regularly used journalism as a cover for their operatives, and they had an extraordinary reach and an unbelievable amount of power within that kind of global mighty world, sir. And the architecture that was set up in the early cold war is still very much alive and well today. And so regarding China, I think one thing that we need to understand, and although my book doesn't deal explicitly with China, although there are references that come up occasionally, if we understand this overall ideological

Starting point is 00:13:41 architecture, then we're very well placed to understand what's going on with the contemporary assault on China. I'll just bring up two examples because they're often used to denigrate China because there's an entire industry, of course, funded to the tune of billions of dollars to cast China in the most negative light possible as authoritarian, as imperialist, as genocidal, et cetera. Two of the examples that are often highlighted are the supposed genocide in Xinjiang province, which is one of the most remarkable genocides in human history because demographically, the population of the Uyghurs in that region of the world has been increasing. So it's incredible how the sneaky Chinese have been able to do this.

Starting point is 00:14:29 They've been able to do a genocide that's not being live streamed to people's telephones, of which there is no real hard proof. There are a series of ideologues who have fabricated atrocities that are put into the mighty world, but there's no real hard proof. And the background for this is that the World Uyghur Congress was actually funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a well-known cutout for the Central Intelligence Agency, while also being funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The World Uyghur Congress is funded to the tune of, I think it's five to six million dollars by the NED. And some of the background for the relationship between the Chinese state and the Uyghurs

Starting point is 00:15:13 is that the U.S. has been interested in running terror campaigns as an attempt to destabilize China. And mobilizing certain sectors of the Uyghur population has been a big part of that project. So what China has been doing in Xinjiang province is fighting terrorism and attempting to actually integrate those segments of the population who feel either disenfranchised, marginalized in various ways, etc. One of the other touchstones for a lot of the propaganda around China is the Tiananmen Square so-called massacre. It has been demonstrated, I think, unbelievably convincingly that there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square.

Starting point is 00:15:55 In fact, not a single person died in the square that day. We have numerous first-hand accounts, including on the part of Western journalists who stated this at the time, what you did have was a set of mobilizations within China that were aiming principally at instigating reforms within the socialist government. But as happens around the world and systematically, the US national security state was involved in instigating outside agitators and trying to get them to push in the direction of so-called democracy promotion, which is

Starting point is 00:16:31 a nice term for overthrowing the government, for destabilization campaign. These forces were trained by the US national security state. There were people on the ground like the most well-known, I think, intellectual involved in democracy promotion, Gene Sharp. And what these forces ended up doing was attacking the security forces of the Chinese state. And there were people who were killed outside of the square. A lot of those deaths were actually the consequence of these outside instigators using weapons against in certain cases, unarmed security forces.

Starting point is 00:17:13 And the Chinese state exercised a very high level of discretion and restraint in relationship to this, which is not to say that there wasn't violence. There clearly was, and there was the threat of a kind of either made-on-style coup or an overthrow along the lines of what the US has done elsewhere. One of the things I think that's quite important is that some of the leaders of these destabilization efforts who generally support, and it's the same thing with the Hong Kong protests, they tend to be Trump-aligned and quite right-wing in their orientation. And there are a number of quotes

Starting point is 00:17:52 actually from the leaders of these movements during Tiananmen where they say that there's one quote in particular where a woman, in fact, I think I have it here, so I'm just gonna read it, instead of try to paraphrase it. This is by Chai Ling, who considered herself to be the chief commander of the radical wing. And this was six years later. She said, what we were actually hoping for, right? This is what the instigators funded and supported by the West were hoping for in Tiananmen Square. What we were hoping for was bloodshed for the moment when the government had no choice but to brazenly butcher the people. Only when the square was awash with blood would the people of China open their eyes.

Starting point is 00:18:30 Only then would they really be united. So the goal was to instigate bloodshed so that then the Chinese state could be characterized as this authoritarian brutal force and it would further drive a wedge between the Chinese people and the state. That ultimately was incredibly unsuccessful. But still, to this day, there are many on the left who will claim that, yes, there is nonetheless a genocide of the Uyghurs, but what about Tiananmen Square and other such things? Basically repeating propaganda lines because they've never done the hard work of doing the research to get to the bottom of where these propaganda stories come from.

Starting point is 00:19:09 Maybe the last thing that I'd say in this regard, because it's an important part of my research, is that a lot of what propaganda does that is mobilized by the national security states, which are disinformation agencies. Ralph McGeehee worked for the CIA for 25 years. He said that the CIA, more than an information agency, is first and foremost a disinformation agency. But one of the principal things that they do is they take state propaganda and they launder it through journalistic outlets and through the academy. And after doing that, what you have is well-known academics and journalists repeating, usually or often verbatim, state propaganda, and then other academics and journalists continuing to repeat those lines because they've heard them from authoritative sources.

Starting point is 00:20:00 And so one of the principal ways in which propaganda spreads is simply people repeating things that they've heard without actually doing the hard research necessary to get to the full episode by becoming a Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, you'll have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this

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Upstream - [TEASER] China Pt. 6: The Long Transition Towards Socialism w/ Gabriel Rockhill

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