Online Leftists

Episode 012: Online Leftism - An Infantile Disorder

• onlineleftists • Season 1 • Episode 12

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In this episode GloboidTV and RedArmyCapybara discuss left-communism: what it is, where it came from, and why it remains influential in online left spaces today.

They also examine some core disagreements between Marxism-Leninism and left-communist tendencies such as council communism, Bordigism, and communization theory. What separates leftcoms from Marxist-Leninists? Where do left-com tendencies overlap with ultra-left Marxist-Leninist currents like Trotskyism, Maoism, and Hoxhaism, and where do they fundamentally diverge?

In this episode we cover 

  • What left-communism is.
  • What the origins of left-communism are.
  • The factory/worker committee system in soviet Russia and its absorption into the union system.
  • The efficiency of the worker committee system vs a cohesive national economic plan.
  • Left-Bolshevism in the early 1900s.
  • The problems with leftcoms & what it has to do with dogmatism and purity fetishes.
  • Lenin's 'What is to be done?'
  • Should communists take part in reactionary unions and Bourgeois parliaments?
  • Pragmatism in practical applications of Marxism.
  • Left-coms (councilists, Bordigists, communizers) vs ML left-deviations (Maoism, Hoxhaism, Trotskyism, etc). Do they share things in common? Where do they depart?
  • State-capitalism and preliminary phaes pf socialism are steps forward not backward.
  • Dogmatism among leftcoms and how Lenin criticized dogmatism in 'Left-communism an Infantile Disorder.'
  • Dogmatism among Marxist-Leninists.
  • The vanguard party and how they function: In response to Maoist critiques of modern Marxists view on the vanguard. 
  • The function of newspapers in the USSR.
  • The election of delegates to people's assemblies in the DPRK.
  • Direct democracy is unfeasible and inefficient.
  • Practical considerations regarding praxis.
  • The collapse of Yugoslavia
  • The Unity of Theory and Practice.
  • Marx was not a rigid thinker and his views shifted frequently
  • The Paris Commune and its failure.
  • Bureaucracy and its inevitability.
  • Opportunism.
  • Maoism vs Gonzaloites 
  • Is protracted people's war a universal principle of Marxism?
  • Have Left-coms ever had revolutions?
  • Left-anticommunism and "pure" socialists.
  • Why is left-communism relevant today? 
  • Do leftcoms only exist online?
  • Multipolarity 
  • Can MLs and leftcoms work together? 
  • Why should we support actual existing socialist movements, despite any flaws they have?

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SPEAKER_02

Online leftists!

SPEAKER_01

Alright, everybody. Welcome to another episode of On My Leftists. Cappy, how are you doing so far today? I'm good. I'm hanging in there. Alright, this is going to be oh you're hanging in there. Go ahead. What what? Sorry to go.

SPEAKER_00

I had a long day. I was out doing yard work and it had to be 90 degrees today, so I was I'm fucking half dead. But we're here. We're alive.

SPEAKER_01

I'm beat up. I you know I'm on my Solitariat arc. I've been in in the gym heavy for the last two weeks. Good, good. Yeah, uh beat down. So I'm here, I'm caffeinated, I got some B vitamins in me, I'm juiced up. Uh I'm I I got some some some sirloin 9010 fat ground sirloin burgers, no bun, no cheese, just mustard, and some green beans. Yeah, that's right, Cappy. I like my burger the way I like my uh Marxism. No fat, no frills, no extra bullshit, just hardcore pure Marxism-Leninism.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. I I I like my burgers with some shit on it, you know, and I like a bun. I like a good bun.

SPEAKER_01

If you would if you actually liked a burger with shit on it, you probably would get along very good with these people that we're covering today, uh, which is left communists. Left communists, yeah. Because that is what their theory amounts to, right? It's a perfectly good burger with some extra shit thrown on that just puts everybody off and doesn't seem to serve any purpose.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, I agree 100%. That's a good way to put it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they're just like they're instead of uh the typical American cheese, uh maybe uh easily meltable and very aesthetic that graces the top of hamburgers ranging from the ones you would get in a restaurant to emojis, they throw uh a turtomoticon on there.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No good. Okay, so Cappy, what is left communism? Oh, and we like to say for the audience. Now we would like to issue each and every one of our detractors a sort of pithy, witty rejoinder, but some of you guys are just sort of like impotent weirdos that only exist online and seemingly are online panelists hobbyists that are antithetical to organizing and the the granular details of objective reality, which uh despite your uh protest, you are a part of. So we're just sort of doing a very quick uh slap uh slapseda slapsical uh reply to the whole lot of you because none of you put together every left com on the earth is about as useful as one Chinese proletariat. Yeah, I don't even think they're that useful.

SPEAKER_00

That guy actually engages in praxis. Just by existing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's that is there is there a sort of like a moral luck? Imagine you spawn in China and you're like, oh, all I have to do is like literally get a part-time job and just like exist and I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, that's that's kind of true. I mean, a decent amount of um working class people are members of the party too. You know, the base of the party is made up of well, it's it's actually a lot more uh fishermen and uh farmers than industrial working class people, but it's like fishermen farmers, and then like more like service industry type jobs uh and tech jobs, and then the industrial workers are actually.

SPEAKER_01

You know who would not agree that one proletariat is a Chinese proletariat, one Chinese prole is worth as much as every left com put together? Who? But left comms. Oh no, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So what w what are they? So it it's it's there's not there's not one single answer to what a left com is. You can't point at one coherent and cohesive like uh set of positions or theories or anything like that. It's sort of broad. Um but generally speaking, they all have quite a few things in common, but it's anything from uh, you know, Bordigists, councilists, some may call themselves Luxembourgists. I think that libertarian Marxists fall into the left com um sort of category. It's basically the left wing of the communist movement.

SPEAKER_01

So that so that sort of like uh begs the question, is there a right wing of communism? Sure, yeah, absolutely. And uh what would that constitute, not to get too far off subject?

SPEAKER_00

It'd probably be like Bukarinism and stuff like that. Bukharin was more of a rightist, um you could argue that the CPC uh had had uh gone a little bit too far right, uh, which Xi Jinping has sort of brought them back towards the center, that's why we love him. Um and and there are others than that. I I you know, I mean, we could consider the ACP to be rightists. Uh they're probably the most right you could get before you stop being a communist, you know what I mean. Uh but yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01

Um so what are what are some of these things that you were talking about here? You were talking about councilists, bordygists and uh communizers. Now we know what communizers are from some of our some of our study of like uh Gills, Gilles, Duvet and these other uh the invisible committee end notes and some of these like and and I I I'm telling the audience here that stuff is so not substantial, it's hard to take seriously. It's basically anarchists using Marxian language to say utopian things with like no plan. It's nonsense. It's not, it's just a meme. Just like on if somebody says they're a communizer, you can honestly you can safely ignore their opinion. It's just like, oh okay, sort of like disability detected, never mind. Okay, sir, have a good day and just go about your day and continue like reading and being practical. It doesn't matter, they're insignificant. Uh okay, so what is a Bordygist?

SPEAKER_00

That is that's and I guess uh someone who Italian left comms that that follow Bordiga, who like this is where it gets confusing because some left comms will say, hey, I don't like Lenin, but Bordiga was like, no, I love Lenin. In fact, I'm a true Leninist, right? Um and then he held positions that would be very counter to Marxism-Leninism as we know it.

SPEAKER_01

Um then you have councilists which take influence from So basically he was the left version, he was the he was the left com version, a la, he sort of kind of dictated what a left com was, although Lenin himself dictated what a left comm was. So in reading State and Revolution, and I just took a cursory glance at uh left com uh left communism and infantile disorder, and it was way too long. So I read the Cliff Notes and the Red Pen video on it. I didn't have time to read it before this. I will read it over the course of the next week. However, he seems to be uh uh uh uh beating up the same people Kotsky, Bernstein, the all the all the Rogues Gallery. The same so it's always those guys. So what he taught what so social democratic entryist reformist people who were in good with the bourgeoisie and uh after the uh Russian Revolution started kind of sided against the proletariat and sort of derided their successful revolution.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, so like in left communism, he's kind of um focused on the um the certain mistakes of European communist parties, particularly uh Germany and Britain. Um if I I don't think he actually talks about I think he does mention like as he put you know, Comrade Bordiga once or twice in that book, but I actually don't think he's criticizing the Italian left comms in that. I think it's mostly focused on Germany and Britain, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I said all that to say earlier, so uh Bordiga is someone who similar to Gonzalo in Peru, thinks that he has distilled the true doctrine. So he differs from Stalin's distillation of what Marxism-Leninism is, and Bordiga thinks that he has the better version of it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean so he considers himself a Leninist, and he and it's he's part of the variant of left comms that support the October Revolution, but just criticize it for some of its mistakes. You know what I mean? So what's bound to make mistakes though. Yeah, and I mean, hey, I mean, that's honestly easier to work with than somebody who wholesale rejects the October Revolution. Yeah. Um but yeah, no, so you have that, you have the Luxembourgists, which are the Council Communists.

SPEAKER_01

Um the Luxembourgists are the people who support the the thesis as uh distilled by Rosa Luxembourg?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, generally, yeah. Uh and they they're very upset that the that the Bolsheviks uh absorbed the factory committees, you know, into the unions and kind of uh broke up the uh the uh how the workers' committees and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01

And they did break up those worker committees, and they did so because is it just hard to herd cats, and they found that there was a uh what do you call it when everybody was fighting individualistic uh individualistic incentives for saying, well, like look, we're a widget factory, we need to keep this what's good for this widget factory. It's like, well, you need to worry about what's good for the whole country.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, absolutely. There's that uh which I've sent it to you before, the the International Labor Office had that uh study called the trade union movement in Soviet Russia where they talked about it, and basically they said that the you know the committees only considered the individual interests of their own undertaking. Uh and and um it sort of led to um compet it sort of led to competitions between like factories and stuff like that, um, which led to like um like hoarding and and higher prices and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01

So there were devil's advocate here, so the individualistic incentives for proprietary collectives of warehouses and the the workers in those warehouses versus one that was done by command, which one do you think it would be easier to get to the point that Leftcoms cope uh co seethe cope and wine about, which is commodity production or production based on need and distribution based on need, which do you think is closer, would get to that goal closer? I think individualistic incentives or a top-down command thing uh adhering to a plan.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, everyone has to be adhering to a national plan. That's I mean, you you I look if if um if this would have worked, the Bolsheviks would have kept it, but it didn't. And and so they didn't get rid of it all together. People always said that, oh, they they dispatch, but what they did was they absorbed it into the trade union system because the trade unions were less concerned with like local and private interests, and um and it it it just worked better to do it like that. They could get everybody, you know, all the individuals thinking on a national basis what everybody needed to do. So it was less concerned with you know the your own little petty individual concerns.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yes, yeah. Yeah, which makes which then makes less touch points to wrangle with the state. Absolutely, yeah. Um Do you now Cappy? So I I have ruminated with you in the past. Do you think that these left comms are just people that can't turn an apple in their head, or is it people that just don't have enough lived experience to actually understand human beings that they seek to or don't seek to better the conditions of? Like Conifesto said, I don't care if China's making it better for the proletariat. I don't care. Uh then you might not be a Marxist at all, Doc. Like, I don't know. That's kind of like the number one thing. Like, do do which part in Capitol did Marx say, I don't care about the conditions of the proletariat? Yeah, no, he didn't.

SPEAKER_00

He never said he didn't say that, and this is one of the issues is that um the you know, left comms, look, I would say that that they're divorced from praxis, but back you know, back in the day, in the time of Lenin, the left comms he was addressing were very much organized and were trying to do revolution. So and and they were still like that back then. So ultimately, the biggest issue I see is dogmatism. And and some people will cringe when they hear that, and I talk about it a lot, but dogmatism is a real fucking bad issue in the communist movement.

SPEAKER_01

And this is I would say it goes beyond dogmatism, it's almost like a religious-like fervor.

SPEAKER_00

They're fanatical, yes, yeah, absolutely fanatical. And the funny thing is when you boil down Lenin's left-wing communism and infantile disorder, he is literally criticizing these people for dogmatism, which we can get into that a little bit later because I want to talk about it anyway. Um but uh Okay, what are what are the origins of left communism? If I remember correctly, um it was in it was around the time Lenin wrote that work, um in 1920? Yeah, um there was I there was a short-lived faction. So there was a short-lived left Bolshevik faction, um, but it sort of died out by 1918. It was around from like 1907 to 1918, but following the Bolshevik Revolution, and when it was time for the Civil War, they literally realized that their views were insane and they were like, oh no, wait, we're with it. And that included people like Bogdanov and stuff like that. So these are people who Lenin has criticized in other works. But then it was like the I I you know, the 1910s, 1920s among the Dutch and the Germans and the Italians that we started to see left communism or different variations, uh, I don't know what we consider. I I like to just call them all ultras. Uh, but we started to see the this, you know, old um this left communist current start to to crop up.

SPEAKER_01

Uh is a uniting is a a sort of uniting feature of these people, people for whom they they lacked the material conditions from which to apply their Marxism. Is this something that lives as an ideal because of a divorce they have from applying it?

SPEAKER_00

I that could be part of it, but honestly, to me, it seems like a reaction to Bolshevism.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. That so that uh I would say that is definitely true in 1925. Why uh I guess it's still trying to and then same shit. It's the same shit, it's just anti-USSR Cold War propaganda that these liberals who call themselves left comms have not fully unpacked yet.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, in what is to be done, Lenin's criticizing left communist positions, um, such as the uh that communists shouldn't work within reactionary unions or bourgeois parliaments or uh have temporary alliances with certain non-communist for formations, and we still see this today. Conifesto just recently posted a video talking about oh no, don't engage in parliamentarism. You know what I mean? They're completely against alliances with non-communist forces.

SPEAKER_01

Uh do you think they get that because of Marx's and Engels' uh um hate for parliamentary politics and bureaucracy? Yeah, I mean it it could be part of that, but but b that context was in applying what will will i i i but when Marx and Engels wrote about that, they talked about how their ideal state wouldn't have that, not that it is not beneficial to participate in that in a bourgeois democracy or in a state where there's not been a socialist revolution yet.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yeah. No, um Lenin was very clear about it. You know, of course, to us communists' parliamentarism is, you know, politically speaking, obsolete. But for the average everyday person, and we've we've mentioned this before, I think, on on the podcast, the people were still engaged in parliamentarism. So it was, you know, to us communists who have the consciousness, we understand it's obsolete, but they don't. So we have to go to where they're at. Not only does this give us a gauge of where they're at, but it shows them who we are, and then it also free advertising. Sure. And it demonstrates to them that the system is fuck it's fucked. That no, you can't, right? It it it defeats itself because if they like you and they vote for you and you don't get elected, they realize that. It it that's what happened in 2016 to me. Like, oh, Bernie Sanders would be good. Then he got fucked, you know, out uh by the DNC, and I was like, oh, we can't elect in so like you can't do that. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

Well, you you know what? It'd be another thing with uh Bernie and AOC and these sheepdogs or quote unquote opportunists, as Lennon might call them, right? These sort of bourgeoisie-oriented uh socialists from the waist up, or whatever you want to call that, who sort of say say rosy revolutionary things, but uh policies all sort of defect to bourgeoisie compatible left points. It would be different if, like, for instance, I was like, man, AOC could have gone a very different path. Chat's like, what do you mean? I'm like, she could be a gadfly to Congress. You won't believe the committee meeting that just went on in here. These people are ripping you off big time. She could have been a gadfly for socialism there, but no, she wants to sit there and make nice with the system in order to appease and grovel and still get on shitty committees and be put like politically inert and worthless. Like, what is she even doing there?

SPEAKER_00

They're just other than crying and voting for Iron Dome. They're smart members of the bourgeoisie. They understand what they're doing. You know what I mean? They know damn right that communism's dangerous, and there's one way to advert it, and that's give people things, make their lives easier so they don't revolt. You know what I mean? Um Yeah, well, that's a that's that's something else I want to bring up because um it's you know, Lenin wasn't advocating you go out there and vote for someone like Bernie Sanders either, who's saying that you should run communists and vote for communists, you know what I mean? So I I think some people get that wrong. That's like Hassan has brought that up to try and defend voting for uh democratic socialists, and it's like or or like people who claim to be Irish who live in England and vote Green Party.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. People people like that, yeah. Who did it who get it fucked up? And also and also I would like to put a finer point on that. Lenin said, you can't be afraid to uh make uh reluctant compromises with reactionary forces. He was very ruthlessly pragmatic. And he was like, and you have to do stuff at the legislative slash political level and work with uh you hold your nose and try to work and uh get common ground with some reactionary organizations because you're trying to appeal to their base, number one, and number two, you also have to do illegal stuff. Yeah, you you cannot be a pussy.

SPEAKER_00

No, yeah, that he talks about both legal and illegal methods, you know what I mean? So yeah, no, Lenin was very pragmatic, and that's something that the the Chinese communists um, you know, they always say it that a communist needs to be pragmatic, and especially in the world we live in today, because Marx couldn't even fucking um how he he he like look at this. This is a fucking wreck.

SPEAKER_01

How cool how full of shit are these people, and how little have they actually engaged with Lenin's and Engels distillation and arguments for which is the best distillation I've seen for Marx. Engels and Lenin, I would argue, right? They were there, they were like they're basically have PhDs in Marxism. Yeah, effectively.

SPEAKER_00

Look, Engels is is I love Engels. A lot of left comms don't like Engels. Engels is great, and Lenin is the greatest Marxist since Marx. Like, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_01

What got me in State and Revolution is all the passages where Lenin was pointing out, like, you guys are claiming to be Marxists, but Marx was for a transitional state, and you want it to be a fucking republic like America has. He didn't say it in so many words, but I'm sitting there reading and I'm like, holy shit, Marx was and he's taking these clips of uh Marx, these these, and I'm reading, I'm like, wait, that which is effectively DPRK, uh a people's republic. That's what they have. They're transitional states that are republics. You know, like Marx fucking wanted you fake Marxoids. Yeah. Holy fucking shit.

SPEAKER_00

Marx was in favor of free trade so long as it helped to ripen the proletarian revolution. Like they were against protectionism and were like, no, we should like it would be good to have free trade all around the world and have this connected world system because it will hasten the proletarian revolution and the new world. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

Even in the 1870s, Marx was talking about like the beneficial qualities of interconnected economies. Yeah, she was talking about that back then. Yeah. Well, it's so like I and it just really makes me wonder for as much as they say, don't read, don't read Marxists, read Marx, it seems like they have in fact only read Marxists and not read Marx. Because they have read less comp left communist distillations which have perverted and uh corrupted the core of Marx because Marx is pretty clear, brother. You need to take the state, you need to fucking run the state out of town effectively, do whatever you can, smash them, destroy the bourgeoisie state, create a new state, and by the by, I can't tell you what to do. I like the republic looks pretty good, and also be afraid of fucking don't have a parliament.

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, I you see I that's basically it. I think it from my reading, it Marx and Engels both have made it clear in many of their works that um after seizing after the proletariat seized. The state power, the building of socialism is a prolonged process, and it's not something uh that happens at one stroke. It's it's as Mark says in the manifesto by degrees. So that means little by little.

SPEAKER_01

Um so this uh, you know, again, the And and he they understood diamect uh dialectical, they understood diamat, dialectical materialism in the same way the Chinese, modern Chinese did. They're like, look, this transitionary state that we're gonna have is going to have facets and features and characteristics of the capitalistic state, and that does not mean that we should retreat from the socialist revolution. In fact, we should get closer and closer and closer to the quote-unquote real one. So you use the transitionary state to sort of preempt and facilitate the conditions by which the quote unquote permanent revolution or the you know the international whatever the fuck you want to happen, you facilitate that via and I would argue that China has done a very good job of that, despite the errant Maoist here who were mad that some Nepalese party didn't get you know the gold the red carpet rolled out for them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's kind of funny when Marxists don't understand like contradictory things. Like it can't they they're like, wait, this doesn't make sense, it's contradictory, it throws me off. And it's like when Lenin was, you know, when they were doing the NEP in Russia, a lot of people were like, I don't like this, this is an abandonment of socialism. And Lenin was like, No, it's not, and they're like, No, yeah, this is a step backward. And Lenin was like, no, this is actually a step forward because our conditions before this was this peasant, a scattered peasant production, you know, uh, this sort of uh petty bourgeois type production, and and now we have this this state capitalism, right, where we can start developing and taking a step forward toward socialism. So it's like it's not And defend the project better. Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01

But it's having a perfectly realized pure socialist country that that affirms to all of the weird anarchists and anprim people and anti-industrialists and whatever that are hiding among the the ranks of the left communists pretending to be Marxists, but seek secretly or utopian anarchists, right? If you had that quote unquote perfect nebulous, heretoforth unseen, unproven, and unvetted state, how are they going to protect it without a state state industry? Yeah. And workers building up the thing so as to protect it from rogue actors on the world stage.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, the it I that does come down to like dogmatism because a lot of people read Marx and they take it as a religion, which is something we've also talked about a million times. But this is this is why even Lenin's first example in um infantile disorder, when he's because he's he's talking about um essentially these European communists attempting to apply abstract principles across like across the board in all circumstances. And the example he gives is um at at one point they the Bolsheviks boycotted the Russian Tsarist uh parliament, um, and that was in 1905. And the reason why they did that was because the revolution was currently unfolding. But later in 1908, when the conditions changed, some like of the left Bolsheviks, they wanted to do the same thing. They wanted to repeat the 1905 tactics, but under completely new conditions. So they treated that boycott like it was some some sort of universal principle, uh, which was incorrect. So Lenin was like, no, we have to run in this parliament. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

Um isn't it see all of these things sort of affirmed the need for I was I was on a I was on um Chairman Mayo. I was scrolling by, he was on a live, he had four four viewers, apropos of nothing, I just throwing that out there. But uh and in that in that live, um he was giving a cursory a cursory explainer of what the vanguard is, and he's like, Oh, you know, the vanguard uh uh you know uh as relates to like uh Lenin in his time, just sort of like a transition government to sort of like keep everything in line and da-da-da-da-da. But like mainly so but the way that modern MLs talk about it as is as if there's only good there you can only need to listen to the good smart people or something like that. And it's just like it's like anti-person, or and then someone in this chat's like, yeah, and it's just like holier than thou or like sanctimonious. I'm like, both of you are dumb. Yeah, that's why you would be completely removed from any policy making. Stop! You guys combined have an IQ of 130. You would not be you would just enjoy the benefits of Marxism-Leninism. Please shut the fuck up about whole holier than thou fucking academic bourgeoisie people. Holy shit, the Lenin was literally referring to the bourgeoisie intelligentsia as in as much as he was talking about Marxists who wrote journals for other Marxists and things like that. It's subject matter experts and people who are in fact smarter than you, and that is okay. Keppy, there's there's should I be in charge of nuclear reactors? No. In in a no, I shouldn't be. I don't know what it takes. Some people are subject matter experts when it comes to that stuff. I'm not a fucking economist. I am not. There are some subject matter expert uh expertise I have, and that might be in graphic design and conspiracy theories. So I could see me on a council for like maybe propaganda or something, just sort of like, like, well, don't say that because you're gonna activate the the fucking reptile brain of like 30% of the population. Use this verbiage instead of that. Oh fuck. I could see me being being uh helpful w punching up some notes, but I should be wholly removed from economic policy, science councils, and anything like that.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. I hey, I would fucking clean the toilets in the in the party meeting room bathrooms, you know. I don't I don't care with your tongue. Sure. I That's how much of a Marxist-Leninist you are, yeah. I don't think that that assertion from them is correct either, because even if we go to China today, this would uh they uh to act as if the the CPC excludes the broad masses is completely incorrect. Uh uh people do have a say, not only in their local politics, but in their national politics, and every socialist state has done that. Uh this is like, you know, I've talked about this on my TikTok, but in the Soviet Union, uh this was heavily done through the newspapers. If you had an issue, you brought it up in the newspapers, and then the editors of those newspapers would would uh it was actually their job to not just report on it, but to investigate it, hit up the specific, you know, state organ or whatever that deals with stuff like that, and to try and reconcile it. And so you did have a say. And within your factory, you had a say on the factory newspaper. You know, the the people do have a say. That's why there are neighborhood committees, or like in Cuba, the committees for the defense of the revolution and this, that, and the other thing. It's not like a small group of people having all of the say and just forcing everybody to follow it. That's not the way we act.

SPEAKER_01

And and not only that, I'm not even against that. The nature does not distribute its gifts uh uh evenly, and some people are much smarter than other people, irrespective of education, anything else like that. And I want the super smart people to be in charge of the zero-sum game knife fight that is states in in our current, you know, uh economic worldwide economic modal.

SPEAKER_00

Well, for instance, uh in in the DPRK, um, not everyone has a direct vote, which is something a lot of left comms would like, by the way, is a sort of direct democracy. But what happens is everybody in like one industry, they'll they'll all vote amongst themselves for the person in their factory or but didn't didn't didn't Marx himself say that universal suffrage was like a pipe dream and that doesn't bring you any closer to socialism? I don't remember, honestly.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, he basically he's like, okay, yeah, universal suffrage, and uh which is like sort of a basically direct democracy, right? Everybody has a voice, everybody has a say. Uh what is what that's not meant to be, but it doesn't have to be, right? It's not gonna move the needle for your socialism. It's not gonna happen. You have to get rid of that state.

SPEAKER_00

It's you have to get rid of that state. It's not feasible anyway. You can't have every single person vote on every single issue. I mean, you this it's funny because the people who talk about that are against bureaucracies. Holy shit, if you think a bureaucracy is bad, wait until every single person has to vote on whether or not this person gets executed for being a rapist. I mean, fuck. 100%. It doesn't even make sense.

SPEAKER_01

It doesn't scale. I think that they have yet they because they lack the gift of having the opportunity to apply their theory. Yeah, no. That's why these things, these ideas malinger for century.

SPEAKER_00

Sure, yeah, absolutely. Um what I was gonna say though is the DPRK system's really good because everyone in a factory, they'll vote amongst themselves on who they think in the factory is the best representative of them. And then that person will go on to like the the you know, local people's assembly, and then they vote for the next level up and so on and so forth till you get to the top, you know what I mean? And I I think that that's a a fair system that works good, and it's not direct, but you have a representative to represent you who you voted for in in the assembly, so it it's you know, it it's the direct democracy thing is it's such a weird component.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and and uh I mean what they're really failing to understand is it's like, do you want school elections? Because that's how you get demagogues. You you're gonna get a person that is going to appeal to the lowest common denominator. That's how you get fascism is the the like the people who are then mediating what they say based on public popularity. That is not good, and that's what we have in America, and I would say like that is not what we should have. Like, we should almost never have a politician on camera saying stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because sometimes what's popular and what needs to be done are two different things. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

So it's you know, and these left homes would get together with their direct democracy and vote for Kool-Aid and all the water fountains or something. Right.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, I I don't I I don't think that they um understand the electrolyte, it has electrolytes, it's what plants need.

SPEAKER_01

Kool-Aid does. Kool-Aid has electrolytes? It can. With this scoop of pre-workout that you can get at online use code online leftist to get Stalinade flavor pre-workout or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say that shit don't have electrolytes. That's a bag of sugar and some water. It probably has something in there. You know, I know Gatorade does. Gatorade does, yeah. Gator Gatorade does. Yeah, I don't know. I it though the left comms, they don't there's like they don't understand any practical considerations that have to be made like by ruling communist parties.

SPEAKER_01

I I don't think that that is quite true, and there's a differentiation in between some left comms, like um um salted coke. He's almost not even a left com in the way that people would understand it. He doesn't really have beef with Lenin. He likes Tito, which is why he hates Stalin. Yeah, which is why he hates Stalin, and that's sort of like, brother, let it go.

SPEAKER_00

He differs from us, whereas like he says, like, you know, I like Dung, uh, but like he doesn't consider China to be socialist, but he thinks Dung's like developmental policies are based, right? And that's probably because he's from a country that is not so developed.

SPEAKER_01

I don't think anybody would consider the dictatorship of the proletariat socialism, and even Marx said it would have very many characteristics of capitalism and the social relations of capitalism from Marx's own fucking mouth.

SPEAKER_00

I don't want to speak for him either. I I would have to ask. Marx? No, no, no, no. I'll speak for Marx.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, stop, hey, stop, hey, that dust is just where I wanted.

SPEAKER_00

No, honey, I don't want to take a shower. No, I was gonna say, I'm not sure if Salted considers them to be a DOTP or not. But also, like, Salted people like people like Salted and Kagora, if you remember them, they're not like I always say to both of them, you guys are bad left comms.

SPEAKER_01

They're MLs, basically.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean they're MLs who want counselism. The thing is, is like, yeah, no, uh Salted likes like um the Tito style um uh what what um the fuck was the name of that that the system in Yugoslavia? The um god damn it.

SPEAKER_01

Probably I don't know, but I I can tell you it probably had to do with uh enjoying some kind of root uh as uh some uh a root in your breakfast, like a tuber or something, like a turnip or a carrot, and uh probably some grain alcohol to wash it in.

SPEAKER_00

Uh the work I'm sorry, I was gonna say is that salted is a proponent of the workers' uh self-management of Yugoslavia. Uh sounds stupid. It did work for them. I mean, you know. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Oh really? Well, let me look on the map for Yugoslavia.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Did that really work out? It sounds like another fucking loser revolution. I don't know. I'm sorry, dog.

SPEAKER_00

Then what happened? Then what happened, dog? Yeah. The Yugoslavia, the collapse of Yugoslavia was a very complex thing. I I wouldn't the other day someone was When did it collapse? Uh technically the 90s, the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, so it was wholly dependent on the USSR to exist.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I would argue that they probably wouldn't have bombed Yugoslavia if the USSR did exist. I I do think that that was um, you know, an ugly point. People didn't fuck around uh half as much when the USSR existed. And at that point, I don't know, maybe they had better relations. I think after Stalin died, they were repaired a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

Um but yeah, no, I it's uh it was a NATO intervention that that but to be clear, the systems that Tito set forth ultimately failed and it got balkanized.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, you you could say that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So and yet the belief in that system persists somehow. I don't know. I don't know, you know. How long of a how long of uh how long of a run did they have? Is is is Yugoslavia the best left com example?

SPEAKER_00

I don't consider them to be left calm myself. I wouldn't either. Um, but they they are a fine example of socialism, and I know the MLs that are listening to this are going crazy right now, but let's not play team politics. They did their thing, it was better off under Tito and the Yugoslavian socialist system than it was before and then it was after. And you know, they had issues with Stalin, Stalin had issues with them, but they did do good things for their people, and it shows because many people throughout the Balkans want that back.

SPEAKER_01

Do uh do you so uh one of the things that I've noticed in this is the sort of like the the actual dearth of understanding that most of these left communists have. They're lit literally armchair philosophizers, yes. Uh they they have nothing, but how very many Marxist-Leninists are the same. They're sloganeering, buzzword espousing, uh Stalin edit making, vapid. But at least they're regurgitating something that works. That was the thing. I I would agree that, or I would say venture, that many MLs are just as dogmatic and just sort of the theory-wise, uh impotent theory-wise as the the leftcoms. However, what they are cut and uh uh cut and paste spamming and regurgitating by rote is shit that has some sort of historical precedence for working.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. They're they're basically they have a lot in common with leftcoms. And in fact, it's just recently I saw a Hosius commenting under one of Spon Tech's videos being like, oh, it's so like in light it's so like refreshing to hear this. I'd rather like hear this than the modern day revisionists and blah blah blah. But so it's like, you know, whereas like the left comms are sort of dogmatic with Marx, the um like anti-revisionist MLs like Maoists and Hosjists are just dogmatic with Stalin ML.

SPEAKER_01

Like But they're they're they're the revisionists. Marx wanted a trans a trans a transitional republic that had a lot of characteristics and perpetuated the capitalist social relation to some extent. That's what he saw as inevitable and said, and literally took pains to say. And you should not be put off by this. We should just continue to sort of work on these contradictions. But right now, this is what it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't even think Marx wanted that so much as that's just how he saw history unfolding, and that there really is no way to escape it. But like most of these people, like, they don't treat theory and practice as if the two have a unity, right? Through practice, Marxism-Leninism has been proven to be one of the most successful revolutionary socialist movements, and we understand that. However, in the modern day, if you just deny all of the gains, all of the theories from modern Marxists, or in the left comms case, if you deny anything from Lenin on, I would argue that you're not a Marxist anymore. Because we've go on.

SPEAKER_01

You're a religious regurgitator of historical materialism from a hundred years ago. Yeah, and which makes you completely worthless. You're like you're like an internet explorer meme. Yeah, you're you're like internet, you're a hundred years late with the joke. Brother, we we heard that a hundred years ago. There have been many new developments since then.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and it leads these people into a position where they then begin to be anti-communist because and they they you know, blank they have a blanket condem condemnation of anybody who's actually attempted to put Marxism into practice, which of course is not ever going to look as great as the ideal itself, because reality is messy, right? We live in a very messy reality. Um so it's like the it's almost treating Marxism like an abstract and static ideal rather than an actual movement to liberate the working class.

SPEAKER_01

And it's they're applying it in a utopian sense, as an idealized final state uh and not a sort of foot in the door to get there and sort of emanatize that situation.

SPEAKER_00

They do engage in utopianism, sort of building a blueprint for a perfect society in their head, and they absolutely do engage in idealism, yes.

SPEAKER_01

And that seems like something that Marx as fastidiously as he it would attack something like the idea of wages and uh labor and use and exchange value and everything else like that, he could like write a billion words on each topic when left to like what should be done or what the state should do, he was like, question mark. You you're gonna have to figure that we're gonna see. Because it and it was very interesting in State and Revolution, the sort of the the dynamic nature. Now you've pu uh pointed out in the past how Marx shifted where he thought the loci of revolutionary potential was, right? He initially thought it was in the hyper-developed, then hyperdeveloped England and Germany and and cosmopolitan areas, and that shifted over the over his lifetime, and he had similarly had a shift to what he thought about the Paris Commune pre-uh 1848 and after. After he had a very different idea, he's like, oh well, actually, or was that the uh the 1871? I think it was the 1870s. 1871. 1871, where he's like, this is gonna be disastrous, and he even like wrote against it, and then uh after it, he's like, Well, hold on, this is actually based as fuck.

SPEAKER_00

So I think 1871, I think is that's that's when they because right beat what like that was an example to Marx and Engels, and then after it failed, they were like, No, like this was a good example of a dictatorship of the proletariat, but it needs more authority and centralization. You know what I mean? Right, not less. And and then and they were also like, you also have to smash the bourgeois state and then build your own, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

And you also have to watch out for uh uh ironically rearguard anarchists. Oh yeah. They'll fuck you. Who ally with so there's a couple questions here, and I don't want to get too too nitty in uh the details of it. Uh when uh uh and say yes or no, can you briefly describe what the bureaucracy was? Because it seems Marx, Engels, and Lenin were all railing against bureaucracy. It seems like they wanted the same thing, but only people that had workers' wages and not salaries. Would that be fair? What with bureaucracy wait, what do you mean? Yeah, with bureauc bureaucrats. What the fuck is a bureaucrat according to Marx? Because I just see it as somebody who like handles the necessary paperwork for a specific task or branch.

SPEAKER_00

The thing is, is bureaucracy is bad, but bureaucracy is inevitable in any sort of big system that you're gonna have. It's hard to escape.

SPEAKER_01

So, like the Soviet Union. I didn't really get I was I was mentally disconnecting from that when I've been reading these last couple books. I'm like, okay, yeah, but but you're you're gonna have paperwork, dog. You're like bureaucrats.

SPEAKER_00

Like, I don't understand. These countries always fault the bureaucracy. You do have to try and limit that as much as you can.

SPEAKER_01

And bureaucrats are bad because they they're like careerists, they'll get a job, they'll fucking I would say like it's it's bad in that it becomes a vector by which people can get useless jobs, useless appointed jobs. They can siphon money off of um the the coffers by appointing their cousins to be the czar of nothing, the czar of carrots and bobby bobby bottom. We've all been to a DMV. It's fucking awful. You know what I mean? So I I low key I don't even think DMVs are that bad. It's one place that's uh pretty much you can reconcile almost everything wrong with your car and your driver's license and everything wrong.

SPEAKER_00

They go to this window and then they send you to that one and you gotta fill out this paperwork and then you get called over here and over there. You know what I mean? And where it is bad, it's sort of by design, I feel like.

SPEAKER_01

It's a poor design. Um yeah. Or it done intentionally. Okay, but like let's get back. Oh, so there's also so okay, so bureaucra I I I was sort of disconnecting when they were anti-bu bureaucracy. I was like, oh, I don't know how you're gonna get around that. You're your solution to it is just to get rid of salaries and replace it with wages. It seems like that's all I heard. We're all implement position people there and have it be led like the the post office and have people get wages commensurate with other other similar work, whatever. I'm like, okay, that I'm fine with that, but that doesn't change what the task is. And the task is dealing around with fucking uh liaison and do liaising and doing paperwork and shit.

SPEAKER_00

I I would say that all Marxists are you know against bureaucracy, but we recognize that this isn't uh you know an uh an un um how could I put it? Uh it's just a it's a fact of reality. It's it's that you're going to bureaucracies are going to develop. The best you could do is like what China does, that's why they do the anti-corruption campaigns, is to get rid of those people and get rid of the worthless ones. Sure. And then you could democratize the system more. I mean Stalin had a struggle against a bureaucracy in the 1930s, um, which ultimately failed. He was outmaneuvered by people within the by the bureaucrats within the party, by the revisionists.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, I'm gonna get it back on track here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is not to say I'm not pro-bureaucracy, I'm just kind of wondering what they meant. Uh and then also there was another um thing that tubs uh comes up, which is opportunists, right? And could we call those people who are sort of like populist demagogues of a sense? They were saying popular things for political gain, but in in the end they were sort of sheepdogs. Is that what opportunists were? People who were saying things that were currently in the zeitgeist and popular, saying flowery revolutionary things, but sort of defaulting back to bourgeoisie tendencies like a la Bernie Sanders and AOC just sheepdogs.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think you could consider that an opportunity. There are a few tur there are a few types of people we could use that term for, and that's definitely one of them. I I do think that would be correct. Um I'm trying to think of another good example for opportunism for you, but like when I I'm I'm like my brain is like blank. I Mao engaged in some opportunism near the end of his life. Certain or uh certain um countries and and movements that they supported uh I would consider to be opportunistic.

SPEAKER_01

Um where the pill where the meat of what they were doing did not match their rationale for it and it was in violation of the principles of Marxism. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, basically. Basically, I think that would be correct.

SPEAKER_01

So you could argue that our uh opportunist is a popular revisionist, a politically popular revisionist.

SPEAKER_00

So opportunism and revisionism go hand in hand. I don't think you have to necessarily be a revisionist to be an opportunist, but yes, revisionists are opportunists.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Uh all right, so we've talked about the different types of uh left comms, councilists, borders, and communizers. Communizers are effectively a meme. They want instant, at least they're better. Some of them believe in a transitionary state, some of them they I we've already covered communizer, didn't we? Or did we not do that one? We didn't yet.

SPEAKER_00

But we've talked about communizers before.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Okay, so what is so and versus ML deviations, Maoism, uh, Hosism, and Trotskyism, do they share things in common? Where do they depart? We kind of have left comms ever had revolutions?

SPEAKER_00

Well, so yeah, with the first one we've we've already kind of talked about the because we were just uh riffing about.

SPEAKER_01

Do they do they share things in common? What are the things that Maoists uh so specifically were talking? That's the thing. I saw a thing about Maoism, and I really got to thinking about Maoism earlier, and we don't have the same energy for other people who say they're Maoists as we do as people who are Gonzalo whites. Gonzalo whites are just like a sort of like a bunch of thugs who are just doing shit and and and barely having a Marxian rationale for what they're doing. They're not even a good example. So uh Maoists, I don't even know how you have to kind of take them on a case-by-case basis, huh?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you do. You do. And some of them are a little more like open to the idea that like, hey, maybe China's actually not like capitalist and revisionist, but uh generally speaking, um the all of these fall uh under an ultra-left deviation and they're all dogmatic, right? Which it's it's something Mao called uh dogmato-revisionism.

SPEAKER_01

Um what's the difference between what's the what's the difference in between a fledgling communist party that is fight actually has a shot, is in like let's say the southern hemisphere and is organizing against their autocratic government to overthrow it. Wouldn't they just be called a Maoist nowadays?

SPEAKER_00

Not necessarily. It depends on uh because a Maoist is someone who takes protracted people's war as a universal principle of Marxism, which you protracted people's war works well in certain conditions, so if some people can pull that off, particularly in agrarian countries, then you do that. But I think throughout most of the world these days, it's not really applicable. So it it's you can't call that universal. Like, think of here in America, it would not be. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um so hypothetically, these same people, if they woke up and there was a sort of a uh a rapture situation and their current government was gone and they seize power, by their own definition, they would not be Marxists anymore because they were able to implement their goals without a protracted war.

SPEAKER_00

They would still be like they would still be Maoists because they would still continue. The the the issue with Maoice is they reject any any sort of practical concessions that Marxist Leninists have to make. So like with China and they're opening up in reform. Maoists are very against that because that doesn't that the primary stage of socialism to Maoists is not a thing. They they they're like, no, you're either socialist or you're capitalist, right? They sort of themselves reject this transitional phase. They don't reject transitional phases in general, but they they're they see what Dung did as a uh vulgarization of Marxism, essentially.

SPEAKER_01

So they feel like, well, that's why they call themselves Maoists, right? Because in in that position, they defy Marx.

SPEAKER_00

They I would argue that everyone we're talking about defies Marxism because I agree they're not utilizing materialist dialectics, they're treating it like a competent fucking beta leftcoms who's like, go read Marx.

SPEAKER_01

I read Marx, I'm like, I am more affirmed in my position than ever before. Have you guys read this? I don't understand. Or are they reading leftcom Cliff Notes for understanding what Marx means and just getting the whole thing fucked up?

SPEAKER_00

So there's there's two ways to do this. One, you read people like Marx and you understand what Marx was saying in his time and space, and then you utilize that methodology that you observed Marx demonstrating, and you look at the world you live in today to try and figure out what to do. On the other hand, you could just open up a book by Marx or say Mao or Stalin, and you could read it, and then you could just try and apply that to our current conditions, and anything that violates that is revisionism.

SPEAKER_01

You know what I mean? So that's not Marxism. But they're not even doing that because they're not for transitionary republics. Well d who? Which is what Marxists are the left comps.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No, well, I think that they would argue that we're they're I don't know, they're they're fairly confusing.

SPEAKER_01

They're confusing and they're not, they they all have different rationales, and honestly, it feels like it's just a thing that they put in their bio. It's just a fucking thing that they put in their bio.

SPEAKER_00

The thing is, is it's so it's compatible, and all of the above, whether it's left comms, Maoists, Hosjists, they all come under Marxist-Leninists, you know, posts on the internet or wherever, and they literally regurgitate the same type of shit that you'll read in the Western media. You know what I mean? So they they end up becoming anti-communists, they are left anti-communists.

SPEAKER_01

So which brings up to the next uh next one here. So we already know have left comms ever had revolutions? No. No. Right? No, so that that one's easy. Let's not even fucking waste time. No, they're big fucking goose eggs, they're not even like fucking losers, they're like never did anything. Which is like worst. At least fucking losers tried. They had to be they had to have some skin in the game in order to fucking lose. Leftcoms aren't even fucking losers, they're literally fucking idealist LARPers, which is like so infinitely more fucking cringe. If these left comms, like, if I saw earnestly left comms trying to overthrow a bourgeois government, I'd be like, okay, well, fucking look, Loki, I'm not really gonna fucking say much about this because I like what I'm seeing. We'd help them. Literally, like, I like that. No, I like that, but these loser LARPers never even did that. No. They they like they they like impotent fucking armchair philosophy. They're like literally, they're anti-action, anti anti-praxis, and ultimately anti-Marxist.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, like I said earlier, they've divorced um theory from practi from practice, which is like because that's everything is theory, theory, theory, but Mark said this, Mark said that, and it's like, okay. But the theory has to be put into practice, and then we have to look at that practice and adjust the theory based on that practice and put it back into practice, and it's that never-ending cycle of theory into practice and practice into theory and theory into practice and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um but not only that, um, if they what I would argue is like, let's say they're right that commodity production makes it not a uh it's a degenerated worker state or whatever, it's like, okay, you would still chomp at the bit to even enact that anywhere you're from. So like, like please shut up, number one, and number two, that creates a new um a new structure by which it that eman emanate emanatizes it creates a new structure which then emanatizes the potentiality for the next contradiction, for the next phase of government which would reconcile some of those contradictions born of the first one.

SPEAKER_00

And I'll tell you what, if I have to live in a world where there only exists capitalist states and degenerated worker states, I'm going to pick the degenerated worker state every fucking time.

SPEAKER_01

Even though that's a nonsense phrase, like that's just nonsense. That's uh still choose it. I would no 100%, yes, I would still choose it, but also it's an it's a nonsense Nothingberg statement. Um left anti-communism, usually uh go ahead. What is left anti-communism? Yeah, right and uh what are the things they share uh uh in common with some of the Marxist left comms?

SPEAKER_00

So uh Michael Parenti talks about uh left anti-communism in black shirts and reds, but he's generally speaking about non-Marxist socialists who don't like the Soviet Union. However, when he talks about Anarchists? Yeah, stuff like that, yeah. Um I don't think he has necessarily like the Bordigist Council communists and communizers in mind. However, when he talks about the quote unquote pure socialists, right, that i like is literally on point um like with how I feel about these people, right? When he says he says um I did read that chapter. Yeah, but the best part is when he says, I quote, the pure socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves would directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

SPEAKER_01

Their only criteria for what a state is and what they would do is a check mark of things that they're mad at other successful revolutions for doing. Yeah. That's it. And that they don't have policy other than the ones that they're mad about.

SPEAKER_00

That quote is so good because it's it's it's we can it's applicable to left comms, anarchists, mao like every everyone, everyone who's out here going there's no such thing as actually existing socialism. This is all capitalism. It's like, okay. So how please show us how it's done.

SPEAKER_01

Mark said the transitionary state would have would have aspects of the social capital relationship. He's fucking said that over and over again.

SPEAKER_00

But then people want to get into okay, but the transitional phase wasn't supposed to last this long, or the transitional phase was supposed to look like this or that, and it's like Where did it say that? It seems like he left it uh oblique on purpose. Say that Marx did say, hey, the transitional phase will be like a year, and then say that when we tried it in practice in our current conditions, it lasted more than a year. Well, what's correct then?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Marx does not benefit from the the long view of history that we had. He was calling balls and strikes in real time, and we saw uh what he called this or that change in real time when he had new examples to look at. We have manifold more examples to view, and many you and I had can re go through comb through the books and find many more failed revolutions than Marx had the benefit of learning from.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yeah. Especially now that we've seen we've seen the Soviet Union and all of the it's we have it's that's what I mean. It's it's not only the social Soviet Union, but the response to it. Sure, yeah. Which is it's fucking wild. Um But no, and and and like you said before, Marx was not a rigid thinker at all. Um Mark, you know, again, Marx informed his theory with experience, with practice, which is why they changed their views with the Paris Commune. So I don't care if Marx said the dictatorship of the proletariat or the lower phase of communism will look like this or that, but then in practice, when we actually do it and we have to grapple with reality, and there's all these practical considerations and external and internal contradictions and issues that spring up, and so we have to do it a little bit differently. Like that that's Marxism is like learning. And also he didn't.

SPEAKER_01

And that's that that's a nice concession. Or if he had, that's a rationale to explain to them why it worked out differently than he had said, but he didn't say.

SPEAKER_00

No, not not really. He marks had very little to say about what socialism would look like. No, he was very interested in the dictatorship of the proletariat. And even with that, he didn't, you know, again, that we he didn't talk too much about that stuff. Marx criticized capitalism. That was his biggest thing, you know. It was Lenin's.

SPEAKER_01

Is that why Marx as a figure is so much more palatable and accessible to these left comms, these sort of non-Marxian leftists and anarchists and everything, because he gives such a succinct criticism of capital?

SPEAKER_00

I think, yeah, and I think if Marx were to lead a revolution and govern a society, they would fucking hate him because he would have done things that were practical at the time that furthered the revolution, but that didn't that doesn't align with how left comms view the world. They would call him a hypocrite. They would instantly, they were he would be reviled like Stalin was. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. He just didn't ever have he wasn't ever in the position to be reviled like that. Okay, why is left communism relevant today? So I would argue it's not when you're organizing in real life. Outside the internet, you don't run into these people, and even the anarchists that I used to organize with in the IWW, they support they're better than left comms. They're about they're like Cuba-based, the Black Panther Party based, Venezuela-based, like they, you know what I mean? They have a head on their shoulders.

SPEAKER_01

But on the internet, these fuckers Especially the ones who are organized and working and know understand about beneficial compromises which move the needle. Yeah. They understand how non-Western states coming into ascendancy is a net gain for everybody.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, it's it's the I guess the answer to the question is the the only place that they're relevant is on the internet. It's and and even then only on TikTok. Um and like Reddit? You find them on Reddit, but they have their own subreddits. They don't come crawling and you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

But you run into them, but Lefcoms only exist to fucking eat cloud off of MLs. It's sad and it's weird. Yeah, no, and all the and all of their followers are liberals. It's fucking bro. Take a shower and go on a date, dog. You left comms are fucking worthless. Yeah, no. Literally, there's no point for them to be alive. Like the state of the the the marks the state of Marxist organizing would be infinitely better if they all instantly disappeared.

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, I agree. And you know, it it doesn't matter what they think about this, that, or the other thing. History will keep moving, China will keep moving, these countries, you know, like places like um that they don't approve of will keep on moving on and doing their thing, and and the multipolar world that they, you know, they all multipolarism is bad. It's like, okay, well, it's a fact of reality right now. It's happening whether you like it or not.

SPEAKER_01

So this and it's so bizarre, so bizarre. Okay, so can MLs and Lefcoms work together? Probably not.

SPEAKER_00

Probably not.

SPEAKER_01

Probably not.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, you know, uh it depends.

SPEAKER_01

I will say this. Can I say a controversial thing? Sure. Happy am I allowed to? Most of these left comms would shut the fuck up if they had access to a party that was traditionally Marxist-Leninist that had some fucking clout and they saw them actually doing stuff, they they would shut the fuck up and get online.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, not controversial at all.

SPEAKER_01

Not controversial.

SPEAKER_00

I do think in the West, it's easy to get disillusioned because in America, bro, we're fucked, and there is no like there is no perfect party. All of these parties fucking sucks. CPUSA sucks, ACP sucks, PSL sucks. All of them have their issues. I like the PSL more than the other ones, but but you know, they all suck. Everything after the Black Panther party was fucking awful. And so I get it.

SPEAKER_01

But even though even those parties are sort of have been encapsulated and removed from the actual politic in America. Yeah. They're not platformed, they're not in debates, they don't hold congressional seats. They are there's a firewall. A lot of them have been infiltrated and declawed. That yes, however, it's not there's no communist party with clout that's doing stuff that is politically viable here. And is that is that true of every Western, every Western country?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, yeah, I would say so. I I do think though, yeah, if these people like joined a party and it benefited them in their life and they were able to help working class people and and actually further along this process of building a new world, I think they would look differently on it.

SPEAKER_01

A hundred percent, yes, because they're literally idealists who are fully divorced from participating in politics. They have no idea how to legislate, they have no idea what policies actually all they can offer are vague, nebulous, oh, a country should do this. Yeah, like okay, how would you enact that? I don't know. They don't know. All they have are critiques of successful revolutions, they have no policy in and of themselves, and they have no political viability. Is left communism purely a thing that is facilitated within liberalism?

SPEAKER_00

Um I'm not sure, but I'm comfortable enough to say that at the very least it is a rejection of Marxism-Leninism. But whether or not it has to because it it what I would say it wasn't born out of liberalism, but these days it has I feel like left comms have more in common with liberals. Yes. And they're very anti-communist, and you know what I mean? They re they reject all of the necessary things. That's that's the most annoying thing. If if you reject Go ahead. This is the last thing I'm gonna say. If if they if you reject centralization and strict party discipline and etc., then what do you have? Because all of the revolutions up until this point that were successful would not have lasted a single fucking month if not for those things.

SPEAKER_01

And not only that, Cappy, like I'm thinking about like like a Maoist who would rejects a vanguard and yet they're in a party that has a hundred members.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Brother, you are the vanguard. Like, what do you mean? Like hey, I like them more than the left comms, though. I no, I I honestly have very little beef with the Maoists. Like, go ahead, topple that government, go ahead. I don't, I'm not even mad at you, dog. Go for it.

SPEAKER_00

Especially the ones in the Philippines and India. They're doing their thing.

SPEAKER_01

It may have been the last 70 years they've been doing it, but shout out to the proud uh people of Kerala, of whom I am a uh distant they're uh my distant ancestors in Kerala, India. Yeah. Based, yeah. Yeah, point 0.02% for the record, somehow. There's a story there somewhere. I don't know. Um why should we support actual oh uh but the thing is with like with these like Maoists, you're it's like you're against central centralization and you're against vanguardism. Some of them might say yes, it's like brother, there's 30 of you making pamphlets. Who are who in your party are you against? Yeah. I mean, I don't think what do you what you are the council?

SPEAKER_00

I don't think Maoists would necessarily say they're against it, but they do cr like like you said, Mayo is criticizing the you know, I guess, idea of a vanguard that Marxist Leninists have in the modern day, which is it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01

Right, but uh yeah, I I don't even know what this I don't even know what to say to those people because like everything especially like anarchists who are against like central uh Vanguard or whatever. I don't I don't even know like brother, like you're everything that you guys organize for is committees and councils. It's just that, but with the what the party position is, what are you talking about? No, but it's bad somehow.

SPEAKER_00

We're just centralizing all of that under a party leadership.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah. It makes more sense. It's more efficient. Are these so again, are these people their their problems seem to be largely born out of being born in a system and learning through osmosis to be reflexively anti-communist?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I would say that it's a lot of uh just left over bourgeois individualism and the fact that they haven't deconstructed their liberal worldview enough yet.

SPEAKER_01

And uh low test. It could be, I don't know. It could be. Yeah, I'm thinking so. Um okay, so why should we ex uh last question here? Why should we support actual existing socialist movements despite any flaws they might have, Cappy?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean it's quite simple. Yeah, I just said it before. You don't get to call yourself a Marxist if you don't support the people, the parties, and the movements that actually attempted to implement Marxism in reality. It's that simple. The fact of the matter is that we live in a world where these countries have tried their best to implement Marxism, to liberate the working class, to feed people, to clothe people, to house people, to eradicate poverty, to produce according to need, and to build societies that are far better than the one we currently live under. And so I I I just don't get at all why you wouldn't support that. It may not be perfect, there may be issues, reality is imperfect, reality has issues. This is this is fucking history. You're never going to get a perfect revolution. So you might as well at least put your lot in with a revolution that's fucking doing something to liberate people.

SPEAKER_01

Now, Cappy, so uh the majority of these left comms are people who can't buy alcohol yet. So keeping that in mind, what should they do if they if they heard anything and any of this broke through their sort of bad internalization of uh Marxism hitherto hearing this podcast? What should they do if there is a left comm who's curious? What would get them on the right course?

SPEAKER_00

I think honestly, engaging with the current reality we live in and trying to utilize Marx's materialist method to analyze the situation. You know what I mean? Rather than just regurgitating a book that they read from 200 years ago, actually think about what's going on here today and think about how we could move human society forward, because that's what we all want. And second of all, don't be afraid to fucking read someone like Lenin or Mao or Stalin. I mean, you may not agree with all of it, but there's something that you're going to gain from it. There has to be something in there you're going to agree with. I didn't like any of those fellas at one time either. And guess what? I read them and I said, I'm an idiot.

SPEAKER_01

And they're bitches. All right, Cappy, is there anything else you want to say to these people?

SPEAKER_00

Uh no, that's it.

SPEAKER_01

Alright, get the fuck out of here. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye bye.