In our second session, we discuss Domenico Losurdo's theory of the birth of Western Marxism as a response to the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We begin with a few remarks on the Marxist theory of intellectuals and power, particularly how imperialism fragments the intellectual in relationship to the working class. We then discuss Losurdo's arguments about how western and eastern Marxism begin to take form and contrast one another in terms of the national struggle, state theory, messianism, and priorities of emancipation.

We discuss Losurdo's theory that, at least in practice, western Marxists develop an anarchist political practice. Our aim in this study group is to learn the practical challenges facing Marxist politics in our time. Please join our Patreon to study this text with us: https://www.patreon.com/torsiongroups 

We are discussing Domenico Losurdo's newly translated work, Western Marxism: How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn in a public study group. Our aim is to learn the practical challenges facing Marxist politics in our time through a close reading method. Each session begins with a brief talk on the salient themes and concepts and then proceeds to group discussion. Order the book from the Monthly Review. Learn more about how to get involved and support us at (https://www.patreon.com/torsiongroups). 

We are joined by Aymeric Monville, author of Neocapitalism According to Michel Clouscard and publisher of Delga Editions to discuss the work of French Marxist philosopher Michel Clouscard. In this interview, we discuss Clouscard's thought, his major works, concepts and ideas. Michel Clouscard was a prominent French Marxist philosopher whose work aimed to reveal the collusion between capitalism and French theory, represented by thinkers ranging from Lévi-Strauss, Lacan to Deleuze, constructing his own concept of neo-Kantianism to describe these thinkers. Clouscard developed a philosophical approach around the idea of the social contract and was highly influenced by the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx, he postulated that "the constitutive principle of any society is the relation between production and consumption".

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Chapters:

• Clouscard's Critique of French Theory

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We are joined by philosopher Stuart Blaney to discuss the thought of Jacques Rancière, his work on 19th century worker autodidacts and his theories of emancipation, aesthetics and equality. This conversation is based around a forthcoming book by Stuart Blaney that is entitled, Equality and Freedom in Rancière and Foucault with Bloomsbury Books.

Please join our Patreon community to get early access to our interviews and seminars (https://www.patreon.com/torsiongroups).

We explore the big philosophical questions at the heart of Marxism. Does Marxism require a supplementary philosophy such as Nietzscheanism or Freudianism to properly ground its practice? How have the changing material conditions post-2008 shaped Marxist thought and practice? What is the best Marxist response to speculative realism, a major movement in contemporary philosophy? To explore these questions we are joined by Marxist scholar and writer Conrad Hamilton who is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at East China Normal University.

Hamilton is the author of the forthcoming book, Marxism Contra Subjectivity (forthcoming from Brill) which looks at the philosophical impasses facing Marxism in a post-2008 conjuncture, with a particular focus on speculative realism, Althusserianism and different strains of French Marxism. We begin our discussion with Hamilton's analysis of Nietzsche's place in Marxism after World War II. We focus on Hamilton's recent essay on Nietzsche and French thought and his review of my book How to Read Like a Parasite. We then discuss some of the ideas in his forthcoming book on Marxism, philosophy and epistemology. Stay tuned for a symposium on Hamilton's book hosted by our study collective when it comes out.

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Chapters:

0:00 - Introduction to Conrad Hamilton

4:11 - Recurrent Reaction: Nietzsche and the Thought of the French Middle Strata

21:10 - Nietzschean Appropriations and Marxism after World War II

30:17 - The Problems with the Nietzschean "extra class" left

48:30 - Does Marxism require a comprehensive philosophy?

1:12:10 - Speculative Realism, Real Abstraction and Marxism post-2008

1:22:20 - Where is the subject of the proletariat today?

1:43:50 - Why does philosophy matter to political Marxism?

Show Notes:

"The Monsters We Become" by Conrad Hamilton (https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/05/the-monsters-we-become-on-how-to-read-like-a-parasite)

"Recurrent Reaction: Nietzsche and the Thought of the French Middle Strata" by Conrad Hamilton (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-13635-1)

We welcome Marxist philosopher John McClendon to the show for an in-depth conversation on his philosophical outlook, his work on African American philosophy, and the role of philosophy in Marxist thought and practice. We then discuss McClendon's important book on C.L.R. James's Notes on Dialectics and its implications for Marxist philosophy in our time. If you found this conversation valuable please consider supporting us on a monthly basis at our Patreon.

The postwar period witnessed a renaissance in Nietzschean thought and interpretation, most notably with the French postmodernist readings generated by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. But what drove the French Nietzschean renaissance was in many ways supported by the work of two Italian philologists Giorgio Colli and his former student Mazzino Montinari, and their lifelong translation of Nietzsche's unpublished material and key main works. To tell this story, we are joined by German Cultural Historian Philipp Felsch to discuss his newly translated book How Nietzsche Came in from the Cold: Tale of a Redemption, published by Polity Press in June 2024.

In this newly translated book, Felsch retraces the journey of two Italian editors, Giorgio Colli and his former student Mazzino Montinari and their efforts to translate the unpublished material of Nietzsche. Felsch tells a gripping and unlikely story of how one of Europe’s most controversial philosophers was resurrected from the baleful clutch of the and transformed into an icon of postmodern thought. Order How Nietzsche Came in from the Cold.

We are joined by scholar and socialist thinker Tony, creator of ‪@1Dimee‬, an important YouTube channel that offers educational videos for a mass popular audience. In this discussion, Tony and host Daniel Tutt discuss his research, writing and video work around The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 - 67. We examine what gave rise to the Cultural Revolution, what it tells us about class struggle and class as a political category vs. an economic category. We also broach how the Cultural Revolution has seeped into Europe, America and beyond.

For background, watch Tony's documentary on "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" ‪and the second video "Why the Cultural Revolution Failed: Lessons for Leftists."

We welcome the poet laureate of Vermont, Bianca Stone to the show for a conversation on poetry and psychoanalysis. In recent years, Bianca has turned to psychoanalysis as a way to teach poetry and as a method to better understand the process of writing poetry. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how poetry relates to philosophy and politics, how to interpret poems, what the process of writing a poem is for Bianca, and much more!

John Ashbery has said that Bianca Stone is "a brilliant transcriber of her generation’s emerging pathology and sensibility" and her work has been featured in numerous publications, from the New Yorker to Poetry Magazine, and her poems have been featured in numerous literary magazines. She is the Director of the Ruth Stone House up in Vermont, check it out: https://ruthstonehouse.org.

We are joined by political theorist Benjamin Studebaker to discuss his book, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut, a sharp and accessible work on the political deadlocks of our present. The American economic system is slowly subjecting Americans to enormous amounts of stress, and the United States lacks the state capacity required to alleviate this stress. The elites and oligarchs have created a system that encourages citizens to blame each other. The crisis cannot be solved, the economy cannot be set right, and democracy cannot be saved. But American democracy cannot be killed, either.

In this conversation, we discuss how professionals can incorporate political rhetoric that does not alienate workers or pander to them as they seek to develop practical strategies for political change. We discuss the idea of the revolutionary subject and its viability today; why economic egalitarianism is seemingly impossible to advocate in the current system; the meaning of the subaltern (in Gramsci's sense) and how we can understand the disempowering effects of our system as one in which more and more people are made into subalterns and deprived of full citizenship. We also debate the role of the Gaza conflict and the student protests.