Fault Lines Politics Podcast: Political Theory Through The Ages

Note: This episode was, after several reschedules, recorded via Whatsapp Audio Call, with Charles joining me from Cuba at 4 in the morning his time. Although we chose the most reliable means of communication, and editing has helped, the call cut out at points and there are several moments in the podcast where the audio crackles or glitches. I’m grateful to Charles for his patience, and I hope you find the conversation I valuable as we did.

In this episode, Charles McKelvey and I discuss Cuba’s political system of people’s democracy, the historical development of the Cuban Revolution, and the ongoing struggle for socialism in the 21st century. The conversation draws on Charles’s 25 years of travel to and study of Cuba, and covers the realities of life under the US blockade, how Cuba’s democratic system actually works, and why the Western left has failed to understand it.

We explore:

* From conservatism to socialism – Charles’s intellectual journey from a conservative upbringing in 1950s Philadelphia, through the anti-war and Black Power movements, to the Centre for Inner City Studies in Chicago, and finally to Cuba.

* Life under the blockade – What daily life is like in Cuba right now and the determination of the Cuban people to endure.

* Cuba’s people’s democracy – How the political system works: direct elections to 168 municipal assemblies across 12,422 local voting districts, with 85–95% participation, and a National Assembly that holds the highest authority in the nation.

* The Communist Party’s role – How the Party selects its members (approximately 15% of the population), educates, guides, and recommends - but does not decide. Only the National Assembly, elected by the people, has the authority to decide.

* Fidel and the Revolution – How the 1959 revolution became socialist, the role of Fidel’s leadership, and the agrarian reform that made the revolution anti-neocolonial.

* Surviving the Special Period – How Cuba endured the collapse of the Soviet Union, and why the political system of people’s democracy was the foundation of its survival.

* Cuba’s achievements – Healthcare, education, science, and the commitment to equality through free, universal education.

* What Cuba got wrong – In Charles’ view, the failure to explain the Cuban system to the world, and the cultural challenge of the work ethic.

* The Western left’s failure – Why the Western left has failed to understand and explain Cuba’s political system, and the Eurocentrism that underpins this.

* Pragmatic socialism – Cuba’s mixed economy: state direction, private enterprise, and foreign investment, and how this compares to China and Vietnam.

* The blockade and the future – Why Charles believes the blockade is not eternal, and what a shift in US policy toward Cuba might look like.

Charles McKelvey is a retired college professor from the United States who has spent the past 25 years travelling extensively to Cuba, seeking to understand its political-economic-cultural system and writing clear explanations for the English-speaking world. He is the author of the Substack column Knowledge, Ideology, and Real Socialism in Our Times, where he provides commentaries on Cuba, the USA, and the anti-imperialist drive of the Global South from a Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist perspective.

You can find Charles’s work here:

Charles’ other work:

The MAGA Phenomenon: A Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist Analysis

People’s Democracy in Cuba

Global Learning, Vanguard Press

For my written views on Cuba, you can find my piece on Che Guevara here:

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In this episode, journalist Daniel Trilling and I discuss his book If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. The conversation covers the definition of the far right, the “impossible promise” of far-right populism, how the Conservatives self-radicalised, Labour’s politics of fear, and whether the far right can be stopped.

We explore:

* Defining the far right – Using Cas Mudde’s framework to distinguish between the extreme right and the radical right, and why this distinction matters.

* The “impossible promise” – How the far right offers revolution that restores the status quo, and why this contradiction makes it both dangerous and unstable.

* The role of emotion – Drawing on Robert Paxton’s “mobilising passions” to understand how the far right foregrounds emotion over rational thought.

* Liberal democracy and capitalism – Why the combination of representative democracy and an unequal economic system creates fertile ground for the far right.

* How the Conservatives opened the door – From Thatcher’s “swamped” comment to Brexit and beyond, how the Tories went from tactically containing the far right to amplifying it.

* How Labour failed – The politics of fear, Blue Labour, and why Mandelson’s “they’ve got nowhere else to go” was so damaging.

* Jesters and grifters – How the media ecosystem has changed, and how Nigel Farage has become a hybrid of both.

* Zia Yusuf and minority figures – The citizen/non-citizen distinction, and why ethnic background doesn’t prevent someone from embracing far-right politics.

* The future – Why the far right is more fragile than it looks, and what a progressive alternative might require.

Daniel Trilling is an award-winning journalist who has been covering far-right politics in Britain and beyond since the late 2000s. He has written for the London Review of Books, The Guardian, openDemocracy, and the New Statesman, among others. His work has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is the author of three books: Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain’s Far Right, Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe, and If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable.

You can also find out more about Daniel here:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/trillingual

Twitter/X - https://x.com/trillingual?s=20

Personal Website - https://danieltrilling.co.uk/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAad5lkmAHkPLTsJoaZuW47bUNfUGvdupTljaohKQr6_4cPVdmk8144g0aW6TAA_aem_YnTk9Q3pNdloIutRnKWSsQ

For those interested in the topic, you can find Cas Mudde’s book The Far Right Today here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Far-Right-Today-Cas-Mudde/dp/1509536841/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

As well as Paxton’s work The Anatomy of Fascism here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/54710/the-anatomy-of-fascism-by-robert-o-paxton/9780141014326

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In this episode, historian and human rights barrister Dr David Renton and I discuss his book The Anti-Fascist Novel in Britain 1923-2023. The conversation covers the definition of fascism, the seduction of fascist ideology, the ethics of violence and no‑platform, and the role of class, culture, and internationalism in anti‑fascist resistance.

We explore:

* What is an anti‑fascist novel? - How fiction offers a different route to explaining the past, letting us get inside the minds of people who make bad choices and understand why they made them.

* Defining fascism - The distinction between fascism and the broader far right, and whether figures like Trump, Netanyahu, Tommy Robinson, and Elon Musk qualify.

* The seduction of fascism - Why people are drawn to fascist movements, through personality, belonging, and the demand for loyalty, and what this tells us about recruitment today.

* Violence and no‑platform - The ethics of anti‑fascist tactics, the limits of no‑platforming, and when violence might be justified in resisting the far right.

* Class, resistance, and strategy - The role of trade unions, Gramsci’s “war of position,” and the slow, grinding struggle against the far right in a moment when nothing seems to be changing fast.

* Culture and internationalism - The role of art, music, and culture in resistance, and why anti‑fascism must resist injustice everywhere.

Dr David Renton is a barrister, historian, and anti-fascist activist who has written extensively on the history and politics of fascism, anti-fascism, and the left. His books include Fascism: History and Theory, No Free Speech for Fascists, The New Authoritarians, The Anti-Fascist Novel in Britain 1923–2023, and most recently Revolutionary Forgiveness. A founding member of the revolutionary socialist network rs21, he has written for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Jacobin, Spectre, and Tempest, and practises at Garden Court Chambers, where he has represented clients in high-profile trade union and employment cases.

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“If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue... they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.”

Two and a half thousand years after Confucius spoke those words, the Chinese Communist Party has erected over 500 Confucius Institutes globally, plastered his face on state propaganda, and declared him the bedrock of “socialist harmony.” The ancient critic who wrote that rulers must earn their legitimacy through moral virtue has been transformed into the official mascot of a one-party state.

But who was the real Confucius, and what happened to his philosophy?

In this episode, we step back from centuries of state dogma to examine the original political thought of Confucius as a serious thinker responding to an acute material crisis.

We explore:

* The Spring and Autumn Crisis: How Confucius developed his ideas amidst the violent collapse of traditional authority and the breakdown of social norms.

* Ren and Li: The structural relationship between inner moral character (Ren) and the external framework of ritual, social roles, and daily norms (Li) that hold a society together without relying on violence.

* The Hundred Schools of Thought: The ideological battle between Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and Legalism over how to restore political order.

* The Bible Comparison: Why the fragmented, recorded nature of the Analects left a doctrine uniquely vulnerable to being weaponised by opposing political factions.

* The Han Turn and State Capture: How the Han Dynasty constructed an enduring imperial system by merging Legalist state coercion with Confucian moral legitimacy.

* The Mandate of Heaven Asymmetry: How a concept designed to place built-in moral checks on absolute power was neutralised and weaponised retrospectively to justify whoever held the throne.

* The Radical vs. Conservative Debate: Whether his philosophy is fundamentally a tool for rigid patriarchal hierarchy, or a radical critique that conditions power entirely on ethical conduct.

We also look at the modern CCP’s selective revival of Confucian language under Xi Jinping, exploring how the state frames dissent as “disorder” to turn a philosophy of accountability into an instrument of compliance.

Ultimately, this episode asks a broader question:

Can an ethical framework survive absorption by the state - or will the ruling class always keep the hierarchy and remove the accountability?

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“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

For more than half a century, Noam Chomsky has argued that moral principles mean nothing unless they apply equally to allies and enemies. He has defended free speech for extremists, condemned American foreign policy more harshly than many of its adversaries, and challenged the idea that liberal democracies are as free as they claim to be.

To supporters, he is the most important public intellectual of the modern era. To critics, he is a man whose moral clarity sometimes collapsed into selective outrage and serious political blind spots.

But who was Noam Chomsky?

In this episode, we examine Chomsky’s political thought and political legacy.

We explore:

• His commitment to libertarian socialism and workers’ self-management.

• His critique of Leninism, vanguard politics, and revolutionary state power.

• Manufacturing Consent and his theory of media, propaganda, and ideological control.

• His analysis of American foreign policy, from Vietnam and Cambodia to Chile, East Timor, Iraq, and the Middle East.

• His long-running critique of Henry Kissinger and the logic of great-power politics.

• The controversies surrounding his political record, including Cambodia, Jeffrey Epstein, and accusations of moral inconsistency.

We also examine where Chomsky was right, where he was wrong, and why his ideas continue to provoke debate across both the left and the right.

Ultimately, this episode asks a broader question:

Was Noam Chomsky a defender of universal principles - or a critic whose standards applied unevenly when power changed sides?

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“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.”

When Marx and Engels wrote those words in 1848, they were announcing a movement they believed would transform human history. Nearly two centuries later, Marxism remains one of the most influential (and controversial) political traditions ever created.

But what actually is Marxism?

In this episode, we step back from individual revolutionary figures to examine the philosophical foundations, core concepts, and competing traditions that emerged from Marx’s work.

We explore:

* Hegel and the Dialectic: The philosophical system Marx inherited — and radically transformed through materialism.

* Alienation: Marx’s argument that capitalism estranges workers from their labour, from each other, and from their own human potential.

* Class Struggle: Why Marx believed history is driven by conflict between social classes rooted in economic structure.

* Exploitation and Surplus Value: Marx’s analysis of profit, labour power, and the structural mechanics of capitalism.

* Ideology and False Consciousness: How ruling ideas become “common sense,” and why capitalist systems appear natural even to those exploited by them.

* From Marx to Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Gramsci, Luxemburg, Althusser, and beyond: the major Marxist traditions that shaped revolutionary movements, political theory, and 20th-century history.

We also examine the internal conflicts within Marxism itself, including debates over bureaucracy, party organisation, reform versus revolution, and whether socialist states can avoid reproducing new forms of domination.

This episode asks a broader question that still shapes politics today:

Is Marxism best understood as a revolutionary doctrine, a critique of capitalism, a method of analysis - or all three at once?

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Trotsky helped lead the October Revolution, built the Red Army, and saw himself as Lenin’s political heir. Yet within a few years, he was exiled, erased from Soviet history, and eventually murdered in Mexico by a Stalinist agent.

So what happened?

Was Trotsky simply outmanoeuvred by a more effective political operator—or was the revolution itself transformed into something he no longer recognised?

In this episode, we break down the strongest arguments on both sides:

* The “Inevitable Loser” Thesis: Why Trotsky’s elitism, factional isolation, and contempt for party bureaucracy left him unable to compete with Stalin’s organisational machine.

* The General Secretary Trap: How Stalin used the Orgotdel, the nomenklatura system, and the Party Secretariat to quietly build a loyal bureaucratic empire inside the USSR.

* Lenin’s Final Alliance: The explosive “Georgian Affair,” Lenin’s final letters, and the failed attempt to form a bloc against Stalin before Lenin’s death.

* The Ban on Factions: How Trotsky helped create the very mechanisms later used to destroy the Left Opposition.

* Permanent Revolution vs. Socialism in One Country: The ideological split that defined the future of the Soviet Union after the failure of the German Revolution.

* The Revolution Betrayed: Trotsky’s argument that the USSR had become a “degenerated workers’ state” ruled not by workers, but by a bureaucratic caste.

* The Great Terror and the “Amalgam”: Why Stalin’s regime didn’t just defeat Trotsky politically—it attempted to erase him historically.

This episode asks a deeper question that still matters today:

Can revolutions survive bureaucracies—or do successful revolutions inevitably create new ruling classes of their own?

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Was Stalinism the logical outcome of Lenin’s revolution, or its betrayal? This episode examines the ideological and structural tensions behind one of the most contested transitions in modern political history.