Leftist Reading

Episode 139:

This week we’re continuing with:
The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Written for the Vietnamese curriculum and translated by Luna Nguyen
You can purchase a copy and support translation of the further curriculum here:
https://www.banyanhouse.org/product/ebook-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-marxism-leninism

[Part 1 - 3]
Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism
1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism
a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism
b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism

[Part 4 - This Week]
c. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism - 0:24
Annotation 33: 1:25-2:19
Annotation 34: 2:38 - 6:13
Annotation 35: 6:54 - 10:08
Annotation 36: 12:14 - 14:30
Annotation 37: 14:57 - 19:57
d. Marxism-Leninism and the Reality of the International Revolutionary Movement - 20:16
Annotation 38: 20:44 - 21:37
Annotation 39: 23:08 - 24:12
Annotation 40: 26:49 - 27:39
Annotation 41: 28:33 - 30:51

[Part 5 - 6?]
II. Objects, Purposes and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 7 - 12?]
Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism

[Part 13 - 25?]
Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics

[Part 26 - 30?]
Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism

Footnotes:

15) 0:53
Populist faction: A faction within the Russian revolution which upheld an idealist capitalist ideology with many representatives such as Mikhailovsky, Bakunin, and Plekhanov. Populists failed to recognise the important roles of the people, of the farmers and workers alliance, and of the proletariat. Instead, they completely centered the role of the individual in society. They considered the rural communes as the nucleus of “socialism.” They saw farmers under the leadership of intellectuals as the main force of the revolution. The populists advocated individual terrorism as the primary method of revolutionary struggle.

16) 26:48
Delegate Document of the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

17) 27:59
Delegate document of the 9th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

18) 28:31
Delegate document of the 10th national congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Episode 138:

This week we’re continuing with:
The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Written for the Vietnamese curriculum and translated by Luna Nguyen
You can purchase a copy and support translation of the further curriculum here:
https://www.banyanhouse.org/product/ebook-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-marxism-leninism

[Part 1 - 2]
Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism
1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism
a. Conditions and Premises of the Birth of Marxism

[Part 3 - This Week]
b. The Birth and Development Stage of Marxism - 0:36
Annotation 21: 2:17 - 2:30
Annotation 22: 2:49 - 3:29
Annotation 23: 3:57 - 4:23
Annotation 24: 4:32 - 4:58
Annotation 25: 5:18 - 5:42
Annotation 26: 7:10 - 7:28
Annotation 27: 7:49 - 8:07
Annotation 28: 8:35 - 9:12
Annotation 29: 9:36 - 12:35
Annotation 30: 12:46 - 13:55
Annotation 31: 14:51 - 15:33
b. The Defending and Developing Stage of Marxism - 15:33
- Historical Background and the Need for Defending and Developing Marxism - 15:38
Annotation 32: 17:03 - 27:35

[Part 4 - 5]
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 6]
II. Objects, Purposes and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 7 - 12?]
Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism

[Part 13 - 25?]
Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics

[Part 26 - 30?]
Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism

Episode 137:

This week we’re continuing with:
The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Written for the Vietnamese curriculum and translated by Luna Nguyen
You can purchase a copy and support translation of the further curriculum here:
https://www.banyanhouse.org/product/ebook-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-marxism-leninism

[Part 1]
Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism
1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts
2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 2 - This Week]
-Theoretical Premises
Annotation 6: 1:05 - 1:38
Annotation 7: 1:57 - 2:25
Annotation 8: 2:30 - 7:18
Annotation 9: 7:28 - 9:54
Annotation 10: 10:07 - 18:11
Annotation 12: 18:53 - 25:12
Annotation 13: 26:10 - 30:13
Annotation 14: 30:28 - 36:07
Annotation 15: 36:21 - 36:35
Annotation 16: 36:54 - 37:13
Annotation 17: 38:19 - 42:32
-Natural Science Premises - 42:50
Annotation 18: 43:08 - 43:16
Annotation 19: 44:14 - 49:02
Annotation 20: 49:26 - 50:27

[Part 3 - 5]
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 6]
II. Objects, Purposes and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 7 - 12?]
Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism

[Part 13 - 25?]
Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics

[Part 26 - 30?]
Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism

Footnotes:

5) 1:45
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770 - 1831 (German): Philosophy professor, an objective idealistic philosopher - representative of German classical philosophy.

6) 1:48
Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804 - 1872 (German): Philosophy professor, materialist philosopher.

7) 24:35
The Holy Family is a book co-written by Marx and Engels which critiqued the Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach.

8) 25:20
Adam Smith, 1723 - 1790 (British): Logic professor, moral philosophy professor, economist.

9) 25:23
David Ricardo, 1772 - 1823 (British): Economist.

10) 37:23
Claude Henri de Rouvroy Saint Simon, 1760 - 1825 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.

11) 37:28
Charles Fourier, 1772 - 1837 (French): Philosopher, economist, utopianist activist.

12) 37:32
Robert Owen, 1771 - 1858 (British): Utopianist activist, owner of a cotton factory.

13) 38:05
The Law of Development of Capitalism referenced here is the Theory of Accumulation/Surplus Value, which holds that the capitalist class gains wealth by accumulating surplus value (i.e., profits) and then reinvesting it into more capital to gain even further wealth; thus the goal of the capitalist class is to accumulate more and more surplus value which leads to the development of capitalism. Over time, this deepens the contradictions of capitalism. This concept is related to the M→C→M mode of circulation, discussed in Annotation 14, and is discussed in detail in Part 3 of the book this text is drawn from (Political Economy) which we hope to translate in the future.

Episode 136:

This week we’re starting a new book:
The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Written for the Vietnamese curriculum and translated by Luna Nguyen
You can purchase a copy and support translation of the further curriculum here:
https://www.banyanhouse.org/product/ebook-the-worldview-and-philosophical-methodology-of-marxism-leninism

[Part 1 - This Week]
Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism - 3:39
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism - 3:39
1. Marxism and the Three Constituent Parts - 3:39
Annotation 1: 5:57 - 7:31
2. Summary of the Birth and Development of Marxism-Leninism - 7:50
Annotation 2: 8:22 - 8:46
Annotation 3: 9:26 - 21:43
Annotation 4: 22:03 - 23:59
Annotation 5: 24:31 - 27:25

[Part 2 - 5]
I. Brief History of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 6]
II. Objects, Purposes and Requirements for Studying the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism

[Part 7 - 12?]
Part I: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism
Chapter 1: Dialectical Materialism

[Part 13 - 25?]
Chapter 2: Materialist Dialectics

[Part 26 - 30?]
Chapter 3: Cognitive Theory of Dialectical Materialism

Footnotes:

1) 4:01
Karl Marx, 1818-1883 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, political economist, founder of scientific socialism, leader of the international working class. ↵

2) 4:04
Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895 (German): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, leader of the international working class, co-founder of scientific socialism with Karl Marx. ↵

3) 4:10
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1870-1924 (Russian): Theorist, politician, dialectical materialist philosopher, defender and developer of Marxism in the era of imperialism, founder of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union, leader of Russia and the international working class. ↵

4) 21:15
Material conditions include the natural environment, the means of production and the economic base of human society, objective social relations, and other externalities and systems which affect human life and human society. See Annotation 79. ↵

Episode 135:

This week we’re not continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
Instead we’ll be reading a response to Listen Marxist by
You can find it on page 50 of this pdf on Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/sim_monthly-review-us_1970-03_21_10/page/50/mode/2up
[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 10]
The Forms of Freedom
-The Mediation of Social Relations

[Part 12 - 14]
Listen, Marxist!

[This Week]
On Future Developments in the College Left - 2:05
Discussion - 20:39

Footnotes:

1) 19:26
Martin J. Sklar, “On the Proletarian Revolution and the End of Political Economic Society,” Radical America, vol. 3, no. 3, May-June 1969, p. 34.

Episode 134:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 10]
The Forms of Freedom
-The Mediation of Social Relations

[Part 12 - 13]
Listen, Marxist!
-The Historical Limits of Marxism
-The Myth of the Proletariat
-The Myth of the Party

[Part 14 - This Week]
Listen, Marxist!
-The Two Traditions - 0:36
Discussion - 29:42

[Part 15?]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

56) 15:17
The term “anarchist” is a generic word like the term “socialist,” and there are probably as many different kinds of anarchists as there are socialists. In both cases, the spectrum ranges from individuals whose views derive from an extension of liberalism (the “individualist anarchists,” the social-democrats) to revolutionary communists (the anarcho-communists, the revolutionary Marxists, Leninists and Trotskyists).

57) 24:18
It is this goal, we may add, that motivates anarchist dadaism, the anrchist flipout that produces the creases of consternation on the wooden faces of PLP types. The anarchist flipout attempts to shatter the internal values inherited from hierarchical society, to explode the rigidities instilled by the bourgeois socialization process. In short, it is an attempt to break down the superego that exercises such a paralyzing effect upon spontaneity, imagination and sensibility and to restore a sense of desire, possibility and the marvelous—of revolution as a liberating, joyous festival.

Citations:

35) 2:35
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence (International Publishers; New York, 1942), p. 292.

36) 3:31
Frederick Engels, Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring) (International Publishers; New York, 1939),p. 323.

Episode 133:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 10]
The Forms of Freedom
-The Mediation of Social Relations

[Part 12]
Listen, Marxist!
-The Historical Limits of Marxism
-The Myth of the Proletariat

[Part 13 - This Week]
Listen, Marxist!
-The Myth of the Party - 0:28

[Part 14 - 15?]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

50) 1:50
A fact which Trotsky never understood. He never followed through the consequences of his own concept of “combined development” to its logical conclusions. He saw (quite correctly) that czarist Russia, the latecomer in the European bourgeois development, necessarily acquired the most advanced industrial and class forms instead of recapitulating the entire bourgeois development from its beginnings. He neglected to consider that Russia, torn by tremendous internal upheaval, might even run ahead of the capitalist development elsewhere in Europe. Hypnotized by the formula “nationalized property equals socialism,” he failed to recognize that monopoly capitalism itself tends to amalgamate with the state by its own inner dialectic. The Bolsheviks, having cleared away the traditional forms of bourgeois social organization (which still act as a rein on the state capitalist development in Europe and America), inadvertently prepared the ground for a “pure” state capitalist development in which the state finally becomes the ruling class. Lacking support from a technologically advanced Europe, the Russian Revolution became an internal counterrevolution; Soviet Russia became a form of state capitalism that does not “benefit the whole people.” Lenin’s analogy between “socialism” and state capitalism became a terrifying reality under Stalin. Despite its humanistic core, Marxism failed to comprehend how much its concept of “socialism” approximates a later stage of capitalism itself—the return to mercantile forms on a higher industrial level. The failure to understand this development led to devastating theoretical confusion in the contemporary revolutionary movement, as witness the splits among the Trotskyists over this question.

51) 5:12
The March 22nd Movement functioned as a catalytic agent in the events, not as a leadership. It did not command; it instigated, leaving a free play to the events. This free play, which allowed the students to push ahead on their own momentum, was indispensable to the dialectic of the uprising, for without it there would have been no barricades on May 10, which in turn triggered off the general strike of the workers.

52) 6:45
See “The Forms of Freedom”.

53) 7:23
With a sublime arrogance that is attributable partly to ignorance, a number of Marxist groups were to dub virtually all of the above forms of self-management as “soviets.” The attempt to bring all of these different forms under a single rubric is not only misleading but willfully obscurantist. The actual soviets were the least democratic of the revolutionary forms and the Bolsheviks shrewdly used them to transfer the power to their own party. The soviets were not based on face-to-face democracy, like the Parisian sections or the student assemblies of 1968. Nor were they based on economic self-management, like the Spanish anarchist factory committees. The soviets actually formed a workers’ parliament, hierarchically organized, which drew its representation from factories and later from military units and peasant villages.

54) 19:02
V. I. Lenin, “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,” in Selected Works, vol. 7 (International Publishers; New York, 1943), p. 342. In this harsh article, published in April 1918, Lenin completely abandoned the liberatarian perspective he had advanced the year before in State and Revolution. The main themes of the article are the needs for “discipline,” for authoritarian control over the factories, and for the institution of the Taylor system (a system Lenin had denounced before the revolution as enslaving men to the machine). The article was written during a comparatively peaceful period of Bolshevik rule some two months after the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and a month before the revolt of the Czech Legion in the Urals—the revolt that started the civil war on a wide scale and opened the period of direct Allied intervention in Russia. Finally, the article was written nearly a year before the defeat of the German revolution. It would be difficult to account for the “Immediate Tasks” merely in terms of the Russian civil war and the failure of the European revolution.

55) 34:04
In interpreting this elemental movement of the Russian workers and peasants as a series of “White Guard conspiracies,” “acts of kulak resistance,” and “plots of international capital,” the Bolsheviks reached an incredible theoretical low and deceived no one but themselves. A spiritual erosion developed within the party that paved the way for the politics of the secret police, for character assassination, and finally for the Moscow trials and the annihilation of the Old Bolshevik cadre. One sees the return of this odious mentality in PL articles like “Marcuse: Cop-out or Cop?”—the theme of which is to establish Marcuse as an agent of the CIA. (See Progressive Labor, February 1969.) The article has a caption under a photograph of demonstrating Parisians which reads: “Marcuse got to Paris too late to stop the May action.” Opponents of the PLP are invariably described by this rag as “redbaiters” and as “anti-worker.” If the American left does not repudiate this police approach and character assassination it will pay bitterly in the years to come.

Citations:

30) 4:01
Quoted in Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (Simon & Schuster; New York, 1932), vol. 1, p. 144.

31) 19:34
V. V. Osinsky, “On the Building of Socialism,” Kommunist, no. 2, April 1918, quoted in R. V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution (Harvard University Press; Cambridge, 1960), pp. 85–86,

32) 23:13
Robert G. Wesson, Soviet Communes (Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, N.J., 1963), p. 110.

33) 26:30
R. V. Daniels, op. cit., p. 145.

34) 30:27
Mosche Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle (Pantheon; New York, 1968), p. 122.

Episode 132:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 10]
The Forms of Freedom
-The Mediation of Social Relations

[Part 11]
Listen, Marxist!
-The Historical Limits of Marxism

[Part 12 - This Week]
Listen, Marxist!
-The Myth of the Proletariat - 0:29

[Part 13 - 15]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

42) 1:12
For ecological reasons, we do not accept the notion of the “domination of nature by man” in the simplistic sense that was passed on by Marx a century ago. For a discussion of this problem, see “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought.”

43) 3:08
It is ironic that Marxists who talk about the “economic power” of the proletariat are actually echoing the position of the anarcho-syndicalists, a position that Marx bitterly opposed. Marx was not concerned with the “economic power” of the proletariat but with its political power; notably the fact that it would become the majority of the population. He was convinced that the industrial workers would be driven to revolution primarily by material destitution which would follow from the tendency of capitalist accumulation; that, organized by the factory system and disciplined by an industrial routine, they would be able to constitute trade unions and, above all, political parties, which in some countries would be obliged to use insurrectionary methods and in others (England, the United States, and in later years Engels added France) might well come to power in elections and legislate socialism into existence. Characteristically, many Marxists have been as dishonest with their Marx and Engels as the Progressive Labor Party has been with the readers of Challenge, leaving important observations untranslated or grossly distorting Marx’s meaning.

44) 4:35
This is as good a place as any to dispose of the notion that anyone is a “proletarian” who has nothing to sell but his labor power. It is true that Marx defined the proletariat in these terms, but he also worked out a historical dialectic in the development of the proletariat. The proletariat develop out of a propertyless exploited class, reaching its most advanced form in the industrial proletariat, which corresponded to the most advanced form of capital. In the later years of his life, Marx came to despise the Parisian workers, who were engaged preponderantly in the production of luxury goods, citing “our German workers”—the most robot-like in Europe—as the “model” proletariat of the world.

45) 6:26
The attempt to describe Marx’s immiseration theory in international terms instead of national (as Marx did) is sheer subterfuge. In the first place, this theoretical legerdemain simply tries to sidestep the question of why immiseration has not occurred within the industrial strongholds of capitalism, the only areas which form a technologically adequate point of departure for a classless society. If we are to pin our hopes on the colonial world as “the proletariat,” this position conceals a very real danger: genocide. America and her recent ally Russia have all the technical means to bomb the underdeveloped world into submission. A threat lurks on the historical horizon—the development of the United States into a truly fascist imperium of the nazi type. It is sheer rubbish to say that this country is a “paper tiger.” It is a thermonuclear tiger and the American ruling class, lacking any cultural restraints, is capable of being even more vicious than the German.

46) 8:17
Lenin sensed this and described “socialism” as “nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people.” (see citation 29 below) This is an extraordinary statement if one thinks out its implications, and a mouthful of contradictions.

47) 13:33
On this score, the Old Left projects its own neanderthal image on the American worker. Actually this image more closely approximates the character of the union bureaucrat or the Stalinist commissar.

48) 16:56
The worker, in this sense, begins to approximate the socially transitional human types who have provided history with its most revolutionary elements. Generally, the “proletariat” has been most revolutionary in transitional periods, when it was least “proletarianized” psychically by the industrial system. The great focuses of the classical workers’ revolutions were Petrograd and Barcelona, where the workers had been directly uprooted from a peasant background, and Paris, where they were still anchored in crafts or came directly from a craft background. These workers had the greatest difficulty in acclimating themselves to industrial domination and became a continual source of social and revolutionary unrest. By contrast, the stable hereditary working class tended to be surprisingly non-revolutionary. Even in the case of the German workers who were cited by Marx and Engels as models for the European proletariat, the majority did not support the Spartacists of 1919. They return large majorities of official Social Democrats to the Congress of Workers’ Councils, and to the Reichstag in later years, and rallied consistently behind the Social Democratic Party right up to 1933.

49) 18:28
This revolutionary lifestyle may develop in the factories as well as on the streets, in schools as well as in crash pads, in the suburbs as well as on the Bay Area–East Side axis. Its essence is defiance, and a personal “propaganda of the deed” that erodes all the mores, institutions and shibboleths of domination. As society begins to approach the threshold of the revolutionary period, the factories, schools and neighborhoods become the actual arena of revolutionary “play”—a “play” that has a very serious core. Strikes become a chronic condition and are called for their own sake to break the veneer of routine, to defy the society on an almost hourly basis, to shatter the mood of bourgeois normality. This new mood of the workers, students and neighborhood people is a vital precursor to the actual moment of revolutionary transformation. Its most conscious expression is the demand for “self-management”; the worker refuses to be a “managed” being, a class being. This process was most evident in Spain, on the eve of the 1936 revolution, when workers in almost every city and town called strikes “for the hell of it”—to express their independence, their sense of awakening, their break with the social order and with bourgeois conditions of life. It was also an essential feature of the 1968 general strike in France.

Citations:

29) (referenced in a footnote above)
V.I. Lenin, The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It, The Little Lenin Library, vol, II (International Publishers; New York, 1932), p. 37.

Episode 131:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9 - 10]
The Forms of Freedom
-The Mediation of Social Relations

[Part 11 - This Week]
Listen, Marxist! - 0:29
-The Historical Limits of Marxism - 11:15

[Part 12 - 15]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

38) 7:23
These lines were written when the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) exercised a great deal of influence in SDS. Although the PLP has now lost most of its influence in the student movement, the organization still provides a good example of the mentality and values prevalent in the Old Left. The above characterization is equally valid for most Marxist-Leninist groups, hence this passage and other references to the PLP have not been substantially altered.

39) 8:19
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, part of the Detroit-based League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

40) 12:34
Marxism is above all a theory of praxis, or to place this relationship in its correct perspective, a praxis of theory. This is the very meaning of Marx’s transformation of dialectics, which took it from the subjective dimension (to which the Young Hegelians still tried to confine Hegel’s outlook) into the objective, from philosophical critique into social action. If theory and praxis become divorced, Marxism is not killed, it commits suicide. This is its most admirable and noble feature. The attempts of the cretins who follow in Marx’s wake to keep the system alive with a patchwork of emendations, exegesis, and half-assed “scholarship” à la Maurice Dobb and George Novack are degrading insults to Marx’s name and a disgusting pollution of everything he stood for.

41) 14:41
In fact Marxists do very little talking about the “chronic [economic] crisis of capitalism” these days—despite the fact that this concept forms the focal point of Marx’s economic theories.

Citations:

28) 5:05
Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 2, p. 318

Episode 130:

This week we’re continuing with Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin.
You can find the book here:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

[Part 1 - 4]
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Ecology and Revolutionary Thought

[Part 5 - 8]
Towards a Liberatory Technology

[Part 9]
The Forms of Freedom
-The Mediation of Social Relations

[Part 10 - This Week]
The Forms of Freedom
-Assembly and Community - 0:13
-From “Here” to “There” - 18:11

[Part 11 - 15]
Listen, Marxist!

Footnotes:

33) 16:47
Marx, it may be noted, greatly admired the Jacobins for “centralizing” France and in the famous “Address of the Central Council” (1850) modeled his tactics for Germany on their policies. This was short-sightedness of incredible proportions—and institutional emphasis that revealed a gross insensitivity to the self-activity and the self-remaking of a people in revolutionary motion. See “Listen, Marxist!”

34) 23:24
It was not until the 1860s, with the work of Bachofen and Morgan, that humanity rediscovered its communal past. By that time the discovery had become a purely critical weapon directed against the bourgeois family and property.

35) 25:29
Here, indeed, “history” has something to teach us—precisely because these spontaneous uprisings are not history but various manifestations of the same phenomenon: revolution. Whosoever calls himself a revolutionist and does not study these events on their own terms, thoroughly and without theoretical preconceptions, is a dilettante who is playing at revolution.

36) 26:41
What Wilhelm Reich and, later, Herbert Marcuse have made clear is that “selfhood” is not only a personal dimension but also a social one. The self that finds expression in the assembly and community is, literally, the assembly and community that has found self-expression—a complete congruence of form and content.

37) 29:27
Together with disseminating ideas, the most important job of the anarchists will be to defend the spontaneity of the popular movement by continually engaging the authoritarians in a theoretical and organizational duel.

Citations:

26) 7:27
W. Warde Fowler, The City State of the Greeks and Romans (Macmillan & Co.; London, 1952), p. 168.

27) 9:55
Edward Zimmerman, The Greek Commonwealth, 5th ed. (Modern Library; New York, 1931), pp. 408–9.