The American Revolution, as analyzed by Marxists, represents a bourgeois revolution that initiated the transition from feudal to capitalist society, but its revolutionary potential was fundamentally compromised by the Thermidor Constitution, which established a conservative republic that suppressed the democratic moment and excluded the working class from political participation. This historical failure created 'sedimented failures' that have prevented the emergence of a revolutionary workers' party in America, with the working class being fragmented by ethnic divisions, wage differentials, and the integration into capitalist state structures. The revolution's promise of freedom and democracy remains unrealized because capitalism itself undermines the very freedoms it claims to establish, making the proletariat's task not to abandon the bourgeois revolution but to complete and transcend it through socialist revolution.
The Crisis of the American Revolution (4/10/26 panel)Added:
I will call this order.
>> Thank you.
Okay. Um I would like to welcome everyone to the opening plenary of the 18th Platypus International Convention, Marxism and the Fate of the American Revolution.
The Platypus Affiliated Society established in December 2006 organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on the problems and tasks inherited from the old 1920s to30s, new 1960s to7s and post-political 1980s to90s left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today. Um today's panel as well as many of our other events is being hosted by our chapter at Northwestern. If you would like to find out more about Northwestern Platypus, um you can talk to Danny Caps who's over there. Um, Platypus at Northwestern runs a reading group on Sundays from 12 to 3 in Kresa 2329 and a coffee break Fridays 4 to 6 at Norris um, Wendia in front of the Wendia. And um, it also hosts more events like this.
So get to them to find out about that.
My name is Karen Hood and I will be moderating tonight's panel. The opening plenary is titled the crisis of the American Revolution.
Following the reelection of Lincoln as president, Markx wrote to the American people, quote, "From the commencement of the Titanic American Strike, the working men of Europe felt instinctively that the Star Spangled Banner carried the destiny of their class. In America, the idea of one great democratic republic had first sprung up whence the first declaration of the rights of man was issued and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the 18th century.
Given the seismic policies of Trump's second term, we ask, does the American Revolution persist today? What is or was the American Revolution? How does it inform the conditions of possibility for the left in the present? What tasks, if any, does the left inherit from the American Revolution? And do we need new interpretations of the American Revolution?
So, joining us um to answer this question, we have three speakers whom I will introduce in the order in which they will speak. they will give us approximately 15 minutes of opening remarks followed by a short round of discussion and then we will open up for the Q&A. Um so on the far end of the table from me is Edith Fischer. Edith Fischer is a Marxist having joined the socialist youth movement as a high school student and been educated in the Marxism of Trosky and Erns Mandel. She has spent the subsequent decade and change in the ranks of the socialist movement. She is a founding member of the revolutionary communist organization now known as communist unity. In the center is Chris Catron. Chris Catron teaches Marxist critical theory at the school of the art institute of Chicago and the institute for clinical social work and is the original lead organizer and chief pedagogue of the platypus affiliated society and the original organizer of the campaign for a socialist party.
And finally directly um to my side is Ingarulti. Ingarulti is senior research fellow at the Rosa Luxenberg ship in Berlin and author of numerous books including Trump's triumph question mark post-liberal capitalism and the addition Marxisman a 36 volume book series of introductions to key Marxist thinkers from Marx to Anoir Shai. Okay, with that I will hand it over to >> Thank you everyone.
Thank you everybody. Um, you forgive me.
I'm going to speak mostly from notes.
Um, and I, you know, I'm not an American. Um, and so I'm, you know, somewhat offering an outside perspective on the question of the American Revolution. I think that that is going to in part of my point that the fate of the American revolution is indeed the fate of the world revolution.
So the American revolution today has many has few friends and many enemies.
Uh on the right you have a sort of illiberal trend which opposes indeed if not usually in word the fundamental pillars of the American republic. Um just the other day uh when we were here we had some uh some friends uh from the what was it the American Foundation for Tradition Family and Property sort of marching around the campus with their little red capes and bag pipes and such.
And those guys, I went and read their manifesto um because I I I I find these people fascinating. And they they believe that that that the um uh that the current sickness in civilization goes all the way back to before the Protestant Reformation. Um and that, you know, you talk about repealing the 20th century, they want to repeal the 14th century. And um with that in mind, I think that it's pretty fair to say that many on the right, but you know, we're talking about people less marginal than that, you know, uh the current trends on the right to oppose things like birthright citizenship, to oppose freedom of the press and freedom of speech, to call for open repression of political dissidence, to oppose um uh any these are attacks on the fundamental elements or an attack on obviously the separation of church and state. um an enormous part of the American Revolution. So on the left, largely hostile to the political legacy of the American Revolution. And there's a few different versions of this and I'm sure that other people will talk about it and others have talked about it in more detail. And I think it's fair to say the American left today is not overly um overly fond of the American Revolution. And and in the mainstream of society um American society, the American Revolution is elevated to a form of civic religion um based around the thermodorian constitution which elevates the revolution to myth while ellighting many of its most revolutionary elements.
So with that in mind, it's necessary to place the American Revolution in the proper historical context. Um, which in my understanding is the world historical transition from feudalist feudal society to capitalist society, pre- capitalist society to capitalist society and from these regime to bgeois civilization.
This transition is marked by what our friends in the you know institute to defend family and property or whatever it's called call the revolution which I will use that term as well cuz I like it. Um this revolution um has an economic component. So obviously the abolition of surfom in western Europe, the um spread of commercial capitalism uh and the first, second and third industrial revolutions has a scientific dimension uh capernac, Darwinian uh chemical and then I would argue also um revolutions in physics and also Freudian and Marxist sociological all constitute part of the bgeoa scientific revolution has political element uh beginning with the reformation. ation. Well, actually before the reformation, but the Dutch revolt um reformation um the Dutch revolt, the English revolution, the American, French, Haitian, Bolivarian revolutions in South America, the struggle for independence of various countries etc. The American Revolution is part of a global cycle of revolutions that begins before arguably the Protestant Reformation and arguably ends with the last great bourgeoa revolution which I would argue is the Shinhai revolution in China um which brought down theQing dynasty and in that time the American revolution which is part of this global cycle of revolutions and should be situated in that as as as a global phenomenon um has passed through periods of retreat and advance. Um the Firmodorian constitution which birthed what um Dan Lazar has called a conservative republic. Um a republican monarchy of the Montescu type one could say um you know itself was aorian document posed on the edge between revolution and counterrevolution. The failure um then so and then you have the second revolution um or the continuation of the first revolution. It's kind of technical, but the the the second revolution uh in the form of the the great struggle for the abolition of slavery and to remake the American republic as a centralized republic, political revolution as well as a social revolution, but which is then hampered by the by the defeat of radical reconstruction and in turn then in the 20th century you have the second reconstruction, the civil rights movement which in turn hits its own historical limits. So this is the kind of long trajectory of the American Revolution and its motions its historical motion is part of a world historical dialectic of the transition from capitalist from pre-c capitalist to capitalist society from f from the onion regime to bourgeoa civilization but in the course of that revolution um the bourgeoa uh historical project exhausts itself the da the dynamic combined uneven development ment and the general exhaustion of of the capitalist mode of production as a productive force. The transformation of human civilization has um has been has been brought to a halt by the objective limitations of capitalist development and the dynamics of combined and uneven development that cannot mean that the bourgeoa revolutions cannot be objectively completed within the system of bourgeoa society.
This gives birth towards the great contradictions of capitalist civilization. Um on one hand you have the trend towards m massification, bgeoa, freedom and equality, universal flattening etc. This idea that all social classes dissolve down into the great classes of capital and labor and they face each other across this great gia. While on the other hand you see capitalist society has a trend towards stratification.
segmentation and atomization of those same classes. The reorganization of the working class in the 20th century through the socialization of the wage um uh wage relation, the segmentation of the labor market, the emergence of the um divisions within the world economy around imperialism, around trade, around skill, um divisions of um the family system etc. All of these are trends towards stratification which capitalist society is not simply liquefied but rather liquefied and then reconstructed and liquefied again.
So today we have passed I would argue out of the epoch of bourgeoa revolutions and into the epoch of proletarian revolutions. Sorry I'm quite thirsty.
This transition while non not successful anywhere has been particularly deformed I would argue in the United States for a variety of historical reasons u the United States has failed to um give birth to even a a labor party um let alone a a revolutionary Marxist party.
This transition has been uh largely because of the particular peculiarities of the American social formation, the particular character of the Bourgeoa revolution and then the segmented sedimented I think is Mike Davis's term sedimented historical failures >> of the um of the American working class to break from the bgeoa the bugeoisi and this sedimented historical failure means that each additional wave of struggle faces more uh more uh limits.
Today the task remains to forging of a political instrument that fits the task of making an American revolution in the epoch of mass capitalist politics.
Just like the first cycle of revolution, this coming revolution will be international in character. In fact, it will be even all the more internationalist for it will reflect the internationalization of the capitalist system. The petty bourgeoa sentimental internationalism of the uh bourgeoa revolutions must be a place where fargoing proletarian internationalism a political and organizational internationalism.
This next American revolution on which I do believe the hinge of world history still turns which is certainly what marks and leen believed will be a hemispheric revolution that completes and negates the previous revolutionary tradition. It will sweep aside the Fermadorian Constitution, overthrow the oligarchy, and complete the task of modernization and secularization. It will found a radically democratic republic, which will extend from the Arctic to Tiara del Fuego, from the Amazon to the Yukon, that unites hundreds of millions beneath a single democratic state. It will finish the civil war and reconstruction, overcome the systematic racial oppression that dominates this country, and achieve democratic self-determination of nationalities and the emancipation of women. And with the working class in power, this new American republic will carry the matter of liberty at the forefront of the workers of the world and prepare for the coming of communism.
And that's all I have to say. Thank you.
All right. The title of my talk is why Marxists loved America.
Hegel made an exception in his to his philosophy of history for America as a land of the future. He acknowledged to a friend that his model political regime of constitutional monarchy on the basis of the English revolution was improved in the American constitutional republic as the ideal form of state for bourgeoa civil society with its elected monarchy in the presidency as counterbalance to democracy to preserve the freedom of civil society. Marks and angles regarded the United States as the most bgeoa democratic and free country of their time. Lenin called the American Revolution a truly revolutionary war and wrote in the early 20th century that in America freedom was most complete.
For their part, Marxist informed socialists in the United States such as the socialist party leader Eugene Debs claimed both the American Revolution and the Civil War and their political leaders as historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to their cause and as their rightful legacy as against the capitalist political parties. the Republicans and Democrats falsely wearing their mantels.
Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin greatly esteemed Debs, especially for his denunciation of US imperialism and its involvement in World War I, which had landed Debs in jail.
and Debs returned the praise, calling himself during the counter-revolutionary reactionary panic after the Russian Revolution and Woodro Wilson's Palmer raids repression of the Socialist Party, quote, "From head to foot, a Bolevik and proud of it."
Later, Frankfurt school critical theorist Theodor Adorno, who fled the Nazis to the United States along with his colleagues Max Warheimer and Herbert Marcusa, among others, wrote endearingly about his experience of American society and upheld the American republic's constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances as the model for critique, the free interplay of theory and practice and subject and object in maintaining and promoting the freedom of society.
So powerful was the influence of the American Revolution that the Communist Party in the United States named its party night school for workers after Thomas Jefferson. Its leader in the 1930s, Earl Browder, famously stated that communism is as American as apple pie.
What was the substance of this evaluation by such prominent Marxists of the United States and the American Revolution and its legacy?
Marxism understood capitalism as a phenomenon based on bourgeois society and regarded the American revolution as a bajgeois revolution. What did what did this mean? First we must step back and examine the Marxist understanding of history and how it had led to capitalism. The basic idea is that the rise of modern bajgeois society or civil society was a societal transformation on the same order of magnitude as the Neolithic agricultural revolution which in Marxist terms had ushered in class society from the original primitive communism of paleolithic huntergatherer communities. This was understood as the beginnings of capitalism. The industrial revolution was regarded as the crisis of bajgeois society and capitalism indicated by the class division into capitalists and workers specifically the proletarianization of labor in which workers no longer owned the means of production the machines and other capital goods owned by the capitalist class. The industrial revolution according to Marxism led to the possibility and necessity of socialism or modern communism. The industrial revolution historically brought about the modern class struggle of the workers against the capitalists that led to socialism.
Capitalism arising as such in the 19th century was the contradiction and crisis of bajgeois society in the industrial revolution in which a dynamic of replacing labor by automation introduced the business cycle of boom and bust. not merely a commercial crisis of supply and demand and market adjustments but a crisis of value and wage labor in the social system of production indicating its potential obsolescence.
The French Revolution was closely associated with the American Revolution which itself was a further development of the English revolution of the preceding century. The French Enlightenment and the revolutionaries it inspired were noted anglophiles. And it was not mere coincidence that the storming of the best deal took place on in the centenerary year of the seeding of the constitutional monarch in the English glorious revolution 1689 as politically theorized by John Lockach.
Mark said that of the two traditions of materialism those of Daycart and lock it was locks that led to socialism.
Thomas Jefferson participated in both the American and French revolutions co-writing the American Declaration of Independence as well as the French Declaration of the Rights of Human being and citizen co-written by Lafayette who was himself who himself had led the French forces in the American Revolutionary War. The later leading French utopian socialist Sansimo served as a soldier in the revolutionary war under Lafayette and wrote of the indelible experience of freedom he had in America. The American Revolution is best understood as the continuation and radicalization of the English Revolution as expressed by Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson's revising of Lock's inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property to the pursuit of happiness of which property was the mere means and not a right as an end in itself. This prepared the United States for the social freedom that made it Hegel's land of the future to be realized in the 19th century, contemporaneous with the rise of Marxism.
British utopian socialist Robert Owen presented his model community ideas to the US Congress meeting with founding fathers and former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also James Madison as a keenly interested audience. One of the final expressions of Jefferson's political sentiments was to endorse in an 1825 letter to Francis Wright the utopian socialist experiments underway as a means for facilitating emancipation and abolition as part of the greater cause of labor.
The second industrial revolution is conventionally dated from 1871 to 1914 from the FrancoRussian War to World War I. German victory over France led to unification under the Prussian Empire which allowed for its rapid industrialization. Contemporaneously, the Maji restoration in Japan and political centralization under the emperor, triumphant over the samurai and the victory of the union in the American civil war and the abolition of slavery as well as the emancipation of the surfs in the Russian Empire meant that these countries saw rapid industrialization in this period. The rise of these new industrial powers produced new international conflicts in global capitalism and eventually the world wars of the 20th century.
Whereas Marx and Engles were individuals in a party of two whose ideas about capitalism and socialism were relatively limited in their influence. In the era of the second industrial revolution, there was the emergence of Marxism as a predominant ideology in the modern proletarian socialist movement of the working class. The new socialist parties most influenced by Marxism in the era prior to World War I were those in Germany, the United States, Russia, Italy, and the very small party in Japan. the countries of the second as opposed to the first industrial revolution. Unlike the others, the United States was a liberal democratic constitutional republic.
It was also quickly emerging as by far the largest and most dynamic and technically innovative capitalist economy in the world. The Marxists of the second international such as Lenin and Eugene Debs understood that the future of socialism at a world scale would be ultimately decided in America.
As elsewhere, the contradiction between bourgeois society and its values of the rights and freedom of labor with the new industrial capitalism was clearly manifest. This introduced a complex dynamic in which the struggle for socialism of the industrial proletariat was connected with upholding the older revolutionary tradition of the American and French revolutions and the boogeoa rights enshrined therein end. Just as French socialism emerged from the revolutionary tradition there, so did socialism in the United States through both the American Revolution and the Civil War. In Germany, the preeminent country of the Marxistled socialist movement at the turn of the 20th century, the working class claimed the legacy of German idealist philosophy of Condenheel, which was itself inspired by the English American and French revolutions as against the capitalists.
The working class claimed the intellectual and cultural heritage of the bajgeois revolution that had decayed or become decadent under capitalism.
This was also true in England, France and America. In this way, the struggle for proletarian socialism took up the mantle of the earlier bourgeoa revolution and emancipation that had been betrayed in capitalism.
So it is not a simple matter of proletarian socialism succeeding the boogeois revolution in terms of leaving it behind but of actively recovering it struggling within the revolutionary tradition from its contradiction in capitalism.
Propagandistically this was posed as the succession of the boogeoisi by the proletariat as the historically revolutionary and universal class. What did this express?
The universality of the bourgeois revolution suffered some severe setbacks outside the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as at home with the reinvigoration of slavery as a function of the industrial revolution preventing it from dying out naturally as the founding fathers expected.
Whereas there had been one American republic from the revolution, one continuous American republic from the revolution to today, however modified substantially by the civil war and reconstruction amendments. France, for example, is today in its fifth republic, interrupted by two monarchies, two empires, and a fascist regime. And the UK remains a monarchy, al albeit constitutional, even though it was a republic during its revolutionary civil war in the 17th century. And Germany and Japan have been liberal democracies only since World War II. And the US remains the pre-minent capitalist country in the world that it became during the second industrial revolution.
The modern bajgeois republic differs from the ancient republic in its respect for civil liberties and rights. The rights of civil society against the state not observed by ancient democracy.
The Marxist understanding of the dialectical relation between capitalism and the possibility and task of socialism means that the contradiction of bajgeois social relations and industrial forces of production poses itself most purely in the United States of America as has and has done so since early on. Just as in Markx and Lenin's times, the spectre of socialism or communism apparently still haunts the world as seen in the last millennial generation's attempted resuscitation of its tradition. Today, it appears as the ghost of Marxism. The greatest phenomenon of a new socialist movement in recent times has taken place in the United States with the millennial left.
In it, questions of original or historical Marxism, the recovery of Marx and figures such as Lenin have figured prominently. This is also true in the last major historical upsurge of interest in Marxism in the 1960s new left which back then as now was influential and inspirational throughout the world. It was long understood that if Marxism is not relevant in the United States then it is irrelevant everywhere else.
Late doubts about the speculative proposition of identical fates of the boogeois revolution and America as its last standing avatar with the struggle for socialism to overcome capitalism reflect not enlightenment but its forgetting. Socialist counteridentification with America as the p predominant capitalist country expresses doubts about socialism.
Marxism and historical Marxism's clear perspectives on the foundational character of the American Revolution and central character of the United States historically in the struggle for socialism have become obscured in the present.
A reactionary anti- capitalism both on the ostensible left and the avowed right has made a casualty of America and its revolutionary history. In its 250th year, this is particularly poignant. In the recent era of neoliberalism, the Reagan and Thatcher revolution of neoliberal capitalism, the American left has reached to postworld war II European social democracy as a contrasting counter model and capitalism has been hastily identified with Anglo-Americanism.
In this both the counter-revolutionary character of social democracy and the revolutionary character of capitalism itself have been obscured. What was forgotten is that original historical Marxism opposed the welfare state of capitalism which was seen rightly as intentionally undercutting the workers own social capacities and struggles by making them dependent wards of capitalist politics. Instead, this counterfeiting of socialism has been accepted falsely as good coin. The millennial left, for instance, the democratic socialists of America, has been content to accept what the right denounces demagogically as socialism in the welfare state and inverting its value positively as their own program.
The original meaning of not only Marxism, but socialism itself, as the promised self-overcoming and transcendence of capitalism has been deranged beyond recognition.
Worse still, freedom has become a strangely tabooed concept both on the left and beyond. Pessimism about America expresses pessimism about socialism.
It is pessimism about freedom. Choosing the pessimistic version of capitalism in progressive welfareism has meant doubting the possibility of socialism that Marxism originally recognized in capitalism as a self-contradictory form of freedom.
The crossroads of socialism or barbarism has cut through the heart of America as the preeminent capitalist country for the last two centuries. It still does.
Hence, so does Marxism indelibly.
As we remember the American Revolution and its historical legacy, we are haunted by the remaining task of socialism to realize the historic promise of freedom as the dialectical truth of capitalism. The truly emancipatory character of the American Revolution lives, however contradictory, in capitalism, and its fate will be determined in the struggle for socialism.
>> Well, first of all, thank you to Platypus for inviting.
>> Is it on?
>> Okay. Well, first of all, thank you to uh Platypus for inviting me from Germany. I think there's a certain irony that uh you invited like someone from Germany, the country with no successful revolution, but plenty of counterrevolution with atrocious effects around the world. Um and um this is the 20 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. But we're also um in the year that um marks the 200th anniversary of Wilhan Deepk who was considered to be Marx's agent in Germany was deemed a soldier of revolution and um in 1847 he sought to go to the United States to form an agrarian commune in Wisconsin um having the failure of Owen's um approach in mind and in 1887 he traveled to the United States finally um after having been absorbed by the 1848 revolution and everything that followed since. And he said, "Well, the Americans are like children who maintain their curiosity for knowledge and the world. We Europeans like to remain in the dark."
And um maybe um we're still at that point. Um because like Chris mentioned that there's at least a millennial left here. Um uh we have a millennial right in the whole of Europe.
It's true though. um since the the victory of counterrevolution with ground zero having been Greece uh in January uh to July 2015. Ever since then the far right has been on the upurge and the left has been in decline. Nevertheless, um uh it it is best fought when with a back against the wall. And um so I'm I'm happy to contribute something um about revolution um and the legacy of the American Revolution in light of the world revolution as Edith has called it.
Um historically I agree the bgeoisi was a revolutionary force. Its 17th to early 19th century revolutions were a force of progress, enlightenment and emancipation. As such they were also welcomed by KL Marx and Fredic Engles and Gablach was correct to emphasize the liberating nature especially of the late 18th century enlightenment classics and literature as well as the early humanist bourgeoa realism of the first half of the 19th century. The American Revolution of 1776 was a cornerstone of bourgeoa revolution the initial spark of an era. It also inspired the great French revolution of 1789 which gave birth to what Eric Hopsborn deemed the age of revolution that lasted until 1848. The French experience in particular then embodied a formula of revolution also for the socialist ones.
The American revolution was also strikingly different when compared to the longstretch English one from uh 1642 till 1688. The English which gave birth to capitalism led to the amalgamation of the new urban industrial bourgeoisi with the landowning gentry in the countryside as a force of double oppression towering above the working class. At the same time the English American and French revolutions already started to reveal the contradictions of bourgeoa rule.
They did so in three ways. First they showcased the sharp differences between the emerging bourgeoisi and the popular classes. Second, they became visible in the exclusion of women from the status of citizenship. And thirdly, they showed liberalism's limitations in the guise of colonial oppression and the emergence of what Dominico Luro has called master race democracy. These contradictions showed as early as the American Revolution itself, even if it was an anti-colonial revolution that facilitated also the emergence of a particular American capitalist imperialism in its modern form as an empire without colonies. And as early as the French Revolution, which immediately inspired the Haitian Revolution, as the earliest anti-colonial revolt against master race democracy, the triple exclusion of the propertyless, women, and the colonized lay at the heart of the spec specificity of liberalism as an explicitly anti-democratic form of elite rule of the property classes. Later on in continental Europe, in the middle of the 19th century, the bourgeoisi ceased to be a revolutionary force for good and became a force of counterrevolution.
Edith mentioned the exhaustion of bourgeoa revolutions and how um it was passed on the legacy of emancipation from the bourgeoisi to the proletariat.
Markx analyzed um this in his historical political writings uh with which he tried to prove the epistemological superior superiority of the method of historical materialism visav the liberal follyies such as the great man or coincidental or circular theories of history. The German Marxist sociologist Leo Kofla spoke of the liberal bourgeois conservative turn of 1848. All Europewide revolutions of that year were crushed once the proletariat emerged on the stage of history. Conservative turn meant the Europeanwide amalgamation of the liberal bourgeoisi and the conservative landowning classes. This also had cultural effects. Even though he largely urged during the 1930s expressionism controversy, Lukatch was correct in identifying the growth of irrationalism as a dominant trend of bourgeoa thought ever since. When we speak of the American and entire age of revolution, then we must also acknowledge that every revolution goes through phases. Each one depends on the mobilization of the popular classes and may only be victorious through them. It therefore contains a democratic moment.
Also the American Revolution was confronted with the popular classes and their demands reaching beyond the limited goals of a bourgeoa revolution.
Revolutions therefore usually radicalize and give birth to counterrevolutions. In the American revolution, the property classes conservative turn already happened during the revolution itself.
It manifests itself in the very process of the founding fathers drafting the constitution. The revolutionary masses were largely demobilized. The democratic moment subsided. The class composition of owners entailed that the constitution was largely written according to their interests. As Charles Beard writes in his economic interpretation of the constitution of the United States, the constitution was quote carried through principally by four groups of personality interests. Money, public securities, manufacturers, and trade and shipping. A large propertyless mass was under the prevailing suffrage qualifications excluded at the outset from participation. The constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities. In other words, it was the first moment in history of what Steven Gil called the constitutionalization of inequality. It is no con co coincidence I think that august hayek the key ideologue of the neoliberal counterrevolution based his idea of a new constitutionalism of disciplinary neoliberalism on the US constitution and later US experience of having both universal suffrage and capitalist class domination at the same time i.e solving the problem of the workingclass majority from the standpoint of a minoritarian bourgeoisi in ways different from Europeans European immediate fascist dictatorships in this way the neoliberals like Hayek and the American James Buchanan were much superior to Carl Schmidt and even Ludvik from Mises Hayek's teacher who had hailed fascism as the savior of civilization American constitutionalization was thus a counterrevolution and the various popular uprisings against it such as Sha's rebellion in 1786 1787 Massachusetts show it. It was Terry Boutton in who in 2007 showed in taming democracy and what he calls the troubled ending of the American Revolution that perceptions according to which the revolution made quote the interests and prosperity of ordinary people the pursuits of happiness the goal of society and government were ideological.
Ordinary people, according to Bowen, were rather quote convinced that the revolutionary elite had waged and won a counterrevolution against popular democratic ideals. During the 1780s and 1790s, ordinary folk across the new nation perceived democracy to be under assault from elite leaders determined to scale it back from the broad ideal that had been articulated in 1776. Ultimately the American civil war of uh 1861 till 65 understood in Marxist terms with Charles Post was fought over the question which mode of production the agrarian slave owner mode of production of the south or the urban industrial capitalist mode of production of the north was to be the mode of production of westward expansion. After the victory of the north the particular American exceptionalism of a developed capitalist country without a class-based social democratic party emerged. The answer to Vanna Zombat's famous question, why is there no socialism in the United States?
Resulted, in my view, from a mixture of factors such as number one, the availability of stolen land capable of cultivation. Second, a comparatively high wage level due to chronic labor shortages that also necessitated the specific technological innovations creating during the efficiency craze and eventually Ford's assembly line. Third, the ethnic fragmentation of a working class composed by ethnicities which immigrated as ethnic waves. Um each and every new one functioning as a non-unionized wage depressing strike breaking workingclass fraction for the previous one. And finally for u the creation of wages of whiteness as a ruling technique technique which made the Irish white. Uh Chris mentioned that America according to second international Marxism would have to be the most fertile ground for socialism and I agree um that was um the idea that socialism is being born from the womb of capitalism itself. Um but as a result uh Eugene Depp's socialist party reached its peak in 1912 and was then in a way absorbed in a grumpian trust for mismo by which popular revolts from below from the Midwestern agrarian populist movement to the Pullman general strike helped modernize capitalist rule and helped bring about the particular social imperialism embodied by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and Wilson's entry into World War I. Um, Zombat contrary to all Browder said uh uh in America there's no space for socialism in between roast beef and apple pie.
So what remains of the legacy of revolution? Revolutionary heritage is passed on from the bourgeoisi to the proletariat in historical terms. Ever since the bourgeoisi and its liberal class sought to forget two things.
First, albeit potentially uh or inevitably violent, overall revolutions are beautiful. Second, revolutions where they occur are necessary. So, let's look at this for a second. First, as Lucach point Lucatch points out in his essay, Tactics and Ethics written on the occasion of the 1917 October revolution, the revolutionary carries the moral responsibility of the violence or oppression he may have to enforce during a revolution, especially if the old ruling class is determined to defend its position of privilege at all costs.
However, failing to do the revolution inevitably perpetuates the violence and suffering of the system against which the revolution was directed. Lukatch warned, "Those who are ambivalent or even hostile to an ongoing revolution carry the responsibility for all this violence and unnecessary suffering within a surviving capitalist society, which as he predicted would lead to another imperialist world war on top of the prolonged class exploitation and oppression. Second, revolutions where they occur are historically inevitable.
They are not the outcome of potheads, of eggheheads misleading the masses, but instead they were already being prepared deep down in the grounds of societal contradictions.
The American historian ML Hansen once commented on the nature of the immigrant. What the son wishes to forget, the grandson wishes to remember.
Likewise, the bourgeoa revolutionary tradition was inherited by the working class and replaced by proletarian revolution in the core capitalist countries. In the 1890s, socialists were convinced that socialist revolution was inevitable. It was a strength of Marxist theory at the time to conceive of socialism as being born from the womb of capitalist society itself. At the same time it was a weakness that this scientific instead of utopian understanding of socialism this um could lead the high priest of international Marxism Ksky to a particular position which uh he phrased as this we are revolutionary but not a revolution making party >> as if the revolution would come by itself. Bernstein's revisionism, trained largely by English Fabianism, considered a harmonization of capital and labor and a parliamentarian path to socialism possible. It appeared as if the re revolution was dead. Bernstein instrumentalized Angel's testimony of 1895 for this message. However, the 1905 revolutions and the mass strike debate and international social democracy showed that social re revolution was far from dead. Furthermore, the mass strike as a new revolutionary method of struggle was born. a third weapon next to parliament um uh and um struggles at the shop floor um at in the workspace.
The dialectic of war and revolution which continues until today and informed in a watered down fashion obviously also Obama's electoral electoral victory in 2008 facilitated a world revolution from Ireland to the far east. Alexander Colontai, Lenin and Trosky were correct in their harsh criticisms of Kowsky Bernstein and the proponents of parliamentarian socialism who actually believed like Kowsky that the post-war government takeovers were already the proletarian revolution itself and who failed to acknowledge the reality of counterrevolution. Colen and Trosky all maintained that if it hadn't been for the Bolsheviks, Kowsky, Bernstein, and the rest of them would still be fig figuratively speaking lying in the trenches fighting the capitalist class's imperialist war caused by their own failure to prevent it by national general strikes according to the oath of the 1907 second international convention in Stoutgot. The Boleviks were correct by announcing that they had done the revolutionary homework at home and now it was up to the socialists in the west to do their part under circumstances much more favorable to socialism given their degree of industrialization, economic sovereignty and the mass character of the working class and the capitalist corps. The boleviks correctly assessed also that the humanity and chances of success for the October revolution depended on the success of revolution in the west. They were also rightfully saying that it was ironic that those who failed to do their homework um ended up handing out style marks to the Boleviks for the contradictions of a proletarian revolution that became only this contradictory because the revolutionaries in the west had failed to do their homework. Among the revolutionaries in the west, it was merely Ottoawa who fought for an understanding that there existed equally legitimate diverging path towards socialist revolution in developed west and underdeveloped east. And it was Antonio Gshi who as a devout Leninist hailed the October Revolution and sought to emulate it under Italian circumstances later seeking to translate the same project onto a terrain of new conditions to separate the young from the material Gshi is a philological error and dishonest political maneuvering.
The experiences of the 1905 and especially the 1917 revolution showed that bourgeoa revolutions were not a viable intermediate step to overcome underdevelopment and dependence for peripheral countries. The emergence of the Soviet Union as the first worker state in the world forced national revolutions in the periphery beyond the bourgeoa revolutionary framework and into the fold of proletarian revolution.
Um, as I said, the 1911 Chinese revolution was the last bourgeoa re revolution and it changed everything including that a communist party could emerge in China under the non- capitalist circumstances of of the time.
Gener generally speaking, we must acknowledge I think and come to terms with the fact that historically speaking, the revolution shifted from the core to the periphery where conditions for revolution are easier but for building socialism much more difficult. shifted from proletarian to largely peasant revolutions under communist leadership.
The experiences of semi-p peripheral and global southern revolutions and their defense against imperialist counterrevolutions, however, has created ideological problems of socialism.
Trosky and Lennin were correct in their assessment that socialism in one country would prove ultimately impossible. At the same time, this doesn't necessarily mean that Trosky's approach was correct.
Generally speaking, we must not lightly surrender the experience of 20th century socialism to epidictic claims of total failure and total terror. For socialists and communists today, the Soviet Union's history is a loss of innocence.
Obviously, yet it also brought achievements and important experiences.
Also um to say today that we are not the offspring of those socialist experience experiments is a too cheap of a way to claim innocence while cutting ourselves off from learning from past experience and failing to learn means losing our history with all its achievements as well as risking to make the same mistakes over and over again. Also the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded where the Soviet Union failed i.e. overcoming historic dependencies and today represents a different path of modernization for peripheral countries needs to be reckoned with. Reducing China to either authoritarian state capitalism or socialism with Chinese characterist characteristics is too simple. It remains a big contradiction with an open history and proletarian internationalism always meant thinking in terms of relationships of forces within an imperialist world system. Advances in any country are are advances of socialism elsewhere and vice versa. And yet we are not in China but in the west.
So where does that leave us? Whether the world historic shift of revolution from the north to the south means that revolution in the global north is no longer a viability is the $1 million question. In some respects we don't know what works but rather what hasn't worked at least under the specific conditions of the 20th century. This may include revolution in the north but it surely includes the Bernsteinian illusions of parliamentary socialism. At the same time also the core periphery relationships are shifting. We are at a world historical turning point. 500 years of North Atlantic domination um in the world are coming to an end. The world economy is shifting from the north and west to the south and west. What if we we are the semi-p periphery now? And what if the revolution therefore returns back to the core the former core capitalist countries? Thank you very much.
>> Okay. So I've got a few notes. Um thank you both for your talks. Um mostly so I'll start with with with your um comments, comrade. Um I I I because I I agree with you more. So I kind of wanted to like I largely I found most of it agreeable. Um I think that something that's important to note is that is that the historical experience of world revolution um and the failure of world revolution but also his own experiences of it show us that and this is something that Lennon and Trosky theorized is that the it is not the most developed capitalist countries but rather places where the accumulation of capitalism's contradictions becomes most acute that we see the first ruptures in the revolution. utionary chain. Um it is exactly for this reason that it was Russia, not Britain in which revolution broke out first in the 20th century. Um and today we see all manner of countries in the semi-p periphery where the um intense contradictions of capitalist development and the limits of that development are expressed most clearly.
Um but it is exactly also true as you mentioned. I believe the quote from Lenon is that the revolution was easier to initiate in these countries but it is all the more harder to complete and it is actually and the inverse is true of the advanced capitalist countries where the revolution is more difficult to initiate um but it is easier to complete. This is why exactly I think we must understand these things as part of a world cycle of revolutions not a particular national dynamic.
Um, responding to Chris, I I I guess my first question is I think the question that's going to define a lot of this discussion is is America exempt from the laws of history.
I I don't think so. Um, we had to address the problems of the failure of the American Revolution. I mean I mean the third one, the one that we were expecting to happen.
>> The reality is it didn't happen. I I find find the story that you tell about why Marxists love America. And I think it's mostly true, but I think it smooths over some important contradictions. You quote Browder, but it's not Browder just the the exact um the exact representation of the total degeneration that was Stalinism. and in fact return to this so this um you know uh I guess you today call it socialism of American characteristics but um you know socialism communism is 21st 20th century Americanism you know this was exactly an representation of popular frontism and an unwillingness to break with the capitalist class and in fact a coalition which saw the um the American communist party move to the right of even the centrist socialist party of America which maintained its um maintained its centism against the right um right return of the Americans um the the communists. This is exactly the problem.
I think that um what is not being addressed here is the relationship between this kind of um invocation of the bourgeoa revolutions and Stalinism.
But it is exactly Stalinism that introduc that that that heavily emphasized this dynamic in the 20th century.
>> Um I want to take up something that you referenced comrade and I didn't take it cuz I didn't write them all down because I I I will be honest with you comrades.
I didn't bring any uh books any of my books with me to the United States because I didn't want to be seized by airport security.
>> Sure.
>> So I didn't have my copy of Prisoners of the American Dream on me. Um but I read that last year for my own uh branch reading group um in in in my local section and I think it's exactly we have to ask the question of what objective dynamics in American capitalism and subjective failures of the American socialist movement led to the solidification and sentimentation of the historical failures of the American working class and in fact a negative dialectic which produced a more and more segmented and stratified working class. One which it was um sort of one in which um its uh revolutionary potential was imprisoned within uh you know the interstate system and suburbia and endless um consumption.
I think in turn we have to address the problem that in the c just as the liberal revolutionaries of the 19th century became the butchers of the Paris commune.
>> So too in the course of the 20th century does the United States move from the greatest of the bgeoa revolutionary powers to the world headquarters of counterrevolution.
a world headquarters of counterrevolution that presided over the butchering of communist revolutionaries from Chile to Indonesia throughout Africa etc. It is this world headquarters of the of international counterrevolution that today we still must struggle against so my answer to the question of is America exempt from the laws of history is no. My answer to the question of is America still at the heart of any world revolution is yes.
But it cannot this advance cannot be made if the American working class does not accept its position does not challenge its position as the backbone of the global epicenter of counterrevolution which today it remains. Thank you.
Okay. a couple of things. So, I wanted to um Edith, I think that you used you talked about the three American Revolutions and included the um the sort of second reconstruction, the 1960s. Um I thought you were going to say something else and also I realize I didn't bring up in my in my presentation, but I think is relevant to what Ingar was discussing. We forget about the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800.
All right. So it would the idea of a kind of a thermodor or counterrevolution in the American constitution leaves aside the fact that the interpretation of the constitution was radicalized through the jeffersonian revolution of 1800. Uh so Jefferson um supported the US Constitution but he differed over its interpretation with John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Um with uh George Washington being a kind of ambivalent figure in this um and he organized the working class uh in his Democratic Republican party to achieve his electoral revolution of 1800. Uh and it's in uh pretty short order after um uh the two terms in office of uh Jefferson that the Supreme Court and through other kinds of precedents uh interpret the US Constitution uh in in a very different way than looked to be the case in the 1790s.
Um, so I mentioned Jefferson organized the working class uh in the in his uh Democratic the Democratic Republican party of 1800. Who was that working class and how did they participate in the electoral revolution of 1800? They were of course an artisal working class uh not a proletarianized working class.
And when we think about property rights and as a qualification for voting, we leave aside how that could be interpreted.
Uh so the American republic like many of the bajgeois revolutions uh from the Dutch Republic onward took some inspiration from the Renaissance citystates and how workers were represented in in those small republics.
uh meaning that either membership in a guild or ownership of tools, qualifications by skill could count as property. In other words, that could get you past the property hurdle in terms of um uh the franchise. So yes, it's not universal franchise, but it's important to understand that the working class first of all was not they were not the poorest people in society by any means.
And second of all, uh they were not uh disenfranchised by by property qualifications in the way that we think about property in terms of like land or or ownership of a capitalist enterprise.
Um, that's important, I think, because of course the Democratic Republican Party of Jefferson is the um the precedent for the later Republican Party of Lincoln. Uh, so the Democratic Republicans were called by shorthand the Republican party.
that party split into the Democratic Party and the Wig Party with um Andrew Jackson and then finally the uh Republican party came out of the wig party and uh included the abolitionists and they hked back to Jefferson's Democratic Republican party. Now I raise all of this because of course um this is before uh the era of the second industrial revolution and the era of Marxism and mass socialist parties and this kind of thing. Um, I brought up Earl Browder semi-ironically. I I of course, right? So, only to say that uh to my chagrin, I looked into, you know, I probably knew this years ago from reading the history of the American Communist Party, but more recently, I had to remind myself that William Z.
Foster and Earl Browder were both members of Eugene Deb's Socialist Party.
They they both went back to that tradition. And I was again a little bit chagrin or horrified to see that. And yet it also challenged me to think, okay, how would it have been plausible for people to have gone from the preWorld War I Eugene Deb Socialist Party into the split that produced the Communist Party and ultimately into the Stalomization of that party in the 1930s? How would that have been a plausible thing for people who had come to consciousness, learned all their socialist organizing as preWorld War I Socialist Party of America, Debstyle and Kowskyan socialists? How would that how would that translate? And of course, this was not only true in the United States, but in other places. Um and so I think that the the question of Stalinism I think is a is a difficult one because uh on the one hand it's clear that Marxism did produce Stalinism. That is obviously true. On the other hand it's also clear that there was a significant liquidation of Marxism involved in in Stalinism. it. I think the painful question is could the revolutions of the 20th century have occurred without Marxism? I don't resolve that in favor of saying oh you know it's like the contradictions of the revolution or the contradictions of Marxism. Um you know when we're talking about the Chinese revolution or Cuba or Vietnam or Korea uh I think that rather it really points back to the question of Marxism itself.
And that's why I centered uh my talk on the emergence of the US as the great capitalist country of the 20th century in the second industrial revolution.
Um so yes you know the American Revolution and the fate of the American Revolution still still endures as a task in socialism and yes the United States did become the uh garrison of counterrevolution in the 20th century but I would offer a kind of dialectical view of revolution and counterrevolution in this context and I would say that perhaps there was a kernel of truth truth to American anti-communism, not only as a counter-revolutionary force, but also as an attempt to preserve the revolution.
Meaning that there's a real split in the context of the cold war and a real contradiction between revolution and counterrevolution in the 20th century. And I don't think that that can be parsed out in terms of well, the east is some kind of revolution, however deformed, and the west is the counterrevolution. I think that this dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution cuts through both sides of the cold war, but again raises the entire question of Marxism and socialism at a very fundamental level.
You know, meaning that's why I brought up that we're haunted by Marxism even in the United States that you know it hasn't had a mass uh Marxist influenced socialist movement since the time of Debs. Nonetheless, it is there.
And I don't think that it just comes in a roundabout way. I don't think it comes from Europe. I don't think that the only reason why people in America remember Marxism is because of Verso Books or historical materialism publishers. No, I think it's here. Um, and I think that uh indeed it might be the opposite. meaning verso and historical materialism may not only depend on an American market to stay in business, but might depend on America itself to uh have Marxism make any sense whatsoever.
I want to I want to start with um the question of the segmented and the stratified working class that Edith brought up. Um cuz the notion that socialism is scientific was connected to the to the idea that like all the the primitive communist dreams that you know you can trace back to early Christianity and like the other religions as as Kowsky did in his writings. um which can give us some hope because it means that socialism is nothing nothing unnatural.
On the contrary, capitalism is unnatural and there's has always been a sentiment um that uh you know we we as human beings depend on collectives like we cannot sustain ourselves without being in a collective. And the main contradiction of capitalism is that we have socialized production but private property in the means of production. I think that's that remains um um as as Markx announced it and that socialism then became a powerful force when socialist utopias suddenly were connected to real social forces in society that developed with you know the de developing contradictions of capitalism namely the working class.
intellectuals and their socialist ideas with the working class. And today we are in a crisis of socialism because that connection it it has not been completely dismantled or dissolved. But obviously um we don't have es especially not um in the former core capitalist countries an an a workingclass movement on the upsurge like we're still recovering from the neoliberal counterrevolution that basically um wiped out the two of the three pillars of anti- capitalism which was number one working-class power in the west trade union power in the west um which is what in the US the focus shock did with mass unemploy employment and also opening up using the debt crisis in the global south, what we today call the global south as a way of pitting workers against one another through the through capital mobility, the ability of capital to relocate um and therefore creating all sorts of competitive corporatist strategies amongst ex-existing trade unions etc. So, and I think we're still trying to recover from from all of that. Um and at the same time like liberalism and the experience of the new democrats in the United States, uh new labor in Britain and the Neymita in Germany have taught us that without the working class no social progress can be made, right? Like that's why we got um like all forms of symbolic victories from the new social movements uh but not real victories, right? like we have um for instance the feminist movement we have gender sensitive language but we don't have free daycare and we don't have free care for the elderly like where it really materially matters and why because the working class when the the new social movements came to power under Clinton under Blair under under GRUA were in the total defense but they would have been the only ones to make it materially painful for the capitalist class by seizing something as um free daycare and free care for the elderly. So we we are at at a conundrum. We have to rebuild the working class um in order to achieve any kind of progress um be it civic rights to um material benefits. Um and I think the good thing is that the we can like we can start with the idea that the segmentation and stratification that Edith has spoken about is not an unnatural state but it's the natural state of the working class like that's something something that we can learn from EP Thompson we can learn it from the state theory of Nikos Pollansis who who argued that you know the capitalist state is individualizing and disorganizing the working class through grades in high school through all kinds of you know credits that you get at university ranking individuals and putting them into the competition of the of capitalism itself and we can learn it from Leo Panag and Sam Ginden um with the idea that the working class is harmed itself like you know workers um uh are not ideal revolutionary subjects right they're under constant the constant control of capitalist enterprises and obviously that does something to their subjectivity and they learn um the self-confidence of a revolutionary class through the revolution itself. So it's basically up to socialists um to create the working class that can really actually um overcome capitalism. Um, so that's that's the one thing that I wanted to mention. And regarding the United States and whether like the revolutionary legacy, I mean what I find interesting is the question like why do you have or have had millennial socialism while we had millennial fascism in continental Europe or have and I think one thing that um can be noticed is that um where you have societies where um there is a real erosion of the mid-inccome uh working pass, right? Um that there you have the potential for bottom middle coalitions and they turn left or can turn left. Whereas you have a working class that has a lot to lose like in countries like Germany or the Netherlands or Belgium um or Denmark or Sweden. Um they have status panic and then they turn right like they will um basically follow right-wing ideologies that say okay there's not enough for everyone. So basically we have to take it out on the underclass or the the lower classes and um and in my view like uh the United States has already um because of tuition fees because of de-industrialization because of um um um like a number of factors also the trade union weakness um like has already experienced the erosion of the wage earning middle classes and therefore there is a potential for millennial socialism or or like bottom middle coalitions. And I wonder and I I'd be curious to hear your positions on this that um like when I started um dealing with um American socialism in and um my writings, I was struck by the fact that even linguistically there used to be no socialism in the United States.
Like if you were left, you were a liberal and if you were right, you were a conservative. And sometimes in academia, you would recognize the radical.
>> Uhhuh. Right. Um and um like how could you build a movement when it wasn't even represented linguistically? But now it is. Right now socialism is is back and it may or may not mean social democratic welfareism but it is something to to to build upon. And I remember in the mid 2000s I wrote an essay for capital and class about this too. There were Stenley Aronowitz and Rick Wolf who argued that, you know, working through the Democratic Party, alignment with the Democratic Party dradicalized the left coming out of the 60s and they argued for a workingclass-based left-wing party. Um and then suddenly Sanders came about um through the irony of history of the two-party system like people like Sanders in continental Europe would have been part of third and fourth and fifth parties and they would have been basically um made impotent as a result right um like social democracy in Germany or like in countries like France and Greece like has no potential whatsoever. there's no ideological like nothing burning anymore, right? Um they can't have a burnout because they're not even glimmering and you couldn't um you know light a cigarette with them. And so um but it it was possible here in the US, but at the same time now we're seeing the end of Sanderism um and we're also seeing the failure of the dirty break strategy that Eric Blamp um put out. And I'm I'm curious whether we're back at are you back at square one, you know, where Stanley Ronovitz and Rick Wolf said we need a a third party. Um and I'd be curious to to hear more from the American comrades about those things.
>> Last idea since you were mentioning freedom and I put it shortly. Um I wouldn't put freedom and uh and welfareism or socialism in in an in an opposition or juxtapose them because I do think that we have a very clear case especially in a country like the US where liberty has such a important role or plays such an important role is that freedom is the precondition or socialism is the precondition for freedom. Um and no no other none other than Kowsky made that argument very uh very convincingly saying that to all the bourgeoa intellectuals. You say that socialism is destroying liberty and freedom. But your idea of freedom is that of the artisan of the 18th century and capitalism itself is destroying that freedom. The freedom in your labor, right? That you determine yourself like when you work, how you work, what you produce, etc. But that is like the capitalist process of proletarianization is undoing that. Um and therefore we have a different sense of freedom. Like we won't undo the social division of labor. We can't right like that is going to stick. But we're going to create freedom for you through the radical reduction of work hours, right? You will have freedom beyond your work. you will be working four hours a day and the for the rest of the time you will be able to learn a language and to basically become um like a henistic like almost nichian ki actually resorts to niche but says it's a niche for everyone >> right like we can all have like a dionian like an ancient helenistic lifestyle and I think that's something that might resonate um with Americans it might not resonate with Germans because we're used to the Prussian I just do a quick response.
>> I just want to just quickly respond to one thing or maybe a couple of things.
So one one thing is the uh stratification question. Um so Ingar I think you uh invoked the neoliberal like the so-called race to the bottom right so race to the bottom uh not only in the periphery but also in the core not only in the developing world but also in the developed world um so I don't think of stratification as uh a question of like dradicalization or aristocracy of labor and this kind of thing. I think of stratification as actually the opposite which is that it's actually pulling the entire working class down. Um so that's one thing. Uh the other thing is freedom. Uh and thinking about you know is socialism a precondition for freedom or is freedom a precondition for socialism? Well today of course you know uh we need freedom to produce a socialist party.
And so the freedom that exists in the United States, freedom of speech, freedom of association that does not exist in Europe, that does not exist in Europe, where religious organizations are controlled by the state. Where the state funds some religious institutions but not others. So the state's not going to fund a cult. In the United States, they don't fund any of it. So that means you can have cults, right? You don't have you don't have the state deciding what a true religion is. That's huge for building a socialist movement because a socialist movement is going to be called a cult by the capitalists, right?
No, seriously. And you know, because I think that it is still the case there there's freedom in the United States that there isn't in any other country.
And it's the freedom to produce a socialist movement and a socialist party that doesn't exist elsewhere.
You're not going to start a new socialist party in China.
But also, you're not going to start a new socialist party in Germany.
The freedom to do it is here. Then why don't you have one?
>> I'm trying.
>> I'm trying.
>> Does anybody want to respond or >> Okay. Um, we're going to go to questions and I would just ask that we hold the applause for questions. So, starting Yeah.
We're going to start with >> right there. Right there.
>> Thank you.
Um I was kind of with with the kind of statement around the fact that the kind of um the working class is constantly under siege, right? And it's kind of a socialist responsibility to like verify the conditions around working class to make it revolutionary. I was wondering if that means that the leftist parties, so the socialist parties in America have kind of failed the American working class by being political instead of social. Or in other words, like a political party or an American social party should be like a grocery store for a club. You know what I mean?
Anybody want to take a question?
>> Well, I Well, I do think that if I understand your question correctly, and I don't want to judge um our American comrades because we're doing pretty badly in in in continental Europe as well. Um but I think that Chris has a very important point. um with regards to the welfare state because the welfare state even though I do agree or I'm convinced that um the defense is important um but at the same time it did demobilize the working class right many of the things the grievances that used to be um dealt with um at a civil society level of workers amongst themselves right like all the insecurities that capitalism um harms workers with um were self organized or against by workers. Um today it's all mediated through the nation state and by through the mediation through the nation state we do get like a a strong sense of individualization. It's individual rights. It's not class rights and um at the same time citizenship then um uh includes privileges right vested interests like the idea that because you have citizenship you have more rights than others like the late commas for instance right and um and so that's I think it like I don't know how to work around this because I mean it's not a viable solution to say let the neoliberals dismantle our entire welfare states and then we're back mid 19th century capitalism and then we build it up again and we do it differently this time.
>> That's not going to work. But I do think that we have to recognize with that notion and possibly find ways of workingass self-organization underneath the state level like >> I have to set it up.
>> Absolutely.
>> Uh should be >> is that working? Yeah. All right. Okay.
Um I I I I find this while I agree that that ultimately welfareism is is like a structure of of capitalist regulation and Markx himself obviously opposed uh capitalist welfare measures in the critique of the go program. But what I I think is is clear is that the passage of of of um from competitive to um monopoly capitalism and the in the course of the transition 20th century sees the emergence of the increasing role of the state in the regulation of of uh the wage um relation. And this actually means that the decis that a social question becomes decisively political.
there can be no you know workplace regulation of the wage relation. It must can only be regulated at the level of the state >> and that means a question of state power is posed immediately. So I think it is exactly the fact that we it is exactly this um this uh state um integration of of state capital and the and the regulation of the wage wage fund through various systems of corporatism etc. that makes the political question a burning necessity more than it was in Marx's time. I would argue.
>> Let me make one reference uh because um I think you brought up uh Bernstein being influenced by the Fabians.
>> Well, guess who the Fabians were influenced by? Bismar.
>> Yeah.
>> So, it comes full circle, right? Yeah.
And um so and and as Rosa Luxembourg said, Bernstein exhibited uh a certain Lalianism, you know, to come back to the critique of the Gotha program um and really identified uh the theatification of the economy and the working class's participation in the state with socialism with the evolution of socialism. Now, interestingly, he was not thinking about Germany. He was thinking maybe Germany still needs a revolution because it's an autocratic state. He was thinking of England, France, and the United States in when thinking of evolutionary socialism. He didn't think he he of course would have loved for that to be the case in Germany, but he thought well actually we might need a revolution in Germany in fact because of the autocracy. Um and so I think that this question of the state and the imshment of capitalism in the state uh that's the big puzzle. If you talk to the DSA, if you talk to the Jacabin writers, they will say we can't be Rosa Luxembourg or Lenin today because the role of the state is much greater today than it was in their time. and invoking like Ralph Miband but also taking some inspiration from Leo Panic uh would say and the state no longer belongs to the capitalist class the way it did in their time but the state now the working class has a stake in that state and of course I would say this is the wrong way of thinking about it in other words it's not about the sociological you know composition or access to the state of course the working classes had access to the state for a long time. Um, it's rather what the role of the state is in capitalism. In other words, is it is its role to socialize production or is it is it or is its role to accumulate capital?
Um, and I think that there was actually a discussion early in Jacaban before Bernie Sanders uh about you know what defines a uh a party as capitalist or socialist is not like do the capitalist support it but rather does the party subordinate itself to the needs of capital accumulation that has been completely forgotten conveniently in the meantime. Um so there was you know I would say a a moment there was a millennial socialist moment where it was a socialist moment and it wasn't a welfare state moment because actually they understood well the welfare state is part of the state's commitment to capital accumulation.
However, contradictory, but nonetheless, it it would still, you know, so that you could have a Labor party that's a capitalist party that there's no contradiction there, for example. They were thinking about these things. That's all out the window now.
And that's something for us to at least ponder.
>> That one right over here.
>> Yeah. Depending >> Well, Mars has certainly defend the anti-colonial revolution, you know, the American revolution, but um it's necessary to defend uh comrade Debs from Professor Cro >> try >> to present the American Revolution as some sort of unadulterated, you know, uh triumph of freedom. It was a bourgeois revolution. So let me just read a couple things that Debs actually said about the American Revolution on the 125th anniversary. The founders of the republic declaring that men were created equal evidently themselves alone and he spent most of his presentation condemning child slavery and linking it to the existence of wage slavery. Mhm.
>> So, it's useful that Platypus has panels where people can learn about history and debate. It's not useful to have dishonest presentations. You can't learn anything about the history of the left.
And you certainly can't intervene in society to win the working class to the necessity of socialism by cherrypicking.
Look, Jeff Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. His presidency initiated the rupture of relations with Haiti because he was worried about the spread of anti-slave revolutions. They then blockaded Haiti. That was, you know, the material interests of the slaveocracy.
Kra Edith correctly pointed to um the fact that there's no has never been a reformist Labor party in this country, not even a break from the capitalist parties. And it's the question of finishing the civil war that is the fundamental you know question of black oppression which is the secret sauce of American imperialism that you know has their it's their advantage over their imperialist rivals because the working class is continuously divided. So, you know, anybody who's here who actually wants to change what's going on in society, um, I, you know, I think you've got to say, why is it that the George Floyd rebellions, for instance, were not successful in, you know, fundamentally fighting against black racial oppression, against segregation. So come check out read black history in the class struggle. You know if if you're interested in changing the world. If not and if you don't even want an honest presentation about American history then listen to professor Katr.
>> Well I guess we'll have our uh duel on cherry bombing quotes. Uh um so yes, of course, and others such as uh John Reed claimed that the Civil War was not really about slavery, but was about northern capital dominating the South. How should we take that one?
That's a speech to the third international.
I prefer the Debs who said that if they were alive today, Jefferson and Lincoln would be members of the Socialist Party and not the Democrat or Republican parties.
That's a more obscure way of putting it.
It involves a kind of a a a leap in thinking. You know, if Jefferson and Lincoln were alive today, they'd be members of the Socialist Party. What does that what does that mean? But that's what we really have to think about. In other words, how did they understand the revolutionary tradition?
uh to give in to this counterrevolution of 1776 stuff, 1619 project stuff. That's the Democratic Party's line. That's not any kind of socialist line. That's going to be taught in every school in America.
Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder. The Revolution was a slaveholders revolt.
The Civil War wasn't really about slavery. That's the redeemer narrative.
That's triumphed now. that has triumphed.
>> Debs is rolling in his grave in the face of that.
>> I think the the quote about Jefferson and Lincoln if they were alive in Debs' time being members of the Socialist Party is interesting because like if my cat had wheels it would be a bicycle.
Like >> I think it's totally obtuse. Um but you know >> Deb said it >> well. Yeah. So what did he mean by it?
>> I guess I guess I go and find him and tell him off.
>> What did he mean by it?
>> I think the I think the key question is, you know, what do we face when we try to confront the history of the American Revolution? I don't think anyone here is arguing for a 1619 project interpretation. Well, I mean >> Oh, really? Oh, really?
>> Yeah, you are. You are.
>> New York Times. You were with the New York Times.
>> You said that any Marxist should defend the anti-colonial rebellion of the American Revolution.
>> But >> but what? Like you did. I I I got the microphone Chris >> and you got an extra time to respond before. So let's be clear about that.
>> Sorry.
>> You know, I see who pulls your strings here.
>> We're not bean counters. We're not bean counters here. I think that the task that like um but I mean I I I think that you know the reality that we face is the is the historic transition of the bourgeoa revolution to a boogeoa counterrevolution and it is exactly the same forces of the bajgeoa revolution that make that counterrevolution.
It is exactly the same forces that made the bourgeoa revolution in England who then suppressed the um the the um the levelers and diggers etc etc. It is the same forces that made the revolution in France that will go on to suppress the revolutionary trends that came forth from that movement. I think today and this is like I think that this question of of freedom I think that freedom do we need freedom to have socialism or socialism to have freedom? I think this is this this to me is is almost theological >> freedom to build a socialist movement.
>> We need we need to achieve a consistent struggle for democratic liberties in every country and that includes in the United States. I've traveled to many countries and I've never had my bag searched from revolutionary literature before and in Europe but I did in the United States and I I've traveled to Europe many times for political events. I've never had my phone searched by border guards asking about my political activities, but I did when I came here for this conference.
So, I think there's a question about political liberty there.
>> Mhm.
>> I think the defense of democratic liberties is the light and air of the socialist movement >> and that's cow scheme. So, you know, and I think that's what I have to say.
>> Okay, let's go to P.
>> Well, maybe just one last quote.
Frederick Douglas says the constitution leans towards freedom and therefore remains the northstar for liberty.
>> So you know um I guess is with us in the room.
>> Yes. Um and it's liberalism versus democracy and um the socialists are being identified with democracy by at least two of the panelists it seems. And so it just raises the question I guess of the Marxist clarification of the concept of freedom. Um to what extent does Markx tell us that it's the battle of democracy which needs to be waged by the socialists towards greater human flourishing and to what extent does the American revolution remain in that way a kind of guiding light towards that human flourishing maybe to put it more concretely it seems like there are three different philosophies of histories that were being presented uh Chris said that there's a continuation from lock to the Jeffersonian democratic revolution, Lincoln and Marx and then Debs. So maybe I would ask him to kind clarify that genealogy and how we inherit that problem of freedom in the present. And then there's an alternative which is that liberalism is the counterrevolution and that the socialist inherit the democratic revolution or the democratic moment in the phase of the revolution.
And in what way then do we need Marxism for that? and just be liberal democrats.
Like why do we need Marxism to defend democracy? Or if it's something more, if it's the proletariat revolution against the BJO revolution, what is it that we're letting go of or overcoming? What is it that we're rejecting within the BJO revolution? Is it individualism against collectivism or what is it that we need to overcome from the BJO revolution? because Chris proposed that the proletariat revolution is a recovery for the fulfillment of the BJA revolution under contradictory conditions of capitalism. So that seems to be a major disagreement kind of philosophy of history of revolution and freedom.
you want to take.
>> One thing that I'd bring up because um she's rebellion was raised.
>> Uh so Jefferson was um the ambassador to France at that time and he wrote back his famous letter on the Shaes rebellion where he said the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Um there's more to it than that. He says, "Let the people revolt because it warns the leaders." Uh, and it to not have the people revolt would be the death of liberty, right? Uh, so uh, even if they're wrong, right? So he said even if they're wrong, the people's revol right to revolt and actual revolt is better than if they don't revolt.
Uh, you know, that doesn't sound like someone who's only interested in their own personal freedom as a slaveholder.
That doesn't sound like that, does it?
Uh, nonetheless, he supported the Constitution, but again engaged in a political struggle over its meaning, over its practical interpretation, over its implementation.
and he he included slavery and wanted more uh condemnation of slavery in the Declaration of Independence. Um and of course uh he you know famously said that it was his lifelong project to eliminate slavery from from America and he felt like it was his biggest failure.
So if that's you know if we're going to remember it we got to remember it in its totality. Um now I tried to raise and I know it's an obscure point the dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution meaning capitalism is both the revolution and the counterrevolution.
It's the continuation of the revolution but it's also the counterrevolution within that revolution. And it's not a simple matter of you know which side are you on comrades especially not today in 2026. Which side are you on comrades? Are you on the side of the revolution or are you on the side of the counterrevolution? First of all, Marxism never treated it as as straightforwardly or simply as that. Not with respect to the bourgeoa revolutions and not with respect to the socialist revolution itself.
It was never a matter of which side are you on, comrades. And yet that's where the left has been stuck since the 1930s.
And it's been very destructive. It's killed any potential socialist movement even before it was born since the 1930s.
>> The connection to lock >> the connection to lock of course is that lock's the thinker of the glorious revolution and it's the clearest you know uh articulation of uh the right to labor and property as based in labor not based in possession.
you know all of that uh and it's the lock in principles that inform both the American and French revolutions. I I pointed out in my presentation very summarily that uh it was both an asset and a liability for the French revolutionaries that they were anglophiles. In other words, what they had in mind was the model of the English revolution. Uh and in fact there was a radicalization of the enlightenment after lock. I see Russo as transcending lock, as radicalizing lock, as building off lock, but radicalizing it. And that's influential for both the American and French revolutions. That radicalization of lock, which I again summarily pointed out in terms of why the right to life, liberty, and property was rewritten as life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Even though much later in the era of industrial capitalism, the Supreme Court reinterpreted pursuit of happiness to mean property. Right? Ironically enough, that it wasn't meant to be property. It was meant to be pursuit of happiness because they understood property is just the form we have now, but it shouldn't be enshrined as a right otherwise it will become a limit to freedom.
So on the question of the relationship between the proletarian and bgeoa revolution whether it is what what what are revoling against the I think I said it in my original talk >> that it fulfills and negates the revolution.
>> That's right.
>> It both it both completes them and it it negates them and and transcends them. It it goes beyond their their limits. This is I think the necessary the phrase like are we revoling against the BA revolutions or are we are we continuing them is is a uni dialectical excuse me undiical uh formulation. It is neither.
It is both.
It is of course the bgeoa revolutions that unleash the historical process by which the proletariat was both born and will be abolished.
That is that is obviously true. This is essential fundamental elementary Marxism in my opinion.
>> It is the it is bgeoa democracy uh or the bgeoa liberal constitutional regime that gives a political form through which the struggle this battle will be carried out. But it cannot be realized within that form.
>> Right?
>> The proletarian revolution cannot be realized within the American constitution.
>> Right? It is it will be it will be and and it is exactly this um I mean I describe it as thermodorian. Me and Chris will probably disagree about the details of that. I do think it is fundamentally a thermodorian document. I think the the I am a I am a a democrat not a liberal monarchist or a republican monarchist but ultimately I think that and and you know just as the American revolution I think perfected um or or advanced perfect is the wrong word uh advanced the form of the English revolution. I also think that the French Revolution advanced the form of the American Revolution by postulating the democratic republic the unicameal uh form of of the maximally democratic republic >> as as the elementary political form. I think that it is um it is exactly you know the bourgeoa revolutions unleash the um the the sort of found the flourishing of of of the movement for women's liberation the movement for the abolition of slavery the movement to both unleashes colonialism and the movement to overturn colonialism um you know it is both you know the the it unleashes all these things but these revolutions cannot be completed under capitalist society And it is for that reason that the proletariat must take up the tasks of the Baja revolution that the Bourgeois left lying on the floor.
>> But it also must um it also must learn to stand on its own feet and be confident in itself as a class.
>> It cannot do so if it if it feels it is if it endlessly ties itself to a bourgeoisi who will not even defend their own revolutions. Of course, >> I think like thinking about history um is always useful in the sense that we like or I personally look at a historical period in time. Um I think to myself, okay, where how would I have acted like with which side would I have sided? um and um what would that have entailed? So I think in that respect obviously it's important to look at history and say was that progressive overall or was that reactionary at the same time legal documents I would say always represent relationships of forces right not like a an ideational discourse um you know just we are historical materialists so we we draw it back to that and obviously there's historical periods that are more progressive and historical periods that are more reactionary. So we do have legal documents that date back to periods that um where the popular classes had a bigger say um in in prep paving the way to that document. for instance like the I mean obviously given um the fallout of capitalist crisis, fascism and war in Europe ironically like the socialist movement, the communist movements were strongest in those parts that then became part of the cold war in the west, right? in France and Italy because they they carried the partisan movements like basically the bajgeoisi failed in national liberation from fascism. So the communists had to take that role and we do have very very progressive uh constitutions in Western Europe coming out after World War II. Um just like you know pretty much similar also to the second bill of rights um you know that came out of the of of Roosevelt.
>> Yeah. Um, and the communists in West Germany said, "We didn't vote for it. We didn't vote for the the basic constitution of federal the Federal Republic of Germany, but there'll come the time where we'll have to defend it against you." And I think that's important to note that um there's certain ingrained or vested rights that will come under attack by the bourgeoisi when the interests of the bourgeoisi necessitate it.
>> Right? Because we know that capitalism is compatible with a lot of different forms of political rule. It's compatible with liberal rule, but it's also compatible with fascist rule and authoritarian rule. And therefore um the moments arise when the capitalist class will be opposed to what used to be in favor of the its interests. Um but we also know and I I do agree with you Chris that like obviously it's better to build a socialist party in a situation where you have fundamental civic rights. Um and um often times like you know we have a lot of Iranian communist exiles in in Germany and they will say you have all those opportunities why don't you use them >> right like if we had all those opportunities to go door to door to speak to people and um like we would use that um and you should too canvasing stuff like that so so that's that's my response to the best play.
>> Okay. Um, we've got and pink in the back over there.
>> Um, good evening. Thank you. Um, I had two thoughts. Thank you for the panel. I mean, it was really my brain is uh borrowing. We've been whirling all day.
Um, but uh I had two thoughts. One I wanted to cover quickly is that I don't think it's right to say that Marxism gave us Stalinism. Stalinism was um count revolutionary. It did not come from Marxism. It came from the fact that the um Soviet the new Soviet um union was under attack by imperialist countries had a famine. It had a lot of necessity. It couldn't afford to do to you know finish the revolution. It did not have the means. It had a back was a back Russia was a backward country. Um it was very illiterate. So it had a lot of freaking problems that it could not solve and that gave rise to a bureaucratic cast led by Stalin who just happened to have a great bureaucratic leader. And and the one thing about Stalinism besides being class collaborationists is to me it um and maybe this is more of a moralistic point than anything is that it people that cave to Stalinism where we talk about the line of Foster and >> um you know at some point they lose their principles >> and their and their solidarity with the working class. And so the other point you made about um which side are you on?
I am firmly on the side of the working class. And I for me I mean I'm a I was a labor activist. I was a union organizer.
Um which side am I on? I'm on the side of the working class. And that is a line I look at every day as a Marxist. So um and that just got me to the failure of the American Revolution to have a working a workers revolution and even have a labor party. Um so many reasons why but in all the discussions I think the other thing we do have to remember is the power of the system we are fighting against. I mean I think Edith you referred to what it has done in other countries. It also does that in the United States and we are up against the biggest imperialist giant in the world.
>> Um yes we have certain rights to organize and do things and I think we should do that. Um but you know we have to acknowledge the um material reality of of what has happened in this country.
Somebody mentioned one of you mentioned McCarthyism and what it did to the movements. It decimated the movements.
It decimated the radical leadership in the labor movement in particular. Um and so then I just get to well how how do you have hope in the United States that the United States would have a workers revolution?
It's a couple of things and I think it does go back to how um it can be true that you um read the 1619 project and it's true that the bajgeois revolution we had did advance us forward. I think both of those things are true. It's not wouldn't pit the 1619 project against its important history. Slavery was one of the most shameful things in in the development of this country and continues to be a problem to this day and in if you look at the south of the US in and the rights of people there. So when I look at the hope of the working class in this country, it is very much I don't it's it's the image of workers that I think often gets um uh uh can just distorted. The workers in this country who are going to make a successful revolution are the poorest and the most oppressed. And who is that?
It is African-Americans in this country.
It is Latinos and immigrants. It is the poorest and the poor. And it is women.
So you've got to look at this multi and you have to address you. Okay. I'm glad I'm sorry.
>> Yeah.
>> And let me just say this as me when I I'm an organizer for the treaty socialist party. So every day my thought is how do we advance the revolution in this country? And it is looking at um raising the consciousness of the entire working class and then includes organized labor but it includes unorganized labor because as you mentioned organized labor is very small and who's not in those unions as much is the poorest of the poor. Um but and that's that's where I think Marxism is so important to raise the consciousness because and that's the other thing about revolution. We can objectively see you need a revolution but how do you get the subjective minds there with you >> and I think that is the hardest that is that is our job. It is a hard job but that is our job.
>> Maybe we got another question in. Can I get the hands up? Who's got their hands up? Okay. Let's do Oh my goodness, so many people. Um, the green Yeah.
>> Um, yeah, thanks everyone. Um, so in you mentioned that uh capitalist governments can rule in many different forms and you mentioned liberal forms, fascist forms. Would you consider um capitalist governments to be able to rule through democratic forms as well in the sense of like you know Pam brought up some really great points I think about you know the kind of distinction between liberalism and democracy and the story you tell about you know the history of revolutions and so you know I do want to consider you know how can liberalism become revolutionary and how can democracy also become revolutionary and just kind of fleshing out you know that I just don't want to be too one-sided in the way that you know you think about these things.
>> I have thoughts on that too.
>> Does anybody want to take that question?
or >> well I think that the point that I tried to make uh when comparing Hayek to Schmidt was that um if we if our idea of authoritarian or fascist rule is basically the 1930s formula then we will not be able to recognize it because the capitalist class has learned to deal with the problem of with of the working-class majority, right? because like their fear was like when like liberalism as you know like in in um classical liberalism in Britain only 2% of the population were allowed to vote because of property qualifications right and it was a long struggle of democracy I would say democracy and liberalism are like antagonists in that relationship a long struggle of democratizing liberalism but sticking to the liberal framework of representative democracy because obviously it's very different from the understanding that the classic Greeks had of ancient democracy um uh which was much more direct but based on a slave slave owning society um and had to be because of the development of the productive forces at the time. Um but so if we look at that the the problem for the bourgeoisi was okay or the fear was if we have universal suffrage who will safeguard that the working class is not going to go the evolutionary socialist way and unelect private property. We know now that the fear was overemphasized. Um but nonetheless that was where the like KL Schmidt initially had those 19th century ideas of a counterrevolutionary decisive battle right going to Denosa Cortis and and Bonald and and all those people. Um and then um the neoliberals were superior to that because they realized we can have li we can have universal suffrage. people can vote but their vote doesn't matter anything because we constitutionalize inequality right because we internationalize the state we create like the WTO we create um balanced budget amendments at the the the European super national level um we declare central banks to be uh independent of parliaments and that way like the decisions that really matter where where it's about the economic affairs where people are reallyffected acted um can no longer be decided about by people to vote. And in that way um uh the capitalist class basically went back to Lenin by acknowledging that like if you can offset dysfunction and and disappointment with a nonfunctioning dysfunctional system and we do have dysfunctional systems um uh liberal democracy is failing the western capitalist classes populations um then uh we can always direct it against the ruling party uh to the benefit of a new party that uh runs the government without having anything to decide.
I yeah on the question of uh you know liberalism and democracy I think for me my understanding of liberalism is that it is the ideology of the kind of ascendant bourgeoisi in the epoch of its revolutions but it is always contains a kind of uh it has kind of two sides this kind of an anti-democratic and a democratic element um and and that there's always intention in that period which represents contradictions of the bourgeoa revolution. Um I think at its apogee when when capitalism truly triumphs over the world and you have I think in the context of the cold war in particular liberalism evacuates itself of much of its radical content um in order to win the cold war.
>> Like in order to win the cold war, liberalism evacuated itself um um of of of sort of its commitments to egalitarianism etc. And today liberalism uh is essentially a hollow political system which uh defends nothing except the most crass bourgeoa rule um and a kind of uh gestural kind of uh you know social liberalism which derives from like the kind of rolls sort of world and that sort of thing. You know I I think that this um today is is totally hollow and empty. So b liberalism is it revolutionary kind of revolutionary?
Well the answer is it's dialectical comrades. the I think on democracy and this is very important. I the answer is can capitalism rule through democratic forms. The answer is once again yes and no. But I think at a fundamental level capitalist society is a minoritarian order. It is an order that enshrines the rule of a minority ruling class. By its nature a democratic order i.e. A maximally democratic order where a majority has has absolute political power is I think at a fundamental level incompatible with capitalist rule. However, however, and is for this reason that in every capitalist state today, you will find limitations on democracy and be it here we have, you know, the anti-democratic Senate, the Supreme Court and its capacity to overturn legislation um and the imperial bureaucracy and presidency be it in Europe. you have, you know, the super national economic institutions, you know, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, the European Commission in Australia, um, and and the other, um, Commonwealth countries, we have these inheritances of the British Westminster system where you have anti-democratic forms of I mean, in Australia, we still have at the local level the property franchise.
um where uh in outside of my own state of Queensland where it was abolished by the Labor Party in the 1920s, the rest of the country, businesses have the right to vote in elections at the local level. Um so, you know, all these Yeah, I know it's absurd. This is you have um these uh anti-democratic limits on on on on the power of working people.
This is a necessary precondition to defend the power of the capitalist class. However, in the context of an anti-democratic search like that, democratic mechanisms can become, as Engles describes it, a tool of illusion, a tool of deception of the working class and serves a role in the historic process of the integration of the working class into bourgeoa culture, which has been, I would argue, a reactionary integration, an integration on a reactionary basis. um which has um uh led to in fact the um uh the sort of uh the imprisonment of working people in a um in in in a in a kind of bgeoa welfarist arrangement. We got to tell things about this. Yeah, that's my thoughts.
All right, let me throw a wrench into the works. It's my role here. Um, didn't Marks and Engles say to their followers in Germany, if you have to prioritize something, it should be the right to speech and association and not the franchise.
He did. Uh, they did. Um so and as far as uh separation of powers is concerned and whether the uh the French Revolution was an advance over the American Revolution, a unicameal uh legislature with a parliamentary system, a kind of majoritarian system. Again, what's the point of having a constitution if you don't have a body that can rule that a law passed by the majority is unconstitutional, namely against the rights of the minority or of the individual against the state?
And wouldn't socialists need that?
Wouldn't wouldn't socialists have to be able to appeal to the Supreme Court to defend their liberty against the state even when that state is expressing the majority will. And indeed in the United States we have the famous uh right to speech except uh yelling fire in a crowded theater. Very few people know what that case referred to. that referred to the Socialist Party objecting to World War I. In other words, it was anti-war agitation that was analogized to yelling fire in a crowded theater. And in fact, the Supreme Court like that case is completely uh misremembered. No, it was upheld that they ultimately it was upheld that they could meaning uh this this is strangely misremembered history.
Uh because building a socialist movement, the majority is going to be against you. The majority is going to be against you.
There's no no way around it. Where we are at now, building a socialist movement, the majority is going to be against you.
Um and it will be a a matter of fighting for civil liberties. Here's another seldom known fact. The ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, who established it? the socialists, the socialist party.
>> Also, by the way, socialists established the NAACP back in the day.
Um, so, but in the meantime, what have these organizations become? They've become NGO organizations associated with the Democratic Party. And that brings me back to the new social movements and the minorities and women and etc., etc., etc. That's another thing that's killed the left since the 1960s. Meaning any attempt to establish a socialist movement is immediately subjected to the imperative that it model itself on the constituency caucus structure of the Democratic party and as soon as it doesn't then it's canled. Right? So we've seen it in the DSA uh and it you know so very clearly and in the name of democracy and uh equitable representation uh the socialist movement is killed before it even gets started. Um finally since I brought up representation I want to point out that the Soviet system workers councils and the conception of uh even the dictatorship of the proletariat by the second international and also by the third international it's not direct democracy. It is representational democracy. It's representative and it's also mediated by parties both of which violate the notion of direct democracy. And of course, parties parties depend on civil liberties. In other words, you can't really have parties unless you have civil liberties against the state and against the majority. Can't have that. Um, my example on this is uh, you know, an article that I wrote like 15 years ago on Lenin's liberalism.
Yeah. Why did Lenin uh, defend the independence of labor unions in the trade union dispute?
uh in 1920 when Trosky wanted to uh militarize labor and uh basically make the unions an extension of the state because even though it was a state ruled by Bolevik's communists and a workingclass party, Lenin said no, the workers need to be able to defend their interests against us.
What did he mean by that? Civil liberties. The working class needed civil liberties.
Okay, so again we're back to square one.
Meaning if we adopt a majoritarian democratic criterion and desidatom, you'll kill the socialist movement before it even gets started. You'll kill the dictatorship of the proletariat if we ever get there.
>> We'll take um more. Oh my goodness, so many hands. Okay, we're going to go with Connor.
Um, I want to raise the conversation to the prospects of socialism in America today.
Uh, I think you're all in your own ways responding to sort of the failure of socialism in America with the millennial left particularly the Sanders movement.
Uh, so this is a question to all three of you. uh there seems to be agreement that the the American revolution is key to the world revolution and beyond that there seems to be agreement that this revolution depends upon a party. In fact, there seems to be almost consensus or is emerging consensus yet no such party exists. Why is this and by what means can the situation be overcome?
I take it.
>> You just That's for you.
>> Well, I mean, I'm not an American and I don't really believe in going about telling people what to do. So, >> you know, you want to >> I think that you know, so so I guess the question is like why has a party failed to emerge and and then why how can that be on that, right?
Yeah. Okay. Well, I think the why is is probably an interesting historical question. I think there's a I mean, I I keep talking about this idea of sedimented failures >> that each failure reinforces and makes more difficult >> the these accumulate, right? It's not just like, oh, we fail, but we, you know, no, no, the accumulated failures, they like pile up on top of each other this enormous mountain, this colossal wreck um that we confront. I think that the American left is is is probably almost archetypical of this. You know, each each successive wave where an opportunity was posed for a formation of an independent workers party, be it um you know, um in the 1870s, you know, the the the St. Louis kind of rising, etc. be it in the socialist party, be it in the um the uh in the CIO and the and the sort of reintegration of the CIO into into the Democratic party apparatus. At each and every one of these turns, the American socialist movement has failed decisively at the sort of brick to make the leap. And there's, I think, material reasons for this. I just Mike Davis's book on this is very good in my opinion.
um in terms of which means that any um ability to kind of to to to break out of this cycle this this negative dialectic of defeat and destru and despair requires a total assessment of these failures and a total recalibration of of of the project. That's obviously true. Um what where where to go from here? I think that the the the fundamental task remains the recruitment of revolutionary forces and the fusion of those forces with the most advanced layers of workers. That remains the elementary calculation. The exact details of that I think will be different in different countries but it still remains our objective task. In America, I think today you have, you know, emerging sort of socialist layers.
You have the inheritors of the old sectarian traditions. You have these layers. I'm a democratic socialist of America. Um, and you have, you know, various um sort of popular movements that kind of eclipse, emerge, and then are kind of integrated back into the Democratic party. I think that the the need to to to kind of draw those three forces together and undertake a genuine re-evaluation and regroupment effort of those forces is the necessary path to an American party. However, I think that this is going to have to be in dialogue and and in a dialectical relationship with the reemergence of revolutionary Marxism in the entire hemisphere. A point on my talk that I that I feel has not been taken up much is that I do think that the inferred American revolution is a hemispheric revolution.
It is not just within the borders of these United States. It is a hemispheric revolution. And that means that you know between the United States and Brazil you have essentially the entire lynch pit of the continent. It just runs through that.
>> Sure.
>> And I mean V and Trosky himself said this when discussing the dynamics of the American Revolution. It is as much as in Chicago as in CDMX and in um and in Rio that the fate of this American revolution will be decided and I think that American Marxists need to take their internationalist duty far more seriously than they currently do. I think the American left has been very derelct in this international duty and the sort of negative reflection of this has been a kind of uh third worldest like well you know oh well that actually the American working class has no obligation cuz we're all and so we just have to go and like you know you know hold signs or whatever. No American workers the American socialists have an obligation and they have the resources to fight. You know Chen Guavara said you know he envys those who live within the belly of the beast. because I think that remains true today. I think that the task of the American socialists is to actually build something that their comrades in Latin America >> can take inspiration >> can take inspiration from and vice versa.
>> Yes. Because otherwise otherwise the the American exceptionalism that has plagued the American left where American left looks only to itself for its own destiny will we'll will condemn it forever. I think that that is the task that our American comrades face. Once again I can't tell you what to do but I I think you should probably take it into consideration.
I think the socialist movement is always strongest where it indigenizes. Um and so socialism will come in very different forms across different countries and that's something that really unites very divergent Marxist traditions from uh Gshi via Ottobawa to Maung like that they all understood it will have to be an inherently American socialism >> um based in the the American tradition just like it had to be an Italian socialism um and or specifically Chinese socialism. Um I think though if you if we wonder why um socialism did not thrive as a movement in those countries where the economic conditions seem to be ripe, right? where the working class became because of industrialization the majority class majoritarian class but rather evolutionary socialists ideas could prevail like especially in the Anglo-Saxon world right in Britain um with the Fabians but also with um new neoliberalism etc um which there is something to be said about new deal liberalism I come from uh fascism like or I come from Germany um where the exist where the exit strategy um from from the crisis of the 30s was um was the opposite to what Roosevelt did, right?
It was crushing the labor movement instead of the Wagner Act empowering the labor movement, etc., etc. So, but but still like so that's something that that we have to come to terms with. What I find interesting is that the the world historical moment like the reason why the working class could be co-opted was because there was much to redistribute in the core capitalist countries >> but it's no longer >> and um we're in a situation where um the questions that you in my viewapose too much like the question of liberalism or liberal civic freedoms as opposed to material gains.
um they are now being like there's a structural convergence of those issues >> because the west >> has is losing the battle in the hyperco competitiveness against China and the global south and as a result you know bidenomics failed not to the degree that next generation EU failed uh not to the degree that the German you know ample >> miracle >> progressive coalition no the Olaf Schultz and and the Greens and the Free Democrats Um but all of them have are asking themselves like why did it fail that we try to emulate Chinese industrial policy because that was what biodnamics and next generation EU was >> and one reason why it failed was because of the dysfunctionality of liberal democracy.
>> So we have an erosion in the faith of liberal democracy both from above as well as below.
>> Right? And so we do um and basically we are in an anti-sistemic moment because it's totally clear that like none of the issues that we have in the current systemic crisis like the climate issue, the social labor issue, um the democratic issue or the gender issue can be resolved um under the current system.
Right? It's totally clear that the militarism that we we're seeing is going to really um have a terrible impact on the working class. It already has, right? And it's also clear that in a block confrontation against China and the global south, climate justice is going to be thrown under the bus, right?
So and in my view the question would be how can we translate that structural convergence of the labor issue of the uh climate issue of the gender issue and the democracy issue um into a movement that is anti-sistic in nature and there I presume we will have a lot of like we will make a lot of errors because we also are in a in a novel situation that we've never faced before. The working class is not a um as I said earlier is not an upcoming upsurging movement but we need to rebuild it. At the same time, what we what I found interesting about America since you were saying that you know America America's internationalism like despite the fact that if you look at the Gallup polls like you know the the the way the world views America nonetheless you're still the country of the lingua frana >> and like every German knows more about the United States than about the Dutch than about the Belgians the the Danish or the Poles or the Italians or the Austrians, right? So um like what happens here has a tremendous effect um and so did the Sanders movement right like we were in the midst like of the crisis of the European left as a result of um the strangulation of Sria >> and this was giving people hope >> um and so um and obviously this inverted Gracianism right that that I think that Sanders was basically right we invoke the working class from above and hope that it will you know and organize itself from below. I mean it did work with Walmart and like I I I appreciate the strikes that you had in the biggest you know employers like Walmart and and Amazon here very important but obviously there's limits to that strategy too but I think we in the future we will have to make we will make many errors but as Mao said um the truth is in practice right that's the measure and we will have to make mistakes in order to learn how to do things better >> I kind of have something to respond to that's okay >> go for it >> yeah I have a few things to respond there cuz because I've followed you so far. I disagree with quite a few things you said. I think this question of of of the indigenization of of um socialism, I think that the 20th century shows us the exact limits of an American road or an Italian road or a Chinese road to socialism. The crisis in the Middle East today is in many ways of a failure of the national road to socialism. You know, the crisis in the mashrek is a failure of the national road to socialism. The failure of the Latin American left is absolutely the failure of the national road to socialism. The idea that socialism will be realized in Cuba or Colombia or Mexico alone rather than as a continental revolution is exactly the failure of the national road to socialism.
>> It's not necessarily the same though. I would say >> I I I I do think that that is the direction this leads to. I think that on uh the comment about FDR, I would argue that the the the the in reintegration of the working class into the state through a corporatist um ma corporatist mass movement is exactly the correlate between FDR and fascism in Europe. And I think that you know FDR's own economic policy was inspired by a Mussolini, right? It is in fact and I you know I've said that I think FDR is America's most fascist president. um you know >> makes a difference if you're sitting in a concentration camp or in a union, right?
>> Well, but I mean what if what if you're Japanese? Like the had concentration camps for Japanese people during the war. Like I think that and it is exactly the integration of the of of the working class into the state, but it was the historical defeat of the American working class with the CIO. It is exactly what um allowed exposed the trade union movement to a macarthism for these state unions where the um state could just purge these um these communists. I think that it is um uh and I I I do agree with you today that you know the ruling class has lost its faith in democracy. The the the masses cry out for a boner part.
>> Who defends democracy today? We do.
That's my answer. like I I I think that we must be the most ardent and consistent democrats and and that is I think that is something that the the socialist movement as a whole has lost.
It is that um a good comrade of mine in Poland once put this to me in these terms. Markx and Engel's historical project was to convince the Republican revolutionaries of their day that they must take up the social question.
Today we have a left that is fixated on the social question and we must convince them to take up the radical republican political question taking up the question of democracy. Uh so that's my um that's my take on this.
>> Do you want to respond to that or >> No, that's good. No, there's so many.
>> Okay, I think we're going to take a Oh, did you want to say okay then why don't we take a few because we're getting kind of close to time. So we're going to start here with K and then Alan and then I'll take some more also after they go.
Okay. So be ready to raise your hands again.
>> Hello and uh thank you. Um so one part was just mentioned and there's one thing that didn't come up yet um surprised about which is the question of Trump.
>> Um >> Trump what is the relationship of Trump to the American Revolution?
Is he the inheritor of the American Revolution?
Is it the counter revolution?
What is the relationship of the working class to Trump?
Um what is the relationship of socialism to Trump? What does it mean for workers to working class which there's one talk about this that workers got compromised and so on. What what does that mean?
What can we learn from that for socialism?
I think we should let I think we should let this question stand on um and then I'll take a group. Do you guys want to respond to this?
>> Okay. So, because I've uh you know uh stepped out on a limb 10 years ago with my crazy why not Trump article.
Um you know I feel like I have to sort of address this. So first of all, no I think that the last 10 plus years like since 2015 2016 the mainstream political discourse has been agonized over this populism question left populism right populism you know Sanders Trump crossover voters between Sanders and Trump the workingclass vote the swing vote it used to be called the Reagan Democrats right uh so the the Democrat working us both that Reagan won and that Clinton won back and that George W. Bush won after 9/11 and Obama won back and then Trump won yet again. So, first of all, of course, uh the working class is disproportionately not represented in the electorate. So, both parties are are interested in not having the workingclass vote and I don't think that Trump really represented any kind of substantial change with respect to that.
However, he was vilified by both Republicans and Democrats for reaching to any extent into the working class with an appeal because they regarded it as dangerous demagogy and because neither party wants to depend on a working-class constituency.
They they don't want to do anything to maintain that constituency in the neoliberal era. Right? So, this is very different from the pre neoliberal era.
So I think that uh now on the other hand you'll also get in the mainstream capitalist political discourse kind of uh strange interpretations of class. So the uneducated versus the educated, right? So Trump won the uneducated vote and the Democrats won the educated vote.
Uh which is a a bizarre way of thinking about class, but nonetheless there it is. uh and clearly the millennial left moment in so far as it did fold into the Democratic party readily. It was of course disproportionately representing educated and not uneducated people in terms of higher education.
So there is this kind of spectre. Now there are people who wanted Trump to be a bonapart but Trump himself much less so. Meaning if we look at like Curtis Jarvin like these kinds of the millennial right was also here and also you know the Gen X right and of course there's a Zuma right so there's like Curtis Jarvin and there's Richard Spencer and there's Nick Fuentes like it it spans the generations there was a millennial right for sure um but the millennial left was perhaps more more prominent and like I said Curtis Jarvin is my generation uh so there is this kind of toying with the idea of bonapartism of some kind of you know monarchism uh etc. Uh but I think that Trump himself doesn't necessarily represent that. I think that that's like a kind of maybe Steve Bannon has some impulses in that direction. Although I think it would be hard to square Steve Bannon even in that direction because he was more of a Tea Party kind of libertarian kind of Republican.
So I don't think that we're there yet.
Like obviously when the Democrats call Trump a fascist, they've been calling every Republican presidential candidate since Thomas Dwey in 1948 and even before that a fascist.
Right now, the left tends to just take up what the Democrats say and treat it in a kind of hysteric like literal way.
Meaning the Democrats know that they're engaged in a figure of speech. Whereas the lefts are like, "Oh, scientifically, let's analyze fascism. Let's define like what is the Marxist definition of fascism?" And oh, turns out Trump fits it to a tea. It's a stressoride fascism, don't you know? Um, I don't think so. At the same time, it's clear that there has been a crisis in the parties. So, I would say it's drastic to say that the ruling class has lost faith in democracy. I think the ruling class has perhaps lost faith in its parties and that that's more a problem of the parties than it is of the ruling class.
I think the ruling class would love to have two functional parties and they don't and they haven't since basically Obama kept the appearance of it and then since Obama it's fallen apart. Uh and so I think that you know to say well the ruling class is ready to overthrow democracy. Well sure if democracy is abandoned by the parties in other words if the parties don't serve then of course the ruling class will find some way of of of intervening but they'd prefer to intervene through the parties.
And I think that what you see is rather a scramble not to overthrow democracy but a scramble to somehow firm up the parties.
Uh, and that just raises the question of a socialist party. And so, finally, on the Republican question, since Edith, you brought that up, on the small R Republican question, because the millennials have landed on this kind of Marx was a Republican. Markx wasn't a liberal, he was a Republican. Um, yeah, I don't think so. Uh, meaning I think that the problem of a socialist party can't jump to the question of the Republic or the Democratic Republic immediately. I I think that first the party would actually have to be based in society. You'd need an actual social movement to motivate the creation of a new political party that would indeed point to the limitations of the existing political order. meaning socialist parties whether the socialist party of America Eugene Debs any of the socialist parties the French socialist party of Jean Jere certainly the espeday in Germany uh for other reasons perhaps the existence of that party challenged the the political order in and of itself presented a crisis of the political order. So in the United States, they would routinely disqualify socialist party candidates on the basis that they were not really political parties because they were membership organizations. Meaning that the Socialist Party was understood as a membership organization and not a political party meant that they could be disqualified as a legitimate political party for electoral contests because the idea was that a socialist representative in a state assembly or Congress would not answer to their constituency that elected them but would answer to the party.
And again that raises the question not just of uh the uh constitutional political order but the question of well how do we understand civil social organizations and right to association meaning why shouldn't a representative in a in a legislative body also answer to a national party and not just to their local constituents? Like other words what is the problem with that? Um because again in in representative democracy it's not immediate recall meaning it's delegated authority. It's representational meaning you are choosing a party to represent you not just an individual electoral candidate to represent you. So it raises all of those questions uh which I don't think can be settled simply via republicanism.
I don't think that it's a simple matter of republicanism or of the legal jeritical order per se, but also qu raises questions of civil social freedom and what social organizations independent of the state, what the scope of their liberty amounts to for a socialist movement. I mean, we know what that means in terms of capitalist corporations, but in terms of a socialist movement, we'll also say about labor unions because we've danced around that issue, too.
Labor unions in many countries labor unions derive their legitimacy from the state.
Is that a good idea? Right? So there's the Wagner Act on the one hand and there's also Taft Hartley on the other hand. Right? So they kind of bookend the phenomenon from the 30s into the late 40s. It's not as if oh Wagner Act is good, Taft Hartley Act is bad. It's all of a piece. And if you say labor unions are only legitimate if the state recognizes them, that's a huge concession. That's a huge concession.
And I do think today the labor movement itself would have to be reconstituted fundamentally from below. In other words, we can't take the existing labor unions and say these are fit for purpose. They certainly aren't fit for purpose for a socialist movement.
They're not even fit for purpose for collective bargaining.
They're not. We have to acknowledge that.
>> Um, look, I'm not I I the question about relationship between Trump and the American Revolution, I I I have no idea.
I'm not going to try to answer that.
What I'll say is that I think that I mean, if you want to hear me talk about bonap bonapartism, I'll be talking about vapartism tomorrow on on the panel, so I'm not going to comment on it now.
Um what I will say though is that you know I agree about about this question of the labor unions and and and this question of depoliticization of workers.
If you want to look at a country where um the the ruling powers do have to like win the consent of workers. I mean Australia is a good example. We have compulsory voting >> like like we have like 99% turnout or something. um every election like is decided by the working class and that means that the um the Labor party more or less like kind of wins default like like like that's not necessarily true.
The Liberal but every other party of the right needs to be in coalition >> to defeat the Labor Party. So we like when we're not ruled by the Labour party, we're ruled by a coalition of the Liberal bourgeoisi and the agrarian bourgeoisi in the liberal national coalition. And at the moment that coalition is breaking down which means that the Labour party kind of rules uncontested. You have one nation which is an attempt to like revive a right populism but it's not working. I agree.
I think that on the question of bon I want to say about Trump and boner partisan vote. I think that that it's quite clear at this point that Trumpism has failed >> like Trump has been both Trump has been this attempt I think there was an attempt to turn Trump into the American boat path. I think I had talked about this in my idea like Musk talking about Trump as the American staller >> this sort of thing is like but this this failed Trump's domestic policy is in shambles his international policy you know I know they go parading around saying that they've won a great victory in Iran it's humiliating this is humiliation you know the republic is still there you know and now now now the the um Americans are crying crying out because the price of oil has gone up too high.
You know, this is a humiliation. The Trump administration has been a colossal failure and I think that that is going to cause constellation on the right >> and maybe out of that we might see an American fascism out of that kind of >> kind of you know the the the rethinking that will happen on the American right after this. Um, you know, uh, I've already seen, what was his name? Dan Dan Cattle. Dan Bo.
>> Oh, Dan Bo.
>> Yeah. Saying that, you know, I had a plan to deport 100 million people, but they wouldn't let me do it. You know, this is this is kind of I think where the American right or sections of it are going. Um, but, you know, that's fair question to figure out. What else? The I think for us I think that we often have this problem in the Australian left where the the the left is constantly talking about fighting the right. We need to fight the right. We need to fight the right. We need to organize to fight the right. We go out in the streets to fight the right. We have to you know organize to defeat the right in the next elections. But the reality is that you can defeat the right but your still remains with a dictatorship in the capital.
>> Yeah.
the the the struggle of socialism is not a struggle against the right, >> right? It >> is a struggle against the capitalist ruling class.
It is necessary to defeat the right politically in order to accomplish that.
That is instrumental.
>> That's not the principle.
>> The Exactly. The principle is to defeat the capitalist ruling class, not to defeat the right. Um and that is not me making some argument for some like like right neofusionist thing. It of course we need to have a clear heads about this but it is the the fundamental fact is that I think many many on the left have converted have because the struggle against capital is too hard frankly and it's depressing.
It's miserable to see how weak we are to basically transform that into a struggle against the right. Um but we the biggest task of the left today is to defeat right-wing populism. Now the biggest task on the left today is to defeat the capitalist class.
They will sometimes they will rely on right-wing populism to achieve their goals or factions often will. But we if we and what it ends up doing is it ends up being a form of passive u kind of a quiet popular front where we join forces with the liberals in order to defeat the right. But we cannot position ourselves as defenders of a corroded decadent bourgeoa liberal order. That would be that is what I think the left has been doing in certain parts of the world and it has been a historic failure. We need to get away from that. We are not defenders of this order from the right.
We defend our democratic liberties of course but we still must maintain our principled political independence. I feel with this like we need to fight the right and the Trump fixation etc grows out of this and god I mean you you see this in Australia Trump isn't even our president we don't even have a president and and people are talking about oh what about Trumpism what about this we have an actual prime minister who is putting trade unions under state administration who is supporting the Americans war over abroad who is doing all these things doing all these things at home and many Australian leftists are more interested in talking about what's happening in the White House which we have very little influence over than they are with talking about what's happening in Canberra, what's happening in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. And I think that is something that we need to get over.
um you know >> um >> well in 2018 we published a book u which is called the new bonapartists um and u like on the various right-wing forces um and government takeovers because I mean we were in a fortunate situation or unfortunate situation that we could um uh try and analyze what the right does when it has power like you know you know the what does the ruling class do when it rules? So, what does the right do when it has power? Um, and I wrote the chapter on on um on Trump trying to understand like to to see whether Marx's um theory of bonapartism was actually still, you know, could explain Trumpism.
And I think that I mean if if in a nutshell Marxist theory of monopartism is based on an equilibrium theory like not a hayakian one but like one that basically the the the bourgeoisi gives up on direct rule um uh um ba because um it's like there's an equilibrium of capital and labor right and if you look at like the United States situation obviously that was like you could not uphold that argument, right? I operationalized it with three um three uh elements like the the level of labor disputes, unionization rate, and the wage quota. Um basically the real wage um development. And so obviously that it was impossible to use Marx's monopartisan thesis to explain Donald Trump. But I do think that um there's a case to be made for um Nikos Palansa's um theory of fascism which basically um I mean even though he was a Mauist draws a lot of on on Trosky's theory of fascism basically fascism as a vacuum right that in a situation where the situ has become so dire um and untenable but socialist alternatives are too weak that then um the middle classes that could turn to the left when they see it as like a source of optimism, as a source of um like um uh alleviating their its pain. Um that they turn to the right when in a situation where there is no left socialist alternative and then hauling a lot of the work workers with them. And I agree with you that like the right-wing populism or right-wing authoritarian nationalism as I call it is a middle class movement. petta movement that like but then has a moment of proletarianization of its base which then obviously causes a lot of problems also in in make America great again. Um what I find interesting is that right-wing authoritarian nationalism is dysfunctional or was dysfunctional in a global capitalist society. Take European right-wing populists for instance like if they were they were against the euro and against NATO. So they were basically against like this the the stepping stone for transnational corporations into the world market right and they were against the military that enforces foreign direct investments in global capitalism. So obviously they could not be an ally of the the dominant faction of the capitalist class namely transnational capital but and it has to do with the problem of the parties. I would agree. Um but in the sense as as Habamas pointed it out like the the the problem of capitalist systemic crisis is they necessitate a unified capitalist class like a unified bourgeoisi but the nature of a systemic crisis is that it fragments the capitalist class. So like that's what like that's how a crisis also becomes pervasive because the state cannot manage that crisis no longer. Um and what we see now I think is that the right-wing authoritarian nationalists become functional to the capitalist class in a situation where there is also a passive revolution in a grumpian sense internationally right China is making because it's hyperco competitive is making the west authoritarian because the west can only compete with strong executive power and that means that also I agree with comrade Edith here um like fighting the right is a a a really terrible strategy if that is if what is right comes from the center itself, >> right? If like the liberals themselves have to become more authoritarian to compete on behalf of the bourgeoisi with China and the global south. And so I do think I agree we have the same argument um in in Europe um like that we need to have a third poll like beyond both the more increasingly authoritarian liberal center as well as the far right because otherwise it's only going to strengthen the far right because we come become part of like in a in a very terrible popular frontist um uh cliche part of a failing system. Um >> one more spoke in the wheel. Um so on the bonap partisan question which you guys will talk about tomorrow. Uh hyperco compressed concept in marks meaning post 1848 post June days suppression of the working class struggles in France. Uh what does what do class struggles look like when the proletariat isn't present isn't in the mix?
Um so when the boogeoisi can't can no longer rule in the old way but the proletariat cannot yet rule. Well the bugeoisi has not been able to rule in the old way for a very long time meaning boogeoisi used to rule socially rather than politically meaning there was a more minimal state. So we earlier in the conversation talked about um because I think the question of bonapartism really raises other questions. The administrative state uh Woodro Wilson the new freedom uh where did he get his inspiration from? Bismar um and what did he say? He said we have to pay lip service to the US Constitution, but we're not actually doing it. And we need a fourth branch of government because liberal democracy can't rule industrial capitalism.
So what can rule industrial capitalism?
The deep state.
And really the crisis of democracy that has taken form whether in Europe or the United States in terms of the failure of the parties is that it has created an opening for people to take democracy too seriously. Meaning who does have the authority? Does Trump as elected civilian politician have the authority or do the bureaucrats have the authority? Because they've tried to sabotage him every step of the way.
uh including perhaps in this current war with Iran. Meaning it seems like less clear than in the first term that the bureaucracy is there as an impediment.
But nonetheless, it raises the question of is the proper role of the parties to exchange empty suits and to guarantee continuity of policy through the deep state. I always like to uh invoke Samantha Power who was the national security adviser for Obama when Obama was supposedly going to end the war on terror.
And what what did she say? She said, "We soon learn the wisdom of continuity in American foreign policy." And she said, "I'm afraid that Trump is incapable of learning that wisdom." Meaning he will actually try to change the policy.
Whereas what we learned is you might want to change the policy but you can't right it's too dangerous it's too destabilizing for the world essentially it's too stable do too destabilizing for the role that the US plays so we are having an experiment in democracy right now meaning the people elected this guy does he know what he's doing has he been vetted properly has he does he read the intelligence briefings.
Does that matter? In other words, is he just supposed to So, you know, we're, you know, in the midst of this war with Iran right now. Um, we meaning all of us living in this historical moment because I don't refer to US policy in terms of we, not at all.
Solommani. So you could say this uh this tetatet with Trump and Iran has goes back to the assassination of Solommani.
Literally what happened the national security agencies developed a menu of options and they did so in a way to try to uh coers him into taking one action rather than another action. So they put the killing of Solommani on there as like the crazy option that of course he would never take and he said he knew that they had put it on the menu as the option he's not supposed to take and that's why he took it.
Now of course we can be appalled and horrified by that. But the alternative to that is unelected rule. And that's the real bonapartism.
That's the real bonapartism. As Markx pointed out, it wasn't Louis Bonapart actually because he was not like Napoleon. It was the state. It was the it was the state that he represented.
And he himself was a kind of mediocrity and incapable of playing a world historic role. But the state that he represented was the necessary instrument to maintain capitalism.
And we're testing the limits of that.
meaning is this a liberal democracy or is it a bureaucratic dictatorship?
It's a bureaucratic dictatorship but with the illusion of democracy including the illusion that the president can make the decisions.
That's can't be left out of the equation. It can't be left out of the equation. Meaning, of course, Trump was never meant to be president because he doesn't know enough to know that you're supposed to listen to the bureaucrats.
>> Okay. Um, we I've been told that 8:00 p.m. is actually a hard cut off. So, we're at time. So, thank you to everybody.
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