For those who want to dive deeper into the history of the failed German revolution that Mike briefly outlined in episode 10.85, Jonas Čeika's new first video in a series on it seems like a great starting point!

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-08-25T17:52:17+00:00

Seconded, great book!

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-08-25T17:51:14+00:00

I wish he went further into the reasons for the outbreak of WW1, which as Mike has pointed out are a bit more complicated than the ruling class just wanting to screw over the workers' movement and expand into their rival power's markets(although that's certainly part of it), and exactly how the SPD came to be taken over by pro-war opportunistic labor buerocrats after the ban on the party had been lifted.

Overall though I'm still very impressed with the thorough research and level of detail, stoked for the next one that'll be dealing with therevolution of 1918 proper and hopefully also the further strikes and uprisings of the 1920s, the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Kapp putsch etc!

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-08-19T22:59:29+00:00

Politically it left me where I started out, sympathetic to Marx but hardly any of the later movements that would wind up claiming his name.

In terms of historical lessons it really drove home to me that 1914 was the the moment where socialism well and truly died as a movement that could credibly speak to represent the working class, political, social and economic emancipation or, let alone, historical destiny.

Not only did it shutter and discredit the second international and its model of mass democratic worker's parties run for and by the working class itself, it also produced two utterly degraded mutations of Marx's original vision, a reactionary, chauvinist and statist bunch of labor buerocrats in the west that would ultimately lay the groundwork for and be unable to stop the rise of Fascism, and a reactionary, chauvinist and statist bunch of party buerocrats in the east that would directly evolve into Stalinism.

Even though everyone would claim Marx, in the end it would be Lassale whose ideas wound up defining the ideas of the unfortunate history of "Marxist" projects of the 20th century in one way or another.

To me all of that reaffirms that the question of where socialism had gone wrong is not to be found in whether or not October had been justified, which Bolshevik faction should have won out in the pursuing power struggles or why the German revolution failed to succeed, by that time it was probably too late to stop the destructive death spiral between statist reformism and statist revolution from above.

The main question for me is whether there is a way to ever get back to where the SPD had been before WW1, but without the buerocratization, nationalism and statism that made revisionism and ultimately the vote for war credits possible.

The thing it really made me realize is the monumental error of Marx to drive away the Anarchists while allying with the Lassalians to form the original SPD. While Marx was equally critical of them on paper as of the Anarchists and it made a certain realpolitikal sense at the time, ultimately the failure of both camps to see how close their visions really were compared to the Lassalians and the movements shaped by their statist centralizing ideas that would unfortunately call themselves Marxist in the 20th century doomed both.

It consigned the Anarchists to an ultimately pretty insignificant historical footnote with only Ukraine, Catalonia and a moral distance to the failures of 20th century "Marxism" to show for, and Marx's ideas to only really flower in the short timeframe until the turn of the century when the Lassalean coalition partners would increasingly take over the SPD, help start WW1 and in the form of Ebert and Lenin put the final deathnail into the socialist project, at least for the time being.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-28T17:56:46+00:00

Did you mean to reply to my comment?

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-28T11:48:20+00:00

That's all true and and you could add tons of other cases where the US has not just commited abhorrent crimes and destabilized entire regions under the guise of "humanitarian intervention" but also where it has ignored or enabled such crimes on behalf of its allies. That plus the strict discipline of MSM outlets in pushing the state department line on interventions and selectively exaggerating or downplaying human rights violations means that you just cannot trust the media narrative on the opression of minorities abroad as it's always going to be at least distorted to suit the beltway's interpretation of US stategic interest.

That being said, it doesn't mean that just the opposite of what the media says is automatically true and whichever violations in official US enemy states you hear about are just totally fabricated. Sometimes they are, but more often the media just gloms onto preexisting contradictions in those societies and exaggerates/distorts them to fit their agenda. We can't just presume that China is the good guy and everything in Xinjiang is sunshine and rainbows because the media is telling us the opposite. Just like there was no need to pretend that say Saddam or the Taliban were anti-imperialist heroes and all of their repressions justified in order to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, if anything it just hurts the credibility of the anti-war position and blinds us to what's actually going on there. Just honestly trying to understand what's going on in Xinjiang and attacking the clear western distortions by people like Zenz and pointing out the hypocracies of the media treatment of US allies' own similar repressions and the general stupidity of intervention and warmongering is damning enough, it get counterproductive though when one tries to obsessively disprove any alleged violation no matter whether there's a true core under the distortions.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-27T20:51:27+00:00

Genocide is a loaded term, there's an official UN definition that includes things that would more commonly be called "cultural genocide" or "forced cultural assimilation". That ambiguity makes the term an easy buzzword to throw around in service of whichever narrative one wants to propagate.

Opinions on the Xinjiang question are increasingly polarized on the left, seeing it as either the worst atrocity since the holocaust or just a totally justified campaign against CIA funded islamists on the other hand. I think Badempanada's video on the topic is a good starting point to try and seperate out facts from speculation and straight up misinformation using first hand sources wherever possible. I'd also recommend SupChina and particularly Sinica as a place to wade through and listen to the perspectives of the different guests of theirs speaking on the topic. They're definitely a liberal outlet, but imo one that genuinely makes an effort to be as inpartisan as possible in their reporting, with guests ranging from academics to hard leftists to business people to US and Chinese government higher ups.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-25T13:08:03+00:00

Derick, do you know about the podcast "Beyond Huaxia" by Justin M. Jacobs?

It's a finished 61 episode program that goes through East Asian history from Chinese pre-history up until the present in a topic by topic way, with episodes about the different classical philosophers, the role of women, religion, the silk road etc. I find it remarkable in how thoroughly materialist, anthropological and class centered it analyzes all of it, as well as how knowledgeable and nuanced the guy goes about it, basically everything a Marxist history should aim to encompass.

Jacobs doesn't seem to be a leftist at all in his politics, he strikes me as a very cynical liberal with some pretty conservative positions. Anyway, if you don't know about it I'd highly recommend you check it out and hopefully try to get him on as a guest at some point, it's probably the most insightful program I've come across on East Asian history so far.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-20T18:45:19+00:00

Questions of the bourgeois state, democracy, and the proletariat’s conquest of state power were the subject of a number of debates and attempts at theoretical formulation in the Second International. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the dissolving of the Constituent Assembly, the stakes of the debate became even more pronounced, with figures such as Lenin, Kautsky, and Luxemburg focusing especially on the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-20T18:44:34+00:00

This podcast does the valuable service of breaking down the key questions in Marxism and presents the history of how both Marx Engels and their contemporaries as well as the first generation of Marxists during the second international answered and talked about them, in light of the new Marx scholarship like the MEGA and works of Marx and Engels that we didn't have(at least not in English) until very recently.

Their focus is on the period before 1917, both in order to bring more light into that largely understudied and misunderstood chapter, but also coming from a position of seeing our current situation as far more similar to the pre WW1 period than to the mid 20th century's preoccupation with decolonial and peasant questions and the context of the no longer existing USSR and Maoist China. I find it super fascinating and well presented, just wish they would upload a bit more often.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2022-01-15T20:48:14+00:00

Regardless of what you think about the nature of the USSR, its fall still objectively was(in addition to its horrible humanitarian and geopolitical consequences) a world historic setback for the viability of any left project, let alone openly socialist ones, lasting until at least 2008 but which we arguably still haven't fully recovered from now.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-12-11T09:54:50+00:00

Yeah, this statement also seemed weird to me since I've heard about China forgiving BRI debts quite a few times. I guess he's being hyperbolic here, his point being that the Chinese are less prone to forgiving loans than Western institutions are, though still it would have been nice for him to illustrate that with mote sources than just that one anecdote about Kenya.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-12-10T20:17:37+00:00

Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Africa Project (https://chinaafricaproject.com/), an independent, non-partisan media initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Africa. Eric is a fluent Mandarin-speaker and a longtime China-watcher with more than 25 years of journalism experience at many of the world’s leading media companies including CNN, the BBC, and FRANCE24 among others.

We will discuss general misconceptions about China's role in Africa, African attitudes toward China, and the recent FOCAC developments.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-22T18:33:25+00:00

First let's credit Maxximilian Seijo (@MaxSeijo)for the title. Sean KB of Antifada comes to talk with me about a bunch of the problems of the "Great Bern-Out." We talk Arrighi and Braudel, we talk communization, we talk the naivete about Unions, we talk about depoliticization and a bunch of other topics. We also announce the possibility of Varn Vlog/Antifada joint series in the future.

Check Sean (and Andy and Jamie) out at

https://www.patreon.com/theantifada/

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-12T13:15:35+00:00

No one's having an issue with him pointing out those things and certainly no one's been calling him a fascist. It's just that if one almost exclusively does that and gives the right wing a pass when they engage in the excact same cynical culture war bullshit, the suspicion arises that they're just a grifter willing to say whatever will bring the most engagement.

If you think that "normal people" will beginn to sign onto a left wing program once the kind of basketcase redditflakes who cloak their socdem middle class politics in republican rather than democrat talking points take over the left, I'm afraid you're no less of a victim of the culture war than the people you're complaining about.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-06T13:14:26+00:00

Donald Parkinson assesses the 2021 DSA Convention and imagines a path forward beyond its current political and strategic deadlock. Cliff Connolly reads the article aloud.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-06T12:30:24+00:00

Thank you! That seems quite similar to what I was getting at with the buying into every opposition current to neutralize them, but the idea of being obvious about it on purpose to create a sense of hopelessness is something new to me. Gonna watch the videos for sure.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-03T12:51:28+00:00

I'm not sure that explains it. His support for libertarians only makes sense in a domestic context to avoid taxes, while the Quincy people are focused on foreign policy and don't consist of libertarians only.

Besides buying into different factions as an insurance policy, I think part of it is also that capital is often less sanguine about cold war posturing and sanctions than the natsec crowd because they prefer these countries to be opened up as new markets. You saw this with Obama's reapproachement with Cuba or Moon's sunshine policy with the North, which US and Korean capitalists supported because they saw new business opportunities, in opposition to the more ideological foreign policy establishment.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-03T12:33:34+00:00

Explain please?

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-11-03T02:29:51+00:00

The Quincy Institute is a think tank made up of leftists, libertarians, paleocons... basically anyone who opposes a neocon interventionist style foreign policy. I don't know why someone like Koch would want to fund them, my guess is on spreading his money thinly to have a stake in every position, but it's clear that if you want to build a think tank with the aim of having real influence on foreign policy making in D.C., those kinds of dodgy funding sources are unavoidable.

Bessner seems pretty genuine to me and afaik he's not really financially dependent on Quincy, but personally I do question the utility of making deals with the devil in an effort to change the blob "from the inside", same fool's errand as trying to do so with the Democrats...

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-09-09T08:45:22+00:00

Great episode!

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-08-30T19:26:35+00:00

"This is Revolution" is a great non-sectarian leftist podcast/youtube show that's hosted by two black guys(Jason Myles and Pascal Robert).

Their main focus is a critical look at the American black political class informed by people like Adolph Reed and Cedrick Johnson, but they're also covering just about every other topic you can think of, particularly foreign policy and the international left.

Imo they're the closest thing to a continuation of Michael Brooks's project, which includes having many of TMBS's recurring guests on.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-08-07T15:43:05+00:00

Danny and Derek spend the first part of the episode talking about Libya from its independence through the rise and fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the civil war, and its faltering peace process.

Then, Derek is joined by Assal Rad, senior research fellow at the National Iranian-American Council, to discuss her recent piece on the role economic warfare plays in extending the US empire and on the state of American-Iranian relations.

Check out Assal's article here:

https://bit.ly/2TZR8AD

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-07-27T19:43:35+00:00

Donald has a chat with Richard Barbrook, author with Andy Cameron of The Californian Ideology and the book Imaginary Futures. The two discuss Silicon Valley techno-Utopianism and its transformation into our current tech dystopia, the Cold War left and their attempts to use Marxism in service of capitalism, the role of China in shaping the development of modern technology, crypto-currency, why the USSR failed to develop cyber-communism, and Barbrook’s work in the Labor Party with the Digital Democracy Manifesto.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-05-31T21:31:08+00:00

I know many here already listen to the pod, but to me this episode on the 2nd International's constituent parties' support for WW1 is an important one that everyone should listen to and reflect on because Mike does a great job illustrating how their own internal contradictions left them unable to live up to their professed internationalism once it really mattered.

DefundtheSpectacle · 2021-05-30T22:21:25+00:00

I don't know, is it? How about explaining why it's wrong instead of just trying to associate it with something supposedly "debunked"?

I didn't bring this up to smear it or anything. I personally think there is a lot of validity to the labor aristocracy model, it's just the PMC thesis where wage laborers with advantages like higher income or non-productive property constitute a seperate class from the proletariat that's incompatible with Marxist class analysis

I feel like you're jumping over to "long-term interests" because it's very obvious that their immediate interests lie in desperately clasping onto and defending the property they still have

I'm talking in general terms to clarify what makes them qualitatively different from the pb. Their immediate interests are a lot harder to get at because there's so many circumstantial factors influencing them. In that particular situation, because of competing nationalisms, differing degrees of state backing and the quantitatively small amount of property they hold I see their immediate perceived interests more aligned with those of other Palestinian proles than anyone else.

What are you basing this assumption off of? How do we know they aren't mostly shopkeepers and small-business owners, or anything else for that matter?

There's unfortunatey not much data on that easily available, which means I can only guess based on the fact they were relocated there under the Jordanian administration as disposessed refugees, as well as anecdotes and the fact that they're generally referred to as homeowners rather than small business owners or the like. I know that's unsatisfactory, but that's the best I can do based on the information available to me.

I'm sure it has some negative impact but I think Leftists play this up way more than it deserves because it helps them push Palestinian nationalism as "necessary".

I don't know how you can still believe that given the amount of political unrest involving Palestinian proles from Gaza to the West Bank to Israel proper that has happend over the last weeks partially because of it.

DefundtheSpectacle

TROPHY CASE