Exploring Western Marxism and Communist Justice

C. Derick Varn 0:48

Hello and welcome to FarmVlog and friends of the show . Musicologist and one of the many hosts of the measures taken , stefan Hamel , is here with us today . Also my favorite unwoke Marxist humanist , since you are not down with the identity politics enough .

Stephan Hammel 1:15

Yeah , I'm a Marxist post humanist , but that's too many hyphens , so we're going to have to come up with a different name .

C. Derick Varn 1:22

Alright , i wanted to talk to you about Western Marxism , but I also wanted to talk to you about the whole concept . Western Marxism has been used for a while now . It means something even more different in China , which basically just means non-Chinese Marxist , but in the context of the United States it's had a very particular sort of ring , particularly after the 1960s And since you've gone through the rise and fall of the second international over there and the measures taken , starting with , well , the beginning of things and ending with the ABCs of communism , which is the end of things My favorite text too , by the way , for the same reason , you articulated the best program and the worst joining points that ever existed in the history of communism .

Stephan Hammel 2:33

That thing should be read by everybody , by the way . So those among the listeners who have not made their way through the ABCs of communism , just make it through the program . It's going to give you new life .

C. Derick Varn 2:46

But the 21 conditions are also going to make you go . Nobody could join this without splitting their organization into tiny fractions .

Stephan Hammel 2:54

Happily , my addition of ABC doesn't include the 20 conditions , or really any mention of it , so it's gracefully neutered in that way from its actual instantiation .

C. Derick Varn 3:08

So I've actually wondered this do you know who wrote the act ? I know that you Kand and Preo Bagensky . Preo Bagensky wrote the program , more or less , and it's also important that even though we associate Bacarren with the right oppositionist , he's actually at this time considered from the left almost oppositionist from the party . He's also the person who kept on reminding Lenin , passive-aggressively , that there was commitments in the state and revolution that he wasn't doing So . He published this whole big endorsement of state and revolution in their one newspaper that the left faction of the Bolsheviks got out . And I think people will be amazed because they associatewe associate communism now with Dungism or the Stalinist period of Marxist-Leninism or the Brezhnevian period of Marxist-Leninism or even the kind of slightly cooler Kushevian period of Marxist-Leninism , that we forget how radical those initial demands really were . They were far more radical than even what a lot of left communists demand now .

Stephan Hammel 4:29

Yeah , you know more than the radicalI agree that they're really radical , especially , as you say , when compared to what we normally think of , when we think of official communism , and there's no greater expression of official communism than the first program of the Soviet Communist Party .

Stephan Hammel 4:45

At the same time , the entire document is focused on the transference of power by means of the majority , but really by whatever means necessary , toward the goal , which is Soviet democracy or council democracy . That's the beating heart of the whole document . Now , you know it gets complicated after that , but it's important also to remember how contemporary some of these concerns are . I mean , we were having a debate in the United States , a constant debate about revolutionary strategy , and the mainstream is still committed to the use of state power in fixing the inequality problem , however that's conceived , and it's just clear that the first generation of Soviet leaders had no intention of using the state power to do anything that transfer the functions of the state to a more radical form of democracy . So it also seems to me , along with being radical , it's also contemporary . You don't need to edit very much about it in order to endorse it .

C. Derick Varn 5:38

Yeah , that's the funny thing about that program is , when I went through my Do you know the story so many , many years ago , 2015 , i sat down with this group called the Red Party and I was asked I was actually tasked by a bunch of Magnari neocouts Back when that word meant something a little bit more specific than it does now To go through all the programs that I could get my hands on and all the schemas that I could get my hands on .

C. Derick Varn 6:12

You know , we started with the classic ones Trotsky's transitional programs , the various Trotsky's groups , interpretations of those transitional programs , the various left communist platforms , the official Communist Party programs , particularly after the 1940s , the British Communist Party's both versions , like both the provisional committee and the MLS . I went through something like 250 programs and then I was like I got my road to power and my Alfred program and I got my ABCs of communism and I'm like , well , most of what we need is still in here , particularly in the ABCs of communism . The only thing that I was stuck on was what would be immediate , what would be minimum and what would be transitional , which was this way that we were viewing our program schema , the maximum program , particularly back then I was very much like . We have a positive vision , we have principles , but no one's laying out a fucking maximum program . That's blueprints , man .

Stephan Hammel 7:30

That's right . There ought to be a maximum program . In fact , if there isn't a concrete vision of the future , communism has no way to enter into people's subjective commitments . We need a picture , but that picture I have to insist , That picture has to be one that is two things at the same time . On the one hand , it has to be the case that whatever picture of the future , it's not just more just , it's also more prosperous . The second is that it has to be worth a certain degree of material sacrifice in the near term in order for that full flowering of productive energies and of the manifesting of human freedom and its full expression in a plentiful society ends up coming around . It's got to be both desirable , concrete and about a better form of life , and not just something more moral or just or desirable in that way , This is actually kind of interesting to me because I have come around to the idea that there needs to be a communist justice .

C. Derick Varn 8:32

But I want it to be way more material than the bullshit we tell the children that most forms of justice are . I don't want it to be revenge . That's the other thing that justice really is , even for communists . It's important for me to re-ground that . I am trying to get out of these stupid growth-de-growth debates . So I'm glad to use term prosperity , because I don't even know what economic growth means in a communist society . Exactly That's right .

C. Derick Varn 9:17

It's not GDP . The other thing . I think people will be surprised by this . I tend to be one of these people who will not pin down terms , because I do accept the general linguistic gift them . As people use a term a certain way , it is what it fucking means , whether I like it or not . However , my minimum standard for what communism is not socialism , and I realize that left communists will sometimes get me . They're like well , marx only uses that framework once and it's in the framework of reticence and the armchair socialist in the German Historic School , and I'm like , yeah , it's true , but he also does use it . And then Lenin uses it and everybody else uses it .

C. Derick Varn 10:00

I think that communism is a classless society .

C. Derick Varn 10:09

We might define that slightly less absolutely than anarchists , because anarchists , when I hear stuff like well , there's still social categories , there may be even cast , but there's no longer exploitation , so there's no class , i'm like just quoting Lenin at people and being like yeah , that class distinction based on legality it's a little bit in Trotsky It is .

C. Derick Varn 10:35

He uses those words loosely and he does refer to cast as legal , but both Lenin and Marx don't make that distinction and Lenin's explicit about it . Lenin actually defines class primarily as a legal distinction and in addition to an exploitation one which might be a problem in and of itself . But it is actually quite interesting the way I think a lot of quote communists or socialists today want to denude the higher vision of any content , including the basic fucking definition , which is a classless society where all hierarchies are provisional and role based and can be recalled and everybody has equal . One of the biggest things about it's not that there wouldn't be self defense in a communist society , but you can't have a fucking standing army . Lenin says that . That's not like some left column , that's a state in revolution .

Stephan Hammel 11:41

I have a kind of 19th century Swiss vision of this , which is yeah , of course there has to be self defense in a communist society , because there's a difference between ownership of the means of production , the relevant means of production , not all means of production in the abstract , just those that the progress of capitalism has brought into socialized production already . So , for example , there's never going to be a communism that you know , by which the labor of tying shoes in society is socialized . that will always be a matter of personal responsibility . That's an exaggerated case , but it's got to be just those areas of human production in producing daily life . that includes all kinds of necessities , maybe even the majority of necessities if they're quantifiable , and it just turns out to be the case that they're more efficiently run by councils . Those councils will probably be something like tenants , workers councils or something , but they can't be limited to the individual firm .

C. Derick Varn 12:34

That's . This is my pushback on co-ops , because I'm like individual , firm based co-ops are not going to be good enough . I actually say even under socialism , because because and I made this point to Pascal Robert and he didn't respond to me , but I told him if a firm is owned , even truly owned by its workers , but that firm is only owned by the workers who work in that firm , the proletariat as a whole does not own that firm , and I can't get people to get that Like that's , that's important . Yes , there are many ways in which syndicates and stuff might be something that we would use the basis off of , but those , the co-op , would have to be answerable to the council , because we have to . So you want , you want plant , you want planned , however , and there's a variety of ways of doing the planning . That's why I study systems , cybernetic theory , complexity theory I realize that Marx has never worked that out But you want a planned economy that is also not super fragile . You know you cannot have firms only looking out for their individual interest .

Stephan Hammel 13:53

No . Yet look , Tillamook is not my vision of communism . You know , that's that . Dairy that's that's , you know , owned and operated by workers . Not that that isn't a part of the labor movement . Historically It is a part of labor movement . In fact it's even , I'll go as far as to say , an organic form of the class . But you know , it's lots of things .

Stephan Hammel 14:13

I have two minds about co-ops actually . On the one hand , I think that I think all what you think about them , which is that there are , there are no kind of model for the transition , and they will have to be subordinated to , if they exist at all . They'll have to be subordinated to , to councils that are political and are able to do that more general form of organization . On the other hand , where we've seen some experiments with with co-ops , especially in those instances where co-ops are linked to one another in supply chain like fashion , I think that there's an argument to be made that that's a kind of transitional form and that at some moment it will be clear to all those involved that the democratic structure that runs their firm is much more efficiently manifest as a democratic structure that self , you know self governs in supply chains . So I'm not like I'm not so I'm not anti co-op either .

C. Derick Varn 15:09

In my in my more in my more dogmatic left calm days in my in my early 30s , i was like Madra gone , spit , spit , spit . But that's right because it's about purity of thought . But now I , now I do think it's important , but also , you know , i've it's funny because I had to justify that by the fact I've never been an anti union left communist . I've never taken the total anti union line ever , even though I like agree with most of the critiques of unions and anarchist makes of unions . But I'm like it's literally the only form of workers organization that currently exists Oh , like you know , other than like , i guess , guilds or something . And I I have really based my thought on co-ops . Like my thought around unions is like they're subpar but they are part of this chain . It's good to advocate for them but also teaches workers that they can actually do this shit on their own , absolutely .

C. Derick Varn 16:17

And one of the things you pointed about the ABCs , the communism , i didn't think about it when I first read it , but I've been , you know I've been for years talking about okay , well , let's talk about cybernetics , let's talk about the codonists , you know not , because , like I end days government was actually particularly great ? I actually don't think that , in fact . Yeah , it just happened . The socialists happen to be slightly more left wing than the communists in Chile , which is a funny thing .

Stephan Hammel 16:44

Well , that gets replicated around the world , not just Chile , but but yeah , that , that that's a .

C. Derick Varn 16:49

We do have to bring good old Khrushchev for that . But furthermore , it was weird because it , self-defense , was a group that was technically outside of it , which was the graverist . So it was like , so the graverist were defending the like , like the , the , the , the , the , the perisate institution that was really fighting to defend the state , a state that they I didn't actually support , but that they didn't want overthrown by rightist , which right , which put it in this incredibly untenable position . And then I'm like , and they were afraid to do any of the stuff they were doing in radical democratization and information sharing , and I don't just mean cyber center , what , or what staffer beer brought in them , although that's important , the codonists worked independently of that . They didn't do it to the fucking army . So which , which the Bolsheviks actually realized you had to do So there's a great film about the

Capitalism's Mutations and Uncertain Future

C. Derick Varn 17:45

days .

Stephan Hammel 17:46

It's a Chilean film made about the , the day of the coup , and it follows a yende himself .

Stephan Hammel 17:51

And you know what we , what the writers , imagined would be his last series of conversations , and of course they're all helpfully reflective , clear-sighted and philosophical , and at one moment the yende character beautifully articulates , i think , what the historical yende held dear , which was that the best revolution in history was the French Revolution .

Stephan Hammel 18:14

That is what produced , you know , a modern state , and the standing army is , in the last instance , the , the , you know , the full expression of the self-defense of that state , the state that was supposed to bring about a more equitable society , perhaps through some version of cyber sin or something else , i don't think I mean that was one of the basic tensions in that , in that Chilean , you know , truncated revolutionary process , which there's a , in fact , there's a good scene in . I keep referring to films , i don't know why , but in the battle of Chile , where , you know , workers councils are negotiating with representatives of the yende regime , trying to decide when it would be that the yende regime would real , would wake up and realize that they needed to start this transference of power process , and it was clear that , that that the yende people , they , they had no intention of doing that . In fact , it ran right , right in smack dab into their , their concept of of a successful , more efficient and prosperous socialist Chile .

C. Derick Varn 19:09

Right . This is I am constantly surprised about the substitutions of basic frameworks of communism from Marx , but not just from Marx . I mean , some of these , some of these traditions are far older than Marx , like you know , as everyone who's studied their critique of the Gertzsche problem . We should know from each of their own ability , each of their own need isn't even Marx . That's just like the communist goal , going all the way back to the French , yeah , and , and I admit there's this stuff about bourgeois society in that that parts of it are left in the socialist thing And I and I hate that it's worded that way , because it's pretty clear that what he's referring to is time accounting , yeah , but it gets taken as markets compensating people by compensating people by skills . In fact , I've had Marxists swear to me that it means compensated people for value added , and I'm like there's no fucking such thing as value added , even in socialism .

Stephan Hammel 20:15

No , nothing in capital suggests that's not what it means to produce surplus value . It isn't value added in in the way that it's normally conceived of , not that there's any of that going on , even in the bourgeois conception of the of the economy . We're we're living through very cool time And look , look , if you're a more or less like technologically determinist , cold stream economist , economic Marxist , this is a great day to be alive , i mean in this new transition .

C. Derick Varn 20:39

So this is this is both the greatest and worst simultaneously , because this is the next , this is the next inch point .

Stephan Hammel 20:46

Yeah , i believe it is , Really believe it is .

C. Derick Varn 20:51

Whether or not we get the , the sixth mutation of capitalism or not . it's really sort of , and I'm counting six mutations . There might be more , But like Hey , what are your six ?

Stephan Hammel 21:03

I said a curiosity . I've got like four I got .

C. Derick Varn 21:07

I actually consider early mercantilism and a phase of capital and I consider it real . So that's , there's that mercantil accumulation agrarian capital , industrial capital , then entrepreneurial capital , which is a misnomer , but you know what I mean . It disappeared from like 1850 to like 1910 , the cloud , the period in which Marxism actually develops most of its theories and which the first two volumes of capital most reflect the world like directly . They still reflect the world . Now I'm not one of these people who've like capital is no longer useful . Chuck it out like Xi Jinping is .

Stephan Hammel 21:49

But I don't mean it's the trains , you know , it's the from , yeah .

C. Derick Varn 21:54

Yeah , and how inefficient the trains are , and you have that's when you start seeing the real , real , real bubbles . I mean there's there's bubbles in the economy all the way back to the 1640s , but you see real ones , yeah . And the 1850 , 6070s . Then we have the end of the heroic period And we have the rising of imperialism , our state capital generally , which more sit into Keynesian social democracy and Fordism , depending on where you're at , and those are closer than people want to admit . Then you have the decline of that and what Mandel called late capital , optimistically , from the 60s into the 70s , and then you have neoliberalism's rise , from like 76 into probably 1999 , 2000 , 2001 , somewhere in there . Then you have neoliberalism's decline and very rapid decline into what I think you know everyone's naming it in hindsight got all the techno , neo-featal theses , which I think they're stupid , but also someone like Hudson calls it new finance capitalism . I think Brenner's not calling it political capital .

Stephan Hammel 23:19

Oh , he started on that article .

C. Derick Varn 23:21

Yeah Well , i'm about to do a whole series on my solo show about like there are pieces of brilliance in that article which they didn't stomp on . It's actually more frustrating that there's actually a couple of insights in it than if it was total shit . But yes , but we know all we've seen this rentiarization of the economy in the second half of neoliberalism And that's you know . I guess that's actually more than six because I have subcategories , but they actually pretty roughly follow also like two to three business cycles apiece . They all have a crisis point . Although , admittedly , entrepreneurial capital has like 85 credits , there's so many fucking recessions and depressions It was like every two years .

Stephan Hammel 24:10

But that was part of the stability right . You put that right in the in the 1850s , which is right . In that moment in which Marx is lamenting that there isn't so much that you know that clatterdutch on the horizon , And for that reason he has to go and he has to pay attention to the writing of political economy , et cetera , It seems to me that it's precisely the suppression of naturally occurring waves that has caused this boom bust cycle . And I don't know , man , I don't know how we unravel QE without , without destroying the , just the conditions for a governable society .

C. Derick Varn 24:46

Yeah , particularly when they want to do stuff . they want to unravel QE , they want to raise them , they want to , but they want to also save the banks . but they want to raise unemployment , but they want . they want to reassure because the supply chains are breaking down . Literally . their demands are impossible with their own demands Whether or not it's a Democrat or a Republican office they're going to be working at odds with the Fed and everybody knows it . But I think it's going to be really hard when the Supreme Court gets rid of that meager ass student loan forgiveness and they're just forking money out for banks and also cutting food stamps and everything else .

Stephan Hammel 25:36

That's the intention . I imagine that that's the political intention , which is look , they're caught within a

Capitalism and Western Marxism

Stephan Hammel 25:41

rock and a hard place . I really do think capitalism more or less ended 10 years ago and it's just been floated since then , and that's just because it turns out to be the case that the profit rate is so low . I mean , it has a hit zeros at the theoretical issue , i suppose , but it's gotten low enough that it's just more sane for money to invest in crypto than it is into productive . But it's anything productive or anything real in the economy , and that's just got to be a problem . So either you destroy a lot of capital or you don't . And if you don't , if you're unwilling to make society poorer , then any supply shock is going to create inflation . That's precisely what's happened . They have no tools to like price caps , to be able to combat it , and therefore they have to start to deflate the bubble that they created . But the bubble is the thing that's supporting the system , and its political structure .

C. Derick Varn 26:34

The thing that complicates it is both China and Japan are also going to try to keep their bubble , but in a must reduce capacity . they're both running inflationary monetary policies . Well , china is I mean Japan's not running truly inflationary monetary processes . The other thing is like what leftists have put their hope on is the great . I shouldn't say leftists and generic , i should say a certain sector of Marxists have put their hope on China as the great socialist reformer . And while I am mildly defensist on China when we talk about like compared to other states , i'm going to say that like no , they have a business cycle now , which also means that now that they have a business cycle , that you guys have been basing this off of an early industrial cycle , you just didn't realize that the early industrial cycle really started in the 70s .

Stephan Hammel 27:30

They also had a real estate crash right There . In fact , they were trying to do , you know , a little bit of this work of disinflating . They've had bank runs too , Like they've had a couple of bank runs like it's acceptable to all of it actually now , which isn't to say that there's nothing to defend in the Chinese model .

C. Derick Varn 27:47

There are clearly things to learn from the Chinese revolution and its progress , but one of those things , mostly from the great proletarian cultural revolution , though , to be honest .

Stephan Hammel 27:58

Lessons in steadfastness .

C. Derick Varn 28:04

I know that , like I am normally associated with the Trotskis in the Marxism , but I get all weepy-eyed about the great proletarian cultural revolution because it's the only time we tried to do things that have been in the minimum program , like abolishing town and country was actually attempted . Like , what else was actually attempted ? Oh yeah , they actually started doing labor tokens and time accounting , not currency Like which you know , the Soviet Union never even got around to . So they did . they do it that consistently . No , they didn't even do it consistently within the country .

C. Derick Varn 28:45

I mean , mao was very good on it in the country tribe , but damn , was he not really happy when it started happening in the cities . But it's important to take that seriously . It's also important to take some of the things that have happened since then seriously in terms of social development etc . But and I'm not , i'm really worried about all the , the , the increasing bipartisan saber rattling that seems clearly I don't . I have , i'm up to mine . I do think there are people who want war , but I also think there's a whole lot of people who can't imagine political legitimacy right now , yeah , without Cold War conditions , right , and so they're really just trying to engineer it because , like , well , clearly they both have . we both have nuclear weapons . We're not actually going to war . But then I'm like , yeah , but you could though .

Stephan Hammel 29:39

We absolutely could . I don't think we're there yet . I mean , i just don't . I think that the that our economies are too intertwined to that for that to be viable , absolutely . But that doesn't mean that decoupling isn't isn't a goal , and I take it that decoupling is also the biggest , the biggest threat That is , that would be , that would that would lead to war most most precipitously is if we genuinely decoupled .

C. Derick Varn 30:02

If we truly decoupled . But I don't .

Stephan Hammel 30:04

I don't know that that's possible . I mean even in , like in five years , you know , five , 10 years at minimum to be able to achieve something like significant decoupling . And there'll be a lot of wins against it too . I mean , where is Apple supposed to put together its products ? We haven't yet industrialized Africa , So where is ?

C. Derick Varn 30:22

it .

C. Derick Varn 30:23

I think it's going to try to do it in India , maybe it's India , But again a chip production and being tied to Taiwan as part of why this Taiwan stuff is heating up , which I don't think people will realize . Yeah , so it's . But yes , we're in interesting times , but we're in interesting times without a revolutionary movement . And to tie it back to the subject of our conversation , a lot of people like to blame that on quote , western Marxism , on quote which is a like when we talk about , say , american social democracy from like 1910 to 1930 , i know what that is .

C. Derick Varn 31:04

If we talk about 1900 , 1930 , if we talk about American communism from 1922 to 19 , say 65 , maybe 50 , 56 , somewhere in there , like in the , you know , because it really kind of falls apart in 56 , it . It hangs on , though , by protecting black intellectuals until the 60s , and then in the 70s is when it's like it does the thing that American sex do . It drops down to 5000 people and then sort of alternates between three and 5000 off of student entries for forever . Looking a lot like the Trotskyist organizations that used to critique , actually . But ironically , yeah , the and I think I mean you know I predict we're seeing that with the DSA right now but it's actually going into that decoupling , dropping out phase . No one even talking about it anymore , So it's just like .

Stephan Hammel 32:01

No , i totally agree with you , i think I think the DSA is just over , but I have a whole theory of how American organizations work And I also am laying my chips on on there being , on there being some revitalized form of communism institutionally in the near future , but that's just . But I'm the only one who believes that , as far as I can tell . So anyway , your point was that you know how to talk about all those Marxisms , but what the hell is Western Marxism ?

C. Derick Varn 32:21

Yeah , what the hell is Western Marxism ? Because , like when we talk about Euro communism or when we talk about American social democracy , american communism , there's delimited things to talk about . Western Marxism isn't even limited necessarily to Europe and the United States and Canada , it's it's . It sometimes includes parts of Latin America and sometimes doesn't . It's just like .

Stephan Hammel 32:49

You know , hey , you compare it to my . so you know , a mentor of mine in my life is Kevin Anderson , who wrote a book about , about Western Marxism and included Lenin . So you know , if it can include Lenin , what the hell are we talking about ? Yeah , okay . So I got interested in this . by the way , just recently , when I guess it was back in January or something , i noticed that historical materials in the journal had had published a CFP , a call for papers on a special issue on Western Marxism , and I thought , oh wow , i'd you know . at the time I was like , oh good , that's a really that's a nice dusty phrase . I wonder what it means . And it seemed clear that from the , from the call that this , that this phrase hasn't really exited our discourse at all . It's , it's alive and well and kicking , and and so I revisited the book , just just , you know , to see what it was like Now . I mean , i'd initially encountered the book like a lot of Marxists when I was really young I was in my early 20s I , you know , bought it off the shelf thinking that this was a great intro And in fact there's some great things about

The Flaws of Western Marxism

Stephan Hammel 33:50

the book .

Stephan Hammel 33:51

Its first chapter , the classical tradition , is a pretty fine summary of Secondary International Marxism . I actually used it in a seminar on historical materials and that I taught last year just that chapter . But the book's thesis as a whole is I mean , i I went from thinking that it was , you know , a thing of the past oh , how dusty to thinking , wow , this is actually it's . it reads as if it's willfully distorting the tradition in order to come up with a category that is just not found . You know , it doesn't seem to like . you know , get to history and try to slice it at the joints , but instead , like Borges , kafka , tries to construct its own predecessors . So which book ?

C. Derick Varn 34:30

are we talking about ? Are we talking about the Perry Anderson book or the Kevin Anderson book ? The Perry Anderson book .

Stephan Hammel 34:37

No , kevin Anderson's book is actually , i think . I think the term Western Marxism becomes so fully a part of the way in which Marxists talk to one another that it made sense to talk about Hegelian Marxism in general as Western Marxism .

C. Derick Varn 34:48

Which Russell Jackalby also does talk about Hegelian Marxism , in which case he actually splits left Marxism and right Marxism , not into how we normally do , but whether or not one is a phenomenology of spirit , inspired Marxists . But if one is a science of logic , inspired Marxists . Because the , the , the , the Korsk Lukas tradition is phenomenology of spirit and the Stalin tradition is .

C. Derick Varn 35:17

Stalin tradition is a science of logic , although it leads him to do funny things like talk about the existentialist Marxists and Sartre as as as like left opposition , as their left communist , which is hilariously wrong . Admittedly , they were more contemporary , but I'm like if you'd have just done a cursory review of of of French communism and that Russell Jackalby books actually really , really good on the period from like 1890 to like 1930 . I learned some stuff about German communists and left communist factions from that book that I'd actually never read before . But then you get to the stuff that's like new leftist and he's just . he's just like taking people at face value .

Stephan Hammel 36:11

Yeah , you know , it does seem to break down from any of these authors that way . So I do mean to make a distinction between those people who use Western Marxism as a category for something . And in the case of , in the case of Kevin Anderson's book , you know he's talking about Hegelian Marxism in general And if you just throw out the word Western Marxism and replace it with Hegelian Marxism , then he is making that intellectual history about a concrete philosophical problematic that you can then trace through a number of texts . This is completely different from Perry Anderson's usage of Western Marxism , which , as I have , you know , lots of respect for Perry Anderson , but as an intellectual history it's just a work of fiction .

Stephan Hammel 36:51

The category , the category is a bunch of stuff wrong with it , but one of the first things that's wrong with it is that it suggests it's opposite , like okay , so if there's such a thing as Western Marxism , what's Eastern ? That is , what do we mean when we say the word Western And this was in the context right of the word Western , and we were talking about this a little bit before the word Western had reentered our discourse in a powerful way around the Ukraine war . We say the word Western all the time , and we know exactly what the word Western means . When we say it , we may we mean inside the NATO security umbrella . That's what Western means . That's the West against Russia . Okay .

Stephan Hammel 37:29

Well , it seemed to me reading this book now , with with all that context , that that's exactly what it means here , and in fact something of , i think , an intended poignant irony in the category's name in the first place is lost on contemporary readers , that is , readers today . They don't see that . For for you know Anderson of 1977 , that you know , that you know Marxism , in his view , had become so sclerotic in official communism And in fact in all those places that had been touched by actually existing socialism's , that the only intellectually interesting part of it left is the Western part , that which was cultivated within the NATO security umbrella . Oh , how tragic .

C. Derick Varn 38:11

Right , yeah , it's basically like look at all the Marxist thinking that's happened with these Lacanians , grasians , frank Ferdians , sartreians . He doesn't mention the Vienna circle , buddy , where could have he also altistarians , which I think is funny , because he's separating that from like Marxist , litanist traditions And I'm like it's yeah , it's different , but it's actually trying to do the same thing . And then he has this whole thing about Della Volpe , volperian Volpe I don't even know how you say that word .

Stephan Hammel 38:40

Della Volpe , but I don't know how you say it either .

C. Derick Varn 38:43

Yeah , he has it as an adjective Della Volpean , della Volpean , but , and I'm like that that current fell away Really relevant today .

Stephan Hammel 38:55

I think you know , but no , it's . It's crazy . I mean I , you know the , he picks and chooses like crazy . Now , part of it is what was available And we just have an embarrassment of riches , of what's available . It's why the measures taken exists as a podcast , because it's because there has been such , you know , such availability of material . But even in his own day , it's weird that there are figures that are missing . There's no discussion , for example I mean , this is on the surface right There's no discussion of anything going on in Japan . There's no Ilyenkov , there's no Rubin , there's nothing about Americans . It's very Eurocentric . It's just not clear what the criteria is for choosing what's interesting to Marxism , what's not .

C. Derick Varn 39:29

Yeah , actually , like Latin America doesn't exist in it either . Nope . So I'm like , okay , so is Latin America a part of the official Soviet Marxism ? And you also get the we're not dealing with the Sino-Soviet split . We're not going to deal with the Sino-Soviet split . And that book is early . The book is late enough that that is relevant , Absolutely . Yeah , Because I'm like , hey , someone was driving this Western Marxist stuff . It's the split between Russia and China .

Stephan Hammel 40:01

That's right . So you know it's a political , it's a political text , it's a political polemic that's masquerading as a history , and it's supposed to tell you who the good Marxists are and distinguish them from the mostly unnamed bad Marxists , the ones who didn't , you know , didn't properly take up the legacy of those heroic figures , like you know , like Luxembourg , into the 20th century . But then , of course , you get faced with characters like I mean . I've been trying to make my way through , well , through this , through this monster . I don't know if you've . So this is Oigen Varga , selected political and economic writings . Varga , perfect example of someone who's neither Eastern nor Western . He is as involved , in fact more involved , in the Hungarian Soviet experience 1919 , then was Lukacs . He comes out of something like the same Central European world . He's fluent in German , he in fact makes it to Berlin , often over the course of his career . But because he's associated with just Soviet policy after I don't know , 1922 , he is lost to history and is neither Eastern nor Western . In fact you shouldn't even know who he was .

C. Derick Varn 41:06

I mean in some ways all of the Hungarian tradition , which is funny because you like , you can tie critical theory directly back to the Hungarian tradition through Lukacs And then again later through Lakatos .

Stephan Hammel 41:22

So it's interesting . That's a good point . That's a really good point .

C. Derick Varn 41:26

Lakatos was an actual militant , so it's .

Marxist Theory and Historical Contexts

C. Derick Varn 41:35

And yet when we talk about it we don't talk about like it's like . Okay , we talk about the weirdo . We talk about your weirdo official communist blocks , the actual Eastern socialist blocks , And they get some theorist . You can still talk about Graverist . We can still talk about the Hade of Chinese intrigue . All the various factions have associated weirdo political positions . My favorite one is three world theory , because everyone recounts it now differently than what it was recounted at the time And I'm always like you know that the first world was the US and the USSR right , and like the second world was .

Stephan Hammel 42:13

I didn't even know that . I didn't even know that . I don't know who first formulated a three-world theory .

C. Derick Varn 42:19

It's strongly associated with Lin Bao And yeah , And it was So pro-Latarian nation theory kind of concurrently develops in both fascist Italy and separately and unrelatedly but still very similarly , in China and the Chinese Communist Party . Before Mao takes over There is that and then , like the other faction in the Chinese Communist Party that is skeptical of the Guomandong but became more and more fatalistic , were like , They were basically kind of Kauski-Ploekhanai's Leninist . They were Leninist but they were very much in the like . We have to economically develop . We got to have , But we also need . We don't need to just do this as a national project . It has to be larger than that . They're both opposed to the Interestingly to the Soviet Union's emissaries of Meringue and Co . Anyway , that pro-Latarian nation's thesis . Then when you add Mao's revision And I don't know why we don't call Mao revisionist because he's a revisionist of a primary order Well , that's not a technical term We don't know how to use the word revisionism , actually It's .

Stephan Hammel 43:42

You know that Measures Taken is thinking about writing a little book and every chapter is going to be a different concept , and then a little genealogy of how we got to that concept and then turn it into a technical term .

C. Derick Varn 43:53

That's when Mao down started with too was like okay , what has tailism meant in time ? Because it means different things . In February , revisionism is particularly weird because it means something very specific from the Bernstein controversies to the 19 . Through .

Stephan Hammel 44:12

Hilfrieding , yeah , not even to 1920 . Just , it's an 1890s thing .

C. Derick Varn 44:18

Right . And then And it gets picked up interestingly actually by a lot of non-Marxists in the historical school . This is something I've been researching separately , but all these ideas come in through Weber and Sombart and Spaytoff et cetera , from the youngest historical school who are members of the right wing of the S-Payday , like the part that didn't leave Wachowski when Kalski left with the United S-Payday . They all either become liberals in Weber's case or fascists in Sombart's case , are fascist and pathetic in Spadoff's case . But Spadoff then , like towards the middle of the fascist experiment , decides that it's totally not worth it and goes hangs out with Joseph Schoepert and Bon for the rest of his life .

Stephan Hammel 45:03

Everyone is true to form . at the end of the day , I think Right .

C. Derick Varn 45:08

And what I find interesting about that is you also have like Berentonowski , who's a Mincivic , who also picks up on . So these are the revisionist traits And what Berentonowski ends up is he defects to the Narodniks . And I bring this up because basically we talk about this and I see it always talked about in terms of Marxists that we can follow , but they don't follow all the Marxist right . But by right I don't mean fascist , i mean like they were just the more nationalist end . They tended to respond to Bernstein by either becoming non-inevitabilist And it's actually a lot of the non-inevitabilist who eventually leave , although it's weird because Hilferding , for example , is a non-inevitabilist . That's part of the Himflin-Kowski debates . So I bring this all up . But by the time that revision is used around Stalinism and I do see kind of how it's related to like the Nambi-Pamby-Marxist humanism of Kuschev . But when I say this as a person , actually this Kuschev was one of the better Soviet leaders .

Stephan Hammel 46:32

Yeah , I'm not sure that's a heroic roster at the end of the day .

C. Derick Varn 46:35

No , it's really not , but it's still interesting because it , pretty much in the 1960s , just means are you down with Uncle Joe or not ? That's all it means .

Stephan Hammel 46:48

Yeah , that's all it means . Revisionism means non-Orthodox , but Orthodox with respect to official communism .

C. Derick Varn 46:53

Right . But what's a problem with that is that , while Mao is down with Uncle Joe , mao's primary innovation is to take the Bukharin-Lenin-Stalin dictatorship of the peasant and worker and turn it into the primary contradiction , which is not just that the peasants can be included , it's also like well , the peasants aren't even supposed to be bourgeoisified . And the issue is not we don't have to really fight our internal bourgeoisie , we have to incorporate them and keep them from going comp or door and helping the imperialists , because imperialism is actually a bigger mode of production issue than capitalism . And I don't think , when most myos today talk about , like the , you know , the primary contradiction being imperialism , that they realize what they're doing because , yeah , contradiction , i mean contradiction .

Stephan Hammel 47:55

What do we mean by contradiction ? do they mean the , the primary conflict ?

C. Derick Varn 48:02

yes , the primary word conflict is is imperialism , not Capitalism , and so you could have a non-imperial capitalist world and that might be acceptable . On on your transition to communism . Right , even just right , which is how they justify some of their political maneuverings against the Soviets in the 60s and 70s , where they're , you know , making good with Kissinger , working with fascist in Latin America , like at the very moment , ironically , that they're actually internal to China , doing some of the most actually following the the early programs prescriptions in the countryside that anyone's ever tried . And that contradiction is like nobody wants to deal with it , like Including people who aren't necessarily Maoist , but it's like . What do you say about ? like , okay , well , a Lot of people who want to make a big deal a sign of Soviet split , or like USSR Defenses , and I and I understand why one would be that . But then I'm like but you have to like , also look at the fact that Now was delivering on goods that the USSR had given up on delivering on . No , that's true .

Stephan Hammel 49:17

That's genuine tragedy , i take it . I take it that that contradiction or I mean I don't think contradiction in that philosophical sense , but that but that you know those two things being true at once is is representative of a genuine tragedy . There are many in history . Here's one That's not a genuine tragedy , it's not the case that that you know .

Stephan Hammel 49:34

Oh so , sadly , all those on you know , all those east of I don't know whatever Germany's eastern border is , lost Marxism in its vitality and all of it was taken over by it , by a kind of intellectual dark age , and That only in the West , however that's defined , can we actually like trace the stream of the history , the intellectual history of Marxism , and that's where it goes to hide until and Anderson , perry , anderson is perfectly like , explicit about this point until Another revolutionary situation will lead those people . Gramsci , coletti , dela Volpe , al Tusser at all , adorno , maybe even Horkheimer , all of those people back their ideas like messages in a bottle will be available To that generation of Marxists that are genuinely engaged in struggle . But there's nothing particularly Non-revolutionary , right or even unmarxist about , about these thinkers and their output . What you know , the only problem is the historical context in which they were , in which they were , you know . They emerged and those conditions were just not propitious for engagement with impolite What's interesting about the Perry Anderson book ?

C. Derick Varn 50:41

It's it begins the transition of this idea of Western Marxism , not as the Okay so and the Anderson selective , you know , historiographic reception . Basically There's kind of a dissident tradition in the capitalist world That's actually keeping a vibrancy of Marxist thought alive , even if it's because it's not empowered and doesn't have ties to the state . But later on his own categorization Specifically are used by people to say well , that's the degenerate Marxist . They're all intellectuals that never engage in struggle . Half of them probably work for the CIA and We know that many of them were anti-communists .

Stephan Hammel 51:22

I mean , in fact , like Al Tusser is the one where it's a little difficult , but I mean , let's not kid ourselves , adorno is an out-and-out cold war anti-communist . You know , like many of these people , well , okay , so you know you , like Marxist , often say well , look , you know , everyone needs a , everyone needs an image of the final crisis , you know , and if you don't have an economic image of the final crisis , you need some other one , maybe an environmental one , maybe a , you know , whatever it is , you know , maybe it's a spiritual one , you know it's just spiritual .

C. Derick Varn 51:50

I mean like , why did they kick ? Why does the Frankfurt school kick gross money out ? It's because he he takes a a mildly defensive stance after 1936 towards the Soviet Union .

Stephan Hammel 52:00

That's right , i'm ready by his truck , by his trotskiest translators is exaggerated actually . You know , gross money , gross money . Who has , you know anyway , who has who's a career in some institutions tied to the Soviet state , like so many people , so many people who were then murdered by the Soviet state actually . But that doesn't mean that he necessarily is a died-in-the-world Stalinist , whatever that word supposed to mean in in the first place ?

C. Derick Varn 52:25

Um , no , you know East German guy who kind of regrets going back to East Germany and then quickly dies . He's not , he's himself in Polish , but like he , he declared he's like you know it's , it's a , it's an actual Marxist state , it's German . Let's give it a try . I'm gonna be the only Frankfurt school person who goes back to the east . And He just doesn't . He like it seems like he's sad at the end of his life and then he dies like that's it , that's all we got like . And then he's translated by an Indian trotskiest in 1970 , which is crazy to me , because that fucking book is published in America .

C. Derick Varn 53:11

It's just published in German and no one bothers to translate it into English .

Stephan Hammel 53:16

It's very , very crazy . It's the Grossman's legacy is , i mean , it's gotta be one of the most important things . But I'll tell you . I've been reading my way through , as I say , through Varga . What's Varga's big , big , big point ? He's trying to do crisis theory . He's trying to do breakdown theory . I mean , these people are , you know , they're economists . They're not Economistic . I don't know what the word Economistic means , just as I don't think the word positivist has a meaning Instead means that you are saying that there's material limits to our immediate political project .

C. Derick Varn 53:44

And go fuck yourself . And I'm gonna , i'm gonna use linen quotes selectively to pretend that we can just , politically , will anything we want to Into being , despite the fact the history of the Soviet Union Explicitly proves that's not true .

Stephan Hammel 53:58

Absolutely the case . Also , why you going to Lenin for that stuff ? He rose as a better writer and she has plenty more to offer you if you want to defend Voluntarism or or like political anything . I mean this is we were talking a minute ago about , about Robert Brenner's article , although I Imagine that it's it that Dylan Riley is the is did the bulk of the lifting in the writing , but either way , the , the concept of a political I mean you know this this idea of the like , the independence and independent agency of the political dimension , has cashed out , is yet another , yet another stages theory and yet another Pollock style post capitalism theory , because now the primary means of exploitation is political subjugation And not economic , or economic , that is , it's not the production of surplus value , but it's an .

C. Derick Varn 54:45

Interestingly enough , it's not because we've solved the contradiction of capitalism , because the competition , but actually in Brenner , the contradiction of capitalism has proved out . Like you and I are saying , it's just that the bad guys are one . I guess , although he's unclear , and who the bad guys even are . Because that that , while I think We not to get too off , but because we're talking about Western Marxism , this is related . I think That , believe it or not , i think their propositions about what socialists and the DSA are wrong about , about American politics , is correct , but their , their proposition about what Biden's actually doing is laughable .

Stephan Hammel 55:28

So I'm by the Biden fanboying in that article is is extraordinary . They're like oh , it's progressive .

C. Derick Varn 55:33

And you know , we know it's not socialist vision , but look , it's delivering all these goods and I'm like is it , though Could you know it's MSNBC brand that , that view of the Biden administration .

Stephan Hammel 55:46

And and it's funny because now if you turn on , i mean either turn on Bloomberg , even , or any of the like obviously I've been , i've been looking at a lot of business press recently , just because it's fascinating now , but but you know , you , i mean Always fascinating , just exactly .

Stephan Hammel 55:58

I mean I'll never forget

Economic Theories and Zero Interest Rates

Stephan Hammel 56:01

. You know , during the this is a little bit off , it just is a side note during the , during the violence and Honduras , after the , after Zalaya was deposed , the only place you could read about violence was not in the op-ed where they were , where they ran off , you know , op-eds in support of , in support of the right wing , so it took over not on the front page of the New York Times . The only place you could read about the violence in Honduras was in the United States . The only place you could read about the violence in Honduras was in the business section , something I you know when the moment I that was my big manufacturing consent moment , you know as a younger man . But either way , i've been watching a lot of business press and the number of times you hear the phrase Vimar Republic Will baffle you , or I shouldn't surprise you , actually , you know it , but it's .

C. Derick Varn 56:42

But I've seen it a fucking lot lately . And the funny thing is , stefan , as I have been on the If , if you don't want a , a fascist takeover , my dear Antifa , antifa friends , don't create a fucking by my Republican . Everyone thought I was doing it the way . Conservatives will say that too , and what they mean is like queer shit and I'm like no , i mean incoherent political economy .

Stephan Hammel 57:11

My friend , like I don't like Oh man , yeah , you're absolutely right , no , okay , well , let's talk about incoherent .

C. Derick Varn 57:18

I mean , it's okay if we go slightly off topic , because oh , we're this you and I never say on topic We will come , we will circle around it , like , like the great circle of history , the way , the way the spiral of dialectics works .

Stephan Hammel 57:32

That's right . That's right , like yeah , musicians in the audience will know , like brookner , i'll articulate a key area through its dominant Um no instead , uh , you know what you hear . So , okay , um , you know , we've been , we've been hearing a lot from the left about economic policies and what the left is supposed to endorse at a crisis time like this . And Of course , i mean you know you turn on I don't know the Rising points memo or whatever that is . Or you or you turn on Elizabeth Warren yelling at , yelling at Jerome Powell in Congress , or You know you hear a lot .

Stephan Hammel 58:01

Well , a Fed has broken this . The Fed needs to now lower rates again . In fact , you've got the head of the AFL CIO Saying exactly the same thing . The feds gone too far , raised rates too fast and with Incredible about . That is on . What kind of economic theory do they imagine themselves being , you know , basing themselves on ? it's already the case . The bourgeois economists don't have a theory of inflation , right . That one broke when they when they decided that monetary policy you know , maximally eased monetary policy could just exist forever , and then they figured out that no , maybe not , although I think supply shocks were more , more at fault for consumer inflation . Right , we've obviously got asset price inflation .

C. Derick Varn 58:39

Right , i said , but asset price inflation has been a whole thing since the QE , which is why the tech sector as it exists right now even exist , which is the great irony of Marxist monetary theory , not Marxist monetary theory , modern monetary theory modern .

C. Derick Varn 58:53

Is that they're right , the Fed can't run out of money , of course . No , no fucking idiot thought that they tell that to the plebs . Like That include monetarists . Don't really think that . Like No one thought that , since we got off the gold standard and we started getting off the gold standard in the fucking Really in the fucking 30s , but we did , you know like definitely by the 70s , because we started manipulating the gold standard by the , by the , by the Britain Woods agreement , but Varga talks about exactly this , by the way , but go on .

C. Derick Varn 59:24

Yeah , but I'm like , but you guys sneak into this from the warm oslerites to the keltonites And I know that all the mmTers will say that there's no difference between these thinkers . But there absolutely is , even to the Hudson . I Hudson's actually the exception . I'm gonna bite them off because he actually does talk about this . They they hide the fact that zero percent Lending interest it favors people who already hold capital . Right , it doesn't . It doesn't necessarily hurt People with debts because it does devalue the debts if there's some inflation . But zero percent interest Favors people are to hold capital to build up rentier things , which I'm like , of course .

C. Derick Varn 1:00:07

This is why , up into this , you started seeing mainstream economists flirting with people like Nathan tankis because Part of their theory was good for them in the parts that the left part of that theory was never gonna happen .

C. Derick Varn 1:00:21

Like full , you're gonna have full employment as the backstop . I mean , even war Mosler says that , although he has that at like less than a living wage , deliberately . But I'm like you need a planned economy to do this . And I'm also like , if it's the only way in which it does not favor high levels of capital concentration is if you do what King said and tax the rich Extremely to soak up the excess it like right , which you will not do , and and I was also because you would also have to slow monetary transactions . Anyway , you're also gonna have to tax the poor To to slow down the velocity problem that you're talking about , because that's how you explain it inflation , which means that it's gonna be politically unpopular , which is why all the Keynesians became monetarist anyway . This is why , like the Krugmans and the Larry Summers and Whatever is because they knew that the implications of Keynesian tax policy would never be accepted by anybody . If they actually understood .

Stephan Hammel 1:01:26

Well , not by the people who fund the state , which is the bourgeoisie that it is right capital investors who produce the surplus value , some of which goes in and it goes into taxation , and funds the state that it's a bourgeois state .

C. Derick Varn 1:01:38

Right , this is the thing is even they will admit Well you know productions , what , what keeps the state afloat ? I'm like , so you think that currency Because of state power , because of the ability to compel taxes , which , by the way , requires guns ? I will add you that , like in in every example that you pull from from nap or from chartle , from tokens , if you really think about it , most of them are actually colonial examples with strong , with strong external states . They don't ever talk about weak states because weak states are metalist almost inherently . Are there an actual commodity ? it's not always , but they're most likely metal . Actually , just for historical , because metals convertible , um , i mean literally you can convert it into things and then back into , boy on , by melting it . That's why , like , convertibility didn't used to be a metaphor .

Stephan Hammel 1:02:28

Right money is a commodity , which is exactly how Marx describes it right , um , non commodity money .

C. Derick Varn 1:02:36

Our commodity backed money is not commodity money exactly . And then , but nonetheless , all that aside , is , during this period of QE , the left itself , the entire time one would go , so it would be so brazen until last year saying inflation doesn't hurt the poor , which is absurd . It's Um , uh , you know they're like , because I think their image of the poor is like metal class debt holders and it might help you against your debt , but not if you actually figure out how much it's raising all of the cost .

Stephan Hammel 1:03:11

Oh , i mean , everyone who makes under $250,000 is lumpen , as far as I can tell , by the state planners . But I live , i live one block away , by the way , from From a bread line , from a , you know , one of these food centers for , for , for families who are food insecure . And while the lions have gone down Since the height of the of the pandemic days 2020-2021 , they haven't ceased , so they're about to go back up , um .

C. Derick Varn 1:03:35

Beyond that , i mean the other thing that just gets me about this . It should be obvious anyone . If you think about it for 35 seconds , all right , it's like okay , zero interest conditions is great for people who have lots of capital because they buy everything up and they have . They can turn it all in the rents and then stabilize their income that way . Um , that's the only part of the whole techno neo feudal Thing that actually holds true . What I find fucking fascinating about that is the people who are complaining about techno neo feudalism are all So the people saying that we should perpetually have interest rates at a natural interest rate of 0% , which is fucking ludicrous . Um , and like , yes , you're right , the state can print as much currency as it fucking wants if it's an imperial state , and that's important . And the reason why it's important is the MMTers used to say they are getting smarter . But you say , oh , it's ideological , that's why the small states don't do this . I'm like , oh , it's not because I have to buy shit and reserve currencies .

Stephan Hammel 1:04:36

By the way , that's idealism . The reason why the state of the world is it is the way it is is because people think the thoughts that they think is just . I mean , everyone should be at least Marxist enough to dismiss that one .

C. Derick Varn 1:04:47

Uh . So bye bye , g-jack , bye , bye bye MMT . No , um and like , and it's really frustrating because there I will say that , after 1960s , one thing we can fault western Marxism for is not having a coherent theory to fucking economics . Mainly because , even if the Pollock administrative state theory or the managerial state theory or the PMC thesis or whatever is true which , by the way , people don't get why I opposed to PMC thesis , not that I don't think there's a leak capture and that the bourgeoisie is out the lunch and basically letting , like , this subclass run everything .

C. Derick Varn 1:05:27

I think that's true , but um but also it's not what Aaron Reich described like . It's like 7% of the population , everyone the fucking degree and their actual elites . And so to turn to the professional managerial class thesis as an explanation for that is to have your cake and eat it too , because you're invoking an older definition that actually isn't the one that you're actually pointing to . But when it's convenient , when liberals are doing shit you don't like , you can switch back to the old expansive definition and talk about that , even though you goddamn well know that teachers are not , that teachers and , like liberal , students , are not actually in control of fucking society . So like .

Stephan Hammel 1:06:10

No , although they are more likely , they're more the people , those people who are identified as in the PMC are that it is more important that they be ideologically doctrinated than others with with less power to like , say , access to the press or something . But even more than that , they're more likely to have encountered their Marxism through Perry Anderson's Western Marx .

C. Derick Varn 1:06:30

Right . So it's all , it's all kind of it all gets to this , this cul-de-sac , which which actually that that in and of itself is why , right , when we're like to promote this grand GM theory , which also find hilarious why we're talking about this , because this really does come back to this Western Marxist like well , the Western Marxist , they're the cultural Marxist , right , yes , and I used to say there is a tiny kernel of truth to that , in so much that , because of different kinds of state capital thesis is there was a general assumption that , well , the contradictions of capital have been figured out by And now we just have to take the political reigns , or it was the hotel grand abyss assumption . Well , we lost , and we're too so like we have to do something else , right ?

Stephan Hammel 1:07:21

The history is over the bad way and we're all headed toward hell , and you know that's okay because we have atonal music to help us feel better about it right , exactly so , those .

C. Derick Varn 1:07:29

But those are the two you know , and ironically , they're represented in the same school of thought by different members of that school of thought . And I'm not saying there like I think there's some genius and Pollock , actually , that needs to be gone back and rediscuss . But the idea , what I keep pointing out to these people is like , well , if Pollock is correct , we should not still be having profitability crisis , and we do . And the other thing we can say about incoherent stuff since the , the domination of Western Marxism , whatever the fuck that is this non category is that .

C. Derick Varn 1:08:05

The other thing that I have seen is that it's Marxologists themselves who are most likely to say after MM tears , who don't even believe that profitability is really a thing . I mean , they kind of do , but but they don't believe in value at all . They don't believe in value . That's true , right , so like , like there's no conception of values . At most , some of them are power is value , people , and I think those are people who take the QE thing seriously , like Hudson , even though he's not , he's not a , he's not like one of the , he's not one of the thinkers , but if you look , read his theory of super imperialism from the 70s . It presages the , the , the , the Nissan power , power is value thesis and a lot of .

Stephan Hammel 1:09:01

The power , which is interesting because it that's another one . There's no well either . There are two things . You can replace economic determinism with political and cultural And their version , and they can be versions of one another . The , the , the political one is the power one . I take it in . The cultural one is the ideal ideological one . The power one is the better one . Of course , the power is always articulated in some material terms , which will have to mean effective control over certain material things and therefore caches out as economically relevant in the first place . But the second interesting thing is is that their notion of capitalism must be it . Is that the case that that , whatever they think capitalism is , it doesn't regulate production , it just , it just does the work of domination right ?

C. Derick Varn 1:09:43

that's the problem that I have with their theory is like it does explain . It does explain how fiat currency It looks , for example , in in the modern world in a way that , like Marxist commodity money doesn't , but it doesn't explain the way the actual markets work when you look at market exchanges and not just get caught up in the nominalization of currency .

The Transition and Collapse of Capitalism

C. Derick Varn 1:10:07

And my whole thing is right now , nominate currency and fictitious capital . And you want to know who gets mad . Inventors get mad . When I say the word fictitious capital , they don't believe that's a thing . So I'm like it's valorizable ?

C. Derick Varn 1:10:19

I'm like no , it's not . If you all tried to valorize it , even it's a very rich try to valorize all that it wants , it would not be valorizable like .

Stephan Hammel 1:10:28

That's right . It is a token , at the end of the day , which means that it's backed up by something in this case . In this case it's dead , and it's backed up by political by . By military power , and large , i mean military in the larger sense of the of the phrase of violent , the monopoly of violence .

Stephan Hammel 1:10:41

But that doesn't mean it's not regulating production in exactly the way that we , that we and that is it exists as a function of the state , in order to , in order to smooth the gears of capitalist exploitation . Although what's weird is that when capitalist exploitation runs , runs aground as a result of our own , just absurd amounts of well , it's was an extent a certain amounts of productivity , then you know what it's ? no , it's no good , unless it's running the exploitation system , because if this exploitation system runs aground , it feeds on itself and just blows up like it blows up like a tulip , which is what we're , what we're living through right now what we're discovering is even people in you and I was one of these people just a week ago who was like we need to be cautious .

C. Derick Varn 1:11:30

These are , this is a , this is a fracture sign and I'm like , well , all you people said that shit was contained or just wrong . Why I ?

Stephan Hammel 1:11:38

was , i was eating popcorn . I gotta tell you , i've been from the moment this happened , moment SVP happened and hit my you know , whatever my cell phone I've been , i it's odd that I take such delight , you know , in these moments because obviously people , real people , suffer or have the potential to suffer . But but it was like it was , it was confirming for me . I was just so tired of you know a lot , many years of . Even just the other day , i ran into some people who are also Marxist , randomly actually at a bar in LA , you know , marxist professor types and and we were having wonderful conversations with people and we agreed on all kinds of things , except when it came to the idea the breakdown was even possible .

Stephan Hammel 1:12:14

I mean , around the table , everyone around the table except for me , thought that we could just float . You know we'll float debt forever and that's . You know . We have to be a revolutionary strategy and I'm sitting there thinking nowhere at the beginning of this , of this . You know , this rollback and that's going to be deeply destabilizing politically , economically , it's gonna be . This is the classical idea of Marxist crises happening before our eyes . You know , let's suit up .

C. Derick Varn 1:12:44

I was talking to a friend of mine is in the product post affiliated society , and I say that as a caveat because we all know what the platus sphere so that he can be like . However , we were talking about like one of the things about the return to Marx . The funny thing about the return to Marx is like , immediately before it was even popular , we had given up on Marx and it was the only one of the few things I agreed with Doug Lane on that like one of the history of Marxism is figuring out how people deviate from it . Now , i am , you know , i'm probably more than you . There are things where I think Marxist sometimes wrong , and I'm okay saying that . But I actually think , interestingly , we are at a transition point And and I've been feeling this transition point for a while and I've been being yelled at by people , by Marxist doing this entire period , who have told me that my concerns about profitability were like well , that's just old dogma to .

C. Derick Varn 1:13:48

And I'm like look , even Michael Heinrich of all people will say like , okay , he thinks that the argument in capital , volume two , about machines , is bad , but that there might be empirical evidence . I'm like there's empirical evidence GDP growth , waste decline . Now , when I say there's negative growth , people think I mean that literally and I'm like no , what I actually mean is there's decline in growth rates , because negative growth in capital is a fucking collapse .

Stephan Hammel 1:14:14

That's right . You cannot even , you can't shrink , you can just slow growth .

C. Derick Varn 1:14:19

Right like , and that collapse is catastrophic . We almost really did hit it in 1975 , 76 , 77 . And I don't know about you guys , but there's a lot of shit that happened from 1975 , 76 , 77 . And then what's been interesting about this time period of the great return to Marx is that's when I started hearing people tell me for the first time in my life that the events of the 70s were political choices that , like we couldn't have maintained Keynesian policies And I'm like stagflation was a thing .

C. Derick Varn 1:15:02

Yes , it took an endogenous shock . Whether it's like that , i mean to really trip it off , there will always be shocks outside of your production cycle . So , like the fact that that's what causes it just shows you how weak things are .

Stephan Hammel 1:15:20

The same thing was said of SF . You know so , silicon Valley Bank when it was first reported . And then , you know , even in conversations in the last week I've heard people say , oh well , you know they didn't have a risk manager , they were poorly managed as a bank , et cetera . Like , i mean , you know , trying to put the blame on the collapse , on some kind of mismanaging , and you know . But that doesn't explain , for example , why it needed to start to sell assets to meet the demand for withdrawals . It doesn't explain why they were increased withdrawals with the raising of interest rates , I mean , unless you look at the underlying capacity of the businesses that they were .

C. Derick Varn 1:15:58

You know who's Why are treasury notes being valuable ? toxic asset , Like that's gotta be something people have to ask What do you want ? Like why is treasury notes ? And I can tell you why . Like it's because banks have not .

C. Derick Varn 1:16:13

The whole theory of Federal Reserve was based off of the Volcker theory , and monetarism in general was based off this idea that if you slowed inflation by encouraging people to save , by making debt costly , that the banks would be more cautious in lending which they have not been And For the backpacks .

C. Derick Varn 1:16:35

But yeah , Right , And they would pay back more in savings . Sure , And they do not . Like . The era of that kind of banking actually ends with the that's over with the end of Brentwoods , That like And so here's what this causes . This means that treasury notes being valuable means that people will wanna cash out their old treasury notes because it's now like you start doing equations , you're like well , I can take the penalty and still make more money buying this higher percentage note . They also take their savings , which is getting like 1% from the fucking bank or something at best , and put it in a treasury note , getting four or five , which means that deposits go away . Yeah , Now , this means that the fundamental instrument that's supposed to hold all this together , whether you're an MMT or a neoclassical monitorist , is toxic for banks because it's worth money .

Stephan Hammel 1:17:46

Listen , it's just the . I wouldn't worry too much about it . It's just the end of capitalism . It's fine , it's gonna be fine . My thing . Maybe I'm more of a lininess than you .

C. Derick Varn 1:17:59

in this one way is , i think linen's right about what linen's right about revolutionary events and our ability to catch up with them , and I think we idiotically blew our wad .

Stephan Hammel 1:18:09

No , no , no , no , no , no , no . Look , we didn't . We didn't at all . I think I know what you mean , which is that we blew our wad in the San Jose Electoralism , and then the pseudo-voluntaryism of the 2020 moment , which wasn't organized institutionally , but I do feel like it's just a sobering moment , and it's also one that calls for organization . So I just really believe in economic determinism so hard that I think that people will naturally form the organs that are relevant to their moments , and that those organs can be formed with startling repetitive I , having studied complexity theory , think that that's naive , like like I just Oh , I see you brought your bourgeois theorizations .

C. Derick Varn 1:18:55

Yes , exactly , Um uh .

Stephan Hammel 1:19:00

No , no , I mean , I'm kidding . But , I'm enjoying the Plyvanetics videos . By the way , that those have been fun .

C. Derick Varn 1:19:06

Well , here's the thing I think that there have been possibly terminal crises before I don't think this is the first one And so what happens to reset profitability can be dramatic . Now , I actually , right now do admit I don't even think a war would do it , So like .

Stephan Hammel 1:19:32

Now then why ? And I don't think you won on the offing anyway- No , i mean .

C. Derick Varn 1:19:35

Well , i you know , we are in a super imperialist moment where proxy wars can happen see Ukraine .

Stephan Hammel 1:19:44

But Yeah , not a general crisis . It's not the beginning of World War Three .

C. Derick Varn 1:19:48

But World War Three is existential and everybody knows it . That's right . So it's like that means . And also , nobody has strong enough supply chains to like build their own war machine . If everything fell apart , including the core of capital , believe it or not , as much as crazy amount as we spend on our military if the supply chains fell apart . I mean you heard about like fucking sending shit to Ukraine , taxing it What do you think that would do ? Total mobilization doesn't even seem possible now , and so I do think this is the moment . What I do think we'll see and maybe this is maybe we more agree is I think we're gonna see some force on the right actually benefit from this at first , but then , when they actually get in charge , they're gonna make it way .

Stephan Hammel 1:20:51

The fuck worse .

Unserious Right Wing State

Stephan Hammel 1:20:53

I have been singing this song against my liberal friends for a little while . I have never seen the right in more disarray . I think that they're the least threatening right I've ever encountered . I was much more frightened of George Bush than I am of Donald Trump .

C. Derick Varn 1:21:06

I'm not frightened of Donald Trump and I've never been frightened of Donald Trump .

C. Derick Varn 1:21:09

No , donald Trump is just not an important historical Well here's the thing actually , since I used to be on the right , i can talk to it . I feel like the right has been way more fractured since I was on it and I haven't been on the right for over 20 years , like I left the right when I was like 22 , 23 . And even then I was like the Reagan coalition bought them time . In Europe they're highly divided because nationalism is highly divided and in America there's no cohesive anything Like there , which is why you get shit like I mean to me , why I'm actually less worried by the day as one Okay , let's say Ron DeSantis does it in the country He tries to do to the country when he's doing the Florida and it starts cracking capital . I don't know , you might have a military coup , frankly . Yeah , like Well , Ron .

Stephan Hammel 1:22:02

DeSantis said the best possible thing about SVB's collapse that he possibly could . If you're a communist , which is because what you're afraid of , what I'm afraid of , i mean I said this before during the Sanders , sanders , trump , you know run , which was you know if Trump comes out with Medicare for all , white people were screwed .

C. Derick Varn 1:22:21

Right .

Stephan Hammel 1:22:21

But he's not gonna and he didn't . There was no immediate .

C. Derick Varn 1:22:25

The closest he got to . it is and this is one of the insights of the Brenner Riley essay that actually think is smart He got more and more incoherent to hide the quasi-social democratic policies he was adopting works .

Stephan Hammel 1:22:40

That's absolutely the case . In fact , he militated against those , the very functioning of the social democratic policies . No , i mean when Ron DeSantis and I think it was Ron DeSantis comes out and says well , the reason why SVB collapsed is because they were too woke .

C. Derick Varn 1:22:53

Right . And then you have Josh Harley saying you know , SVB is too woke to fail , And I'm like they're not serious , They're absolutely not serious .

Stephan Hammel 1:23:01

They have no alternative . They have no alternative plan .

C. Derick Varn 1:23:04

They cannot turn around and say to any fraction of the masses we have a vision of a more prosperous future Which is interesting because even the kind of center right corporatist types I mean corporates not , and like corporation I mean like in the old , scary form of that .

Stephan Hammel 1:23:20

The scary marriage of the yeah .

C. Derick Varn 1:23:21

Yeah , like Michael Lind and someone who's personally quite nice to me but has really sketched your politics . So , robb Amari , they're both . They're also like . This is fundamentally unserious . You don't know how this works . You need NAS movements . The mass movements have to hold things accountable . That's why you know , it was fucking Michael Lind , of all people who was like this . Is why FDR was FDR and not Andrew Jackson , is because in FDR's time there are mass political movements of workers and other things that can hold them accountable , and Andrew Jackson's time there is not . And Andrew Jackson's time you get grift and stupidity , And in FDR's time he has to be accountable because somebody will rip him apart And , like you know and I'm not an FDR lover , by the way- No , no , no , not a mind , i'm highly unpopular on the left for being like FDR may be killed to left , but it is either FDR or Sanders .

Stephan Hammel 1:24:18

One of the two .

C. Derick Varn 1:24:20

But it is actually the case that I think Lind is right And I'm like and I keep on saying , why isn't a Marxist saying this ? So that makes me afraid . And you know , Josh Harley takes sometimes running orders from these guys and they start sounding smart , Like when the rail thing happened , when these Palestine happened , and then you had .

Stephan Hammel 1:24:40

You know , I was afraid . Then too , I thought they could get one up on us too . I'm so glad that it's become a banking crisis , Because they know how to go into an Ohio town and say look how capitalism is dumping on the poor , on our poor , And we hate those corporations . And it's a completely different thing to say oh , by the way , we don't understand how the economy really works And we have absolutely no arguments about , I mean , it's more than a progressive vision . All they have is a restorationist one . For a past , I mean a past not worth recovering , not one within living memory .

C. Derick Varn 1:25:26

And if they wanted it , by the way , their own policies make it impossible . From Daniel Bell forward , everyone's kind of now like , yeah , i mean these guys like the 50s , but they're never going to do what Eisenhower did in the 50s . So they're not going to give labor a real seat at the chair , they're not going to tax marginal gains at like 120% or something Like . That's just not going to happen . And so this is why Trump never . I was the only .

C. Derick Varn 1:26:02

It's funny , stefan , i had this debate in 2016 in the long , slow decoupling of like me and Tom O'Brien and Doug Lane and Tom O'Brien and the Hades show now . But was this debate like ? Tom was like I'm listening to MMTers and Trump is going to do dark MMT And I'm like they only ever do part of their program And that's the part where they rack up a lot of debt and float the government off of tax rebates But they never do the other part , which is like reassure , reinvest , bring back jobs . And if we were looking at trends and this is where my friend Nico Villegas was too conservative And I mean that like he was like oh , sbb is regional , it's just , and I'm like I don't know man , i'm like I feel regional And I realize this relates to like it's downstream from the crypto bullshit because it's tied into tech mentoring .

C. Derick Varn 1:27:07

But I'm going to tell you , i bet we find out that there are more areas of banking tied up in this And , lo and behold , it's in fucking Europe And now all the small banks are freaking the fuck out . And what I find interesting about this is it's social , like , aha , look at the small banks there . And I'm like , ok , you think that's funny . But what you don't realize is like you should be taking advantage of this because this is a sign of banking crisis for real . But also you're just like laughing at them because , oh , the banks are getting money .

C. Derick Varn 1:27:44

I'm like those are not the rich banks that are doing that . The rich banks are actually getting doubly paid out because of the rewrites of Dodd-Frank . They get paid first . When these things are settled , when you do repo borrowing from the Fed , the first people get paid are the large incorporated

Future of American Economy and Politics

C. Derick Varn 1:28:02

banks . And I'm like and what I was pushing back on people who were talking about Glass-Steagall and Dodd-Frank like Dodd-Frank sort of prevented it . I'm like , look , the problems with Dodd-Frank is presaged by Glass-Steagall One , dodd-frank with the Volcker rule . Ironically , it's the Volcker rule . But Dodd-Frank with the Volcker rule literally was almost never put in place . It existed for one year and all the major banks got existed from it anyway , barney Frank himself argued that banks like SVB ought to be exempt from his own law .

Stephan Hammel 1:28:41

It's not the case that a bourgeois state can impose that kind of austerity on the only section of its economy keeping it running , which , at this state , in a highly-financialized and largely fake economy , that's going to mean these banks , and it's going to mean these banks , who are invested in the most speculative assets , when the only growth is in asset price inflation . at the end of the day , this is it's pretty straightforward , and what's wonderful is that what we should be saying is like hey , these wicked people , the wicked people on the right , have no vision at all . They can't even do dark MMT . The wicked people in power can't produce what we need to survive . That is , we're getting these massive shocks , these supply shocks . there aren't enough eggs , there aren't enough diapers , there's not enough .

Stephan Hammel 1:29:26

the one factory closes and it turns out that , like some , 30% of the supply in the United States of X disappears . We have these super fragile supply chains . We can't produce the stuff that we need . We can produce tech firms that produce apps for nonsense all day long . The only hope that the people in power , the demons in power , can offer you is that we can go back to some infinitely growing and inflating version of an economy that is most productive in producing things that we don't need .

C. Derick Varn 1:30:00

Yeah , this is why you wanna talk about that Brinner thing again . Maybe we can go back to the problems of the whole category of Western Marxism , because political Marxism is a Western Marxism that just comes after the book . But let's ask ourselves a question with the whole like that , one of the primary assumptions is Bidenism , is Keynesianism without growth ? And I'm like immediately so it's Keynesianism that doesn't work . Yeah , obviously Like , because the whole point of Keynesianism is that it promotes growth , is that it promotes growth ?

Stephan Hammel 1:30:35

That's right , that's right . In fact , you have to do these things that look like the contrary to the self-interest of the bourgeoisie in order to support the system as such , because no individual member of the system is gonna have the you know , that objective view about the well functioning of capitalism as a whole , and so it's the state's role to intervene and , in fact , even create mixed economies in order to keep exploitation going .

C. Derick Varn 1:30:55

It doesn't even function anymore , Which is also funny , because if you hear people who wanna celebrate the biggest pro-China argument , Okay and again , you and I are both not anti-China . I want people to know that . But I find it ludicrous when people are like , well , they'll take out their discipline . I'm like they'll discipline a billionaire . Like you realize that fascist governments , capitalist governments before the 1980s , capitalist governments now , if it's not about financial stuff , all the time discipline billionaires . Oh , come on .

Stephan Hammel 1:31:27

You think Elon Musk is above the fray and that at some point , if he gets hated enough , he'll go to prison over something ? I can imagine that . I mean they'll put a billionaire in prison in the United States if he's annoying enough .

C. Derick Varn 1:31:40

Yes , they have more control over a few capitalists And , yes , like , capitalists are seen as junior partners in the Chinese state project , as opposed to , you know , the American project , which is nothing but . But I'm also , like you , have such a meager vision of anything , because that doesn't even fix , you know , business cycle problems or whatever . All you're doing is saying , well , the state at least takes care of the worst excesses . That's what socialism is .

Stephan Hammel 1:32:13

Why ? Well , right , i mean , we're gonna have to start building it ourselves , obviously . I mean there will be , i think there will be a movement that will pick up on this line if just because I don't think human beings will consent to starve themselves to death . But we are gonna enter a very turbulent , rocky time And you know , is the American population going to consent to be poorer , suddenly , within one generation , markedly poorer , in order to maintain this current fictitious bubble forever ? economics going ? I don't know , i don't think so .

C. Derick Varn 1:32:54

I don't think so either , and I also don't know that . I think that the actual people who run our country , ie the military , would tolerate it forever . Even And that's the thing that like this is the like I don't like to say look at what you can't talk about , because that's where it controls you , because that's a bullshit quote anyway , and it's not even true . I've never heard it before . It's right when you're said all the time , but I will say this I remember a year and a half ago when all the liberals were like we're gonna be in civil war .

Stephan Hammel 1:33:34

And .

C. Derick Varn 1:33:35

I do that correctly , because that was fucking ridiculous And I'm like by civil war do you mean , like days of lead ? Do you mean political terrorism ? I'm frankly surprised we don't have more political terrorism . To be honest , We had a lot in the 90s . I think you may have forgotten .

Stephan Hammel 1:33:55

It's more satisfying to yell at people online ? I think , yeah , social media has displaced , has probably replaced a lot of violence and for its cathartic value .

C. Derick Varn 1:34:05

But anyway , that's the equation The praise will take . But I just remember going at the time like the military , the people who literally ensure that global cap on exist by protecting the sea lines , they're just gonna let us fuck that all up . You think so And like , by the way , they don't even have to be in shape , they got robots . Like I just want you , like you're like , oh , the American military today , they're so weak . I'm like drone , drone , drone , drone , drone , drone , northrop German drone , so like you can think what you will , and so I think that .

Stephan Hammel 1:34:49

The civil war is coming , but the civil war will not be between Democrats and Republicans , and I think that's what's just the bizarre in the water right now . They just think that the people who like drag queens are gonna start killing the people who don't like drag queens , and it's just not . I don't think that's a realistic vision of where we are in history . Instead , it will be I mean , it will be a struggle for power with the state , and either we get our act together and understand that we need institutions , democratic institutions , to take over state functions , or we don't and we struggle with the right for the state And I don't know what happens .

C. Derick Varn 1:35:27

No , well , and basically I think out of that I'm a military , i don't take over .

Stephan Hammel 1:35:32

Yeah , that might totally pop .

C. Derick Varn 1:35:34

Like at that point I'm like well , the right that you think you're fighting is not the right that's gonna win Like they're .

Stephan Hammel 1:35:42

But look , a military junta is only as strong as they're strong . That is one military defeat of any kind and their toast . Look what happened to the Argentine military junta And the Argentines . They're horribly disorganized , which is kind of ironic given their own self-conception I guess national self-conception , but you know , i mean the dirty war is just a disorganization nightmare . And then they lose a skirmish , really over an island and the whole government collapses And then they go to prison . Many of them go to prison as a result of having been military junta members on human rights violations . So that's not even a forever solution . Anyway , we might have dark you know , handmaid's tale images , But a military takeover doesn't mean that's the end of history either .

C. Derick Varn 1:36:31

I mean it's funny because right now I think we're talking about the Gramscians and this Western Marxist . I'm like , well , you know who seems to benefit from actually you know who thinks they benefit from Western Marxist conservatives , cause they always think they're doing the Gramscians shit , like taking over universities . After they don't matter anymore . They are tailing us Right . It's like , yeah , it's like they're now doing the shit that we did . That didn't work .

C. Derick Varn 1:37:05

Yeah , it's great , because they think that we wanted what's happening , which it's like it's like guys , what I've actually been I've actually talked about this like the Alkalinsky community organizing works better for conservatives anyway . And then I'm like guys , literally they think we wanted this cultural like 70s , like defeat , like you know , where we all became good , narcissistic , hedonists because we lost our , and I'm like they think that was a goal the whole time .

Stephan Hammel 1:37:47

It's amazing We're not even narcissistic hedonists . I wish we had been narcissistic hedonists , you know I was just . I was just rewatching Michael Pollan's rather well research , i think , his new series on psychedelic drugs , which you know we weren't even able the 1960s weren't even able to reintroduce psychedelics into the , into the medical research community , i mean , let alone , let alone as recreational , as mind expanding and all of the other human properties that it has . we weren't able to do that . let alone the sexual revolution . We've talked about that before . I mean , we didn't , and you know we couldn't do it . We did it with a rock and roll , maybe , but sex and drugs ?

C. Derick Varn 1:38:22

not at all . What do we got from the sexual revolution ? a bunch of kids who like , since the introduction of Tinder , like don't have sex and can't go to bars and talk to other human beings about having anxiety attack .

Stephan Hammel 1:38:37

Like This is the most anti-sex phobic version of society that I have lived through .

C. Derick Varn 1:38:42

I think that that is impossible to deny Yeah , which is crazy because it's more sex phobic than during the fucking AIDS crisis .

Stephan Hammel 1:38:49

What ? During the AIDS crisis Precisely . In fact , that's a good point . We both lived through that .

C. Derick Varn 1:38:53

We were young , but we both lived through it . Like That's right . Yeah , i'm just like I was actually talking to a conservative woman the other day about this and I'm like isn't it ironic that like we were all afraid of , she actually weirdly agreed with me It was a little word for the kids Isn't it ironic that we were all afraid of this shit in the 80s but we were not nearly as scared of human sexuality even though we weren't , it wasn't as definitional to who we were In the same like .

Sexuality and Politics in Modern Society

C. Derick Varn 1:39:25

Like I mean the fact that , for example , i like refused to continents any questions about my sexuality because I don't believe in the fucking concept . Yeah , exactly .

C. Derick Varn 1:39:36

It's like . It's like Like people . I've actually been told that that's a retrograde position . I'm like go fuck yourself , Like , Like .

Stephan Hammel 1:39:47

We're at the bottom of the well . That's clear to me . We didn't even do Keatonism properly and they're trying to tail end us on that end . Yeah .

C. Derick Varn 1:39:55

I mean we're all here .

Stephan Hammel 1:39:56

really , What were you gonna say ?

C. Derick Varn 1:39:58

Well , i mean , this is one of the insights of the Tom McGowan not of Marxist , by the way , by any definition , even if he thinks he is . I don't think he thinks he is , though , nice guy , but But I think he did have an insight about , like , yeah , what you know , the rights off and tailing left me enjoyment , but just in , like the sadomasticistic parts In the unconcentral sadomasticistic parts .

Stephan Hammel 1:40:22

It's absolutely the case . I was once So I used to date a guy who liked watching episodes of Law and Order SVU , which I find more or less unlookable . But one of the things that I noticed about it is that it would do all of these portrayals of violence , of sexual violence in fact , and then in the most , you know , obviously titillating way possible . but it was okay because all the perpetrators went jail at the end of the show . So you know , you could indulge and then you could lock up that part of yourself , right .

C. Derick Varn 1:40:49

And the whole process , Literally the Hays Code , by the way , Like What . That's how people figured out in the 60s how to play . The end of the Hays Code was like as long as you punish the wrongdoers , you could be as solicitous as you wanted within a certain framework , like Yeah , right , and I take it that that's like that's the lesson , that's the handmade-style lesson , right ?

Stephan Hammel 1:41:09

Which is that you know you can do . Actually , the repression of sexuality is an expression of sexuality , and that has been the most avant-garde and probably the most honest version of human sexuality we've gotten on offer in the political world . There's this like you know , no abortions and no divorce , and you know traditional marriage and the rest of it . That's at least avant-garde and imaginative , whereas you know our conception , which is as liberal as you want , as long as your family looks like that of Neil Patrick Harris , you know .

C. Derick Varn 1:41:41

Yeah and Yeah , as liberal as you want , and also , And they need to make polyamory suck .

Stephan Hammel 1:41:50

I know , i know they've turned that . They've ruined it all . It's terrible . I've had to take into buying chocolate . I would enjoy myself .

C. Derick Varn 1:42:00

It's just like . It's like , oh God , if I read another Polly Amory book that sounds like puns and self-help make me want to die .

Stephan Hammel 1:42:12

Yeah , we're far from Charles Bukowski , i'll tell you that ?

C. Derick Varn 1:42:15

I mean , you know what's funny ? It's just I'm like , if anything , if anything , what it's convinced me of is not that the Nietzschean left was right , because I think I am on the whole pro or anti-Nichie debates I'm actually somewhere in the center where I'm like Nietzsche's a reactionary , a fucking obviously , but he's onto some things that we need to understand . But every now and then I'm like but Nietzsche was right about you fuckers just being like warmed over , secular , godless , boring ass Christian Like it's just .

Stephan Hammel 1:42:51

Well , let's say that where we got here from which is a good point Western Marxism , I know , I know We got right exactly Western Marxism and the right-tailing Western Marxism . I mean just , they're trying to go to bad against Disney and culture and the rest of it , And you know what More power to them Do it , Do culturalism , electoralism and have no political economic theory , Do all of that , And I think that's a recipe for the right's demise And so far that's what it's doing .

C. Derick Varn 1:43:23

So they are . The thing is , they're even becoming unpopular in their strongholds And the only reason they can hold power is our stupid , undemocratic federalist system . And I'm not . I think centralization and well you know me , i don't like getting into the centralization versus decentralization problems because I sort of think like it's neither Like yes , of course we need a centralized planning authority to coordinate all this shit , but also no , there's no way to have the super panopticon , god of God's plan , plus a supercomputer Like plan everything that you know . That's not what a planned economy means . Why don't you guys learn that from capitalist Capitalists ? clearly plan their economy , you idiots Like By the way , socialism will take many forms , presumably .

Stephan Hammel 1:44:27

I mean , let's put it this way , i don't like to say socialism any more . In fact , i started to like the phrase council democracy Because it's finally , i think , been discontented with anti-Bulshavism , which was where we began , which is the 1919 program , which is basically a council communist document . How ironic is that .

C. Derick Varn 1:44:45

But anyway , whatever version of council democracy , we're going to invent I imagine there will be multiple

Left's Misreadings and Future Movement

C. Derick Varn 1:44:48

. The Bolsheviks really like parts of Panicook . They really like parts Like I . Just you know , what they reject in Panicook is like his anti-nationalism And something that I reject in Panicook they're hatred of any forms of unions because they're too bourgeois , right Yeah .

Stephan Hammel 1:45:08

That's right . That's your ultra-leftism , which has to do with strategy , not with the goal .

C. Derick Varn 1:45:13

Right , and I think that is lost , that the critique of ultra-leftism was a strategic critique , and I actually do somewhat blame Lenin himself for that .

Stephan Hammel 1:45:25

Sure , Well , he was so personal in his attacks .

C. Derick Varn 1:45:29

Yeah , it's weird that like Bortiga was . I still , for the life of me , actually don't know why Bortiga's during that book , other than that they were sometimes assholes Like like it's not that , it's not that they they are sometimes more entranced than any other group , but like I'm like they're not guilty of a lot of this shit that you guys are accusing , like the Dutch Council Communist are . In fact , their problem with Lenin is like Lenin , you don't understand yourself Like we understand the real you . It's so .

Stephan Hammel 1:46:04

Yeah , digging out the real Lenin is from Lenin's unpolemnics , is even Lukacs , or beloved Lukacs is good Western Marxist born in the East , i guess . Whatever is it , whatever is the East . Actually , i encountered someone from Central Europe who are from Poland , who I would describe as coming from Eastern Europe , and he was furious with me and told me that I was that I .

C. Derick Varn 1:46:24

I've noticed that Eastern Europe increasingly just means fucking Russia , Like it's like madness , absolutely madness .

Stephan Hammel 1:46:35

Never mind that there are like missiles . now Poland is now sending planes , et cetera . So I don't know where you draw the boundaries and why . But yeah , no , I mean we've gotten into a bad way . But I'm filled with hope because , as much as I think that we need to combat the bad historiography of Marxism and it's all available we're getting . you know , it doesn't look like the future of the left is going to be some really renewed version of electoralism , And if that's closed for us , that's good news .

C. Derick Varn 1:47:15

Here's the thing In the long career I grew with you in the immediate array , I think we like as I was telling someone literally early this morning the left , by reading J MacAvery and Kim Moody and misapplying it , actually reinvented the same mistakes that killed Union organizing in the 70s and 80s , which is why it hasn't grown . And people were like what do you mean ? it hasn't grown , So you've all . It's focused primarily on staffers . It's focused primarily on national political events And the national political influence are about politicizing . The Democratic Party And Kim Moody is not the case . That is kind of the case for J MacAvery . I actually think those are misreadings of them . But when you add your boy , Eric Blank , who is supposedly a neocowskies , I was going to say why is Eric Blank my boy ?

Stephan Hammel 1:48:13

He's not my boy .

C. Derick Varn 1:48:14

He's supposedly a neocanceller . That's what I like . I have told you guys my big . I get a kick out of this and we're going to have a wholesome posium when you're talking about Trotskyism . But I'm like . You know what replaced Trotskyism ? Neocowskianism ? It just reinvented it , without the transitional program and parliament revolution Like how interesting .

Stephan Hammel 1:48:36

That's an interesting view . Yeah , we should have that . I'm looking forward to that . That's going to be really , really informative , I think .

C. Derick Varn 1:48:42

I mean because you have defensist neocowskiest . You have people who ignore , even though they're basing themselves off McNair . They ignore everything McNair says about siding with the socialist right , like they ignore it completely . That's like to name names . That's Sibash Karashankara , eric Blank , view of New York . I mean explicitly . That's why you have them praising the fucking you know National Labor Relations Committee and shit as like more progressive than just like what are you . But they've become , they've literally made the same mistakes of the New Left in their interest .

C. Derick Varn 1:49:27

What's different this time ? This is what concerns me And I think you have a good answer that maybe we are going to have to learn . Because one thing , i , a lot of people look at the culture now and say , oh , it's moving . Right , i'm like , but why does the right keep losing a stuff ? true , it's incoherent And the right just is loud , and they're loud because they're like you know , the evangelicals right now . Right , i was like , oh , the evangelicals fucking lost . They lost . We're primary , like , even in terms of Christianity , we're primarily a Catholic country . This is a dying bear mauling randomly through the court system And , yeah , it can hurt a lot of people , but it's still dying .

Stephan Hammel 1:50:11

Yes , Yeah , agreed , they lost the battle .

C. Derick Varn 1:50:14

So you're literally fighting the wounded dying bear as it dies . Similarly , most forms of conservatism from the Tea Party to the Tea Party's immediate aftero turfness into Trumpism , into whatever the fuck is going on now It's been a perpetual , more and more of a farce of itself , like , in a very well way , even though he's the more serious inside man , rhonda Sanchez is a fucking farce of Trump , who himself is a farce of Pat Buchanan , who himself is maybe a farce of Reagan . I don't know . Like I'm still out on what Pat Buchanan was .

Stephan Hammel 1:50:56

Right . Who's the farce of Wallace ? Who's the farce of ?

C. Derick Varn 1:50:58

Who's the farce of Like ? it's just like as I rename my Twitter handle today . Tragedy to farce is a perpetual motion machine . It's where we're at And at one hand , I'm like we should be scared of the damage these people do as they're flailing , But you keep on mistaking flailing as winning , because I guess you're dumb . Actually , it's because you don't know who your enemy is .

Stephan Hammel 1:51:32

Well , also because the enemy's standards for itself are so low . I mean , we were just making fun of the right just now . I mean , if you're measuring yourself against the right , then , jeez , you're fucking a joke .

C. Derick Varn 1:51:43

When people are like , we need to do what the right does . And I'm like . Why ? Like ? despite the fact that they're literally blowing millions of dollars down media projects that don't even seem to work .

Stephan Hammel 1:51:55

Why ? Yeah , the media project , the media sphere . We is so powerful on the right . It's amazing . It's more powerful on the right than it is on the left . We know this from that Dominion lawsuit in Fox , which is nuts .

C. Derick Varn 1:52:07

But it's like that's really . You know it from the Crowder versus Shapiro wars , which is such a joke . But I'm like literally , people are throwing multimillion dollar contrast at these fuckers who can't even prove that they were profitable .

Stephan Hammel 1:52:22

on the right , Well , with that niche audience , I'll take Crowder over Shapiro . At least Crowder doesn't claim to be a classical music expert .

C. Derick Varn 1:52:36

I mean , but my big thing is also . This is why this is like my difference from Ben Burgess , because I'm like you think you're winning people over by debating these clowns , when these clowns are barely winning people over .

Stephan Hammel 1:52:48

No . I wish he'd stuck in that . I know that's not , and you know what It's from a good place . It comes from his good , like you know , ga Cohen analytic Marxism instincts .

C. Derick Varn 1:52:56

We have to reach out to everybody and include everybody And , like , like all the workers , we can convert them to our side , And I'm like . You know history is going to convert them to our side , not you .

Stephan Hammel 1:53:08

That's right . The world will assess you when it impinges itself . It's a Habermasian , his view . You know it's . You know every one of those is a potential perfect speech act . Yeah , no , i mean , i don't actually oppose it . I don't think it's misguided or anything . I like Ben Burgess , but I wouldn't engage with it myself .

C. Derick Varn 1:53:26

Personally , i think . Here's my stance on it , which I think is very complicated , and I say this as Ben is a personal friend , like . So like I have been promoting him for a long time because I thought he was decent , and if we were going to have someone doing that shit , i'd rather it be him than other people be promoted in the past who were not as decent , and good comradeship does matter . But that caveat aside , i'm always like your heart's in the right place . But what's going to happen is it's going to drag you into debating ludicrous shit that even you realize is not going to help you . And , lo and behold , it's like oh no , we're now talking the MAGA communist . It's just like . It's like , and I'm just like look , that's the trajectory of that .

C. Derick Varn 1:54:22

People go well , vaarn , you don't go out there , you're not like in so parasocial figure here . I'm not going to name names , because they all show up in my comments screaming at me and telling me how I don't have the proletariat on my side , as if they don't understand that millionaires with established media legacies would always have a larger audience than a dude who's a part-time broadcaster and a public school teacher . I don't know what they get , but it's like real dumb . But that aside , there is a real sense in like well , what is your political project ? And it's hard for them increasingly because they're more frustrated with the Democrats than they've ever been . But they constantly get attacked for being Democrats . Yet they don't have a way to revitalize their electoral strategy , and they know it . And yet they're also hated for stupid reasons . A lot of people get mad at Ben Burgess for it , i'm like , but he's not wrong , i don't know .

Stephan Hammel 1:55:32

I mean , i don't think we should be arguing with MAGA communist , and it's not because of the size of their audience , it's just because that debate is not going to end up with either more organizational strength or new strategy . It seems to me that we should be engaging in the theoretical sphere as much as we possibly can and clarifying our ideas , but that's because we bring those ideas into concrete moments of organization My own building , which is attempting to yet again fend off illegal rent increases from a hostile landlord . You know any number of the concrete organizational activities that people are in , whatever they are . That's where you want to start smartly using the word revisionism and coming up with succinct ways to explain to your neighbors or your colleagues at work what you think is going on in the economy .

C. Derick Varn 1:56:21

And not being an ass out about it , because what are the things I will say right now Is a lot of socialists have been weirdly both downstream from progressives and ass hats , and what I mean by that is they both don't sound like they're really offering anything separate from what a just a standard progressive Democrat would offer , but there are bigger jerks about it . So it's totally alienating And they're not producing new theory . They're actually subsuming their theory to liberal , bourgeois theory , and I think this is true . I get pushed back for saying that people are also doing it towards the right People who are following right-wing talking points . For example , i almost got in a fight with Doug Lane .

C. Derick Varn 1:57:09

I'm not accusing Doug Lane of following right-wing talking points , but during this fight , who on the left is tailing Republicans beyond MAGA communists ? I'm Mike . Have you ? there's like multiple publications that are like dedicated to that ? now , what do you ? what do you ? what do you what ? where the fuck are you like ? it's just like , and I guess it's because , in a way , he's right . We do have to see , even if you're working with Democrats , you have to see them as an enemy and not just like oh , it's DNC , every Democratic official , not every Democratic partisan because it's so like , because partisanship in America is is like wearing a brand it's not like that .

C. Derick Varn 1:57:55

Member of the party right , there's no social unity holds good , so you don't have to like lay laymo , hate up every stupid Democrat you encounter in your life , but you do have to be like even if I'm using you strategically right now , you are ultimately an enemy now . That's why that's why I tend to be a united frontist , but but even then , i'm a little bit hesitant right now because I'm like I don't know , you guys have been too soft on these fuckers like this is what we I think I said this here before the dirty break happened .

Stephan Hammel 1:58:32

They broke with us , so so but we haven't realized it we haven't realized . It's like we it's likely we're scorned , lovers in denial , we're dito abandoned , trying to imagine that , in fact , aneas will return . And Aneas will not return , and thank god because he wasn't leading us where we needed to go . It's not going to lead to a more robust form of democracy . I don't think there's anything in the American state project worth saving . There's no institution worth saving .

C. Derick Varn 1:58:59

Uh , you know not yeah , i think we know this from the Democrats , because the most progressive move they can think to even do on race is to have a primary and self-care fucking line up , basing off of old black women and the most concerned . I'm like , i literally said to someone I'm like why don't they put it to Chicago or Detroit , except that they're afraid of progressives ?

Stephan Hammel 1:59:18

they're afraid of progressives like this is absolutely right , but it's not about a black majority . It's about maintaining control .

C. Derick Varn 1:59:25

Look , it's about maintaining control with a specific black majority also , you dip shit . I just want you to realize that when , if the vision of the party is black professional women , that is less than five percent of the population . If it's black women as a whole , it's less than eight . So it that can't be their real vision . It just cannot be , unless they are totally dumb , and I don't think they are , i like . I think that's an utter distraction . That's why they can throw out people like Kamala Harrison on the life . But if we accept that , particularly right now , we are tools and I think , i think , i think that we might be in a wilderness period for longer than you think . I think there's going to be a lot of leftists doing buzz , like I think maga communism , for example , isn't going to be theoretical help , but it's not useful . But it comes from an understandable place of like well , what the fuck do we do ? and there's just discourse . Now how do we know ? this discourse is absurd .

Stephan Hammel 2:00:26

They've now had a year and a half long debate with everybody about whether or not baristas are proletarians yeah , and that's the most important thing on their , on their , on their agenda most maga people in the in the us are not going to be convinced by the small number of self-appointed communists in their ranks .

C. Derick Varn 2:00:48

Yeah , it's not in the nature of that movement .

Stephan Hammel 2:00:51

So we shouldn't yeah , we shouldn't engage with it and you shouldn't be . I mean , you know this is story the french radical who sees the crowd pass by the cafe door and says I've got to find out where they're going so I can lead them . You know , it's just not going to happen .

Partisanship and New Ideology

Stephan Hammel 2:01:03

No , no , i think that the period of electoralism is over and partisanship is a distraction . The only problem is is the fault of people's imagination in knowing what to replace it with , and that can be aided with a return to a kind of . I mean , when I say neo-cowskianism , all I mean is a version of revolutionary social democracy that comes before the debates about actually existing soviet power , but that doesn't mean we forget all the lessons of soviets or anything we're not throwing linen out entirely we're not throwing linen out .

Stephan Hammel 2:01:33

We're learning all the lessons . What we're not doing is choosing sides in a defensist , you know . Defeatist to struggle , you know at the , you know in the world imperial realm right , we've already fucking lost .

C. Derick Varn 2:01:46

It's over now I mean , look , the soviet union's gone , so you went away right , no one can be a trotskis anymore , because there's no soviet union well , i mean that's , but that's been the primary question I've had for 20 years and this is my question , when I kind of trotskis in college . I was like you have debates over the soviet union . Maybe it's important for us to understand what to build in the future , but why are you guys still split over these asinine things ? and why are some of you like defensists of a , of a state that doesn't even fucking exist anymore and other users are like beating off to nato , like that's right , because it's gonna keep the aslamo fascists at bay , like hitchhens .

Stephan Hammel 2:02:22

Who was right , right , or ?

C. Derick Varn 2:02:24

or the galway trotskis , like we've got a side with the umma to like keep , keep the the nato . I'm like what ? like it's it , you know . And , of course , what do we get as the farce of that ? well , we get , we get unreconstructed marxist doesn't even claim to be malism anymore . Like , um , that also has .

C. Derick Varn 2:02:50

No , they don't even know the positions of the time period they're fetishizing , like , because they're like conflating like dung with , with like almost the rodnik theory sometimes , like it's , it's uh , it's maddening , um , and you know , i have taken , like you know , i used to be like on the east , die hard , like we have to fight , and now I'm just like you know what , um , these people are gonna figure their shit out , are they're not ? and , um , if it it is , it is kind of rational , when you've been lied to about the soviet union forever , to like just invert it for a while . But they are gonna have to deal with the fact that certain things did happen and , um , like you know , you can't retreat into a fantasy world about it and you can't deny that the purges are to syno-soviet split . We're fucking disasters . So , um , um , you're gonna have to deal with it and when you do , you're gonna cut either helpful or you're gonna give up , and , like you know , i don't think we're . I just don't see it as a let me put it that way .

Stephan Hammel 2:04:05

That's not a struggle that I'm worried about , because it's all about the realm of ideas and I think a whole lot of that's been moved off the table like right you know , how are we gonna run production will be the question going forward , and for that we cannot turn to any historiography of the tradition that relies upon a conception of western Marxism . And oh , i brought it back to the beginning .

C. Derick Varn 2:04:25

Finally , like uh , i mean , we've been talking about the . Really what I should name this children is Stefan . Stefan Hamel on Varen talk about the bastard children of western Marxism in quotation what western Marxism hath rocks yeah , yeah , for sure well it's always a great deal of fun to to banter about these things

Marxism, Neocowskyism, and Revolutionary Transformation

C. Derick Varn 2:04:47

.

Stephan Hammel 2:04:47

I'm sorry we live so far away so we can't do it over alcohol sometime .

C. Derick Varn 2:04:51

But yeah , although you are one of the few people I've met I haven't actually met the regrettable brothers who have known for way longer . Um , but uh , yeah , it's , it's , uh , it . Actually I think it's funny because if you put , if you put us on the spectrum of of pessimism to optimism , i am the Marxist center between you two that's true .

Stephan Hammel 2:05:16

I know no one more pessimistic than the brothers .

C. Derick Varn 2:05:18

Regrettable , yeah , except occasionally they get soft on like of like missing party stuff and I'm like , well , you know , it'd be great if we could build the stuff . It would be required to build a party that matters and not like , try to think we can conjure it out of the fucking air . Um , but you know .

Stephan Hammel 2:05:35

You know that they believe in poetry . You know , and I wouldn't want to take that away from them it's a mutter , mutter , mutter , catholic mother , mother , mother um oh man , well I'm really looking forward to the debate on Trotskyism . I will , i will thoroughly prepare for that because I think I think that's gonna be .

C. Derick Varn 2:05:56

It's gonna be a debate on cost gism and sort of my like neocosky improved myself is not the same thing like um , because I do think , as a side note , i do think like if you were to line up the neocout tendencies , we could even tell you which tendencies they're the most like from Trotskyism . Marseism is a big one , uh , but and that's actually said by magnare himself magnare himself thinks that the Marseist in Europe , he kind of ignores how , how the Marseist in America went , but the Marseist in Europe are the place , is like the place to go . And I have a lot of friends who are like well , the Marseists are like , of course , like , look at , that's their whole theory of like . You know , you know all the cosmonaut people are like soft on ml's because they're they're secretly Marseists . We all know what happens to Marseism . It just becomes Stalinist over time . And you know , i'm like , eh , i'm not sure that's inherently true actually .

Stephan Hammel 2:06:58

I don't even like those categories . Uh , quite frankly , i mean , in fact , that seems to be doing the wrong thing if the theory is that that Trotskyism is alive and well and and called and living in neocowskyism .

C. Derick Varn 2:07:10

I don't think it is uh , i think neocowskyism I don't think it is alive and well , and what I think is interesting about what I'm saying , what my argument is like there are forms of it that fit the , the kind of niches that existed for Trotskyist , um , i do not think they're the same thing . I think like theoretically they're not the same thing because they , uh , they're very focused on civic , on communist republicanism , which of course we're not , but and that's not all neocowskyist , but it is most of them um , and they are very focused on um , political readings . The cosmonaut variety is very focused on political first readings of marxism , the politics first marxist , i think um , and they're also very long daurais like they . They're like we're not going to see communism in any of our lifetimes , revolutionary patience .

Stephan Hammel 2:08:10

I think is right yeah the strategy of revolutionary patience .

C. Derick Varn 2:08:14

And like in where I am , like you don't have time , like that may have made sense in like 1890 , but I don't know more .

Stephan Hammel 2:08:21

Like we're in a big world historical crisis . It's the best possible time to be a communist . I'm having a great time . People should have come over and have a great time with me um , you know , and so , um , i know I .

C. Derick Varn 2:08:35

I think it's interesting because my big thesis is like , okay , neocowths are actually , although marxist , and most the other marxist , they're not marxist and by that I'm not . I'm not one of these purists . So there's one orphan school marxism in which we belong . I think orthodox marxism is like a category error . But , um , like , thank you , luke harsh , thank you fucking rest your marxism for the whole fucking idea . But , um , i do think in this in this sense that some people have dropped so much of both the stated goals of communism and the theories of marxism , even from their historical traditions , that we really can't say they mean anything by it . It is just a floating signifier for them . Yeah , um , and , and I don't know that I would consider those people marxist . I mean like , um , and do I throw ? do I throw them out ? I don't throw anyone out of the socialist republic , so , or , actually , the council democracy , that's not even being a socialist republic , shit no , i mean , it's when I was in , like early during occupy days .

Stephan Hammel 2:09:43

We were once having this debate with a friend of mine who was doing palestinian solidarity work , uh and uh , and we were talking about thomas freedman and uh , and one of the things that we stumbled on and liked was the idea that we wouldn't have to after , during the revolution , we wouldn't have to shoot thomas freedman , because no one will remember who he was , and I guess so I'm not throwing anyone out of the bourgeois republic just the mechanisms which make them powerful will no longer be available to them . You know , they're gonna be assholes and socialism . It seems to me , though , that we are gonna have to go through some kind of revolutionary transformation , and the non marxists , the people I don't want to call marxists , or the people who have a radically different crisis theory , or no crisis theory at all if I'm going to turn to marxism , it's to explain breakdown , and I'm looking around and I'm seeing breakdown , so I don't get people who look around and don't , but that just might be just how we're this .

C. Derick Varn 2:10:31

It is weird . There are two things . This is , this is uh . This is something I talked to uh , off air , to the , the revertible brothers , about um . I pointed out to them that , like , one of the weird things about the left front now is , like every capitalist pathology , we make excuses for um . Not that we not that , it's not , that , it's not your fault . Yeah , it's not your fault . I don't give a shit about that . But when we go like but it's good , though are you shouldn't try to change it , and I'm like that's ridiculous , like no , i mean , yes , there will still be certain kinds of crime as an antisocial and violent behavior . Yes , there will still be mental ill . I'm not like a fishery and think that , like uh , there won't be mental illness under socialism and that we won't need doctors such like uh I . However , i do think maybe we'll see a lot less of it um , and I do think we'll have better means to help um , and I do think and better health across the board , probably better health across the board .

C. Derick Varn 2:11:30

Oh , almost certainly like one of the things that we can see about , about this current form of capitalism . And now this is where people call me a conservative . Um , because this is my whole like , like I'm a communitarian , but you , we can already tell from this , this , this , uh , this conversation , that my visual community is like not , um , what , what it's not like , uh , we're gonna reinvent the , the nuclear family or what it's . A people think that because I like Christopher lash , but I'm like , no , that ship is long sale of my friends and it's not even not even worth having it's , you know , and it's not even I don't even think it's bad that it's out is are we still gonna have kinship bonds ?

C. Derick Varn 2:12:07

yes , of course , like it just shouldn't be politically determinative of anything like , yeah , people figure out their domestic , their domestic relationships .

Stephan Hammel 2:12:16

We don't need to tutor them in anything . Uh , you know , i mean , our whole generation learned how to live with roommates for basically ever , because they'll never own a home .

C. Derick Varn 2:12:23

So right , it's like in . Like you know , i , five years ago I was making a joke about like , about , like , economically necessary polyamory . But I'm no longer saying it as a joke . I think I've actually seen it , uh , where it's like well , if there's four of us and we're all intimately tied together , we can afford this like what all that weird ?

C. Derick Varn 2:12:47

you know that there's a wonderful novel by , by a bourgeois novelist well , art most novelist , bourgeois novelist , but I know that , yeah , that's , yeah , that's right all novel is now taking our ability away to read them , and also socialists tell me that's good too , so whatever , oh , oh god , i've got to tell you .

Stephan Hammel 2:13:06

I mean , it's you know , uh . So I mean I teach college students and you know , college students do struggle with writing , and it is the case that that they've always struggled writing , since the beginning of university but uh , but it's a new kind of struggle , i think , these days and it's not worse like link a sentence together but here's .

Stephan Hammel 2:13:23

Here's what's not true , and I you know in my experience . It is not the case that what you have is people who struggle with formal writing because they have no respect or love for it and they don't want to to read books or novels , or be part of that . No , it's people , for for you know who have been robbed of that and don't come with it to class and have you know .

C. Derick Varn 2:13:43

And so it's people want to be persuasive and argumentative pros right , like the reason why they don't do novels is that before it's fed down , they're both they're boring , but also because they no longer see any way in which it's going to help them . And and uh , like that's what my students say to me and I'm like , well , there are ways , and I mean then I almost like a fucking Victorian Matthew Arnold type , but I'm like there are ways in which it's going to help you because it helps you model minds and uh , you know , like it's , but so do other kinds of media , and it's okay . Like I am one of these people's like , yeah , it's fine to learn literature through film , although we'll also say reading is reading . Um , anyway , this is well .

C. Derick Varn 2:14:25

I just get mad with socialists . Like , well , it's bourgeois , anyway , we don't . I'm like what the like ? don't take away the few . Don't like , now that a bourgeoisie is taking away the few good things they gave us , don't fucking like celebrate it , because it was them who gave it to us , you idiot like like stop it , like that's right , that's precisely right .

Stephan Hammel 2:14:46

I'm , this is what I'm Trotsky's end of the well , not that round , really , but on on that , the debate about proletarian literature good lord . Well , you're gonna have to let me go cook dinner at some point .

C. Derick Varn 2:14:56

Yeah , i'm gonna let you go cook dinner because it's it's uh getting latest over there and uh , unnamed place in the west coast . Um , so , thank you so much for coming on . We're gonna have you on again soon and um , uh , for the great , actually you're a regular . You're gonna come on fair amount , because basically , i think everything that's not like you get bottled up and uh , i feel like you guys are so focused on the measures taken and I don't know how you do it with a group . I can do that by myself , but I can't talk to other people and be that focused . I'm too uh , even the brothers regrettable . Can't like keep me on on one topic for an hour so it's Nathan and editing , that's those of the people , you see and I noticed Nathan's , the one who hasn't met me and says probably why ?

C. Derick Varn 2:15:52

because I promise , people who have tried to edit barn into like singular , linear arguments have always failed . Like it doesn't happen . Yeah .

Stephan Hammel 2:16:02

I can only do for my .

C. Derick Varn 2:16:03

I enjoy the riparolicking ride , but oh yeah uh , well , i think it's important also as a side note , and then I am I'll let you go . Um , as a side note , as , uh , as a part of interviewers is there's a marxist leftist like interview circuit , um , and the only way I break people out of it is by giving them tangential space and then they actually say some more important things than they're normally going to say , but they don't realize it . Uh , sometimes it's how I undo them . Let's not be like be honest , but uh , but there's a reason why I do that , because I'm on all these shows where we have like an hour and we got to like plow through like in an hour , explain all of marxist monetary theory and modern monetary theory , and there are likes and differences , and like motherfucker , you can't do that .

C. Derick Varn 2:16:51

I saw you try to do that on TIR the other day and it was like oh , would you see me like , try to like , like , run through the banking crisis of the last year ?

Stephan Hammel 2:17:01

yes , the whole thing as a summary , you know , and after one of those characteristically long introductions on that show which I do , i do like because I , you know , i listen to it while driving but uh , but I did feel for you in that moment .

C. Derick Varn 2:17:13

I was like , oh man yeah , because because Jason's like cover it , cover it all and get it done in an hour and do not answer anyone's questions , but Pascal's are mine , and I'm like , okay , oh my god , because you want me to go all the way back to glass steel , like I mean , i think we're gonna . Okay , job people like it's so dense . I'm like , yeah , i'm worried that most of you are not gonna gonna get everything that I hit on like it's cool , it's gateway , it's gateway , it's uh , it's uh catnip to discover on .

C. Derick Varn 2:17:51

I know I had someone remind me that like hey , barn , there is such a need for kidney . Because I'm always complaining like we all get stuck on marxism , one-on-one and that efforts like yeah , but you do need , like militant it was an anarchist who came on a show but he was right , you do need militant kindergarten and I'm like shit . But like that , you know , i guess you do and it is something you have to do over and over again and build expertise . But but also , my friend , i don't teach kidney gardens like that's not what I do .

Stephan Hammel 2:18:21

No , you know , i think we both , i think we need you know , we often describe measures taken as marxism 201 and yeah , i , i think there's .

Stephan Hammel 2:18:31

There's something

Militant Kindergarten and Critical Theory

Stephan Hammel 2:18:31

to that . You know , when I first learned critical theory , it's because I was in a graduate student course , a seminar , and and everyone was being really shitty to everyone else about how much they'd read and and pretending that they'd read a lot more and understood certainly a lot more than they actually , when I realized I was an English major and and critical theory and I'm like you fuckers read like a summary and I was always behind in that goddamn class because I actually read all the books but they bullied me into knowing what I was talking about so that I could go toe to toe with them , and I think that that's necessary too .

Stephan Hammel 2:19:06

So you both need militant kindergarten and you need those things that are right above your norm . You're like where you feel comfortable talking , so you have a sense for where you're going yeah , i'm with you on that , and we need both in the media sphere , like so .

C. Derick Varn 2:19:24

And on that note , let's actually , in this long conversation where we I'm gonna I am gonna name this western marxism's bastard children , because we just talked about the category . So that's great , all right , have a great night you too , man .

Stephan Hammel 2:19:37

Bye .