What Infrared is All About

[Music]

what's up everybody

um so we're here this is not going to be

a traditional episode

instead we want to use this as an

opportunity to give an idea of where we

as the infrared collective are coming

from because we kind of just came out of

the blue

we've been getting a lot of emails and

shit of people just asking us like

where are you even coming from like what

is this even about right what's your

position our political positions we

thought we'd

take this time to as an opportunity to

distinguish ourselves

why we got beef with the current left

and

why we have problems with so-called

prevailing marxism

now for starters in broad terms we

identify as marxist leninists

we uh but we also think that there's a

big distinction between

um marxism leninism as it's

translated into the west and marxism

leninism as an

index of historical experience in russia

china and etc

um so i think we want to take this as an

opportunity to kind of

uh expand upon what we consider those

crucial differences to be and why we

think a new approach

for westerners is necessary

in order to catch up

with the experiences of

marxist leninist practice

globally most of the topics that are

within the scope

of our analysis and our concern and

especially the angles that we're coming

from and analyzing them

don't really fall within the horizon of

what is traditionally called

marxist-leninist analysis or

theory as it exists in the west but i

think

uh a few things are in need of

clarification

on this point one is the question

what is marxist leninist theory

um and we'll use the example of

uh the big ones russia and china right

and why this is a problem translating

this over into the west

and why it gives uh rise to mediocrity

laziness and um sterility and

uh an inability to really tap into any

type of popular sense whatsoever in the

west

so uh i think the best example is china

uh as far as this is concerned because

on the

russia with the entanglement with the

whole history of

western social democracy and stuff like

that is a little bit more complicated

so in the case of china um

the question of what is marxist lenin's

theory uh

is only a kind of a practical question

in a sense

the raw material or the substance

whatever you want

to which this theory is being applied

is something that a person in china can

take for granted

so what is this basis it's the chinese

national or even civilizational

whatever you want to call it sense

[Music]

when he speaks of uh the need

to apply marxism to chinese conditions

um

he is able to take for granted his

acute understanding of the chinese

situation

which may may as well be shared by all

uh chinese people more or less

then marxism mennonism is not a question

of um

legislating uh

your sense from zero but clarifying it

this is why in the east uh marxism

leninism

takes such an apparently limited uh

scope it's all very basic it's all very

simple

simplified i mean when it's recorded the

problem is that westerners see this

and they they um they do this kind of

cartesian reduction where they think

that uh that's all it is and that this

is

this can replace reality itself but in

china or in russia or wherever you want

they're taking a reality and a sense in

relation to that reality

for granted and this is what

we consider the infrared collective we

consider to be missing in

the west so why we're called infrared is

because

we're trying to tap into this

sense which is not on the visible

spectrum of light

it's not on the surface you have to have

a deeper sense

yeah so what basically distinguishes our

position with

china and russia and the other former or

current

uh you know communist states is that

marxism leninism or socialism acquired

an objectivity

that is it was already a ground which

people could take for granted like you

said that people stood on before they

could think

and what theory's job was was to clarify

uh practical questions so in china it

was the war for national liberation

right

to resist imperialist aggression in

russia it took the form

not only of this but also of of catching

up with the west of industrializing

[Music]

or even returning to the being of uh its

uh

to the being of the state right to the

peasantry through the russianization

yeah yeah to the russian people but in

the west this is missing what's

instead taken place

of this kind of sense which again it's

sense because

although uh it can be clarified by

thinking by

thoughts it's something that does pr

that

precedes it and which gives thought

direction

you know it's a practical question in

other words leftists here they kind of

begin

x nylo they begin without this sense

they begin with

uh thoughts to then arrive at

a more beautiful form of it but they

don't engage this with uh

with objective with it with the

objectivity that precedes them

you know what i mean with what they're

already dealing with

yeah they substitute the sense

with the forms of thought they think

something called marxist leninist theory

which is very

um laid out in a very simple and

concrete way in if you read the

the classics that are available from the

experiences russia and china and so on

they think that's a substitute for the

sense when really that's meant to

clarify some kind of already existing

sense

that's why um in the west marxist

londoners just appear psychotic

they're cults or they're just really

enclosed

they don't have a sense of a wider

reality that

the people they're taking inspiration

from are able to kind of

have already and i think at the same

time i mean this is

although it becomes explicit and

objective

uh in the form of a national economy or

culturally in china and russia

um this is already even apparent in marx

i mean it's not as if this doesn't have

a

precedence in uh marx and engels and uh

you know in marxist before 1917 because

what is marx doing right he's clarifying

you know in his later work especially

with you know with gotha

he is uh he is critiquing prevailing

social circles for a lack of what we

call objective

sense right for uh

um for a lack of

stake in existing existing reality

yeah i mean going back to marx i think

there's a deep

philosophical or you know it's really

tough to

say philosophical post philosophical

whatever you want but

there's an element to this that goes

very deep in marks um

his break with not simply hegel but more

specifically the young hegelians

and then foyerbach and so on and so on

um can be condensed in this critique of

the reign of pure form or pure

abstraction

that occludes uh almost uh

in a way that others of the kojima point

out is similar to heidegger

uh that occludes that aspect of reality

that cannot be pre-emptively

assimilated into any consistent

form or idea or thought

so for marx material reality is

something it's similar to the object of

what is

what we're talking about is the sense

that is able to exist in

outside of the west yeah yeah it's why

he

it's why he talks about submitting to

to uh two laws you know he calls laws

but

submitting to to to objectivity right

instead of being with this kind of

cartesian

uh uh subsumption of all reality to

you know to form but you know the

problem with

western leftists and this is where we

really take our point of departure

is that there's something terrifying

about this uh

this insight the reason it's terrifying

is because it shows you you cannot

pre-emptively be safe or comfortable in

any type of position

there's no such thing as marxist

leninist theory that you're going to

able to

take refuge from at the expense of

reality

you have to immerse yourself in the

whole wealth of reality even the things

that are uh

not uh hello apparently

halal or whatever um in order to prove

the actual meaning of uh

and practical significance of marxism

feminism which is not to create

in a separate reality away from the real

one

but to help clarify and decide exactly

i i think that's a good way of putting

it because the

the function of marxism and especially i

think uh

self-proclaimed marxist limits in the

united states no tankies or whatever

so-called tankies is that um see we're

the real tankies they're the

the idolaters but um but uh is that

for them marxism is like um it's

it's a way to escape reality to fall

into like a safe

cozy kind of doctrine to which you can

always retreat into

that's why they're obsessed with this

purely because aesthetic has a real deep

meaning right

that is a part of objective sense but

they retreat into a purely detached

aesthetic from china's soviet union

you know with like this uh obsession

with like music or tanks or whatever um

that's detached from the actual uh

objectivity to to the to the

particularity of those

of of those phenomena you know what i

mean it's like it for them

is a haven from rio again themselves it

was

embedded in reality again what they do

is something really perverted

is that they again they accomplish this

kind of cartesian reduction of what's on

the surface

in china or in russia or wherever else

in the world and they think

that's it that's the way in which i have

access to the objective essence

of this phenomenon is simply identifying

with the superficial appearance

what they don't understand is that

underlying this appearance is a deeper

sense

of the objective that's where this

that's where the dogmatism comes from

the staticness of the thought of the

west

is because it's not connected even

during the heyday of china's cultural

revolution

the level of obscene dogmatism that

prevailed among western maoists

this stuff is not the stuff that can

keep states together

it's not the stuff that um that is

possible

to be in power anywhere i mean the

thought of

western leftists western marxist

leninist

being the equivalent in the west of

russian marxist leninist or chinese

marxist leninist and so on and so on

it's absurd there's no equivalence

whatsoever these are completely

different types of human beings

uh different types of humanity i mean

it's a purely reflexive phenomenon in

the west but

in all of in africa latin america

wherever you go

that there are boxes leninists these are

people who have a profound and deep

national whatever you want to call it

sense of their own people

and this almost in a sense it comes

first marxism leninism is just helping

them

clarify this reality where it appears

where there uh the appearance of

contradiction inevitably makes itself

um well apparent

you know facing contradictions is an

inevitability

for humanity in general so

that's why though so many western

marxists

or or socialists are confused by

china and russia and they decry these

uh communist parties is you know

nationalists you know you've given way

to nationalism or whatever

but they don't get it they don't get

that the point of marxism was to clarify

what

you know whatever they want to call

naturally but to clarify national

reality

that already exists that you can't

legislate away in thought it's like this

the way i would respond to it is that

maybe there are

so there is something arbitrary about

borders that exist in some countries

they're not necessary

but there is something objective about

nations

there is there's an objectivity to

nationhood

um and that objectivity may not

that may go beyond the bounds of what is

traditionally considered a nation is

china or russia a nation i don't think

they are

russia is a multinational civilization

and so is china

but nonetheless these are delegating or

referring to

real objective realities that are not

reducible

to some kind of identity they

and then people you know they they prod

and they what do you mean

well we don't want to go too far but

this is where psychoanalysis and all

that kind of stuff comes in this is

where um

this question of what is the unconscious

and then going off of that what does

even

the objective mean right what do we mean

by the objective

is the objective something that is only

a relation uh

to um a kind of cartesian

subject not not so well if this is the

subject of the khan

right lakon said his subject is the

cartesian subject

is like in what sense is the even phrase

objectivity meaningful right

if not as the limit to

a limit for the symptom of the subject

so and so on

but then you can also um critique this

as subjectivist and idealist and so on

and so on

uh it's i'm kind of gonna ramble get off

you can go the opposite angle and say um

not necessarily because you can also say

there are

symptoms in nature itself not just

symptoms for the subject

this would be where lacan and heidegger

are

conjoined i think now you'll notice you

know we're kind of a little bit going

into territory we're dropping names high

to gorilla khan and stuff

but this also raises an important point

which is that

um interestingly and in a way that makes

perfect

should if you really are someone who

talks about dialect if you understand

dialect this should make perfect sense

uh this irony um

in the west the manner by which marxism

leninism has been translated

was never you've never been able to come

close

with people who simply just call

themselves marxist-leninists in the west

um and identify as such

now i'll say there's exceptions in terms

of practical organizations like the

panthers the black panthers

but they didn't their organization was

not founded upon being marxist leninist

the organization was founded upon the

black community and marxism leninism had

a practical significance in relation to

this pressing

reality and history and so on and so on

uh

maybe there's other exceptions in the

west similar to that that follow that

but beyond that um it's really through

uh theory what we maybe call

theory or i don't like calling it

philosophy i don't i think it's maybe

beyond philosophy

[Music]

specifically i think this is a position

we all share

is it's been through heidegger that

something like marxism leninism can be

smuggled

into the western way of thinking and

made

legible and intelligible to the western

mind

is through heidegger because why because

through heidegger you then have kojir

kojiba is a very um

susan if i'm saying that right

example of how the depth and wealth of

marxism leninism

is able to am i saying it's right kojiev

i think it i thought it was code jeff

but i don't know i'm such a fucking

idiot man

it doesn't matter it's not worth uh

whatever um

uh sorry well he's a very simple example

of how

you can just when you read someone like

kojev right

you get the sense that you're only on

the tip of the iceberg

and then real marxism leninism like

what's going on in the soviet union

acquires

this transcendent uh reality which means

you don't think it's something that's

reducible to the superficial

forms it's a very deep reality that

can only be um perceived in some way or

sensed somehow through this kind of very

um uh

this very uh intense heavy kind of

theory that goes again deep you know

you need something very complicated to

arrive at what is simple in reality

but you will never appreciate what is

simple in reality which is the

experience of

marxism leninism through a simple

uh analysis

if that makes sense well but it's not

just kojiv and then you have um

[Music]

but i it's kind of who surprisingly i

am more familiar with than kojev but

these

some similarities between what's going

on in batai

and um specifically marxism leninism

at the time of battal's heyday the 50s

in the soviet union are striking

[Music]

it's never an explicit rendering of the

theory but it's more

a manifestation almost symptomally if

you want

of um accidentally of

what the consequences of this are for

thinking

and obviously bataille goes down a route

that is

very peculiar to him the tragedy and

loss

and he's kind of

uh he want to put it in simple terms

it's kind of negative shit

you know but um

but this is only where the west is able

to encounter and appreciate the depth

and wealth of

uh what we call marxism leninism is

through these very strange

eclectic and bizarre thinkers

who have ultimately drawn from heidegger

uh this i mean it goes to the end i mean

if

if you are a sophisticated maoist

in the west you're probably a follower

of bed you

that you is someone who tells you that

you can be a maoist without being

cringed

you can be a maoist without um larping

right you can have an appreciation

there's a deeper reality

besides this kind of clowning shit

and badu comes his lineage again traces

the hydrograph

so um if we

if i mean i personally if you call me

heideggerian i don't think i'd have a

problem

but i don't identify this way because i

think it's superfluous i just think

heidegger is unlocking something that

others can take for granted

in a way

[Music]

you know speaking of uh badou

what i found interesting about uh

badou and also like um what we're

talking about in relation to like deeper

sense and objectivity

is that what would do you kind of see

the way that

um a culture relates to this uh

deeper sense because you know if you

follow like a political commitment

through to its final end

or an aesthetic commitment due to its

final end or even a scientific

commitment you know fully through

what you're going to end up doing is

inheriting the full like

legacy in history of um

their culture and so there's kind of

like this um

unity almost between uh just like the

common intuition of the people

and then the highest uh you know

achievements

of culture and that's

um also uh i think

this essential thing that we've hit upon

the uh

separation that western leftists have

from

um you know this deeper objectivity it

results in a lot of

auxiliary uh problems

related to um history

nationhood and so on so for example when

speaking of history a lot of uh

western leftists will kind of take a

position of rejecting tradition

rejecting

uh almost literally rejecting and

canceling history but like even if

they're more moderate

they tend to you know tend towards you

know word for progress

we're going to reject the old ways and

so on

but in in doing this um

i think they kind of missed the point

because the entire point of

something new is that it renews and

rejuvenates

what was meaningful about the old

traditions

and customs and so they concede

tradition and custom

to conservatives when in reality the

position should be you know

we are like truly inheriting you know

what the essence

of our culture and our traditions are

and

you can kind of see that's kind of what

happened

in relation to china and the ussr

because

you know china did not simply you know

copy the ussr or try to like impose the

you know soviet system unto themselves

what they did is they dug deeper

into their own uh national realities

and their own culture and and like their

kind of cultural and political economy

played a really big role in production

of

you know chinese style socialism yeah

they try and liquidate

their own um i'm sorry

oh no you continue i was gonna say that

um i think that's really well put like

they try and liquidate their own

um their own objectivity right their own

the very ground they stand up they don't

see that marxism is a way to clarify

this ground itself to articulate it

right like they try and liquidate their

own being their own existence

and they take refuge from this in the

kind of cozy

uh if you want uh i don't want to call

it theoretical because it's really not

but in this kind of you know

uh theoretical position right that's

divorced from their own

existence their own being you know it's

really

interesting that you mentioned the

national and

uh and these kinds of aspects you guys

are talking about

because in the west

i think i said this before but it's a

really good way of summing it up

the thing that distinguishes it most

from the experience of people in

the east is that in the west uh marxism

leninism is a kind of political satanism

or communism you don't have democracy it

can be anything it's just the type of

satanism

right it's just a type of infantile

rebelling against your surroundings and

your parents

and every success of china

they see as um

they see as negative they don't see any

positive they only see as negative

but from the perspective of

um their own authorities and their

parents and their

society and so on in other words when

china is marching on with its

great successes they only see this as a

wound

to their uh people their own people

instead of seeing it as a success for

the chinese people

they don't understand that

marxism leninism uh only corresponds to

that sense

which is bounded up with uh

maybe i'll speak cringe and i say this

love for the people right

but it's it's just that isn't it uh

and it doesn't matter how wicked or how

much evil there is among them and so on

it's ultimately based

in that even your own people it's not

based in uh

resentment it's not based in negativity

it's not based in um

like this kind of satanic fuck the world

and fuck everything

maybe that's kind of anarchism where

they're coming from

it is but i think that's why they kind

of pull from the same crowds

you know what i mean they really it's

like they look in the same way i mean

satanism is still christian it's just

rebellious

edgy christianity it's only it's only

satanic because it's in the eyes of

a religious person the same thing with

with like western you know so-called

marx linus they're still

liberals or whatever they're just doing

it to be edgy that's what it

makes uh western marxist so-called

marxist lenin is

western the thing that makes them

western is not that they're too

much um explicitly western

obviously they're not explicitly

pro-western but the very intense

negation

they attempt to pose to the west to the

countries that they live in

um as a whole

is still bounded up if you only are in

the negation of something you're still

entangled only with it that's what makes

you

that something you're a westerner

because you're

pretending to i mean but that's the

whole history of the west the whole

history of the west is pretending to

negate itself right yeah

and then arrive at a kind of universal

position

no particularity but the whole point of

marx was to clarify what is particular

you know who is more western uh

who is more american uh

liberals uh the the woman in the car we

saw recently were talking about

the fascist are you gonna vote for a

fucking fascist that's how she said it

or trump she's more american trump is

less american trump is

uh a north korean or something

i'm not gonna insult north koreans but

you get my point he's

he's coming from some foreign place

trump right everyone sees that

and yet he's the one waving the american

flag not them

so uh and one of our clips on our

channel is like being a moderate isn't

and maybe people are how are these guys

marxist leninist their mouths

how are they you know what are they

talking about bernie sanders the

the suck dem really fucking say on

reddit

suck them shut up but um

this goes to another point is you have

to analyze the conditions by which

people in the west especially today

become identified with this radical

stuff and including this identity of

being a marxist leninist

what brings them to identify with it and

so on and so on

um alongside what i said about this

satanic negation kind of thing

it's also as a matter of this extension

of the petty and narrow political

divisions

that may exist in america specifically

after trump was elected you had a lot of

people who were

radicalized aka they were liberals who

were mad

this is how they became marxist leninist

this is a true is this a true

genesis of mars is this how marxist

leninists are made of

is this the stuff out of which they are

made a liberal butthurt liberal

no if one

can appreciate the meaning of marxist

leninist theory

in the west i guess the first

probably most important thing would be

to be able to rise above the petty

uh superficial political positions as

they may prevail

in a sense marxism leninism has always

entailed a type

of true centrism

not specifically between left and right

but being able to see the objectivity of

the contradiction itself

and inevitably again as i said before it

will be like the way

yeah sorry go ahead

uh yeah sorry it kind of cut out for me

but

the way that i would i would even put it

is that um

it you know with regards to being a kind

of centrist or whatever is being able to

navigate

uh the objective reality before you or

the particular reality before you now

you know navigate it

not simply take this position because it

is you know the most left wing or

something

but being but being able to navigate

your position that's why someone like

jimmy hoffa who was a labor organist

you know he was labor organizer was not

like uh a leftist so to speak you know

objectively sure but like he was able to

he exactly

he had the body of a maybe an

american maoist or something he just

didn't have the head of one

and but in america it's all head that

sounds weird

in america it's all here right it's not

the objective the body it's not that

kind of reality

the two are permanently in a state of

estrangement and that's why that's why

it's a tragedy in america because when

you see manifestations of the raw

material of some kind of maoism you even

see it in trump

and maybe in 2016 i don't know why now

you may you even saw it there

it's always estranged from

uh the intellectual articulation which

is

where in the university with all these

stupid people

right the head and the body are

estranged and this is the estrangement

that gives rise to

dialectic sense it's the contradiction

right

but i won't veer into that it's almost

better when you don't begin

i'm not saying it's always better i mean

for me it was it was a little bit

different but like

it's almost better when you don't begin

as a

as a marxist you know what i mean like

if you begin definitely

from from somewhere else if you even

look at the history of like

of you know what what revolutionaries

are made of they come from backgrounds

which you don't see today in

seminarians in seminary in the west

conservatives

the people who would make the best

marxist leninists are ones who

originally come from

a semi constitutional religious yeah

yeah religious

traditional whatever background

initially

um that's another thing is that uh when

i say

see past the petty political division i

don't mean

withdraw and dismiss it all and suck

them or whatever the fuck they're saying

i'm saying uh distill the true

essence from the appearance don't get

don't let

for example don't be

caught up in the false appearance of the

division

don't get involved in this kind of stuff

where i'm on the side of the uh

the liberals you know you have to have a

higher sense where you're able to see

sometimes the liberals are really wrong

in a sense yeah foolish and you can joke

and be cynical and stuff

and then sometimes uh conservatives

uh well they're objectively wrong in

their position

but you can learn from maybe what

they're saying

rarely but you know what i mean like you

don't have to be so one-sided and so

like

uh for example i'll give you a good

example what i think about this

when ginsburg died i saw one of two

responses

by leftists universally one was

they're crying the other one was that

they were laughing

they're both perverted you know they're

laughing because

oh they're still in their diaper

rebellion against the democrats

listen was anyone else just like me who

just didn't give a shit

and didn't even think anything of it

wasn't emotionally attached at all and

just

was like oh yeah she died because that

was literally my reaction when i saw it

and then that's what i mean by not being

so caught up in the fucking bullshit

you really have to have a global

perspective

and if you have a global perspective

you're going to be able to understand

that

[Music]

the political division that it exists in

america does not reflect

the realities of real politics

real politics is not manifested at this

site here

real politics is something you need to

be able to see with infrared vision

and having an international perspective

allows you to see that

having an international or a global

perspective allows you to distill the

bullshit from the

chit chat and 99 percent of what's going

on in america

i don't care who they are their leftist

or their writers it's chit chat

right it's just chit chat

if you have a more global perspective

you're able to

you're able to be indifferent you're

able to see this as a false division

and a lot of shit is just the kind of

false division in america

division over nothing now there is a

real objective

division of course the class struggle

and so on and so on but

it's not always it's not reducible to

the

explicit terms of its articulation

between democrats and republicans look

you go to any community

you show me a conservative i'll flip you

a liberal the same family members the

same

it's just a matter of your personality

what kind of like uh

type of person you are it's not some you

know what i mean

yeah it's not a the real fundamental

division

you need to have this kind of populistic

sense

mao understood the distinction between

primary and secondary contradictions

the primary contradiction is the class

struggle and all that stuff we know

but there's also a secondary

contradiction if you want

which is between the people and the

establishment

right without an acute sense of this

contradiction there would be no

revolution in russia

because there would be no land reform

the bolsheviks would have simply sided

with the mensheviks and

allied with the established bourgeoisie

instead of the

anti-establishment bourgeoisie that

existed in the countryside who was

hungry for land

and i don't even have to mention the

experience of china because it's

self-evident

but you get my point and every

corresponding successful revolution in

history

was based in an acute sense of the two

i mean this is even a kind of limited

way of putting it but if your

basic malware you should understand the

primary and the secondary contradictions

are two

code temporal and yet

uh not the same thing

if you uh for example only uh if you

substitute sense of the secondary

contradiction for the primary

contradiction

you're gonna inevitably side with the

establishment

think about it i'm in the university and

i need theory in order to understand

the concept of class struggle the

proletariat is the bourgeoisie i'm an

academic right

i require theory in order to

come to these conclusions about class

struggle that i found in the university

of the academy right

how did i arrive at that position

through university

through the institution through the

establishment inevitably

if i base my entire reality on this

reflexivity

i'm gonna resent people who don't have

access to this knowledge or simply

don't find it commonsensical or have no

reason to accept it i'm gonna

side with the establishment everyone's

stupid except me i have this insight

into the

truth and no one else does but on the

other hand

if you have an acute sense of the

secondary contradiction

you'll be able to see that that

very same the object of the primary

contradiction

which you have called the class struggle

is actually the same object as the

secondary contradiction

it's just manifesting itself in a

different way

a way that's not reducible to the terms

of its articulation and thought

something that's happening in actual

reality under your fucking nose

the revolution is underway under your

fucking nose there's a huge

anti-establishment sentiment

there's um the establishment is

crumbling

by this tsunami of the people that's

coming right

these things are happening it's just

that because the two contradictions are

estranged from one another

uh it's not clear

but that's the significance of maoism

was to make this precisely clear

this is why mao for the first time

allowed the millions hundreds of

millions of

people who were considered outside of

civilization outside of enlightenment

to have some kind of recognition you

know there was an article

recently that was like this chinese

strategy

from mao was to find a base in the

countryside to overthrow the cities

and they said china's trying to do the

same now

mao did the same thing with his

international perspective

he's trying to um

get all of the uh rural countries

uh against the urban

center of the first world and so on and

so on it's interesting you know

all right ezra just joined um

and he's gonna piggyback off what i just

said even though he didn't hear it

well i think um yeah the issue of the

secondary conjuring because it's it's a

it's not just a theory it's also a

practical lesson learned

through uh you know almost through

various hard

hardships or the chinese communist party

had endured

throughout the um the first stage of the

civil war and then

later on the sign of japanese war or

is that you know there is a necessity

but sometimes the you know because the

class

contradiction between pro therapy is

always the fundamental contradiction but

it's

you know the formal consideration is

important because you cannot you know

pretend you know just to be opposed to

the

at that time for the chinese government

so there's the nationals governments

that so

like you can also oppose them at the

same time

when there's a you know the i

at that time the primary contradiction

from all is

the national contradiction almost

between

the chinese people as a whole and uh the

invading uh japanese imperialist poll

and then as conditions shift the role

the

primary secondary reverse

dialogue too i guess i think this

is is an important concept to consider

today in the united states especially

when um

you know what does it mean to be what

even is a proletariat what's even is uh

um

a bourgeoisie it's not it's not a given

you know not not just subjectively it's

not a given it's not even

a given that you know people directly

relate

almost on an objective level i'm not

sure if it's the correct way

for this but um

but that doesn't mean you know like

to oppose the establishment through a

united nationhood or united uh sense of

the people as a whole

is a betrayal because it is

on a deeper objective level you advance

the even the class struggle to a much

greater degree than any pretension of

proletariat unites like you don't give a

shit about like

the rest of the people or

pretend that the national reality

doesn't exist

know um it's yeah because you you

mentioned uh the issue of the

proletariat in bourgeoisie in america

and it's like

it's such a tip of the iceberg thing as

far as we didn't even get to that

real problem of marxism theoretically

which is in a

it's dug a deep hole for itself the

dogmatic western marxists have

no ability to relate to the world

as it is exist today whatsoever all this

ideas that are talking about proletariat

bourgeoisie and then you can even go

the theory of value

the value form itself uh commodity

production the forces

raises all these things that they talk

about the base and superstructure

[Music]

uh they they can only dogmatically

impose upon the world but there's always

things about the world

that they're never going to be able to

appreciate as long as they're steeped

this is what i would say is that

essentially marxism is correct

but the form by which we can relate to

this correctness is not given but for

most

marxists in the west it is given

in order to understand what the

proletariat is all you need is a neat

little definition that says

uh someone who doesn't own the means of

production

but then you gotta you know it's in

and which means that uh a graduate

student is a proletarian

can you believe that shit i mean it's

betraying

any meaningful common sense that is

connoted by the word proletariat that's

always existed but we only accept it

because of some form

formal bullshit that no one ever agreed

upon or

was never given or dogmatically

implied in the first place so

that's another big point of distinction

we have with um

marxists we accuse them of formalism we

accuse them of dogmatism

and we think they simply are unable to

relate to the world today

at all i mean in what meaningful sense

besides of

a few niche people we know of on twitter

in what meaningful sense

have mark do are marxist today able to

establish

in the west i mean a brilliant analysis

of

the world or the economy no one it's

always coming from non-marxist who have

something

interesting to say it's always coming

from people outside of the dogma

you know and that's the interesting

thing that is

uh speaking of things that are happening

under the nose

of marxist in the west is that the

biggest

division between east and west in

marxism

cannot really be put on explicit

theoretical terms

because uh marxism leninism in

the east is never considered to be

reducible to a

theoretical exploitation whatsoever

there's a certain

maoist brilliance that is simply given

in china

but you have to ask this question how is

this brilliance

given in china in the communist party

and

even the people in a sense when you

cannot

find anywhere uh a code of laws where

this is all simply made explicit in all

its wealth and all its depth and it's

all its complexity and its

applicability to the world and so on and

the answer is that

there is an index of accumulated

experience uh

of marxism leninism that is subterranean

it is below the surface it's below the

sea

it's um unconscious it's uh

in all the deepest freudian metaphysical

whatever connotations of the

world sorry word in both russia and

china and elsewhere there's

an accumulated um index of

marxist leninist experience that while

is not

enunciated explicitly is still

recalled as a matter of deeper sense

um you don't need to read

books by badu in china

to understand the meaning of primary and

secondary contradiction

it only suffices to um point to an

example

and then it's just an ah i see what you

mean moment you know what i mean

and there's an accumulation of that kind

of into it intuitive sense

eastern marxism leninism where you just

simply have an aha moment and then

not only are you able to see

the meaning of it in this specific

instance it's not like some

english common law or something you're

able to actively

apply it to other things as well it

opens up it

unlocks um

aspects of reality that

uh you didn't that weren't before it

makes things

intelligible that were not before

intelligible about reality

and i think the thing that the way that

you could put this in the western

thinking i think

would be almost like uh de luz's idea of

transcendental empiricism

now it's a really brief rundown for kant

in the transcendental we know his thing

the transcendental aesthetic is uh

one thing or two things right it's space

and time or something like that right

de luz uh it goes

uh so far as to refuse to define

any one object of the transcendental

aesthetic

for de luz uh the transcendental

aesthetic

which is experience beyond the threshold

of i don't know

the surface consciousness maybe for him

to signify

um is a matter of um

active and uh recurrent

uh it's a experience it's a wealth it's

a reality that has

depth and wealth that must be active

actively and continually discover it's

called transcendental empiricism

in a similar way as the regular kind of

empiricism to nature

it means there's a lot of shit in nature

right

empiricism means we're discovering

different ways of relating to them by

the senses

for delivers it's the same thing with

the transcendental reality is what i'm

trying to say

there's a lot of shit out there right

and then the new delusions they have

this idea of the hyper object

and uh you have um

the whole thing about speculative

materialism maybe is another word

for transcendental imperialism it's all

kind of talking about the same thing but

all of this stuff again which is coming

from heidegger ultimately

his ways of thinking this is the only

way you can translate

marxism leninism into western terms

meaningful western terms

if you try to import eastern marxism

at face value in the west you're going

to end up with clownery and absurdity

so we've been getting some questions by

our viewers and they've been asking us

they're like

how are you guys first of all here's the

crazy they're just so surprised by this

they're telling us first of all you're

marxist leninist

what second of all you're dealing with

all this theory stuff that

only university people deal with so

those two already bizarre combination

but to make matters worse you're talking

about bernie sanders

as though it has some practical

significance and you're talking about

the bernie movement

you guys are suck dems it's just a whole

batch of contradictions and insanity

roiled into one if only you had

a true dialectic sense my friend because

you would be able to see how all of

those things you mentioned

beautifully and harmoniously complement

each other

uh you know and

it's funny people ask this question and

um

the only response you need to give is

again we just talked about what

westerners do with marxism leninism in

the east

but you also do this in your own

countries when phenomena rears its head

you call bernie's movement suck them

just because of the explicit

statements and claims of its

leaders but by doing so you've committed

two problems

the first problem is a very obvious one

the objective essence of the movement is

not reducible

to the explicit

[Music]

um explicit appearance

given to it by its leaders that's an

obvious materialist

101 so that's an easy shit right but the

second error you've committed

is worse you've committed a violent

cartesian reduction whereby

or kantian reduction you can either one

whereby

you have made it seem like something

that's contingent

uh exists for itself as a universal

whatever maxim when they say we want

universal health care just because they

didn't mention

we we want uh a communist world which by

the way is not a materialist position or

statement

doesn't mean they're they're elevating

this as a final goal that exists for

itself

they're speaking to a reality that is

concrete and is real in the present

tense

speaking to the contradictions in the

american politics as they

actually exist when you accuse them of

being suck dems because of what they did

not do not because of what they're

actually doing but because what they did

not do

you're knocking on an open fucking door

no one mentioned anything about that

shit you're talking about

the burden of proof lies upon you to

make that somehow meaningful or of

any practical relevance what the fuck

does it mean to call yourself

a fucking communist you're just talking

about things you don't want

oh i don't want a society where there's

money what does that mean practically

what does that even fucking mean

you can't even tell me what that means

oh i'm a communist because i want there

to be no

uh private property okay but what does

that entail what does that mean i'll

tell you what it entailed in the soviet

union in russia

it entailed the land reform that gave

small allotments of plots of land

to peasants

that's what it entailed and in china

i'll make even make the ark it entails

uh socialism with chinese

characteristics that's how they saw it

so what does that entail for you because

you can't collapse

the essence and the appearance there's a

discontinuity you cannot

you've only arrived at a negative truth

you've said communism is a stateless

classly okay but you haven't actually

arrived at the positive meaning of that

you've mistaken the positive meaning for

uh the negative one you've mistaken the

form

for the positive meaning form is always

negative tell me what that means

concretely

if you want to get to the real stuff

about concrete reality

you got to leave your little uh

pseudomarxist study group

or your little cult you got to leave

your kindergarten

and you got to go out in the real world

and be given to that and it's

tough it's brutal it's humiliating

because why is it humiliating because

it's always going to humiliate you it's

always going to change your perceptions

it's not you're not going to have any

pre-emptive knowledge going forward

it's going to you know exempt you from

the the constant humbling

uh nature of practice changes what you

think about the world

you may know the world negatively and

abstractly doesn't mean you know it

positively and concretely

it's so funny how so-called radical

leftists will be like

well look what happened to corbin and

bernie told you so

we never no one ever made the assumption

you're saying

nobody like

this and by the way you didn't know

anything

if if you what's that

quote in fast or go with you or

something

uh when all that is

the martin the one that marx likes no no

the one quote that says

better if nothing came to be yeah

what is the full quote

um oh yeah all that exists

deserves to bear we'll perish so better

if nothing came to be

if you hold that position uh

you'll always be right no matter what

fucking happens

we're all gonna die man we're all gonna

die one day

so so and the same is true for movements

and states even

if you just hold that lazy position

you'll turn out to be right eventually

but you know what you won't accomplish

getting anywhere

oh i didn't think about that

did you you only thought about this

abstract

formal idea of being right and you're

not even right because you weren't

in order to be right you have to prove

it in a particular way what do i mean by

that

if you're betting on the stock market

you can't just say

um all co all stocks will eventually go

down

by five percent you have to choose a

specific stock

at a specific time you have to get it

right like that

you didn't do that for bernie or corbin

you just said it's all bullshit

and everything went to shit eventually

but

you didn't make a particular observation

or analysis doing that requires work

and if you're able to make those types

of analysis that are particular

and actually concrete

you would be helping the movement you

would be fighting for the uh leadership

of the movement because you're saying

uh it's going to shit unless we lead in

this specific

this is our concrete specific position

this is what is necessary for victory

if you can prove you had that position

once

you would already be the leader of the

western left

easily if you could prove once that you

said

something specific we need this specific

strategy

we need this specific tactic

and we will win without this and it's

something specific and concrete

and you're proven right

you would lead the western left or if

you're critiquing a specific tactic and

you're saying this specific one is wrong

and there's a clear way in which it's

proven that that was the wrong move

you were congratulations you gained

something called

in grand theft auto terminology

street cred right what's that game where

it's like that saints row

you gain reputation

you gain you gain reputation you know

you gain the xp points

people will see that shit and they'll be

like wow you were right that's street

cred right

[Music]

and i think there's kind of an irony to

the uh like the leftists who make this

like criticism too like they you know

they knew it was gonna

go bad because the irony is that it's

precisely because of these kinds of

leftists

that the bernie and corbin movie

movement

failed it's precisely because of uh you

know these kind of radical leftists who

are disconnected from objective reality

and putting their own kind of like

special meaning

um upon any um like kind of social

political movement instead of like

embracing it for what it is and really

embracing

um i like really taking a mantle

of the people's will it's it's precisely

because these guys have left us that

the bernie and the quarter movement get

bogged down it's because

you know bernie and corbin were trying

to um

almost like appeal to these like sort of

woke leftists who were giving these

impossible

um coastal uh demands they got

increasingly and increasingly

uh more and more ridiculous like by the

end of it you know corbin was like

saying

uh he was going to like make

animal rights um like

uh reforms and whatnot that had nothing

to do you know with

like the original you know core of this

movement

and so i think there's like an irony to

this because like they are the

they are what i would say a big part of

the problem

um you know uh discounting animal rights

because i think that is bullshit both

abstractly and concretely

but i'm not going to rant about that

here i'll tell you the tragedy of

sanders and corbin things so

concrete truth and concrete victory

was sacrificed in the name

of uh

things that were abstractly true

so what do i mean by that problems were

raised on the basis

of abstract problems

technically it is true that um

whatever abstractly yes it is true uh

i don't know let's even say um

let's even say uh yes abstractly it is

true capitalism should be

or must be abolished or will be

abolished right

concretely what does that mean

you see what i mean when you exhibit

this notion

abstractly you're coming at the expense

of the actual concrete truth of this

abstraction

so you stiffen concrete victory because

you're being tempted by abstract truths

technically the us

is founded upon cis heteropatriarchal

exposition of native land and

slavery and white supremacy yes that's

all true

so bernie and his movement was tempted

by this truth this abstract truth

sorry truth and

it saw this as sufficient ground to give

concessions to

the self-anointed um

self-anointed uh disciples of this truth

the ones who saw who uh considered

themselves to have the solution to this

problem so we're gonna have more lip

service we're gonna have more

woke language and shit all you did was

alienate the population though

you see what i mean whereas in actual

fact

to concretely relate to this reality of

native genocide and then slavery and all

this kind of stuff entailed and

faithful uh

entailed fidelity to the concrete needs

of the movement

which means putting a fucking muzzle on

the meaningless pseudo-radical language

so you don't uh

you don't just right off the bat

antagonize

90 percent of fucking people i think

that they want to be able to solve these

these things you know indigenous without

having

the power the basis to do this you know

and because they have not established

that power basis first

they demand that it's that it's uh it

comes first on the agenda you know so to

speak

you know it's it's almost like what you

said with like primary and secondary

contradictions what mouse said

you know yes yes these are problems but

you you only get this first by

establishing trust

and a basis in the people that comes

first and and by the way

that's only in terms of educating them

about it which is a cultural thing

educating people about the crimes

against native americans yeah that's

cultural though

that's doing something that's real in

relation to the

predicament of native whatever i don't

know if they like to be called as

indians

that has nothing to do with uh that's

not just a matter of culture it's a

concrete thing it's about giving them

land and all this kind of stuff you know

what i mean

it has nothing to do with um

merely acknowledging something

like and by the way the thing that

they're demanding everyone acknowledge

was just negative

let's acknowledge america is founded by

sin no one wants to dwell in a bitchy

negative

fucking world let me tell you man life's

already a bitch people are jobless and

struggling for jobs

jobs went overseas the way of life is

being destroyed

you don't think they have enough of a

bitchy reality they're living it man

you're just a fucking college student or

a graduate student in a graduate student

union

and you don't have enough of the bitchy

reality so you have to make one

abstractly

people are already living it if you only

give people negativity

oh america's sinful so what do you have

to offer what is your fucking point

if you have a point get to that point

instead of this stupid iconoclasm that

you

are so content with dwelling in no one

likes a whiner

and no one likes someone who just

bitches as a way of life

in order to live i'm gonna be like a

self-help guy but living means

positivity in a way right

living means waking up and just living

persisting if you dwell in negativity

all the fucking time

that's no way for a fucking human being

to live

just say what you want to say and say

everyone should die

you know what i mean by that in a way

just tell people they should just

fucking drop dead like what do you

fucking want

at the end of the day you gotta wake up

and eat and work

that's life

you need to acknowledge america was

founded

but what's your fucking point

you know what i mean like get to the

point

you just want people to acknowledge it

no but i'll tell you what they'll say

they'll say

well the first step to doing anything

about it is acknowledging it no it's not

it's the last step

uh the first first of all you don't know

what the positive consequence of that

is it's not necessarily true that all of

america is a

needle because of what you're saying

there's a reality to america that isn't

just that

there's a deeper reality to the thing

you're saying

you know there's more to it than

that or the implication of that

is not reducible to the appearance of a

horrible crime and there's other

implications too

you know that you gotta draw out with

work

um i hate to be the type you know it

says

like what jija could the same thing that

was bad also gives rise to the

opportunity for something good

and i don't fully buy that but

there's an extent to which is true you

know

like that should allow you to um

clarify the good instead of just

dwelling and

bitching about the bad you know about

america i mean

and the american nation specifically

i i think it has a lot to do with like

this kind of

way of thinking where we um we

supposedly want to get to like the deep

dark uh reality of things

but i think in some ways when you get

down to like the deep dark reality of

things

and so on you end up missing um the

bigger picture

because you meant you end up missing um

the appearance

there's kind of a truth to the

appearance of good even when there's

like you know

um evil uh beneath it and i think

almost a commitment to that appearance

of good

is like precisely um what's needed

because i think that appearance is more

than just

like superficial more than more than

just um

like an ideological lie but al but

actually represents

something um redeemable about america

like you know as an american citizen or

like

as a um someone who's taking like a

political stance or being a partisan

if you're coming from an american

standpoint i think you do still need to

like base yourself

in this kind of like idea of america as

being you know

this um experiment of democracy

and of enlightenment principles it's

just that you have to commit yourself

more deeply to that than the actual

founding fathers and so on

were capable of doing um in their

context

[Music]

here i think you're muted i'm a clown

you also have to be uh delivered to the

oceanic reality of america the one that

isn't written anywhere in history books

right the american people the story of

the american people

democracy what does it mean it means you

know

deimos democracy it's about people

so there's also this unconscious reality

you have to be delivered to that can't

really be put in

explicit terms but i really like how you

put it

because um about the good specifically

because

if you think about it what is the motif

of the era

the good or the sun was fake

and now we're dealing with this issue of

uh the beautiful the good was a lie

platon and good right the form of forms

the center

the father whatever the state it was all

based on a

false myth and now we've taken the red

pill and we're in the matrix and this is

the real reality and all that's left is

this question of the sublime the beauty

the beautiful sorry um

[Music]

beauty is the only real thing why

because

when we see the good as debased

it is by means of a phenomenal

appearance

or as an object of the aesthetic

that we perceive the good as debased

right the form of forms is let's say

rome

uh caesar uh was killed

or christ was crucified maybe it's the

same story i'm not gonna get into that

um something happens though

in phenomenal reality that debases the

good

so the good cannot be redeemed but only

there can only be a striving for beauty

which is what

the realization of perfection in

phenomenal

reality this is the theme of

media it's the theme of everything it's

also the theme of the contemporary left

and its idea of communism communism is a

cultural and aesthetic

idea it's a realization of perfection

in the world as an object of phenomenal

sense

whereas before in the past maybe you had

a utopianism but communism was never

an idea in the sense of a phenomenal

object it was never a thing where we

said um

this is how it will be and if it's any

other way it's bullshit

you know how leftist in america say that

you can keep your revolution it's

bullshit

unless you acknowledge ablyism

it's bullsh you know they say all these

kind of things because it's an aesthetic

object

it's all about appearance it's all about

beauty anyway i'm rambling

the whole point about what you said

about seeing appearance of the good

there's a truth in it

is to arrive at the insight that the

good

the platonic good never pretended

to worldly perfection the form of forms

was never

reducible to any phenomenal appearance

in the first place

you only made the assumption it was

after

the good was debased the appearance of

the good was debased

to have a higher sense of the good

and even you can even think about this

in terms of what is the meaning of

maoist

goodness of the people stalinist or

maoist because they say the goodness of

the people

it's a very common maoist motif how can

you say the goodness of the people the

people rape

lie cheat and all these bad things and

then leftists will

why can you say this patriarchy and

there's racism okay

because when you say the goodness of the

people

you're referring to something that's not

reducible to what is formally

intelligible on the surface

that's the meaning of the goodness of

the people so to see the goodness of the

american people doesn't mean to excuse

all the crimes and hideous shit it just

means to acknowledge there's a reality

that's not on the surface

[Music]

that is ultimately what is called the

good the form of forms

um it's the same reason that any idea of

communism is a kind of final

eschatological reality he's already

mistaken

you know absolutely mistaken uh

communism uh maybe not even as just a

final eschatological sublime

you've had that maybe in the in the past

and uh

it's just truth in it what is absolutely

false

is the idea of communism as

as a

total culturalization of the world where

we render everything the economic laws

the material reality

every single thing in the world becomes

subjugated by the dominion of culture

where we can

uh establish rules and social

association on purely explicit terms

there's no unconscious there's no deeper

reality there's

no material reality it's all a

contractual

reality what do you know of course

people critique this as

bourgeois it's fundamentally bourgeois

right

i just said it contractual we go back to

where

who uh lock and all those assholes

right the english theorists

of state bentham

the the ego the english egotist uh

yes um what's absolutely false is an

idea of communism i mean i feel

disgusted saying it because marx already

said it and everyone always quotes marx

but i don't think they really understand

what he was trying to say communism

isn't a society you want to establish

it's a real movement

[Music]

toward not the abolition that's an

american word

it's a retarded word uh the russian

equivalent to that word is liquidation

they had a word for it in russian

liquidation and liquidationism was a

tendency that the bolsurex were fiercely

fiercely opposed to

[Music]

not to abolish the present state of

things but marx said to sublate them

to off hebrew you put it in the hegelian

terms

[Music]

so what does that mean it means

uh there is an objective movement

that attests to some kind of

transformation that is happening

not something you want to happen it is

happening

and this is what we're calling communism

so to be explicitly a communist all that

means is that you're someone who

acknowledges that

doesn't mean there's no like uh there's

no component to that where it says i

want society to be this way

no being a communist just means you're

acknowledging something no one else is

acknowledging

and or you're acknowledging it in a

unique way why did angles call it

scientific socialism why didn't he just

say

socialism but we're also going to be

scientific no he called it scientific

socialism why

because to be a scientific socialist

means

you're acknowledging something in a

scientific way

that not only others are not

acknowledging who aren't socialists but

even the socials who are acknowledging

it aren't acknowledging it in a

scientific way

right

[Music]

so but um

another thing about this question of

socialism is that it goes back to this

question of the culturalization of the

economy

and politics and great

[Music]

yeah i think you asked me about

something regarding what i said about

china and

why it cannot really be said china isn't

socialist

[Music]

yeah particularly because it was in

reference to

something false equivalence of public

property social exact ownership exactly

yeah that was it and more particularly

with with private property itself

exactly

yeah yeah what people don't understand

is that people think

socialism or communism the end of

private property simply means everything

becoming public state property

ah no that's not the historical

experience

in fact public property is what's the

bourgeois notion

what is public property it's a owned by

who right it's an abstraction the state

is an abstraction

it's the same abstract state as the

bourgeois state that owns it this is the

commons of bourgeois

society is an anonymous

[Music]

universal a not determinate or

particular

uh type of ownership uh state and public

ownership

exists in all uh societies after

modernity

and it is only as a necessity it's a

pragmatic reality it's not because

it's more virtuous for the state or how

jacobin magazine wants to put it well

the state will be more caring for people

because

you know what i mean this kind of

bullshit no the state ownership

is something that is where the economy

has a political

strategic whatever dimension for the

state and the state must own it because

they can't trust people with owning it

because if people

owned it privately it would that like

it's always like a temporary burden it's

always

privatization is always better in the

bourgeois society

maybe even in general because

um it uh

it makes something that was a burden

into something that just works by itself

we as the state can privatize something

because this no longer

threatens the strategic integrity of the

state

or the welfare of the people whatever

you want in a socialist

what we call today's 21st century

socialism that already won

um anyway uh no

the real stakes of socialism or at least

marxism whatever you want to call it

is not in the public ownership it's in

the strange and bizarre

[Music]

uh almost

[Music]

unintelligible type of ownership

and the reason it's so paradoxical

unintelligible was because

it's in between the very contradiction

between

the universal form and the determinate

private particular

and what is the first form of this it's

the call causes under stalin

the stalin era coal closes were not

public property

stalin hinted that the coal causes were

the true form of

communistic property it's not it's a

false assumption to say that

public property was the communist that

it will evolve in the form of public

property simply swallowing the coal

closes

he said no it could be the opposite is

true maybe there's a more

decentralization

decentralization sorry uh maybe it means

uh

public property something will happen to

it and the call causes are the model for

the future

socialist ownership you see

uh the issue with the universal public

property

is the same issue marx critiqued of the

bourgeois state

it's not that oh you can't um

[Music]

it's gonna you can't own everything

because of the pragmatic reason it'll be

inefficient

no ontologically it's not possible for

universal public ownership why because

economic reality is something objective

it's something material and objective

it's a simple

thing all marxists can accept you cannot

legislate the material premises

of the economy you cannot do it you

cannot legislate them

by decree this is idealism it's

volunteerism

uh you can only submit to the economic

laws

objective economic laws but you can't um

establish the next nihilo the problem of

marxists

chiefly western marxist they have

reduced the materiality of

the economy to the um

to the uh only as the technological

forces of production

which lacks any human elements the

machines and the

nature and the science and this this is

what they have said is

the material forces of production they

neglect that the relations of production

are also a material

site the relations of production are

also material

unless what do you mean they're

hardwired and said no that's the whole

point

they're not physiologically reducible

but they're still material you know what

i mean they're still objective and real

maybe they're not the same as uh the

same thing as um

an animal uh instinct but it's still a

this is why psychoanalysis is important

it exists and you can discern it in the

unconscious

symptoms and so on and so on well anyway

um

if the material forces of production are

also

sorry material relations or production

are also material

there's a universal ownership of um

the means of production is fucking

absurd

it's absolutely absurd um because what

does that mean it means you're replacing

material

relations of production with some ideal

of what they should be the relations of

production

and in the west in america it's so silly

and this is why

we didn't want to mention them this is

why we're not bred to because we don't

say

the workers ownership public no that's

cultural that's you're not talking about

anything material

workers ownership of the means of

production

socialistic ownership of means of

production is not something you can

legislate

it's only something that can emerge

uh accidentally in a sense

and what do i mean by that accidentally

and maybe not even in the

in the form in which they they think it

is that's what i mean more

that's more what i mean that's more what

i mean the call causes for example

they were you can't legislate maybe put

this way that

you can't legislate the form in which

this takes workers

yeah they weren't obviously they weren't

entirely voluntary

but the causes uh opened up a reality

that couldn't

could that was neither legislated

beforehand the reality of the peasants

the particular reality of the peasants

in the country

nor was it a reality that they whose

ultimate outcome anyone could have

decided beforehand

in the in the form of the cult closes

themselves the peasants were burdened

with improvising and dealing with all

these minutes

small uh details and realities to meet

those quotas

you couldn't have you can't know what

that's going to be like beforehand

uh by some central state you can't you

simply can't

the reason why maybe that this is uh is

socialistic

it's that only i would argue it was the

only socialistic

this is where uh you know we want to

avoid being textualists but this is

where you know free association

and submitting to laws beyond you comes

into play exactly

it's

acquires determinate in particular form

it's not just this universal state

owning everything

here in the void of private

reality if you want something

socialistic can emerge

right which you cannot pre-emptively

this is why we're hydarians

in a sense right

and then maoism complicates it even more

going beyond the coal closes and so on

and then with socialism with chinese

characteristics

uh it gets even more interesting and

more and more interesting but we can't

talk about it all here right because

uh it will take too much time

but i think the main takeaway the main

point of this should be

what distinguishes us infrared we are

marxist-leninist we are communists and

so on

but if you're watching this

right um

everything you think you know about what

those words mean

we argue is wrong that's what we're

about

that's where we're coming from it's all

wrong you got it all wrong

and it's so severely wrong to the point

where up is down and left is right

you will you will think we are

conservatives and we're writers

it's i mean it's so far out there in

terms of how we see this

that um

it's almost like there's no common

ground i don't even want to critique

bread to people because what do we have

to do with them

nothing right like

uh and and that's kind of what the

reason we we made this show is because

we think that what we are about isn't

really being given adequate

representation anywhere else we think we

are really a unique

thing we have going on i'm talking about

in the west okay

in elsewhere outside of america there's

a lot of common ground a lot of

interesting things going on

but i'm just talking about specifically

in terms of dogmatic uh

talmudistic i'm not saying an

anti-semitic way i'm saying

stalin's criticism uh marxism that

exists in the west

to clarify that's why we feel more

closer to

non-american and somewhat non-western

left

western marxism was a mistake absolutely

absolutely i mean

yeah i mean if by western marxism we

mean lukakus

who destroyed marxism in the west

theoretically

his continuation of marxism

was the death knell of marxism and

anyone who says read blue cox i'll say

for every

lucox there's a kolakowski is his name

legend yeah oh she's got a pool yeah for

every lucox there's one of him because

he's the conclusion

it's simply liberalism kantianized

liberalism

that's western marxism the only

interesting marxism in the west was

happening after heidegger kojev batai

and france all those french thinkers

coming after this

franco-germanic dialogue that was

happening

which also somewhat gave rise to

de-colonial theory fanon phanon came

from these people right or is influenced

by them

the iranian intellectuals

were influenced by them so all the

interesting things were happening

in terms of the west were happening

there and

it's corresponding influences in the

third world it's happening there

right western marxism is for nerds

sorry it's for academic nerds who want

to feel like they're orthodox

and marxism they're doing it by the book

so they feel safe and comfortable

when you read baatai you're doing

nothing by the book there's no guarantee

or safety you're doing it correctly

whatsoever

you have to discover the essence of

marxism

by means formally unfamiliar to you

and i think that is the only correct

position someone people who live in the

west like us

can have you know um

we're not trying to appear like we're so

much more enlightened and smarter than

all of you all

we really just want to share it with

people because we think there's people

out there

who do agree with us and who maybe are

out there

like us but who aren't really being

given representation their voices are

not really being heard

and that maybe they don't have the words

for this but they have they do have

exactly

we don't think we're geniuses who are

smarter than everybody

and you just have to listen to us and

whatever we think that for accidental

reasons

you know we want to bring

interesting people who aren't being

given representation together

and the real target is not

uh you the viewers uh as a regular

person

the real target is the institutionalized

marxism that is up there in the ivory

towers and the academia

those are the that's the target of you

know i'm not trying to say um

oh we're so much smarter than everybody

i'm trying to say we need to

we those of us marxists who are out

there those guys like us

what's that movie who's like if you're

out there x-men

if you're out there

[Music]

we're just trying to say if you're out

there

we can muster the courage to take this

shit over you know i'm saying we don't

gotta

be bounded by this kind of blackmail of

the institutionalized marxism of the

academic establishments and all these

not

nerds not that we're any comparable but

think about lenin i mean lenin was was

considered a rightest by a great many

marxists in his own day he was shot by a

leftist candidate yeah we're not even in

that league you know that

we're not we're not but it but it is a

good example you're right 100

and mao was the same thing how was the

same thing yeah

believe it or not was it mao ezra maybe

you know about this

wasn't mao less favored by the soviet

establishment

in the beginning um

they prefer others right i'm i think so

not just specifically moss basically i

think he just

wasn't in the beginning it wasn't even

considered because um

you look at the early ccp history it's

um

a bunch of bunch of other failures but

almost for the exact reasons that we

talked about here who are

very much more or less dogmatists

who are um their bolshevism

is very much you know the bad parts of

bullshit as a relative

that makes sense it's very westernized

it's

exclusively urban focused it's uh

yeah ezra wasn't the uh i might be wrong

but

didn't i think the original ccp members

loved and turned to trotskyism because

of this reason you know some turn to

japan right

yes some turn to trotskyism but it's not

necessary that's a problem because

trustee was so demonized among the

coming term but you know japan is big

was a big thing

um and then just um

you know de facto into kmt or um just

people just

you know you have this process of people

just

dogmatically uh assume the proletariat

um appearance uh that says in the west

you know trying to extrapolate this

to china um even though china's

proletaries the size of the chinese

proterra is

debatable at best at that time and

and then mao is the first person to you

know talk about a swarm of return

like going to the people in the center

going to the countryside going to the

10th century and it was um extremely

controversial

both in the coming panel within the

chinese conference party itself

it's a lot of contestion theoretical

and practical uh confrontation

and eventually you will not know almost

all the practical necessity in a way

that's you know

um because the party was basically

destroyed by all its

attempt and they did try all the

attempting

almost purely urban mobile mobilization

but small was certainly considered as

like a deviation

of someone that's um not only dj for

mall but even devious from lemon

um yeah like someone who's

almost good i guess a rice winner i'm

not sure if he's explicitly called us

but it's

something it does it's something like

that um

so it's a it's really a internal

revolution that the chinese communist

party have to go to

in order even to progress and like i

said before they learned the hard way

they

was almost annihilated multiple times

throughout the 20s and 30s before

you know they finally come to the

conclusion um

that something different needs to be

done

that's the um

the predominance in ocean that they the

marxist

at the time that they that they have was

need to be

completely re-evaluated re-evaluated

and that's why i think it's kind of

absurd now is this like

what we're doing isn't really new what

we're doing should be common sense for

anyone who's looking at history

all this shit happened i mean if you're

a marxist or an academic marxist

who's watching this and is so mad about

heterodox and shit we are

man you were those people in the common

turn in the

chinese and soviet establishments of the

communist party who didn't like mao but

mao is the one who won

and this story repeats itself across

history

lenin was the same thing every concrete

victory of marxist anywhere

was the same thing or or of a communist

party anywhere was the same story it's

the same story

of going against the establishment

and you really got to think to yourself

if you're really you know watching this

in your butt hurt and shit you got to

think about

like today in 2020 where are you like

who are you

right like where would you be back then

so where are you now

right you would be with that

establishment

and i can't see how people like look

guys there's literally people who will

watch this and like

well you still believe the value form

shouldn't be abolished

so you're not a marxist and they'll

really say that

like what where do you where do you

think you look like saying that

in a historical perspective like where

are you right now

you an establishment

dogmatic little bass bitch sorry to say

you know you're not the type you're

you're thinking is not the one that's

gonna carry

um carry uh

the proletariat to victory it's just not

at the same time i do think it's kind of

a fad

um nowadays at least as far as i can see

where you do have a lot of

leftists in the united states who condem

theory and theory talk

you know supposedly for this reason

they'll hear this stuff and they'll hear

yeah we need to go back to common sense

you know you're thinking you stop

telling people to read shit but

it's not that either you know the point

is obviously to be

um you know like you said uh to kind of

do because they think

common sense means abolish the police

and that's good

no exactly exactly exactly they think

they can skip the prop

the point of fear is to clarify this is

to put something like this not not watch

the police but like abolish value form

discover what is concrete about that

today it's not to impose that on reality

you know what i mean you want to know

something like they reverse it the

phrase

abolish the value form is the most

retarded fucking thing you can say yeah

it's so fucking stupid how can you

do you actually think the value form is

legislated somewhere it's a

it's a statute it's a civil code you

abolish you fucking idiot

you can't abolish it the the form itself

can only be sublated you can't abolish

that

it doesn't matter it's the same thing

for everything with the family with the

state

you know and this and this stuff is

common sense but you'll have the same

people say abolish the value form

abolish wage labor

but these things are not like ex like

they're not objects of thought that you

can arbitrate

you know i mean like how like how do you

do that

but but that's that's like you said

that's where

if you if you are uh acquainted with the

history of marxism you'll see

that what this means in practice you

know in uh in russia

in china you know in america they're

trying to draw parallels to the

abolitionist movement in the 19th

century

but guess what guys the difference with

that is that there was the element of

formally instantiated human bondage

involved which means people were

formally

legally recognized as property so you

can directly political

you can abolish that because it's

directly formally there

when you're talking about capitalism or

you're talking about the value form or

you're talking about

the family and all these things that's

not there there's no

set of laws you can repeal

or revise that are going to change these

realities because they're not

a matter of law whereas slavery and

actually slavery wasn't entirely a

matter of law either

that slavery is an objective reality

somewhat has persisted even to this day

right but it's still meaningful to say

abolish slavery

but that did not eliminate the reality

of slavery no one would

argue that in 2020 i don't think

but there was something meaningful about

abolishing slavery

it wasn't meaningful because slavery

meant

people were in bondage in a legally

recognized way

you no but i think that's another

just going back to what we said before i

think that's another way in which uh

we're straddling a kind of

and it's a bad word to use but it kind

of centrism because on the one hand it's

not an

over emphasis on the purity of thought

and these kinds of abstractions and

taking this being

but at the same time it's not the uh

you know this kind of con you know you

know common sense it's not actually

common sense

view that you ought to just dispense

with theory and what is common senses

about

these things you have to have a

dialectic between

both and see that theory is

clarification of

the practice of objectivity of whatever

you want to call it you know what i mean

i i think it's also like important to

remember that in like opposing

um like established academia and like

established theories of knowledge

it's not like for the point of negation

it's because we're like putting forward

our own affirmative

stance or something that is in

opposition to what already exists but

it's not purely

like a negative stance on knowledge

itself

but a competing theory of knowledge that

we're you know putting forward

absolutely the only reason i mention

institutions and academia

is because i see how very clearly when

we're trying to put forward

our positive views

the fact that we lack those credentials

gets in the way for so many people

who are you to say that you know it's

just because we're not established and

that's the whole point of

anti-establishment sentiment

it's when there's a positive striving

that an establishment is getting in the

way of

you know you know another thing about

this so-called you know oh that theory

is so

inaccessible i bitched about in a show

um

for them common sense is just

uh it's still reflexive it's still this

purely reflexive instinct

it's not really common sense

because as metropolitans as urban

whatever

youth for them the negation is almost

like

already their reality so it doesn't take

much thought

to start screaming and screeching

abolish

this and abolish that because we get it

dude you're edgy and you want to abolish

the world you want to abolish reality

your whole position is based on

abolishing reality because that's what

your way of life is as a petty

bourgeoisie

listen if you are a

artist i'm not going to hate these i

don't hate

please don't mistake this for i'm saying

as a general phenomena as a class

phenomena

if you are a petty bourgeois cultural

uh cultural bourgeoisie

your instinct is going to be to abolish

reality why

because reality is what limits you isn't

it with limits you like

you still have to eat and feed yourself

and that's uh things those are things

that cannot be negotiated on the terms

of

your practice you can't artistically

determine

how you're going to get food you cannot

intellectually determine how you're

going to get food

those are realities that just humiliate

you and so there's this instinct for

these people to just want to abolish

reality itself

because they have this it's something

they have to submit to and which

is outside of their control if that

makes sense that's one way of looking at

why they always say abolish this and

abolish that

because reality itself humiliates them

and they see the things they want to

abolish is the thing that prevents them

from

being able to set the material reality

that conditions them on terms

controllable by them they want to

control

um uh yeah i would say before we wrap

things up

um i think that is at base is what

differentiate what we feel

differentiates our marxism

from the west you know why do we feel

special when we talk about this stuff

and if you want to kind of uh abstract

but i feel like it's also pretty

intuitive

uh explanation of this it's just that

for western marxists they see reality as

something which is to be domesticated

their own being foreignness whatever is

outside them has to be domesticated

that's why they're obsessed with this

kind of

dogma it you know this kind of dogmatic

adherence to text it's not that we

repudiate these texts

that for them this is a consolation from

from the world right

but the whole point the whole point of

marx's critique is to be

not only acquainted with but submit to

that which is

uh that which is objective right which

can't be

so easily domesticated made an object of

thought which is

condition which thought is conditional

on you know what i mean

that's why he's a materialist but this

is forgotten

and the sad thing is that

and like i said wrapping it up i think

this would be my final critique i guess

of western marxist

the decisive significance of marxism was

always a critique of socialism

socialism had existed in marx's time and

marxism is a specific

form of the critique of socialism it's a

socialism yes but

it's a socialism founded upon the

critique of other socialisms

we cannot even afford to say that we

just have a problem of the pestilence of

non-marxist socialisms

in the left because they're not

socialistic whatsoever

they're not utopian socialists they're

not erratic

interesting socials they're not any type

of socialist whatsoever

instead we have a pestilence of

liberalism

and liberalism which is based in

only the negation and the negative

rights and all this kind of stuff

and negative freedoms has encountered

its civilizational

limits and out of this paradox people

have

convinced themselves that they've

discovered the meaning of marxism when

in fact

they're only taking liberalism to its

extremes to the point of total absurdity

self negating

absurdity psycho psychosis and

foreclosure nowhere in this

is anything similar to marxism or even

socialism in the general sense

[Music]

uh to be found the extremity of

liberalism i think if i could just put

words in your mouth

is uh is a kind of of anarchism or the

extent of anarchism

of liberals it's trying the significance

of that

is beyond just you know the stupidity of

the politics it's that it tries to get

rid of its own ground

even specifically anglo-american

anarchism has really nothing to do with

who bakun in they have nothing in common

yeah bakunin was an anti-semite

and he was a pan-slavist anti-semite

what does bakunin have to do with these

people nothing anarchism is a phrase it

has no

real meaning in a trans-historical way

but people in america who call

themselves anarchists yeah they're

liberals edgy liberals

of course name me one and david graber

he was kind of interesting

i don't think he was a liberal he was an

interesting guy but

name me one someone you find who says

i'm an anarchist it's a liberal

okay in america it's a liberal who's

edgy

right uh and unfortunately a lot of

tankies are that way too

so it's the same thing we're talking

about they're all the same to us

pretty much same pathology you can call

yourself a trotskyist

a stalinist a tanki or

anarchist or

a maoist someone who's very mentally ill

and it's all the same all right i think

that's a good

place to end it right yeah

okay and uh we really have been

enjoying all of your feedback so keep it

up

um and hopefully

we will have another episode soon

[Music]

you