Unraveling the First Revisionism Controversy with James of Prolekult Films

What impact did the first revisionism controversy within the Second International have on the socialist movement? Join me and James from Prolekult Films as we untangle the complexities of this historical debate and uncover the lasting consequences it had on the socialist movement. We'll explore the origins of the controversy, the social and political conditions in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the positions of key figures like Bernstein and Kautsky.

Together, we'll navigate the twists and turns of this significant debate and its implications on the development of socialist thought. We'll examine the challenges faced by the socialist movement in both Britain and the US, discussing the dissolution of social democracy in the Labour Party, the rise of apologists for Bidenism, and the increasingly concerning migrant situation in Britain. James and I will also compare the debates and tensions in Marxist theory and the contradictions between the scientific method of inquiry and its mass ideological project.

This insightful conversation will leave you with a deeper understanding of the first revisionism controversy and its lasting impact on the socialist movement. We'll also touch on the importance of building Marxist education and support in today's world, sharing our thoughts on reading groups, grassroots campaigns, and potential resources to help spread Marxist thought. Don't miss out on this unique and thought-provoking episode as we delve into the intricacies of socialist history and its modern implications.

James of Prolekult films and I talk about the context of the Revisionist controversy and its long-term effects on socialist understanding.  You can support James' work here.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Chapters

• 0:00 The First Revisionism Controversy
• 10:33 Breakdown Theory in Second International
• 19:31 German Revisionism and Social Conditions
• 30:51 Revisionism in the SPD
• 40:40 Debating the Path to Socialism
• 50:42 Marxism and Revisionist Controversy
• 1:01:58 Debates and Tensions in Marxist Theory
• 1:15:38 Orthodoxy and Marxism's Fundamental Contradiction
• 1:22:56 Leftist Challenges in UK and US
• 1:33:14 Britain's Economic and Political State
• 1:51:37 Building Marxist Education and Support

Transcript

C. Derick Varn: 0:48

Hello and welcome to Varm Vlogging Today. I'm with James of Procult Films, not Procult Films, that's kind of different. And we are here to talk about the first revisionism controversy, not the second one which is all about how loyal you were to Stalin after he died, but the first one which was the, the Bernstein-Kalski debates. And you know one of the things about late Frederick Ingalls and I love I'm an Ingalls defender, i'm not one of these Ingalls corrupted Marx, you know theorist, but is he endorsed a lot of people that if he had lived I think he would have felt really, really kind of sketch about. He gave We a good review. He was close friends with Bernstein.

C. Derick Varn: 1:50

But Bernstein's an interesting figure because I think, while I ultimately think Bernstein, the Bernsteinian answers to the problem of revisionism is, you know, wrong, i think, why Bernstein arrived there is actually kind of interesting And the more I learned about it, the more sympathetic I was to how we got to the revisionism controversy And I think you have been working on something similar and coming to kind of similar conclusions. So to frame this for my audience, if they're not, in the history of the Second International, how did the revisionism controversy actually begin?

James of Prolekult Films: 2:35

So I mean it begins immediately following Ingalls's death with an article on the class war in France by Marx which is about the 1849 French Revolution, and it's really he begins kind of trying to revise some of Marx's conclusions and coming to different conclusions. But what he's really kind of speaking to is the Foucq programme which had a theoretical component which was attributed to Kautzky, authored by Morwendriss Kautzky, and a practical component that was authored by Bernstein, or attributed to him but authored by Morwendriss Tim, and that's installed in 1891 as the sort of revolutionary programme within the Social Democrat Party in Germany. And there's a complete division between those two parts. So the first part, the theoretical component, regurgitates the kind of thing we all know about the concentration of capital leading to an emissary, growing emissary in society, a growing polarisation between bourgeois class and the proletarian class and therefore, you know, ends with a proposal for revolution overthrowing the old order and that kind of stuff. Whereas the practical component orientates the party entirely on kind of like reformist lines, what we would call reformist lines anyway, which is things like universal suffrage, social security, a few other components which are quite important as a list in the programme, and what Bernstein's really trying to do is a number of things. He's trying to really bring the theory more in line with what the party's actually practically orientated toward, and I think that's actually quite an honourable thing to do. It's up front At least. It's not kind of using phraseology to then smuggle in a reformist kind of platform, which is something we see a lot now, certainly. But then he's also addressing what he views as inconsistencies within Marx or things within Marx that don't live up to what was actually happening and particularly the breakdown theory within Marx, that project, that kind of growing emissary of the proletariat. And he's doing this on quite concrete grounds because practically it hadn't happened.

James of Prolekult Films: 4:58

And there's a kind of immediacy in interpreting Capital Volume 3 when it gets published, so that people are kind of thinking this breakdown is coming quite soon And what he's arguing? well, it's not. It's empirically not. That isn't happening. The middle classes are growing. There's still an absolute and relative growth in the number of capitalists within Germany, within France, within England, and we have to observe that empirical data. Whether or not that means we have to revise the theory is a distinct question. But within the context of the time you can understand that Capital Volume 3 is this massively anticipated work that has taken over a decade since Marx died to complete. And it contains the thesis that capitalism will fall apart and collapse, which had been long awaited and indicated in the footnote in Volume 1. So people were really excited for this and really thought it was going to complete something and explain how short lived the system was going to be. And he compared that to empirical data and saw that it wasn't bearing out in that context.

James of Prolekult Films: 6:02

So there's a real reason why he goes into the theory and begins revising it.

James of Prolekult Films: 6:06

It's not some kind of evil way of trying to usurp Marx's title or anything like that. It's a way of trying to say, well, look, this hasn't borne out in our context And so we need to reorientate to what our party is actually practically doing. And he does that through an open campaign of trying to revise Marx. He doesn't shy away, doesn't slip things in. He says like we need to reevaluate these things quite directly and goes through systematically trying to do that. And that culminates in a book we now refer to as evolutionary socialism But at the time had a much wordier title the problems of socialism and the tasks of social democracy, i think. And yeah, so he's quite upfront about it and quite he gets a lot of support initially as well, which is quite important to recognize too. Like even Kautsky, who becomes his major theoretical opponent, actually approves of this process of revisionism as bringing the party in line with some concrete information and so on and so forth, there's a lot of value to it.

C. Derick Varn: 7:09

So one of the things that got me to take Bernstein more seriously was the realization that he had that the industrial proletariat as commonly understood at the time was not more than 50% of the population anywhere, and to the extent that you limit the proletariat to the industrial proletariat, that's been true for the entire 20th century, and what we've seen is the proletarianization of other priorly non-proletarian classes. By that I just mean they don't have productive capital and their wage earners And, famously, capital Volume 3 doesn't even really define proletariat. It stops right at the moment where it would. So there's that I wanted to ask you, though.

C. Derick Varn: 8:14

The inevitability of socialism thesis and the emissoration thesis are bug bears? Yes, and there are times where Marx undeniably gets some wrong. I mean, even to himself. He admits it to himself In letters. He's predicting an almost imminent breakdown in 1850. I've had an argument indirectly with Andrew Kleinman and his alcolytes that try to convince me that that's what Marx was saying in the letter, but it's pretty clear that it is, and a lot of you know a lot of Marxist humanists will still argue that breakdown theory is not actually the implication of crisis theory etc. And even people who were considered fairly orthodox breakdown theories, like like Henry Grossman are actually think they have to correct Marx. Yes, so what do you think Marxist actual opinion was on breakdown? Because I can't tell actually, going through With the caveats, we have a lot more text now than even Bernstein would have had access to.

James of Prolekult Films: 9:32

Yeah, absolutely So. I think my kind of view on this is that it's unfinished by either Marx or Engels. It's a necessity of the Marxist schema, for a few reasons though. So the first is that if we look at the concept of modes of production as kind of an operative category within Marxist thought as early as the manifesto, we are talking about something where is it has a defined duration where relations and means of production will come into a contract contradiction with each other. The development of the means of production comes in, is constrained by the relations of production, and therefore social systems have to break down.

James of Prolekult Films: 10:16

Now, that is very justifiable in a historical sense and indeed has played out with numerous different societies Well, throughout history, and different modes of production have all broken down up until capitalism. Basically, there is, i think, an essence. The way I interpret the, because I have quite an orthodox reading of breakdown theory in a lot of ways, but more recently I've been thinking about it in terms of kind of it's an object of long duration if we're going to take it seriously, just like the breakdown of feudalism was an object of long duration when we take it seriously.

C. Derick Varn: 10:53

It didn't take a few hundred years.

James of Prolekult Films: 10:55

Yeah, yeah, arguably 500 if, depending on who's kind of definition you go by, or I mean, i think the Nazi goes even further than that.

C. Derick Varn: 11:05

Well, arguably, for example, there's still feudal landlords and the British Isles, So yeah yeah, they're relying on ground rent in a very capitalistic way now.

James of Prolekult Films: 11:17

But yes, those are still the same families in a lot of instances. Yeah, winston Churchill's parents were aristocratic landowners, for example, and you've got that playing out in quite a few British politicians still. But I think it's one of those things where we have to look at value as simultaneously as a conceptual abstraction and a real abstraction. It's both and it can never not be both. So when we look at the conceptual abstraction which Marx develops through volume one, volume two and volume three, and Engels adds a lot of kind of notes on and so on and so forth, it's a logical kind of process which has certain laws that have to develop, and what that is is a conceptual proof that capital must break down at a certain point. What it isn't is a prediction on when or exactly what circumstances will really exist within that actual breakdown.

James of Prolekult Films: 12:14

And I think that's really important, because value as a real social relationship, as something that actually happens in the world, is very distinct from the ideal concept, and we have that distance of the ideal and the real in a lot of Marx and Engels's writing.

James of Prolekult Films: 12:33

So what Marx's offers us, i think, is these are the limits to the relation and these are the counter tendencies which can shore it up, as far as I can see within this schema so far, where I'm writing from in the late 1800s, and I can show that it has to break down.

James of Prolekult Films: 12:51

But how that will actually occur is going to look very different in different contexts and is going to involve more contradictions than simply an instant dissolving of the ability of capital to socially reproduce itself.

James of Prolekult Films: 13:05

And we can see that in a lot of ways now, like you look at a lot of like climate investments, for example, and like the capitalists who invest in things like carbon capture and the way that we're financializing nature and so on and so forth, they know that those are short term investment projects and they don't care. They simply get on with it, make what profit they can move on, and that's that is reproducing the capital relationship. It's doing it on an unstable basis. It's doing it on a really unstable basis that is known to everyone who's doing that But it still allows that reproduction and expansion of capital to happen, and so we have to understand that there's going to be. The point of that analysis to Marx is that it's this concept shows that capital is going to run into contradictions which make it harder and harder for capitalism to socially reproduce itself, but that social reproduction is a real thing and that's what we need to be looking at.

C. Derick Varn: 14:06

It makes sense to me. I mean, i am not a I'm a long-duray breakdown theorist. I don't think I famously don't think there's going to be one final crisis, for example, even though I do think the crisis is increased. I've also thought that the kind of modern economic, you know periodizations of capital itself are helpful in understanding like internal epicycles within capital, although epicycles and unfortunate term because epicycles are things from Paloma accounts But what I mean is like you can see a couple of business cycles, capital management operates it this way, but if we look at and we see this in the political organization of capital, but we also do see real profitability declines and stuff that's perfectly consistent with everything we saw and described in, you know, capital one through three, when also added theories of surplus value and parts of the Good address that Yeah, but it's interesting how those kind of work out right.

James of Prolekult Films: 15:18

So, like sectorally, we can see there is an acute over accumulation crisis in agriculture. That's going to be in. What that's going to actually mean depends on a lot of things, because it depends on how many of those farmers actually fold. It depends on whether or not they can be incorporated into monopolistic concerns that can still make profit, however thin on that over accumulation. It depends on environmental conditions quite a lot And it depends on whether or not there is a technological innovation which allows for a profitable cycle, which are all real things that we can't predict.

C. Derick Varn: 15:57

Like we can assert Maslow's law on the technological thing, but should, that will have its limits and it's getting to the Yeah, i mean, one of the things I have done that has made my more classically inclined Marxist friends a little uncomfortable is increasingly incorporating complexity theory and all this because I think the talk about capitalism as a totality is very useful. But sometimes we can see patterns that fit Marxist predictions sectionally, but we don't see them all at the same time everywhere, and that's that is a complication. But I guess, to take it back to Bernstein, you know Bernstein famously was involved in the party unification Congress, new Ingalls, new, new new Babel, new leave next. So you know, but definitely new, and he's there from the early days. I mean arguably he's there before Kowski.

James of Prolekult Films: 17:03

He's certainly closer to angles than Kowski. He was, angles is executive.

C. Derick Varn: 17:09

Right He. He also is part of the party unification Congress with the Los Allianz And this was backing the Eisen knockers. We all know that. You know, the Krakika, the Gerta print program, is not actually printed till far later for the sake of working class unity. Bernstein's involved in that. And one of the things that I have not loved about the way we teach the kind of straw man of the revisionist controversies is that a lot of this is left out. It's just a race from Bernstein's history. Why, you know why, is this such a flashpoint? I mean even now? I guess because the conclusions obviously are uncomfortable. And you know Luxembourg famous pamphlet, reformer revolutions pretty clearly aimed at Bernstein. But Why do we have trouble looking at the second international in, say, 1895, where this seemed like a reasonable debate to have?

James of Prolekult Films: 18:36

I think there's a lot of distancing that's gone on from the actual context and there's not a lot of work that goes into examining the context. Because I mean, part of the reason I wanted to write about this actually is that I think what we see now is revisionism is mobilized primarily as an insult to denounce people whose arguments you don't actually want to engage with, and that's the kind of primary use that it has on the contemporary left. Is that it's my orthodoxy is correct and everyone who disagrees with me is a revisionist in some capacity. And to preserve that political category, you can't then turn back and go. Well, these were reasonable debates in the period. They were interpreted as reasonable debates within the period, not just by Bernstein and his followers, but by Kowski and his followers too. They had huge implications on the second international. The result of the controversy locates the SPD as a firm authority on Marxism within the second international, which had been a wavering thing before these debates, partially because of these debates, and I think that that's a really uncomfortable thing. It also requires us to really go into the material basis and the fact that this was an inevitable confrontation that couldn't be shied away from within the way that Marxism was developing in that period. So we have here, in the kind of period that the revisionist debate actually begins to kind of shape up in the lead into that we have obviously the death of Engels in 1895, which leaves a sort of power vacuum in terms of who's the chief interpreter of Marxism. And that's partially what's at stake for both Kowski and Bernstein although reluctantly on both their parts, i think, is an attempt to claim that mantle as the authority, as well as a lot of social contradictions and problems within Germany that aren't really that well known and are quite complicated, which makes the way that this debate developed really important.

James of Prolekult Films: 20:42

So the SPD, i'm sure most people know, was the first mass Marxist party that had ever really existed, and that puts you in a lot of different positions simultaneously. It puts you in a position of international contest, because this is where French parties are forming, italian parties are forming, belgian parties are forming and everyone's kind of trying to define the policy that would come to be within the second international. And indeed there's a lot of suspicion, particularly on the Germans part, but also on the French part, about joining the organization because they didn't want to be dominated by people in another country and didn't want to have their practices and theory set by people in another country. So there's a very conscious need for theoretical consistency in order to be able to compete within the second international. To take that spot, which was inevitably what did end up happening in the end, the Germans went out and end up dictating French policy, keeping quite a lot of prominent figures in the French movement from ever-assuming office within the French Republic in that period, which is an uncomfortable fact to have to attribute to an orthodoxy that you want to nominally defend, at least as a political instrument. Then there's a lot of problems which come out of the conclusions of the debate, but might deal with them a little later. The social conditions in Germany really need to be understood.

James of Prolekult Films: 22:06

So the 1880s, which is the decade-prefacing these debates, is a really, really rapid period in capitalism's development across Europe and a really important period which sees the end of what some people refer to as the first globalization, what is probably better understood as a European free market with America. As tariffs are reintroduced by Germany onto goods, french tariffs go up again. England starts to consider introducing new tariffs in order to compete with the US, which can produce lower-cost goods in the face of rising demand. So that leads to quite a large expectation that there is going to be an international competition or development in that direction, which the socialist parties of all these countries need to prepare for. But it also comes alongside mass industrialization, particularly in Germany.

James of Prolekult Films: 22:54

We're talking about between 1870 and 1914, to give a kind of broad overview. Industrial production increases by output, increases by 500%. That leads to rapid urbanization, rapid masses of proletarian people forming which need to be incorporated within the Bismarckian Empire for that empire to survive in this period. And that's really important because that leads to a number of things. It leads to the growth of unions initially, which are different to the workers' associations that had previously existed, that had been more about professional standards and professional support to their members, and leads to the strike becoming a real tactic. And that's new, that's very new in this period and is not something that is very well understood yet, which is why we can sort of look at Luxembourg's view on the mass strike as actually an innovation.

James of Prolekult Films: 23:49

Then we also see that being incorporated largely within the SPD due to the anti-socialist legislation that's passed by Bismarck in the 1870s to the 1890s, which effectively bans all party activity, doesn't allow you to have meetings, doesn't allow you to have a local socialist association. Any politicians associated with the socialist movement can literally be expelled from the districts in which they live. And in the same period the Bismarck Empire institutes some reforms, some social security and so on and so forth. So it's trying to squeeze this movement At the same time. What that ends up doing is it leads to trade union suppression more than it leads to party suppression, which leads to the growth of the SPD inordinately, but primarily it's bureaucratic sectors. So primarily it's party bureaucracy, it's party administrative sectors and involves a lot of lawyers and professionals who join the party, who fundamentally become the social basis of both camps in the revisionist controversy. This is not a question that is being fought by grassroots trade union members a lot of the time. It's more and more fought among that administrative section And we also have with that some regional disparities.

James of Prolekult Films: 25:04

So southern German members within the SPD tend to lay members, tend to align with revisionism a lot more because they unlike the national government, which is run quite differently to how any other parliament in Europe is run in this period, in that you can be a member of the Reichstag but you can't propose legislation.

James of Prolekult Films: 25:29

When you're elected, your entire role within the Reichstag is to approve budgets and legislation passed by the imperial government, which is appointed by the chancellor, who is appointed by the emperor, and so real reforms not on the cards here.

James of Prolekult Films: 25:45

What is on the cards here is party building, alliances within that parliament to act as a basically as a lobby on the imperial government, and that's the only actual purpose of parliamentary delegates. So what that does. So that's the national framework. And then in southern Germany you have local government where people still can pass some policies within their local areas and still can engage in some kind of what we would understand more as reformism in an actual practical way, and so there's a divide between people who are largely within Prussia, in Germany, and people in the south, and orthodoxy ends up kind of having to get rid of the concerns of the southern German party members in order to reinstate itself and pursue the policy of proletarian isolationism that Kowtzky wants to pursue. So there's a lot of uncomfortable and concrete things that come up with revisionism, which actually do situate it as a social question and not just as a purity of doctrine question, which is how we like to talk about it on the left today.

C. Derick Varn: 26:53

So you know, the purity of doctrine question and the move towards Marxist or Marxism, a concept that I will probably never forgive Lukash for, to be honest, like I hold him personally accountable for that. But it seems to me in this time that we reread the revision of the debates partly from their results but also partly from the use of anti revisionism in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, like where it is purely. It's not even about orthodoxy of opinion, it's literally about fidelity to one period of one state's development. So that's a very different kind of question, still material, very much material, very much social. But it's different, it's fundamentally different And we read that back onto the Bernstein-Kowsky revisionist debates mainly because of a similarity in wording and, i guess, a deliberate attempt to link the two changes.

C. Derick Varn: 28:20

But you know, i've always found that somewhat I mean even before I was as well read on this as I am now somewhat questionable for the reasons why you say in context, but also because, particularly when you consider how little of Marx and Engels's overall output was even available at the time, it seems completely clear that the standard interpretation of Marx as believed in the 1890s was wrong.

C. Derick Varn: 29:04

Like you know, whether or not you think that as Marxist interpretation is another question, but it was wrong, like there was no final class of capitalism after the end of the long depression, and that has haunted Marxist multiple times. I mean, i think about the predictions by everybody from Trotsky to the Soviet Union, to left communists, that in the 1950s we were going to, that the war had stalled, the final collapse that was finally going to happen, and it never does So. To go back to the original context here, why, i guess? one question that one has asked, even the way it's talked about in terms of purity now, why doesn't this split the espadé, like the war votes did Like? why isn't that why this is not an occasion for a split?

James of Prolekult Films: 29:59

So I think the reasons for that is that there's a few reasons, the first of which is that a lot of the theory is not actually what the substance of the debate is about. So I think Bernstein is theoretically wrong. I think he has empirical reasons for believing what he believes, but I think he's theoretically wrong. But the practical question was about forming alliances within the Reichstag, whether or not that was right to do, whether or not we should pursue a policy of trying to ally with, say, christian parties that also opposed votes on, also opposed war credits on the invasion of France, for example, or whether or not we should pursue a pure policy of proletarian isolationism. The reason it ends up not splitting the party as thoroughly is that we are also dealing with a social basis of invested institutional interests in the party. People like to reduce this to like a class question, but I think we all know that class isn't the only thing that plays into political conflicts and is not the only ultimate interest. The long term interest of the class is not the only interests that figure for people within these debates, and so the basis of revisionism and the basis of the orthodoxy is largely derived from an inflated party administrative sector which does have dominance over the workers movement And it's split in a number of very strange ways. So the basis, the social basis of revisionism within the SPD is you have law practicing lawyers who who are still working within the Bismarckian Empire's courts in a professional capacity. But you are a journalist who work for the broader popular press, but not necessarily they'll write for the party press, but that's not their only kind of income, like the southern German members who are very resistant to the orthodoxy because of their ability to participate at a local level of government. And so you have a lot of different sectional interests that align around revisionism, that don't necessarily have to take the theoretical component of it that seriously, but it's a window into getting other objectives that they want. Similarly, around Kautsky you have a very uneasy alliance of people that provide the basis for the eventual victory of orthodoxy. So you have, on the one hand, people who are dedicated communists within the professional strata of the SPD, who who we would still interpret as like quite down the line Marxists, and those often are.

James of Prolekult Films: 32:44

So, for example, one of the largest sectors is lawyers, who only practice in the defense of the party membership. They don't do anything other than defend the party membership in court. That is their job, and so they're more likely to ally with the policy of proletarian isolation on a principled level, like believing in the theory and being more invested in it. But they are also allied with disbarred lawyers, so people who feel like the society had cast them out and weren't necessarily allied on proletarian isolationism on a, like, theoretical level as a principle. But we're simply doing it because that's the circumstance they'd ended up in And they wanted to have a bigger voice than the practicing lawyers within the party, the journalists.

James of Prolekult Films: 33:26

You have people who only write for the party press and are therefore more likely to go for a pure kind of Marxist thing, so that you can have more prominence within the party press than the people who also work with forward bourgeois newspapers in their view, and so you have a lot of different sectional interests playing off against each other who, whilst this is a stake on the things that they want, it's not an existential stake for their position within the party or an existential stake for their political project. At least it doesn't seem to be, and I think that is possibly why it doesn't result in such a big split, although I am. I do think that's a difficult question because it's also about unity needed in the second international and the ability whether or not the national presence of the German party is more important to them within the second international than the way that's achieved. So once the orthodoxy kind of debate wins out, the SPD takes an increasingly prominent role in the second international and so perhaps that role internationally is enough for these people and they don't need to split on the basis that they would lose that, even if their theoretical position has lost out.

James of Prolekult Films: 34:34

So I think there's a lot of different factors and none of them are really that clear cut. It's also kind of straightforwardly the SPD is the only vehicle going and if you're going to try and form something else you are going to be very unpopular. The SPD are very popular. They get in the year after they're unband and able to stand candidates. They get a fifth of the vote nationally, 35 seats in the Reichstag and over a million and a half 1.5 million votes. So like there's not really much possibility of doing anything else as well, which might explain that too.

C. Derick Varn: 35:11

So I guess the other question then is why? What are the ripple effects in socialist movements outside of Germany?

James of Prolekult Films: 35:23

So I mean, you see parallel processes to this playing out in France. Particularly Italy and Belgium are kind of the hotspots for this, where you have reform or revolution being posited as a question in those parties. Those are actually a lot more cut and dry, because those parliaments do allow you to propose legislation. In Italy, for example, there's a reactionary advance which would have seen the Italian Socialist Party completely banned unless they had made a parliamentary alliance and fought for legislation to maintain their legality. Similarly, in France, you have fights for universal suffrage taking precedent, and things like that. The consequence in the long term, though, is that you have the SPD demanding this kind of policy of proletarian isolationism within the second international, and so you have, like, quite prominent figures in France who can't assume political office without breaching their commitments to the second international, which I guess you could view as a positive thing if you are just completely opposed to parliamentary participation, but within the practical kind of constraints of the French movement in that period, i think that was a blow.

James of Prolekult Films: 36:38

Peter Netl, who is a new left theorist who wrote on this in the 60s, makes some really good points on the kind of way that this plays out, in that it kind of leads to a situation where is it, peter Netl? Sorry, it might be McClellan or it might. He was one of the theorists on this. Sorry in that it leads to a similar dynamic to the common turn imposing kind of the Russian party through the common turn, imposing disastrous policies on different parties in different times because it doesn't have a knowledge of the situation and it has that theoretical weight within the international.

C. Derick Varn: 37:26

So how are the initial responses to Bernstein's original work? How does that go Exactly?

James of Prolekult Films: 37:33

It takes a long time to form, like Bernstein. it's really bizarre because, like I, think this is quite hard to understand from our context. where you go, like I, have questions about value theory, you are immediately lambasted and denounced as a heretic, whereas back in this period it takes literally years for a sustained response to Bernstein. His articles are quite well received. Kautsky is even publishing these in his newspaper, the newspaper he edits in this time period. The book is well received to a point. Kautsky writes to Bernstein and says that you know, you've overthrown our philosophy, and that's positive. What matters is what you actually say is new, and that's what's going to determine my attitude toward it. So there's a long period of allowing this to land.

James of Prolekult Films: 38:28

People are annoyed about it to a degree within the theoretical leadership of the SPD, but they don't really launch a sustained response. They allow Bernstein to get his initial arguments out the door, include them as theoretical discussions and so on and so forth. That, in this period, has always been the attitude of the SPD, though, that there's a lot of freedom of expression within the party. in this period, one of the consequences of the revisionist controversy is that that ends from the 1910s on. That's one negative, disastrous problem, and it's part of the reason why Luxembourg and Karl Leibnacht end up having to be as radical in the split as they do. What it's generally received is a kind of like well, he's presenting empirical data, he's presenting problems. This is theoretically inconsistent. There's some back and forth, but there's no like denunciations or anything like that going on.

C. Derick Varn: 39:23

initially, Once the debate starts getting going? how does it affect the actual politics of the SPD during this period?

James of Prolekult Films: 39:41

Very little I think that's the core of it, right. The SPD was always kind of very divorced from parliamentary struggle. Anyway It would vote against war credits, but there's not much else that you can really do. It will vote against certain kind of imperial government policies. It will abstain on others. It won't enter into dialogue with other parties to form an alliance and refuses to do so all the time. That doesn't change.

James of Prolekult Films: 40:09

On the ground activities is mostly popular press. There is no theory relating organization to politics in this period that has not been really seriously written about and indeed isn't until Luxembourg and Lenin's interventions. Largely this is still support for unionism, support for strikes through a party press, through occasional demonstrations and then parliamentary representation and trying to again vote in the elections. Neither Kautzky nor Bernstein at any point thinks that there needs to be a complete abstinence from Bourgeois Parliament. Indeed, his view of socialism, even after Marxist orthodoxy is established, is that the socialists need a majority in parliament to enforce things. That needs to be such a sheer majority that they can just do it without any opposition or any kind of need of alliances, rather than an alliance electoral bloc kind of position.

C. Derick Varn: 41:13

So, interestingly, we can't really attribute this debate to the beginnings of the formation of the sort of socialist right within the Espereil.

James of Prolekult Films: 41:25

No, no, I don't think so.

C. Derick Varn: 41:29

Which is kind of my understanding too, but it's you, would think by the way, this is normally characterized that it was like the first step in that direction.

James of Prolekult Films: 41:39

Peter Nettle is.

James of Prolekult Films: 41:40

Peter Nettle this time argues that the split in socialism and the formation of the socialist right within the SPD is actually entirely contained within the orthodoxy camp, which is an interesting one. He argues that it's so. I went through before and I was saying there's a mismatch between those people who are sincerely committed to revolution as an ideological practice, like socialist lawyers or people who work exclusively for the party press on an ideological basis, and then those who are doing so because they're disbarred lawyers or they can't gain employment within the newspapers in the way that they used to after their socialist convictions are outed in public. And he argues that the right would turn forms of basis on those who were disbarred or those who were kind of cast out of their practices. And as crisis deepens in the lead up to the world wars, those people are needed again and they can be reincorporated within the German state, and so they are, and that leads them to kind of abandon this position in favor of kind of more support for, eventually, for the world war. But yeah, it's a complicated one, that's.

C. Derick Varn: 42:58

I mean, I think that actually feels pretty accurate to me when I look at the actual positions And I know when the United SP Day forms way later. I mean this is not part of this controversy, truly part of the 1914 controversy, that the revisionist are actually, you know, closer to the Zimmerald left than a lot of the more Orthodox, And so that makes sense as a process that would lead to that particular weird constellation, In addition to, you know, Bernstein's increasingly hesitant views on violence. How much does Bernstein's views on violence actually factor into the initial debates?

James of Prolekult Films: 43:52

Not terribly much. Again, it's mostly argued at the level of value theory and breakdown theory. There are some aside elements, but he does view that this okay. So it's not that it doesn't feature, it's that he is primarily arguing that a harmonious development to socialism is possible rather than the violence of the masses of Horrent. He is arguing that it is possible to move toward socialism through capitalist development And in his view that is happening.

James of Prolekult Films: 44:23

So he's his argument for greater democratic incorporation of the proletariat And he doesn't just mean in like suffrage as a set, because that's already broadly been achieved in Germany for men at least over 25. He's arguing in terms of incorporation into German civil society, is arguing interpretation into kind of different kind of cultural aspects of German society. He's arguing that that happening is a way of kind of harmoniously developing towards socialism as things develop and that particularly the expanding middle strata, in his view, are going to side with the workers and that can lead to a democratic imposition of socialism, which he also views as the real movement of capitalism. He doesn't view any. He doesn't basically view class antagonism and class polarization is happening, and so it's. This opens the possibility of a transition without violence. Whether or not violence is desirable or not doesn't really enter into the argument because it's not argued in a moral register a lot of the time.

C. Derick Varn: 45:30

Hmm, so how does this actually lead to the formation of we've already kind of said it doesn't lead to the formation of these, the socialist right, but we do. It does seem crucial and it can kind of consolidation of a socialist communist left and a Marxist socialist center. How, how does that happen? Like it doesn't seem to be an immediate result of the debate. So how does it happen?

James of Prolekult Films: 46:10

So I mean, it's not. It's it's kind of flows from the debate but isn't resolved, or kind of entering into the debate itself. So it flows out of the resolutions. So in a large sense, the resolution as I've said, the resolution of the orthodoxy debate was necessary for the SPD to function within the second international as a kind of consolidated ideological block that could assert itself. That's really important because the lesson learned is that this kind of culture of freedom of criticism within the SPD is gradually eroded as other problems form.

James of Prolekult Films: 46:47

And so by the 1910s you start to get that being shut down, political debates within the SPD being shut down, which is part of the reason why the kind of Zimmerwald left feels that need to break and why we get that process happening. And then the Marxist center kind of rests upon the interpretation of the orthodoxy, but without any way of relating it to practice. So they kind of sit there quite contentedly thinking the breakdown is going to be inevitable and not needing to really debate these things anymore, whilst also kind of trying to kind of manage political activity in the same way that they were, which leads to increasing parliamentary participation, reintegration into the bourgeois state and so on and so forth, as crisis tendencies bite, which then also ultimately leads to kind of that kind of turn toward a kind of socialist center. I think Right.

C. Derick Varn: 47:47

And I guess the division later on in the socialist center being like helping us, is Kowski who maintains breakdown theory later.

James of Prolekult Films: 47:56

Sort of It's an interesting contradiction within Kowski, because I think his theory of ultra imperialism kind of actually ends up going against breakdown theory. Me too.

C. Derick Varn: 48:06

We actually that that? I've never been able to square that because his theory of ultra imperialism, while ultimately incorrect for the time period it's written for, actually does seem correct for first World War, two capitalist world. It also doesn't square with his insistence on breakdown theory and is the base with Hilferton. So I mean it could just be.

James of Prolekult Films: 48:31

I mean I can chalk it up the Kowski's inconsistent, but I think the turn really comes in 1912 for Kowski, i think, with the published, with Hilferding's finance capital and a few other texts coming out around that time The turn really starts to happen then, because of his view that these cartels are essentially creating greater demand and therefore having because he views that this is going to have to all come together as an ultra imperialism or like ruin is ahead for all the capitalists, then I guess you can square that circle by seeing he thinks that either they can put it off forever by entering into this unholy ultra imperialist alliance or they can break down, and he's sort of posing it as an ultimate counter tendency. I think maybe that might be how you could theoretically square that circle.

C. Derick Varn: 49:23

One of the interesting structural similarities that we can see, though, from from both these debates the evolution versus breakdown debate is that both at least two thirds of the factions of the of the SP day think that socialism is going to happen regardless. They differ on how that regardless is going to happen, but it actually doesn't have any immediate implications for political life.

James of Prolekult Films: 49:54

No, there's no tactical conjecture whatsoever within those kind of things, other than do we make alliances within the Reichstag? That's the hinge of the whole whole issue, really, and whilst that does have some like tactical implications, i don't think that that's enough to like. It's not a strategy, right, it's a do we or don't we question. It's not a how do we work towards this? And indeed that's kind of where Luxembourg's kind of view of the mass strikes stimulating organization has to come from, is because she, her kind of intervention, is in kind of viewing this and saying that, while there is no relationship between theory and practice, our organization exists, it's not really strong, but what is it for? And that that ends up being like a really important distinction.

C. Derick Varn: 50:43

Yeah, and this was always an irony to me about, like the 50s, revisionist controversies which, again, we've already said are completely different but frame themselves in this debate for probably historical reasons.

C. Derick Varn: 50:55

Yeah, the anti-revisionist, after they introduced a popular front, actually do the political implications of the evolutionary socialist, but for completely different reasons. Right, it's their logic's different. But the actual effects on policy, you know, that's when you have coalitions with bourgeois parties with self-censorship involved, which is, you know, radically different than, say, the early Third International or even the second International's positions on this until the 1920s. And I guess one of the things that I find interesting about this is, i agree with you that this conflict is inevitable, you know, looking at the counter tendencies both in the espadés historical moment and in, like, the unfinished nature of Marx's work at that time. So you know from both, you know from both standpoints. It seems to me the irony of this is how little political implications it has, even though it seems like it would have massive amounts of political implications because it totally changes your parliamentary strategy. But it ultimately kind of just, doesn't It?

James of Prolekult Films: 52:24

has greater political implications for the struggles that come next within the espadés than it does for those that actually it enters into. I think is the way of looking at it that I would take.

C. Derick Varn: 52:35

Okay, so I guess that gives us to the question What are the struggles that come next that actually make this matter? that don't seem to matter when they're actually having these debates.

James of Prolekult Films: 52:45

So I mean the fundamental one is the failure to. So what Bernstein is doing with revisionism is attempting to realign the party's theoretical outlook with what it's actually practically doing. Right, that is actually. There's a degree of honesty within that that I think is absent in Kowtzki's defense of orthodoxy. Kowtzki at no point attempts to relate his theory to any form of action other than the maintenance of a proletarian isolationist position within the Reichstag and other than his intent to kind of maintain the espadés domination in both the second international and within over the unions within Germany. That has huge implications for the development of the Zimmerwald left and for the development of particularly the KPD in Germany and the way in which this comes about as a split between Luxembourg and Karl Leibnecks faction and the espadés, because it not only shuts down discussion but also this allows that kind of conversation because it's essentially already been had right. If Bernstein was attempting to root the theory in the organisation because I think that is ostensibly what he was attempting to do to make the effort program consistent, then what you end up with is a position where Luxembourg's attempting to relate theory to action and attempting to relate that to extra parliamentary means, which is not what the implications of the orthodoxy suggests. They suggest maintaining a position within parliament just without actually doing any kind of alliance building or anything like that, and that leads to a continued kind of defensive culture within the party's orthodoxy, a continued defensive culture within its spheres of debate. There's a lot of leadership, manipulation of debates in terms of how they're framed at congresses, even though there is freedom of expression. But once that ends up going away, what you end up with is an increasingly like a party culture which doesn't want to have debate because of the embarrassments that it's suffered in the revisionist controversy from people looking in, because of the international context, because of all these kind of difficult questions, and that really figures. It's a limp orthodoxy that has absolutely nothing to do with practical struggle.

James of Prolekult Films: 54:59

Essentially And that is where you get Luxembourg coming in and those splits really mattering It's also where you get the split between Lenin and Kowtzki really mattering is over the theory of organisation and the theory of imperialism. It's also when you get the fundamental split in the socialist movement, which is defined in various different ways, as a split between the labour aristocracy and the workers or as a split between the communists and the social democrats, really coming to matter, because both. All of those camps were contained within the orthodoxy, but the orthodoxy kind of smuggled that through, without those distinctions actually being visible and those debates ever having to matter. So what you have is you have a false unity on the supporters of the Marxist orthodoxy within the SPD, which smothers up the actual contradictions in their positions and their view of what an orthodoxy is, at the expense of having to argue with something against revisionism, basically. So the argument against revisionism clouds these other splits.

C. Derick Varn: 55:58

So when it actually does hit and the war bonds, vote it kind of. It doesn't just split things two ways, the classical communists versus the socialist way, but really three. And because it was suppressed, this was not really seen.

James of Prolekult Films: 56:12

Yeah, yeah, I would say so.

James of Prolekult Films: 56:14

Yeah, i think that's the important way of looking at it. Peter Nettle's argument on institutional interest is one way of looking at it And I think that's a really useful way because it situates I think there's a lesson there that like these, even like this, what we normally view as kind of theoretical jousting, always does have social stakes. Or it wouldn't engage so many people, And what reasons they're involved in those struggles are often very diverse and can't just be broken down into you're a worker, you're a labor aristocrat, you're you know this, that the other. It's about where people are located within the institutions and it's about the actual stakes of those positions.

C. Derick Varn: 56:56

So, going beyond the immediate implications in Germany and in the you know, the eventual fallout of the of the SP Day, like perpetually between, say, 1914 and the fascist takeover which you just see the SP Day continuing to fracture, what are the longer term effects of this debate? I know, and I don't mean the way we talk about it, i mean what are the kind of like the unseen implications of this debate?

James of Prolekult Films: 57:41

So I think there's quite a lot of them. So it's not just how we talk about the debate, It's about the categories that makes functional within the way that Marxist criticism works. So we have a view, I think partially as a result of this, Also, I think as a result of the way this plays out in the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Khomenchivik split as well. But we have a view of orthodoxy or heretics. Basically, which plays out again and again and again through the Marxist tradition is you can, you are essentially faced with the choice of being either following an orthodoxy or being a heretic if you're in any social context that matters. That is the position that confronts the Marxist. I think a lot of the time Now in our context that's much limper And that's something that I really wanted to write about this for is to talk about how real tendency formation matters in comparison to the contemporary left in in Western Europe and in Northern America. But that's perhaps getting ahead of ourselves.

James of Prolekult Films: 58:46

The other ones are that as kind of consequence of that, we see a kind of I think Luxembourg is right in her context of reform, of revolution. I think it was correct for her to write in that way But the kind of binary split between those two things, reform and revolution. That is consequential both of this split and of the latest split within the SPD, is a really detrimental one within the kind of way that the movement's literature has shaped, in a way that the movement's a lot of criticism functions, because in reality it's, it's always going to be both to a certain degree And you can't artificially separate those things out. Whenever we're fighting a union struggle, we are fighting for some kind of reform. It's some level with, either with within kind of a struggle. Sense And revolution is a long term project which is not simply kind of reducible to what position you take in relation to reforms. Rejecting parliament does not mean that you are going to lead a revolutionary movement, for example.

C. Derick Varn: 59:51

And generally it actually doesn't mean that at all.

James of Prolekult Films: 59:54

Yeah, no quite.

C. Derick Varn: 59:59

And you know, even people who cite the Bolsheviks for this have to basically Periodize the Bolsheviks in a way that excludes, like I don't know, most of their actual history before 1921. You know, even for the Bolsheviks, whether or not they engaged in parliamentary activity, that was, that was a tactical question and shifted constantly. It wasn't, it wasn't a theoretical or principal one.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:00:28

I think it was. Oh God, no, no, you think it also. I think also this kind of the way this debate shapes has some really bad implications for certain elements of Marxist theory. So breakdown theory becomes a curiosity often relegated to the margins of the Marxist movement. From this moment on, like Grossman is one of the only serious writers on breakdown theory for a long time after this debate, and that is a problem that continues to happen. This is like, whilst we have a lot of people who will declare the breakdown is now, it's inevitable, we don't have a lot of people actually examining the theory, and I think that is a consequence of this, because it becomes a sort of embarrassing thing. We you know everyone will declare the final breakdowns here, and when they're when they're wrong, they'll just quickly shelve it away, much like the SPD, which is a recurring habit within the Marxist tendency.

C. Derick Varn: 1:01:25

It makes us look like millennialist Christians. Yeah, yeah, so that that's. I mean that's that is kind of a fundamental irony of this is is both the reformer revolution false binary emerges And the tendency to both maintain breakdown theory but not actually even try to explain what you mean by it emerges And I don't think people realize that that's actually important. For other debates, like imperialism is related to breakdown theory. The third period is related to breakdown theory. Multi polarity debates, now Yep, related to breakdown theory which, although the multi polarity base related to breakdown theory, really pain me because the other sides at least one, i mean, even if you consider bricks altogether. One thing which I don't at least three out of five of those letters are capitalist nations. So it's not, but even the reformer revolutionary.

C. Derick Varn: 1:02:47

When I was talking, i did a show the other day about Vietnamese socialism And I was like it's interesting to me that Ho Chi Minh thought is like never been popular on the Western left at all Because it's like somewhat concessionary to the Western left, actually like an official Ho Chi Minh thought after, i think, 1991, they're like, yeah, we have to acknowledge the actual, you know, bourgeois, revolutionary political philosophy of the United, of the US and France, even though they were colonial occupiers, like and you know they actually have had to do both revolutionary. I mean undeniably the Vietnam, the anti, the anti colonial and social development project. The Vietnam was a revolutionary process but also highly reformist in their orientation, and this is also, i mean, it's true for the, for the Bolsheviks to. I mean in regards to USSR, you go through like periods of marketization and relative marketization and market reform are nearly constant actually, as attention there So, even though it never looks truly like a capitalist market, but that happens there too.

C. Derick Varn: 1:04:07

So I just this seems to just, you know, lead people to come up with stuff. And by the time you get to my my, i don't I don't actually hate Lukash altogether as a theorist, but I do hate this by the time you get to Lukash making his circular theory of, of Orthodox Marxism, where Orthodox Marxism is whatever the working class does and by the working class we mean either the Soviets are later the party And there's no even content to it. It actually removes debate or development to court. You can't talk about development meaningfully anymore. There is no theoretical development.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:04:45

Yeah which is the circumstance we're now in on the Western, the Western European and North American left, is you can't talk about those things. It's. it's all contained within these kind of static categories of are you a reformist or are you a revolutionist, are you a breakdown theorist or a revisionist, none of which has any real content beyond sound and theory, if that actually Yeah, i was about to say I mean, when we like one of the things I will say about quote reformist socialists now is they're not even reformist, so you know it's.

C. Derick Varn: 1:05:29

It's something that I think you know I live a lot with is like we're we're calling these people reformists. Don't install reformists that bad, like like I'm not one, but but like they had a historical mission and and a project and a goal. I don't know that we do.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:05:50

I mean it's quite telling that, like the reformists in Britain, for example, still haven't managed to fulfill the last demand of the charists. Right, you know one one year parliament and then we vote on you again to make sure you can get out. Like you know, like it's. Yeah, there's a lot of different tendencies within reformism that are really admirable And there's a lot of ambitions in reformism that are really admirable. At certain points I don't agree with it, but I think revolution is the way forward. But that doesn't mean you can just dismiss your political opponents because you've assigned a word to them. But yeah, and also yes, the the present strain of quote unquote, reformists are probably better term mediationists, maybe.

C. Derick Varn: 1:06:32

Yeah, Yeah, i think they're media might even turn them accommodationists, but which is real mean. But that's like when I get mad at Jacob in magazine and call it gerund, and then I get really mad at Jacob in magazine and I call it or leanest. But you know, no one gets my French Revolution jokes. So the one of the things I can say about this is I end up feeling that Bernstein is a sincerely tragic figure And I end up more frustrated with Kalski. Like I get, like I'm a big pusher of like the linen Kalski divide is always overstated. There's a huge misrepresentation there. But I also, the more I've learned about this and the more I've learned about Kalski concessions later that I've just been like you know, it would have been a lot better if you actually tried to deduce any political implications what you were actually doing. Yeah, because you don't seem to do that, and when you do, it's usually after the fact, so it's normally after someone else has proposed it as well.

C. Derick Varn: 1:07:58

Yeah, it's it. it becomes very frustrating to me the more I deal with it. At the same time, I think it forces the Communist left and this is before we can talk about like left communist proper our left oppositionist and I always have to remind my audience those are not the same thing But it kind of forces them into a bunch of cul-de-sacs too, I think.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:08:36

Hmm, depends which communists we're talking about, i think.

C. Derick Varn: 1:08:39

Well, i mean obviously not Bardegas, because I don't even really know why they're in the Infestyle Disorder book, but like with Councilists, because Councilists become more and more entrancient on everything, yeah, they become entran-. I mean like, yeah, the national debates, i kind of, you know, i get Panicook's point, but when you start talking about like we're not even going to work with unions, Mm-hmm. That and that seems to be out of. We can make no concession to evolutionaryism, because that will be a concession of working class autonomy.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:09:18

And it's also a conflation, i think, of how to put this. It's a conflation of theory and practical activity. That happens through these debates as well. So this is an entirely practical question that's argued theoretically. That then becomes a tenor that is adopted throughout the rest of the Marxist movement's history, where we argue things theoretically when we're actually talking about something eminently practical, and that's a problem that happens.

C. Derick Varn: 1:09:45

Except when we're not.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:09:46

Except when we're not Right.

C. Derick Varn: 1:09:49

I mean, one of the things with left communists is that, at least in the Dutch case, after saying the 1920s, they really aren't in a position to be eminently practical And so that kind of removes it does remove it totally through a theoretical realm. Yeah, And I think that's. You know, that may be part of what's going on. I don't know. It's hard to say what's going on in the West, particularly when we have to talk about the Anglo sphere, but like the American tradition and the British tradition are so extremely different, I think I think they are too.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:10:32

Yes, i think we are fooled by a common language. Yes, yes, there's a persistent anger of mine, actually, because there's been, within the time I've been on the left, even a persistent Americanization of British politics, where frameworks from the US are adopted without any kind of critical thought put into the substance whatsoever.

C. Derick Varn: 1:10:58

I have noticed that and it's been an irony to me because I'm like we care less and less about you. Why are you adopting our politics? I mean including on the left, like for most of my adulthood, the American left, particularly the Trotskis left, but in even the Social Democratic left, looked to Britain for its primary tax force, intellectual leaders, etc. Even in the editorship of, say, the New Left Review, there has been a shift from Britain to the States.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:11:33

Yep.

C. Derick Varn: 1:11:36

But we read it as if we have a common tradition And my argument is generally like no, the hell, we don't Not at all.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:11:47

I mean, like this is something that kind of again comes up in like the early revisionist debate, is that a lot of people who you're talking, who were talking about it, kind of say that like there's a continental European tradition and Russia and Britain are outside of it because they're completely different contexts And to a degree I think that's true, right, i think Russia it's very obviously true.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:12:08

Britain it becomes a little slippery because Bernstein's obviously inspired by the Fabians in some ways and marginalists theorists from England as well, when he when he goes to London in his exile. But I think there's there is a very specific tradition in Britain that is hard to understand unless you kind of live here or have studied it in some depth, where these, these ideas and the way they play out just don't actually have that much relevance either. When we look at the reform or revolution question as it's been adopted in in these kind of debates, either through the revisionist debate or the kind of straightforward reform versus revolution debates in the early second international, that wasn't happening in Britain. What was happening was very, very different with the formation of the Labour Party, and how that's understood is really hard to articulate sometimes.

C. Derick Varn: 1:12:59

Right And in the American tradition, there's never a Labour Party. In fact, laws are passed to make sure it never happens. Yeah, and so you know, i mean it isn't an irony, you know. My other favorite irony is that, despite the fact that I consider like the socialist party of America was in some ways more right wing than the, than the early Labour Party, we voted the right way On more credits. Yeah, Just you know, and our guy went into prison for it. So it's, it's, it's, it's always been like. You know, when people say there's no left in America, it's actually because it's been buried. But I think that's that right now leads us to a position, and I'm also just gonna you want to talk about imminent real political things. Let's be honest, the defeat of Corbinism is also part of why and but the Americanization of politics generally, james, seems to be a worldwide phenomenon.

C. Derick Varn: 1:14:17

Yeah, yeah, definitely With the exception of Russia, china and and maybe India, like it's a pretty big exception. still It's not just even a European thing?

James of Prolekult Films: 1:14:32

No, it's. it certainly extends beyond Europe. I mean, like Korea is a very clear example, south Korea.

C. Derick Varn: 1:14:39

Absolutely. I live through it. It's absolutely more and more like the United States. In fact, it presages things that happen in the United States.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:14:50

It does. Yeah, japan does as well, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a difficult one to kind of. Yeah, there's a whole scope of things to talk about there.

C. Derick Varn: 1:15:03

Yeah, You know, and I think it's funny because for also most of the US history until very recently, we have been in many ways, since the subsubption of our left into the Democratic Party, through the popular front and through a very it's not just a popular front When I say that, it makes it sound like it was just ideological also the decline of sharecropping, divisions within the civil rights movement, our own racial history, etc. There has been We've never really had anything other than play acting the reformer revolution debates like until very relatively recently. So we've had revolutionist parties. I mean, they were very arguably. Max Elbaum points out that if you combined all the left factions in America in the late 60s and early 70s, you would have had over a million people, but they were all adopting ideologies that were with the exception of some of the American trotskyist actually, who are fairly indigenous All adopting ideologies that were determined by nations outside of the United States which is which I think again, that that kind of is a consequence of the orthodoxy revisionism debate in a very indirect, long winded way.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:16:38

There is a way in which, in establishing an orthodoxy, not only within a single party, but setting the precedent that the international establishes an orthodoxy then leads to the way in which quote unquote Leninism spreads, leads to the way in which Maoism spreads, leads to the way in which trotskyism spreads, as this kind of pseudo internationalist thing which is often actually derived from very particular conditions, and what we end up with when we kind of put all of these things together is a smorgasbord of orthodoxies which don't relate to any real social conditions, but the left continues to pluck from a hat.

C. Derick Varn: 1:17:21

And so, since it becomes more and more removed from any real struggle, it becomes less and less relevant to any real struggle.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:17:27

It becomes self-deluding ultimately.

C. Derick Varn: 1:17:31

Yeah, i mean leftist self-delusion. I mean it's interesting, right? I mean in some ways that's in a weird way, this insistence on Marxist orthodoxy actually regresses you back to something like utopian socialism.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:17:46

Yeah, absolutely does. You know, there's the old reactionary criticism of Marxist as kind of having a scripture, and I don't think that's true when you actually read the texts and interpret them, for what they are, which is their intent, is like, what you can get out of them is analytical tools, approaches to the world, ways of viewing social struggle, ultimate objectives perhaps, perhaps some kind of way of getting there, and a critique of capitalism that I still think is unmatched. But what you don't get really is a how to paint by numbers guide to building an orthodoxy, building an ideology and building a practical tools necessary for that. And that's a fundamental contradiction within Marxism. that I think, is the fundamental contradiction which leads to the orthodoxy revisionism debate in a lot of ways, is that Marxism simultaneously posits itself as a scientific method of viewing the world, a scientific method of inquiry and a scientific method of understanding phenomena in the real world.

C. Derick Varn: 1:18:46

And we have a debate about orthodoxy, pardon, then we have a debate about orthodoxy.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:18:54

That's the second position, though, is that it also posits itself as a mass ideological project, and those two things are not compatible a lot of the time.

C. Derick Varn: 1:19:06

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, i would agree with that, which is not to say that's not to say that, like any ideal set doesn't have Darwinism, for example, There wasn't Darwinist or Xeroxie, and then, but I don't know, not to get all Stephen J Gouldy on things, but if we were, if Marxism was still living a scientific tradition, then then the orthodoxy question would eventually become irrelevant by actual struggles and actual research and political programs. That were just clear. And it puts you and I in a weird situation, actually, because I feel like I'm defending the guy who I think is also historically wrong, yes, but at least he was asking the right questions. When I think about why Bernstein was asking these questions, it feels fundamentally honest to me, even if they get conclusions wrong.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:20:05

I think it's, because it's to me it's yeah, so we are kind of in that position.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:20:09

But what we're really what I'm kind of think we should frame it as the defense has his, his, his right to be able to make those points and have that line of inquiry, because even being wrong within a theoretical sense is always useful, because you highlight a real question.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:20:23

if it's a real like, if it's an actually worthwhile inquiry, if those are worthwhile questions that are worth debating, then you do highlight something real, even if you do it in the wrong way. And, like Bernstein was highlighting real questions in the sense that he was highlighting the practical concerns of the SPD as it was constituted And what then we saw was the elapsed into inaction ultimately, and there was a different critique that could have been made that Luxembourg and Lennon end up making in a very antagonistic way because they have to. But if that had not been the case and if there had not been this kind of need to have it as a mass political project upfront, before you'd sorted out this ideological problem, then that would be in different state of affairs, i think. But ultimately that's kind of what ended up happening.

C. Derick Varn: 1:21:15

Third periodism, as pay days fall up, but not for the reasons why traditionally thought.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:21:21

Yeah, yeah, that way we get to the same conclusion.

C. Derick Varn: 1:21:30

Yeah, i think this is. this is very interesting and I think it's very interesting now in the context of. This is not directly related, but I wanted to maybe, since you're back on the pond How bad is it for the British Marxist left right now? because I get the feeling that, like, the atmosphere there is very different than the atmosphere here.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:21:56

Well, i can only speak from my context.

C. Derick Varn: 1:21:59

I don't know how bad it is in the US, so I can't make it actually kind of better for us than it's ever been, but that's actually been bad in and of itself.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:22:08

Okay, it's horrific in Britain. So I mean, the situation is as such that we what we've seen is occasional expressions of, like, serious dissent, through the kill the bill protest movement, for example, which, whilst I had a lot of problems with it In some ways in terms of its orientation, in that I think it made it about the left rather than about the right to protest per se, and particularly about police violence toward women, which was the inciting kind of moment of that movement Still did a lot of things and still was probably like the most positive development that there has been on the British left in a long time. It got a lot of sects who wouldn't normally talk to each other talking again, which is is something right like, but it is since that sort of dissolved. What we're seeing is really in Coate in every direction. There are some people who are still campaigning on very limited issues, like There's still a lot of disabled people's organizations, migrant solidarity organizations, and like trans rights organizations and women's rights organizations who are doing good work, but beyond that it's just absolutely nothing And it's really hard to know what direction to take.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:23:35

Within the Labour Party, that has been a practical severance which I have. I have been and still maintain that the Labour Party has always been bad for the British left. I'm actually very much on Sylvia Pankhurst side in that initial ultra leftism debate because not because I think she was right on principle, i think she was wrong on principle about parliamentary participation.

C. Derick Varn: 1:23:56

I just think Lenin was right about the Labour Party.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:24:04

I'm very much. She had been in a 10 year relationship with Kea Hardy at that point as well, which she knew the in a machinations incredibly well. Right like this is not an uninformed woman, and so you know. With that said, the dissolution of social democracy within the Labour Party is probably the single most developed dangerous development we've seen in a long time. The defeat of Corbyn is an instituted, a horrific, reactionary turn. Kea Stammer is one of the most unprincipled politicians in the world and one of the most dangerous politicians, i think, in Britain, and at the same time, we have the Conservatives advancing ever more reactionary legislation with not very much in the way to stop them, apart from the House of Lords, which, when the House of Lords is the last line of defense, you are fucked.

C. Derick Varn: 1:24:58

So for a British listeners, the American situation, which I'm probably sure you're tired of hearing about is, is both similar and different. We have an organized left in a way we just haven't had forever, but they've actually achieved less than nothing. So that's at least beyond, say, the municipal many or your level, like they do have some effect in cities. But, and that's been both weirdly disillusioning, because on one hand, we have more numbers than we've had probably since the 70s And on the other hand and it's coherent and sex, who have hated each other for forever, are now talking And we're having we're having real theoretical debates that aren't just based on play, acting historical positions of other places.

C. Derick Varn: 1:25:50

However, we are also more wedded to the Democratic Party than before, even more wedded to the Democratic Party than before, and we have a lot of apologists emerging for Bidenism which, just because Biden has not taken as strident any liberal tone as, say, early Obama, are the Clinton administration. People have assumed that there was a neo progressivism emerging that there is just no evidence for. And you know, i think we kind of are in different positions, where we are in a phase of of ineffectiveness but growth it seems like, you know, britain is in a different phase, although it's kind of sad in another way, because you guys are having labor militancy that we haven't seen since the 70s in response to austerity, and yet the left seems to not really be there.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:26:54

To a degree It's a difficult one because in a lot of ways that labor militancy has been there. There are some sects that are doing good work, who will continue to do good work, but they do it as the unions rather than as the sect. they'll just report it to the sect, which is fine and in many ways I think is actually healthier. But there is a huge problem with that wave of militancy in the sense that so take the RMT, which was kind of the a bit of an ideological breakthrough for the workers movement, not the socialist movement. the workers movement distinctly And we saw Michelin to is probably the only fighting union leader we've had in, apart from Bob Crow, who was also the head of the RMT before Michelin in a long long, long time.

C. Derick Varn: 1:27:47

I heard of Michelin in America, so that says something. I don't say something.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:27:52

He was good with the media as well. He knew how to play that game And but not in a concessionary way, in a way where he would just get his point across and leave And was antagonistic with them in a way that I think is Corbyn really could have benefited from himself. But what we do see is that, unfortunately, the RMT was initially campaigning for below inflation pay rises. They knew there were below inflation pay rises. It's. It's not. It's militant, but it's. It's not building a worker's stake. It's defending partial part. It's a partial defense of what's being lost. So it's not.

C. Derick Varn: 1:28:34

It's not as victorious as it appears on the surface, i think this is been my interpretation, but also you must like we should go ahead and caveat that I am one of the most seemingly cynical people on the US left, but I have felt like what I've been seeing from Britain is real militancy but it's real militancy coming from utter defensiveness and losing, yeah.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:29:03

Yeah, i think that is an honest assessment of the situation.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:29:08

Again, i think I would probably fill fill the position of one of the most cynical voices on the British left, but you know that is that is really seemingly cynical, that it that does seem to be the case. We also have to kind of set this alongside like the migrant situation in Britain is getting like deeply scary. We're getting to a point where people are going to be, if the government gets its go ahead, which it looks like it will people are going to be put on barges, slavery protections, modern slavery protections are going to be withdrawn for for any migrant essentially, which is obviously in breach of the European Court of Human Rights, which is entirely the point of it. So we're getting to a point where the Conservative Party feels confident enough in its, in its, in its electoral dominance and its support within Parliament and its support within the social sphere, even after the embarrassment of Johnsonism, that it sincerely thinks it can write a new social contract for Britain in this moment of weakness for the British left. So that's, that's very, very dangerous.

C. Derick Varn: 1:30:18

And that's not both of you guys becoming. No, it's not actually interesting. We have a bonus problem You don't, You can't keep leaders to save your life The I mean. But that that that's been what's amazing to me. I'm like, well, I've been watching 10 years of Tory leaders just go down in flames and some new, weirdo, bizarro factional Tories emerges. You know it's and yet Labour can't seemingly do anything about that, which is which is kind of amazing. I mean, like that that structurally is not possible in the US.

C. Derick Varn: 1:31:00

Although this may be an argument, one of the most basic things about the differences between strategies between the US and anywhere in Europe is we're not a parliamentary system, which means all the language like we're talking about United Front versus popular front versus whatever. I'm like, well, all those strategies can only analogously apply at best here. Yeah, And, but we do actually have change. It kind of has to change, Whereas you guys, like you, can have a new leader emerge to replace someone within the same party and we kind of can't do that. Like the other party will get a chance when that happens.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:31:49

It's a very I mean, we've gone through what is it now Like six, yeah, i mean, since the last election, since 2019 is three, so that's three prime ministers, the only one of which was voted for So that's like by anyone other than the Tory party membership, which is like absurd proposition and should like be enough to have frankly seen the rise in some kind of organized politics. I think like it says a lot to the state of the British left that that isn't a coherent challenge to that, because they have been at like ideologically. Liz Truss was one of the weakest prime ministers well, the weakest prime minister in British history. She absolutely destroyed herself within two weeks and was somehow also the person to preside over the Queen's funeral, which is such a pertinent symbol of national decay for British people. The fact that we didn't manage to launch anything in that period, even if it was just like a short-lived protest movement, is damning. It's really damning.

C. Derick Varn: 1:33:06

Not to continue slagging on Britain, although I must admit to you, James, I like slagging on Britain.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:33:13

Everyone does including.

C. Derick Varn: 1:33:14

Britain. I know it's one of the few things I like about the Britain, so no, No, in all seriousness, it seems to be particularly the way a lot of people convinced themselves what Corbinism was the utter defeat of. That seems hard for us to understand. And yet this is the same time where your government seems dead set on, i guess, to spite continental Europe, on making itself an economic equivalent to a medium tier Latin American nation. I mean, the economic prognosis for Britain is real bad. Yeah, real bad. Like we don't like the poverty you're dealing with in the UK right now is worse than anywhere in the United States, which and we, are one of the most uneven societies that exist. So like that's bad news.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:34:24

I think it's a belated lesson in how parasitic Britain is as a nation. An imperialist nation Like we are talking orders beyond what like the US. So yeah, people, you know it's correct that US imperialism does rely on the rest of the world for its wealth, right.

C. Derick Varn: 1:34:44

Yeah, but would you actually produce stuff?

James of Prolekult Films: 1:34:46

Yeah, But the degree of that parasiticism in the US is nothing compared to Britain, right, Like we're talking that Britain exports in capital, at the last count, 560% of its GDP, which is absolutely insane, right? That means any economic disturbance anywhere in the world directly winds back And, as that, has been decreasing and there's nothing to replace it within the British economy over like the last decade or so, because it was at 1.7 times British GDP that was exported in financial capital. If you include portfolio investments and other derivatives, Like when you get to that scale and it starts decreasing, and then you leave the largest trading block that you're a part of in order to restake a claim for the national petty bourgeoisie who are going to be wiped out by that move, you end up in this absolutely absurd position, which is, I think, why breakdown theory and things like that have become quite important within Britain and is perhaps another reason that's drawn me back to the revisionist controversy.

C. Derick Varn: 1:35:58

Because you guys really are breaking down, yeah, but it's sadly mostly just you. Yeah, um, uh, no, i actually Me. My war with the English and specific is well known, but I actually, when I was looking at the last set of economic stats, i was like I can't even play, be mean about this. This is horrific, and the Tories aren't paying any price for it, which is also horrific. Um, you know, the best I'm going to get out of it is like the devolution of a bunch of you know, i don't know, i mean maybe the evolution of Wales, northern Ireland and Scotland, but who knows? even I'm not even sure about that. So it's, the whole thing is Is kind of sad, although I will say this Britain's getting good at exporting its reactionaries to the United States the way that Canada used to do.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:37:11

Yes, it is, yes, it is. You also get all our failed comedians now as well. Yeah, yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:37:18

Which is that's a reverse. You used to get our failed comedians So.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:37:26

Oh man, change one economic dynamic at least.

C. Derick Varn: 1:37:31

No, i mean, it is such a. Actually, you know, from the standpoint of quote Marxist-Arfodoxy unquote, it's very hard to explain what has happened in Britain, because it was self-inflicted Or not self-inflicted, self-exaggerated, self-accelerated. It's.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:37:53

I think it's one of those things that it seems absurd from the exterior right.

C. Derick Varn: 1:37:58

Yes, it does We quite.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:38:01

But if you look at the kind of political basis in the Tory party, there is a line of economic reasoning that does allow you to make sense of it. So the Tory party is. People obviously like to characterize it as just the capitalist party, which isn't true because obviously the favour Like a petty bourgeois and a bureaucratic party.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:38:20

Right Yeah, there's certainly that element with elements of monopoly capital, although a lot of monopoly capitalists tend to actually prefer the Labour Party, which is why, say, the City of London's internal management council, which manages its own. The City of London has its own police force, which is a private police force, which is run by a council of the bankers who live there who vote Labour for managing that. The City of London mayor is always a Labour council and he's always a Labour candidate other than Boris Johnson. He is the only Tory mayor of London in a long, long time. So you know, those are kind of preferences.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:38:57

But there are monopoly capitalists within the Tory party too, obviously, and the split for Brexit was a split between monopoly capitalists who wanted to remain part of Europe because it wanted to remain part of the European Union, because it allowed them freedom of capital throughout, access to the single market and so on and so forth, whereas the Petty Bourgeoisie in Britain sincerely felt they had concerns about sovereignty because they can't exploit migrant Labour at the same scale as these monopoly capitalists Straightforwardly. That was why the contradiction over the border was there, why the contradiction over the European Union and freedom of movement and those kind of things. The Petty Bourgeoisie here sincerely felt that there was a sovereignty question because of their economic location and how migrant Labour features in British capital, which is at an astonishingly high rate of British capital's profitability. Wherever it is profitable is because of the exceptionally low rate of money paid to migrants and the degree of not quite slave labour, but not far from it.

C. Derick Varn: 1:40:04

That's incorporated within it And that was tolerable because of the difference between power and Euro exchange rates.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:40:12

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:40:13

Yeah, i mean, that's something that people miss. You know what's interesting about this, though? Your left does not resemble our left anymore in some way And, as I said, i don't think it ever really did But your right does resemble our right, which is a mixture of a minority of monopoly capitalist for us also extractive industries, which you have, but we have way more of. They're coming back here Yeah, you'll get them again And Petty Bourgeoisie, like, yeah, like, whereas the Democratic Party is a weird alliance of most of the rest of them, most of the monopoly capitalist, the professional strata and academics and the very poor, yeah, which is, you know, kind of. The Tories don't quite. I mean, the Tories resemble the Republicans, but Labour does not resemble I mean, i think, There's quite the same coalition as the Democrats do in America.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:41:29

No, the Labour Party is an interesting one. I mean now it's very hard to Much like it's getting harder to say what the hell the Tory Party is. It's also getting harder to say what the Labour Party is Because I mean So the traditional kind of analysis of the Labour Party that I get from, i guess, the British, how to put this? So it calls itself the. It frames itself as the British Marxist, leninist tendency. What it actually is is a bit less simple than that.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:42:02

But the old sects who kind of analysed British imperialism and the relationship to the Labour Party was that you have a mixture of a kind of labour aristocracy involved in it. You have a Pétis bourgeois involved in it. You have a certain degree of monopoly capital and imperialist capital involved and enmeshed in this kind of What is presented as an unholy alliance Which only in very extreme circumstances has ever been able to secure the vote of the very poor within Britain. Generally the very poor in Britain do not engage politically And that has been the fate of the British kind of working class for a long, long time Is that the poorest sections of the British working class do not engage in the parliamentary system.

C. Derick Varn: 1:42:53

That's So. What is interesting about the United States is that is more racialized Proletarian. People of colour tend not to vote And then, interestingly, with the white proletarian, whatever white working class, whatever weird non-eclature, you want to lose all of what you're contested here. It is very different. Our patterns are extremely different, rural and urban, as to who participates in voting amongst the poor.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:43:34

Well, maybe that's a determinant then, because we increasingly have less of a rural proletariat Like it still exists, but it's very small.

C. Derick Varn: 1:43:43

Well, we don't really have a rural proletariat either. It does still exist, but it's small. But we have an ex-urban and suburban proletariat, which I don't think you have. We just have that. And actually that got worse In the last 20 years. A lot of people who used to live in the inner cities have been priced out in the suburbs And in this way the United States is beginning to look a lot more like We're too much of a diffuse nation to say that it's like France, but the suburbs of France actually are closer to the patterns of development and the major cities, the rich cities in the US, which is a new development of the last 20 years, and so in some ways we actually look a little bit more like Europe proper, but our politics is nothing like Europe proper. So you know, we're kind of It's hard, because when you describe this I'm like well, at a superficial level it's very similar and increasingly similar than like, say, the Tories and Labor did in the 70s versus the Democrats and Republicans in the.

C. Derick Varn: 1:45:00

States. Like that was a very. There was very big divergent, though. Similarly, in like Canada and some of the Commonwealth, the parties there, like Canadian conservatism has not historically looked at all Like American conservatism and often you know it's a major import to us was oil and reactionaries And actually our economy is pretty integrated, but still that's what people knew And that has, interestingly, in Canada seemed to have gone the other direction, whereas, like Canadian, politics increasingly looks like American. But the party that you can't get rid of is the Liberal Party.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:45:50

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn: 1:45:52

Which you know is a center. Actually calling it center-left is pretty fucking useless, you know, like a centrist Liberal Party. So it's interesting And I just want to bring this up. When we talk about I mean, we started talking about the revisionist controversies but, like, all of our debates need to be, yes, we need to be international and, like the American left and the British left need to be coordinating because we speak a similar language. But we also have to realize that our conditions are extremely different and trying to view them as the same is going to lead us into weird total sacks. And it hasn't helped that American academic culture is really picked up from, say, i don't know, french academic culture as the dominant academic culture of the quote academic left-on quote Because I think that's been particularly disastrous in Britain and Europe, where our categories are not helpful for you. In the same way, I'd agree with.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:46:54

Yeah, i would agree with that, and I think there's a need to. I think the core of, say, when we look at the revisionist controversy or when we look at these kind of disparities in political categories, what we are talking about is a form of discourse that becomes hegemonic over the way that the Communist left conducts itself, and I think that's the real problem of the thing is that these become, i am clad theoretical categories, and whether or not you're on board with the theoretical category comes to replace whether or not you're actually engaged in useful activity in your own context. A lot of the time, there's a disdain for the local that flows out of this grand theoretical kind of debate, and I think that's one of the problems that's implicit within the revisionist controversy and part of the way it has served to shape left-wing discourse since then, and particularly in the Communist left.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:47:56

But similarly the common term plays a role in that that. however many internationals deep you wanna go, play a role in that. But it ends up being this thing where you have a dominant strain within the left that then determines the categories of the rest of the left, which is a hugely detrimental, destructive thing, and the mantle just passes from place to place.

C. Derick Varn: 1:48:18

Right, i mean and from my standpoint I'm talking to you too it also makes us unable to understand our different context and how we could help or not help our comrades in other countries. I don't know what the US left can really do for the British left at this point, but talking about it accurately would help. Yeah, so you know on that. Yeah, go ahead.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:48:44

I think that is contingent from a British perspective on the British left actually developing an analysis of what is happening to us, which I don't think we've done.

C. Derick Varn: 1:48:53

No, well, yeah, yeah, that would help. It's very tempting to talk about how similar our situations are, because some of these problems are actually the same. The US left has a very weak theory of what's going on, and that's why we're producing weird sectarian hybrids that don't exist anywhere else like crazy right now Maga-communist, post-leftist, marxist for Trump except.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:49:26

Oh, the Maga-communists Jesus.

C. Derick Varn: 1:49:29

Yeah, i mean, you know it's weird. It's weird LaRoucheism plus CPCMLism, plus weird parts of ultra-leftism, plus not being able to seemingly read. I actually should be careful with that, because one of the dangers I think people have with these ideological strains is they assume these people aren't smart And that's actually not true. They're smart and correct are very different things. So, but I will say they have some tortured readings of text. So I guess that this is a good place to end on why this matters, even though it seems very tangential.

C. Derick Varn: 1:50:23

But I wanted people to kind of see why, you know, framing everything in terms of revisionism and anti-revisionism and any other periods you wanna do it actually blind you to trying to see what the struggles actually are on the ground and why those debates ever came to be in the first place, because the way we debate them afterwards and the way we debated them when they were happening are totally different, and that's an important lesson. So this is a part where we have to be petty rintiers ourselves. This is, unfortunately, a development of the modern economy. Thank you, breakdown theory. So what would you like to plug, james?

James of Prolekult Films: 1:51:06

You can support us on Patreon. The dollar gets you access to everything we give out. because I'm a stickler and we'll never drop that. I want everyone to be able to access it. And that also includes our Discord where I run at least fortnightly reading groups. I finally got after a long two years, i finally got my capital reading group through volume one. So we will be starting volume two and a second cohort of volume one as soon.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:51:38

But we also have a regular kind of ones on bring your own text, educationals and things like that, where you can bring what you wanna discuss and we'll all discuss it, and also video discussions on the approaching Marxism series I'm developing which you can find on youtubecom forward slash protocol. That will the next episode of that. we'll be looking at revisionism and orthodoxy, putting this all together in like a digestible 15 minute video for you to kind of use the ambition with the series that you can use them as an intro to a study group. So you've got a pretty prepared introduction there and the texts are all laid out and that's all done. I want it to be kind of useful for that because I think we are at a point where reading groups and things are probably the most external facing thing we can usefully do to build the Marxist tendency in a lot of ways, outside of doing what practical activism you can within renters unions, actual unions and so on and so forth, grassroots campaigns So yeah, if you wanna support any of that, then please do. that'd be cool.

C. Derick Varn: 1:52:40

All right, thank you, james. I'm gonna go ahead and endorse pro cult films. You over there across the pond and the measures taken over here on the West coast of the United States are kind of one of the few people doing this history lesson in the second international. I got Ben Lewis from, i believe he's in the CPGP Provisional Committee, also does a lot of good work here, but there's not a whole lot of people doing this So and that's kind of a shame because we're finally getting a whole lot of these texts and documents and historical records accessibly easily. So I would tell people to support you, particularly for a dollar. come on, it's a dollar. It's like it's a dollar man, that's nothing.

James of Prolekult Films: 1:53:26

Thank you, you know that.

C. Derick Varn: 1:53:28

I know that I'm also going to go and support you because it's a dollar bucket. So thank you so much and we're gonna end.