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Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
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The Enduring Legacy of Loren Goldner: Left Communism, Marxism, and Cultural Critiques
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What if the horizon of the workers' movement has truly ended? On this thought-provoking episode, we welcome Ross Wolfe to dissect the enduring legacy and contemporary relevance of Loren Goldner a monumental figure in left communism. We delve into Goldner’s solitary stance amid post-structuralism, his fierce critiques of post-colonialism, and his eye-opening reviews, such as his take on Max Elbaum's "Revolutions in the Air." Walsh offers a rare glimpse into Goldner’s mentorship of writers and theorists, his influence on the New York ultra-left scene, and his rigorous examination of movements like Occupy and Maoism.
Our discussion continues by contrasting the intellectual debates between Troploin and Theorie Communise with Goldner’s unwavering belief in the working class as a pivotal historical force. We touch on Goldner’s opposition to third-worldism and post-colonial thought, his rich academic background, and his critical stance against post-structuralism and Maoism. Walsh further critiques contemporary intellectual currents, making connections between Goldner’s ideas and ongoing global workers' struggles. We also delve into Christopher Lasch's critiques of American culture, discussing his departure from Marxism, his analysis of cultural malaise and narcissism, and his interactions with feminists. Walsh draws intriguing links between Lasch’s thoughts and contemporary thinkers like Anselm Jappe, who critique modern capitalist society.
The episode wraps up with a broad look at the dissatisfaction with the mainstream left and the bleak state of contemporary leftist movements. We highlight the significant differences between resistance movements like BDS and the anti-apartheid efforts, underlining the harsh realities faced by Palestinians today. Furthermore, we explore the unexpected political realignments of former radicals and the implications of anti-Americanism within the left, especially concerning the Ukraine-Russia war. Stay tuned for an insightful update from our guest on their upcoming research and writings on Marxism and the family, promising a series of thought-provoking essays in the year ahead.
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Legacy of Left Communist Intellectual
C. Derick VarnHello and welcome to VARNVLOG . I can't even say my own name , right . And today we are with Walsh Rulf talking about the legacy and relevance Loren Goldner . I mostly know Goldner from his editing of Insurgent Notes , which I read somewhat religiously in the early aught teens , and I have two of his books back there . But we're going to be talking about him in a larger perspective today . His trajectory as , like the lone left communist in the period of high post-structuralism which must have been really lonely and his critique of post-colonialism and reactionary anti-imperialism , um , his arguments with uh uh . I've recently covered an essay he did that was almost , I think , too harsh of a review of max l bomb's revolutions in the Air .
Ross WolfeI love that review .
C. Derick VarnI think it's an important counter-history to what L-bomb's trying to do . People are like why do you suggest that book ? I'm like I'm not suggesting the L-bomb book because it portrays the new communist movement well . I actually think there's kind of like an unintended counter-history in that book . But today we're going to be talking about his legacy in general , the role he played in maintaining some view of left communism outside of the formal left communist sectarian organizations such as the International Communist , tend , international communist current , the , the international , the internationalist communist party is an internationalist or international .
Ross WolfeI'm always confused international communist party , and there are a couple of them at least .
C. Derick VarnThey're mainly just in italy , though right , I know some people who are in them in america , but they mostly answer to the Italian section . And there's I think there's at least two , because they're split between true Bordigas and a mintest , and I put those in quotations because I don't want to deal with who counts as a true Bordigas and who doesn't .
Ross WolfeBecause there's some members of who in Croatia who had been sort of independent left communists , who I guess have since just become members of the ICP abroad .
C. Derick VarnYeah , and we will be referring a little bit to an episode of the Antifada , which is a memorial episode that will be linked in the show notes for people who want probably a bigger dip into gulner , uh gulner's biography , um , and from people who knew him I did not know , lauren , um and uh , uh , lauren and uh , and so I uh . My only interactions with him , uh , personally were dealing with the far out around Michael Rettenwald , now a tempted candidate of the Libertarian Party , I believe .
C. Derick VarnI also used to write for Insurgent Notes , and so we want to talk about his legacy . So you have met Lorne . You weren't close friends with him , you weren't like buddies , but you have met him . Why do you think it was so important ? And you know why was he such a key figure to any kind of left communist revival .
Ross WolfeWell , it's interesting , like he was kind of , you know , alone in the wilderness for decades , really A kind of remarkable figure who a lot of the people who are the guest rotation of the Antifada , who write for various ultra-left publications and even more mainstream publications today , were mentored by him . He really , especially after the financial crash , a lot of sort of independent-minded leftists , you know , marxists , anarchists and so on , really gravitated around him because he'd been , you know , consistently putting out these essays , writing , I think a lot of the Libcom people and the Mute magazine people had published his writings and he was a mainstay in the New York ultra-left scene . And so , for that reason , just because of , like , the sort of imprint that he left in terms of just , uh , mentoring uh , various other writers , uh , theorists , intellectuals , um , yeah , I mean he , he , he has a major legacy , like he really , uh , you know , you know left a lot in terms of just conversations and and articles and whatnot over the years yeah , I think that's that's fair enough .
C. Derick VarnI think insurgent notes was kind of a for some of the the his . I think he mentored a lot of people and I also think he played a particular role in the kind of left communist critique of Occupy that emerged around 2012 , 2013 and he was also very wary of . He really had a thing out for Maoism , actually like it was a big part of his overall milieu .
Ross WolfeSo yeah , I mean , and like he did , you know that , especially toward the end . Um , he had this ongoing like over a decade long engagement with , uh , the class struggle in china . He had a number of contacts there . He was was teaching himself Mandarin . One of the things that comes through in the Antifada episode memorializing him is just how much of a polyglot he was . He knew over six languages . I don't think he was fluent in Mandarin , but he was familiarizing himself with it so that he would be able to comment on ongoing struggles more intelligently using primary sources and whatnot .
Ross WolfeBut yeah , I think it must have been like 2012 , 2013 , came out with notes on Maoism broadly . It was very , very polemical , pissed a lot of people off . But you mentioned the Max Albaum book . He had a very , very polemical review of that Again , because he had been so active in the 60s and he'd seen a lot of that stuff . Max Albaum was a member of groups that he was engaged in long , longstanding disputes with , and so the sort of nostalgia that that Albaum evinced in Revolution is in the Air . That was not how Loren remembered it at all and he really , you know , made sure he fixed on a lot of the things that Elbaum and others probably would have preferred to forget and just directed the reader's attention to that All the elisions and all the things that were skipped over that were rather unsavory from the history of American Maoism .
C. Derick VarnYeah , he was very , he was very good at that . Um , I think you know the other thing . I mean he's an interesting figure also in in that he's one of these people who came out of the independent socialist movement , which was the old IS , before the IS became the independent socialist movement , which was the old is , before the is became the international socialist movement , when it kind of merged with the cliffites um , which how draper did not join it . But I was sort of like laughing once when I was like going through how draper's immediate cadre and I was like anarchist , anarchist left communist , like um , which for some people , even some of my audience , is going to be a condemning factor . But it is interesting that he starts off in a kind of trotskyist milieu but finds it very unsatisfactory .
Ross WolfeUm , yeah , and I think like it comes out like he really was quite responsible for the rediscovery of Luxembourg , in a sort of non like there's a very particular way that various trot sects read Luxembourg as kind of and I think there's some truth to it as kind of the German Lenin , or almost Lenin , insofar as she wanted to found a German Bolshevik party , but reading her in a way that is not just assimilable to Leninism , as just an adjunct of Leninism , in a very original way . He was very , very interested in her writings on imperialism and really saw her theories as central to his own understanding of imperialism . I personally probably have more problems with some aspects of Luxembourg's economic theories than Goldner did , but for him she was a central reference and that was , you know , that was very significant , especially in the 70s and 80s , foregrounding her the way that he did . And then of course you know there was he wrote a very influential essay in the 90s for Hillel Tickton's journal Critique on Ameo Bordiga and the agrarian question , very , very interesting . That was largely through his own awareness of Bordiga and that tradition you mentioned we were talking beforehand Philippe Bournet , who's a historian ex-ICC guy .
Ross WolfeHe was a historian ex-ICC guy who did a history of Italian , portuguese and and council communism in Germany and Holland . But really I think most of that stuff , I think , was translated into English . So really like in terms of like original source , like English language material , until Endnotes came out , most of that was through Loren and just maybe just a handful of others . That was largely through his contacts in France , because he lived in France for a number of years . He knew Camat and Devey and others , or at least corresponded with them . I'm pretty sure I knew them personally , uh , but he was , you know , he had a firsthand familiarity with them . He knew a lot of the ICP , uh , people in Italy stayed with them , um , and so he was writing about this stuff from like the late eighties through the nineties , um , and awakening people to this entire other tradition that then became a bit better known after the first volume of Endnotes , I think .
C. Derick VarnYeah , I was about to say my introduction to Bordiga was volume one of Endnotes and Goldner's essay simultaneously . Then I got the Bernays book . Now I know enough to know that actually even the Bernet book is somewhat flawed because it actually repeats some Communist Party of Italy propaganda against Bordiga as truth , because it wasn't very well discovered yet . I mean one of the unfortunate things about how long it takes to get stuff out is there's a good . Now we have a good , scholarly approved , good translation of a fair amount of the Bordiga writings that aren't just from independent left communists trying to get it out on very tiny presses from Brill Haymarket no-transcript , not really , with the exception of like , maybe like the five people . And then in the nins who were in the internationalist communist party or the international communist party or whatever . Uh , that's where we got a lot of our .
C. Derick VarnOur initial view of bordigo was from the french ultra left after the 70s . Um , and I mean I find that I find that interesting in a lot of ways . Um , that guldner was basically this lone guy that was respected by non-left Communists . This is one of the things that makes him a little Different . I mean , usually left communists have a Reputation of getting along With nobody like Paul Matic . You know , both junior and senior , pretty easy to get Along with . Gouldner is pretty easy to get Along with .
C. Derick VarnBut If you've ever dealt in the comment section of any time you touch on anything related to bordega and see the immediate sectarian squabbling that comes out or like trying to figure out any kind of council communist debate and seeing the immediate sectarian squabbling that comes out , um goldner was interesting in that he for all of his like insistence on a line he was easy enough for people who were not part of that line to get along with um and also could make that line appealing to people who were not already died in the rule left communist sectarians . So uh , that seems kind of important given that the rebirth . But I was going to ask you like I mean , I know genealogically why that happened but it's never entirely made sense to me . So would you like to speak to that a little bit Like ?
Ross Wolfeyeah . So I mean , I think I mean Goldner probably would have been sympathetic to communization as represented by somebody like Devey , more so than by Theory Communist or by Endnotes and Endnotes .
Workers Movement, Post-Colonial Thought, and Marxism
Ross WolfeYou know the first volume . It basically just reviews this debate between Troploin Dewey on the one side and Theory Communist on the other side . Other side , um , and I would say more or less , uh , ends up siding with um theory communists , although they have uh , some , uh , some quibbles , uh with the , their periodization of history , they generally view the sort of um eclipse of the , uh , the horizon of the workers movement as as , and this is what the subsequent volumes of end notes , at least up through four , especially in volume four talking about is yeah , it's talking about the sort of end of the horizon of the , the revolutionary horizon of the workers movement .
C. Derick VarnThat's I mean for for Goldner go ahead .
Ross WolfeYeah , for goldner , like the sun really never set on the workers movement , uh , finally , so that horizon had not been extinguished .
C. Derick VarnI mean by the history of separation in notes , is going so far as to say the workers movement was never real , like you know it's , it's .
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean it views it as like a sort of moment within the history of capitalism that has since passed Right , that inspired a number of understandable and perhaps sympathetic programs which no longer are tenable because of these , because of the fact that this horizon no longer exists , and it believes that there are these structural reasons for that .
Ross WolfeAnd it's a very interesting history one I tend not to agree with as much . And Goldner really , for him the working class was still the only viable subject of history and that's why he . And so , even if the industrial proletariat in the most advanced capitalist countries of the world was no longer central , he still saw it as the real locomotive of history , even if it had been dispersed to the global south and other places . So for him , I mean , he really took a lot of issue with third worldists , certainly people who just upheld the sort of national struggles of third world countries against American imperialism and whatnot , as that's the revolutionary horizon . He really argued vehemently against that . But for him the working class struggles within those countries was immensely important and he had tons of contacts . I think actually when you were in Korea he had been active there a few years prior , just working with various unions , working with various groups that were organizing looking to . Obviously they couldn't be openly communist , because I do think that they still have .
C. Derick VarnThe national security law would have gotten important . I mean , I was careful about that when I was in Korea .
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean I think there's still on the books , like you can there's the death penalty for like about communists .
C. Derick VarnI don't think it's actually been used , but but yeah , it's also very easy to get deported if you're accused of being a communist .
Ross WolfeSo , yeah , if you're , if you're not a , if you're not a citizen , yeah Right , even more so . But in any case , he had a lot of contacts there , um , like he . So I mean , one of the things that came out uh of the uh discussion in the antifada was , just like all these different places that he lived um , he was often in the wrong place at the wrong time but he was in , you know , at the center of the action . You know , during various stretches he had a lot of contacts in portugal and spain . He wrote a very interesting reflection in the mid-70s , when those twin revolutions were happening , the sort of downfall of of fascism in spain , ubu saved from drowning . Um then , yeah , he , he was the uh , he was the librarian at Harvard for a number of years and after that point , after he lost his job there , he moved around a lot , spent a lot of time in France , I believe . He lived there for a couple of years at least . Again , he was fluent in spanish and french and all these other uh languages and that's what allowed him . I mean , it was interesting , like if you uh read through the archive of his uh works , um on break their haughty powernet , which is like the easily the most , uh , complete archive of his writings online . He's got these reviews of obscure French books , arguing against the pro-structuralists .
Ross WolfeHe's upholding Marxism in the early eighties against post-colonial thought , which was , again , it was a very , very new , it was a very new formation at the time . It was a new , current , current even within the academy , and so it's interesting that he included that in a number of other very interesting essays and a great collection , the Vanguard of Retrogression . Yeah , he viewed that as kind of and again this is where it kind of dovetails with his earlier opposition to Maoism he thought of post-colonial thought as a kind of academicized , epistemological translation of the monthly review school of sort of third worldism , the sort of Samir Amin style dependency theory which he , you know , was very much opposed to and against that he upheld , you know , the universality of Marx . But again , like , what's great about him is he was dogmatically Hegelian Marxist , so like his , he wasn't opposing this flatly , this kind of vulgar materialism against it . I'm forgetting what essay it was , but he explained that Marx's materialism was not just a materialism of things but a materialism of social relations that are mediated by a thing , namely commodities , and this allowed him to approach this and other matters very dialectically , very intelligently . It wasn't just , you know , you know it wasn't just saying that you know , so-and-so post-colonial thinker was just deviating from the truth of Marxism . He was able to sort of spell it out conceptually in a very , very compelling way . And , yeah , he did this , you know he did this . He had a great review of a book by Fay against Derrida yeah , just very interesting . Fey against derrida . Um , yeah , just very interesting , um .
Ross WolfeAnd one of the ways I I came into contact with him was , of course , like I studied with moish bastone at university of chicago and just reading around reviews uh , critical reviews of uh bastone's time Social Domination , which is his sort of grand theoretical treatise , definitely one of the most interesting ones , one of the most insightful ones . That was , you know , critical but appreciative of Postone was From Goldner . I was very , very impressed by that . I then , you know , I became more familiar with his work too , in organizing a panel for Platypus back in 2012 between him and Paul Mattock and David Harvey and Andrew Kleiman . I really read him because I was so taken by what he had said , all of his ideas about fictitious capital and its relation to the sort of the economic downturn .
Exploring Goldner's Revolutionary Thought
Ross WolfeI began reading his writings much more in earnest and that's when I really began corresponding with him through email , meeting up with him . The times that I did with him through email , meeting up with him the times that I did , and just you know , viewing him I'll be at a bit , at a bit more of a distance , as a mentor figure as well . Yeah , he's , he's just a towering intellect . It's great to like , I mean like I do .
Ross WolfeYou know he has this other great I reposted it on my blog , you a number of years ago , but a two-part essay from a race trader called race and enlightenment or race in the enlightenment , I'm forgetting which , but um , it's , it's amazing , uh , it really it shows . It shows the way that the concept , the modern concept of race developed , uh out the Enlightenment as the sort of intellectual reflection of bourgeois society , just the way that it developed historically . But the way that there was the seeds of its overcoming within bourgeois society then presented themselves and the sort of complex and dialectical Really like at a number of times I viewed his own attitude towards the Enlightenment , because it wasn't just this essay . He had another one , another , several , I think , actually talking about Newton and Kepler . He was a great champion of Kepler . He actually thought that if the enlightenment had been more Keplerian rather than Newtonian , that it might've even had more emancipatory promise .
Ross WolfeHe , I viewed , I viewed his sort of understanding of the enlightenment is very , very similar , tracking very similarly with Adorno and Horkheimer's which is probably one of the areas that I disagreed at assimilated a lot of the Frankfurt School's thought to a sort of Heideggerianism , in sort of viewing it as the domination of nature , largely because I think this is the way that the Frankfurt School was in the academy . It was viewed as , despite you know , uh , adorno's , uh polemics against heidegger and the jargon of authenticity , um , it was viewed as largely along the same lines . It was largely the frankfurt school was largely seen as saying the same thing as the various heideggerian french theorists , um , and the post-structuralists . So I think that that somewhat colored his view of the Frankfurt School and of Adorno and Horkheimer , though I believe I might be wrong about this . Jake Blumenfeld , who was also very close communist in situ , who was very close with Goldner , I believe he told me that he'd had conversations with Goldner where he had come around a bit on his appraisal of the Frankfurt School .
C. Derick VarnInteresting . The Frankfurt School is interesting for a variety of reasons , and that is one . There's the Marcuse and Heideggerianism . There's their questionable attitude towards the working class . I mean , when you think about Lash's big war , like he agrees with the Frankfurt School until they start talking about the working class and then he's like super annoyed with them .
Ross WolfeBut I do think that domination of nature stuff is really big and certain circles in the 80s and 90s , even though , um , he was arguing against a lot in the sense that he believed that the project of Marxism was to save the Enlightenment from its sort of undialectical rationality or rationalism . There were figures like Rousseau who did , and others who thought dialectically . There were within the Enlightenment , there were concepts that lent themselves to the sort of irrationality that then came to prevail over society under capitalism , society under capitalism . And I think that I mean the way that Goldner argued against the kind of one-sided rationality of some Enlightenment thinkers , and the same way that Adorno and Horkheimer did as well in their book .
Ross WolfeYou know again , it's eminently dialectical . It's looking to . In their book , you know , again it's eminently dialectical it's looking to overcome the Enlightenment in a sort of enlightened fashion , to sort of fulfill its latent promises , in a way that the French post-structuralists , and certainly insofar as they're heirs of Heidegger , were not interested in doing that . They were looking to de-center , you know , anthropology and humanity and whatnot , and the subject itself , and even cast doubt on the coherence of the idea of a subject . Adorno , horkheimer and I would say Goldner as well , were very much invested in the idea of an historical subject that could .
C. Derick VarnThat , you know , was contradictory but could potentially free itself from this irrationality . So if you were going to tell some people where , where , where to start with Gouldner's work , where would you tell them to start ?
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean that's . That's a tough question . I would say it depends on what you're looking for . The Universality of Marx is a great , great essay to start with , if you're interested in his criticisms of Maoism , his notes on Maoism from 2012 is great . Race and the Enlightenment is outstanding . It really showcases just the breadth of his knowledge , I mean again he's interactions with Ataturk and the Turks in the 20s .
Ross WolfeIt's interesting because many Trotskyists view the sort of fatal move of the later Comintern was to side with the bourgeois nationalists in China , siding with Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang Party against the sort of homegrown communists . And one of the interesting things sort of asides that Goldner polemically makes in the notes on Maoism is that Mao opposed Stalin's line on this because not because he wanted to oppose Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists , but because he actually wanted to be closer with them than Stalin was willing , was comfortable with . This was , of course , all prior to the 1927 massacre that really set them obviously against each other as sort of mortal enemies . But so Goldner pointed out that this quite similar policy propped up in the earlier 20s , in so far as the Bolsheviks were willing to sort of prop up Ataturk and even advise Turkish communists to side with the nationalists in Turkey , and for him , for Goldner , this is like a fatal mistake . This is part of his broader opposition to national liberation and the support of bourgeois nationalist parties in peripheral , semi-pro , overusing world systems language . He viewed that as a as a vital mistake , albeit it is one that I think that's part of the reason why trotsky was eventually able to to find refuge in turkey for at least for a few years is because there had been this , these prior cordial relations in the 20s .
Ross WolfeUm , but yeah , so that's a very interesting essay . His his essay on bolivia is is really outstanding , I think . I think brill haymarket actually picked that one up as well . Um , but yeah , very , very good essay . That it's possible . I'm not . I mostly read all this stuff when I was on his website , and the essay on turkey might actually be in that collection as well .
C. Derick VarnI believe it is .
Ross WolfeYeah , yeah , so that these , in terms of , like his historical essays , these , those are really great . He , if you're looking interested in just a sort of broad sense of his , his thought and his understanding of revolutionary history , there is a his thought and his understanding of revolutionary history . There is a I don't know if it's called like a crash course in world revolution or intro to world revolution . It's like a three part lecture series that he gave and it was great talking on the antiphotic , because there were a number of people who actually attended these lectures , these lectures that he delivered in the basement of a Wendy's just talking , you know , these lectures that he delivered in the basement of a Wendy's just talking off the top of his head , about basically the history of revolutionary thought and the revolutionary movement from Marx down through , I would say , around the middle of the 20th century . Yeah , it's very broad strokes . There are occasional errors that he makes , but again , these are errors because he's just against uh , reciting everything from memory , um , but that gives you a good sense of kind of where he um , where he falls . He had a very famous quote that um was taken up by Beanie Adamzak and her book yesterday's tomorrow , which is that at a certain point in the seventies . You could tell , you could , you could kind of infer somebody's entire political and historical worldview based on what date they chose as the date that everything went wrong in the Russian Revolution . So if somebody said it was 1919 , if somebody said it was 21 , 23 , 27 , if somebody said that it was 56 or 91 , then you knew you could ascertain a whole host of related positions . For him . His answer to that question and he did give it it was 1921 . So he did actually follow the Bordico line on that where the third Congress of the Comintern was kind of the final one that was kind of ecumenically acknowledged by him . But yeah , I mean I would check out any one of those essays .
Ross WolfeHe's a brilliant and quite lucid writer extremely , and again he could range from , you know , very sophisticated and dense writing , though I would say it's always . It's never . It's never kind of academically dense , um or sort of jargon , laden the way that a lot of sort of academic marxism is um to uh . You know some very , very uh demanding . His book on herman melville is quite demanding but extremely interesting .
Ross WolfeUm , I've not made my entire way through that book entirely but it's , you know , largely because I haven't read the entire , um , all of the works of melville , and it requires familiarity with all of that to really grasp what he's getting at . So , um , I had to keep stopping , uh , every couple chapters in that to kind of understand what he was referencing . But , in any case , so he could go from very popular presentations of revolutionary history to very , very erudite literary and social criticism . He was really a towering intellect , um , and I think the reason why his loss has been felt so acutely is just because he took such time to mentor people and because , like his , his writing is even more broadly . Even the people who never met him , who never really interacted with him , uh , have have familiarized themselves with his writing , and I've , because there is so much , because it is so rich .
C. Derick VarnThey there's a lot that they , a lot to chew on , a lot that they , you know , can take inspiration from well , one of the interesting things about goldner that is somewhat similar to someone who's close to my heart , but from a very , very different perspective . I mean , basically we're talking about moving from ultra-leftism to what one might call right-deviationism or populism or something like that , and that's Christopher Lash , because they both had encyclopedic knowledges of the early 20th century left-wing movement . I mean Goldner , I've gone through some things Goldner's written and occasionally he'll get stuff wrong about minor events , but they're like minor events that nobody else knows about at all . And similarly with Lash . There are some issues that I have with him and his recountings of specific incidences of the SPPA , for example , or some of his readings of Freud later on in his late career , or his weird obsession with Sorrel in his late career in his late career .
C. Derick VarnBut Lash was actually acutely interested in ways a lot of the new left was not in something like the precursor left to the new left , so like the actual old left as it existed in the United States in the 19th and early the new left , so like the actual old left as it existed in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries . I wanted to ask you you know a little bit about that . I mean we can compare them as like a launching point to going , maybe talking about Lash a little bit I know you wanted to talk about that um and uh . We can kind of use this as a , as a , as a , as a contrast and study um . One of the interesting things , though , that has often been that that marxist leninists will often accuse left comms of being is that we're one step from being either negationist or secret conservatives , and for people who don't know what negationism is , that's a French tendency that tends to downplay the Holocaust or even deny it .
Ross WolfeAnd one that had some rather unfortunate connections to actual French Portuguese , had a bookshop , le Ville Taupe , that actually some of the most notorious Holocaust deniers in France were these Bordigas .
C. Derick VarnBordigas and also some former anarchists who got in with the Bordigas . There's people around that group who wrote Militancy , the Highest Form of Alienation , or whatever . That also ended up around La Ville Taupe and see , the highest form of alienation or whatever . That also ended up around Loveville Taupe . So you know , I realize there's a danger in bringing it up . I also remember one day , Amy Therese of all people , for those of you who don't know our actually existing Australian friend . There was a rumor that maybe she wasn't a real person for a while . So I was thinking about , you know , maybe we could talk about that , because one of the things that Amy Therese would always do is she would bring up Bordiga and Lash in the same sentence . Now , funnily enough , I always find that kind of amusing , because who on the left ?
C. Derick Varnhas an obsession with Bordiga and Lash it's your boy here , but in general that's a very weird . You know , it's a weird pairing , yeah , chocolate and fish kind of pairing , so we could talk about it a little bit . In that they were Both Flash and Goldner were critiquing a lot of the same left , like they were very uncomfortable with both the kind of Congress of Cultural Freedom , proto-neoconservative left , and the Lash has really harsh things to say about French Fanon fans and stuff and people who were completely abandoning the American working class
Christopher Lash and Cultural Critique
C. Derick Varn. In fact , that was one of the reasons why he cited for walking away from Marxism is that he thought that Marxists had actually abandoned their subject .
Ross WolfeYeah , and I mean I was interested in talking about Lash for a number of reasons . Just my own research , I'm interested . I know that you're writing this book with a colleague . Yeah Shall and .
Ross WolfeBentime this uh book with uh a colleague shall , and yeah shall , and van time uh as well . So I'm I'm just eager to talk about lash , um , for various reasons , um , goldner , I mean again like I'm not positing any real affinity between him and lash , though there is interestingly an offhand reference that he makes in one of his more obscure essays to Lash , where he says I actually looked it up while you were talking here . He says one can disagree with , one can agree or disagree with someone like Lash , and as an aside , I would imagine that Goldner tended to disagree with Lash more than he agreed with Lash . But Goldner continues . He says but can one argue that there's any contemporary novelist who's come close to his analysis of American culture and its malaise in the past 30 years ? He was writing this essay in the 30s or in the 90s , talking about why for the previous 30 years or in the 90s , talking about why for the previous 30 years he believed that the generation of struggle around 68 and afterwards really didn't produce any really truly great novel in his opinion . But in any case he seemed to , at least in that , appreciate some of the sort of broader diagnosis that Lash made of this sort of cultural malaise of modernity , certainly of American society , during that period .
Ross WolfeI'm curious because it's interesting . I've been rereading I mean many years ago I read the Agony of the American Left . More recently , just in doing a bunch of research on Marxist approaches to the family , which is a much richer subject than even I was aware of , I believe I've actually unearthed a lot of material that has never been translated into English . That's very , very interesting and could contribute to a lot to the various debates around the family within Marxist circles and you know Marx adjacent circles today . But you know , as you know , doing my due diligence , of course , I revisited Haven in a Heartless World by Lash and the follow up book , culture of Narcissism .
Ross WolfeIt's interesting too because a buddy of mine , eric John Russell , recently translated a book by the French well , the board biographer , uh anselm yop um , and he's also a value critic .
Ross WolfeA part of the critique uh tendency kind of close to it was very close when he was alive with robert kurtz . Um was a great admirer of moishba stone . Um anselm yop has this book , the Self-Devouring Society , where he takes up a lot of the themes of Christopher Lash and his idea of a culture of narcissism and tries to ground it in the sort of boundless appetite and the sort of emptiness of , or the emptied subject of of capitalist society , with this sort of boundless appetites for more and more of it knows not what . The way he tried , he it's interesting , he really does try to get into the nitty gritty of uh freudian theory , the freudian uh diagnosis of narcissism which is I mean there's both primary and secondary narcissism , so there are different um levels yeah , narcissism , yeah , and lash clearly like actually equates the different levels of narcissism to different periods of capital development , which I think most people miss when they're reading cultural narcissism .
C. Derick VarnSo primary narcissism is actually related to early forwardism and secondary narcissism is related to the beginnings of neoliberalism . By the time neoliberalism is fully instantiated . Lash actually isn't writing in those terms anymore , but one gets the feeling that he would have seen post post neoliberalism as something like total psychic devastation . Um , and the reason why he would have is that lash very much does not believe um in like the atomized individual , but he does define uh individuals , understanding of the world . At least he does define this after he writes Haven in the Heartless World about their relations to the family and the way that family is ensconced in a broader political economy . I actually think the worst book of Lash , to start with , is his most famous book , culture of Narcissism . By itself is actually really misleading .
Ross WolfeLike yeah and I think it mostly makes sense , like it was kind of written as a sequel to haven in a heartless world , which made like a major splash itself . Obviously it was very controversial , like he was engaged in a number of um controversies with feminists . As a result of that , I don't think he's as simplistically traditionalist as some people make him out to be .
C. Derick VarnNo , certainly as many of his own , at least not at that point , but even in 87 , he posits that traditionalism is actually fake and that we needed to find a working class traditionalism and he didn't know what that was . That's actually in his response to Lillian Rubin and the 87 tycoon essay , which is the one that posts leftist light . Because if you want to find where he says I a left , the left um , it's , it's , it's in the , the response to lily lily rubin in the in his uh 8722 . And I say , but it's funny because I miss the fact that the first , the first part of that , that exchange is actually him denouncing the reaganite right as a failed response to the failure of the left . Like that's his uh or not a failed response . He he basically posits as a totally false response , um , and that they hit on real problems that the post-70s left ignores schooling , education , familiar familiar lays break , breaking down of familiar bonds , the end of the family wage . But they , they bait and switch . That's his critique of Reaganism . This is the bait and switch towards neoliberalism , whereas he sees the left basically putting its head in the ground , celebrating their victories in the sixties as if the 80s is the same thing and abandoning the working class altogether for for nice subjects .
C. Derick VarnAnd he also basically accuses even in early writings he was a little bit skeptical of feminism . So , like he , he is familiar with 19th and early 20th century feminism in a way that I think people don't give him credit for . But he points out in Agony of the American Left and in World of Nations that it was suspicious that in the beginnings of the decline of the family wage and he's seeing this while this is happening , we got to remember this is he starts writing about this in 68 , this , while this is happening , we got to like , remember this . Is he starts writing about this in 68 . Um , that betty fordan style feminism is becoming really popular , which is a good way to hide the fact that the wages are decreasing in in in real terms , but not in like , you need more people to work , and this is this whole thing that he sees by the 1980s is like , look the feminism . That one was a feminist and it could justify forcing , forcing everyone into the workplace .
C. Derick VarnUm , he , he does have some fairly reactionary things to say about homosexuality . Um , unfortunately , or fortunately , it was not out of line with about a third of the new left . I mean , he basically echoes Eric Fromm on homosexuality as a form of narcissism . So that's not great . He also , you know , unlike , say , lacan or some of the later Freudians who take the gender roles as symbolic . You know , lash reads them extremely literally and , as we were talking about off air , he's very influenced by Russell Jacoby , philip Reif . Although he does that , he thinks Philip Reif is too right wing and although he does , he does have Philip Reif is too right wing and although he does , he does have philip reef's distrust of the therapeutic .
Ross WolfeThat's definitely in there yeah , that's why the therapeutic was definitely foundational for him . But , yeah , yeah , exactly like what I was struck by and again , like I want to stress , like off the bat I had I probably disagreed with especially the general thrust of some of his ideas in Haven , in a Heartless World , and I really thought that he gave short shrift to Engels and to historical Marxism insofar as he dismissed their entire , the origin of the family and whatnot , as the sort of socialist theory of the family . He adopted Weber's line there .
C. Derick VarnI he also later on in 87 , claims that like no one in anthropology thinks that like the family was not a man and a woman getting together for the for the purposes of social reproduction and the literal reproduction of a child which made me laugh that he said that in 87 , when I'm like there's by the 80s like symbolic kinship is literally the the main thing the anthropology is doing . Um , so I mean I want people to know that like we I think we both think lash gets some stuff majorly wrong . But I also think if you go back and read uh haven in a heartless world , he isn't saying what a lot of people think he's saying and he might not even be saying what he's saying later .
Ross WolfeLike yeah , I mean I think he gets worse , like in the like in the late 80s , early 90s , um , but the I I was impressed by um just the quality of his understanding of the freudian uh theory of the unconscious and of development um childhood development , um and like again like . I think that he insofar as it is a strong interpretation of of uh Freud's theory I think it's because Lash takes it almost uh entirely from Russell Jacoby who was considerably younger um than he was considerably younger than him but uh who was very influential to him .
C. Derick VarnYeah , In the archives during this time period there's a ton of Jacoby letters , there's a ton of letters to Richard Sennett and there's a ton of letters to Philip Reif . So we know that these were the people he was very much in correspondence with during the writing of that book and and it it almost seems like , uh , um , he's trying to work out um richard senate's like decline and fall public man , also in the culture of narcissism , and combine it with his stuff from russell , jacobby , um to to deal with what he sees as the problem of of the left liquidating itself . I mean , like this is this is something that's interesting . I think guldner and since we're talking about both guldner actually share this concern , although they would have completely different diagnoses as to why . Um that uh , that the left in the 70s and 80s was totally liquidating itself out and was actually in denial about both its own past and also the fact that it had basically failed at everything it said it was set out to do in the in the in the late 60s . Um , so I mean , I find that that interesting .
C. Derick VarnUm , I do , you know , I do think uh , there is , there's a , there's a strain of scholarship about lash right now that tries to argue that he abandoned marks for freud . I find that interesting in so much that there's still more marks in late lash than there is freud in late lash , even though he clearly loves freud . But by the time you get to the true and only heaven , he's not writing about freud that much at all . Um , so I think that's that is interesting to me , and it is interesting to me when people try to accuse lash of being like a heron folk socialist with , like his favorite , his favorite leftists tend to actually be like black populist and black power people . So it's just a very strange reading of him . Yeah .
Ross WolfeWhat's also interesting to me is like he also is clearly very interested in the Frankfurt School and I mean again , he gets a lot of this through Russell Jacoby . Russell Jacoby's own interpretation of psychoanalysis is vectored through Adorno's essays on Freud . But what's interesting to me is that , like Lash , just clearly despises Wilhelm Reich , and not like the late Wilhelm Reich , but like Wilhelm Reich and not like the late Wilhelm Reich , but like Wilhelm Reich of the thirties when he was talking about the authoritarian family , and he really dislikes the Frankfurt school writings of the thirties and he absolutely the the he loves the authoritarian personality he despises the authoritarian personality .
Ross WolfeHe thinks it's the worst thing that they that the Frankfurt School ever which I happen to agree with .
C. Derick VarnI mean , it's Well .
Ross WolfeI think that some of its empirical premises are perhaps a bit flawed . I mean , again , they were under a lot of pressure to produce an empirical study .
C. Derick VarnWhat's interesting to me , though , is the other empirical study on the same subject actually finds that the working class is not nearly authoritarian as they find it like it's . There was another study at the same time . It's discussed in um martin jay's book in the frankfurt school actually dialectical imagination I have .
Ross WolfeYeah , it's been a long time , but the like . What's interesting , though , is that , ironically , like the thing that inspired Lash to write this book according to his biographer at least , and it makes sense is like Horkheimer's later writings on the family are very conservative . Oh yeah , and I mean I would say like in the middle , like he writes an essay called Authoritarianism in the Family in 48 , which is different from his essay from 36 on authority in the family , authoritarianism in the family . I would argue that that's still quite dialectical in terms of not nostalgic for , but like seeing the bourgeois sub , the bourgeois family , as producing strong subjects capable of resisting authority . He sees that as being thrown into crisis by the further development of capitalism .
Ross WolfeUm , but in any case , like uh lash clearly took that and several of uh Horkheimer's later remarks and tried to spin an entire uh theory out of it . Again , I would like there are aspects of Haven in a heartless world . I think that he's a very interesting reader of various sociological accounts of the family , a bit glib , but at times an interesting reader of historical attempts to trace the genealogy of the family and its development . But again , the stuff on Freud and Freud's theory is very strong because , again , it's taken directly from Jacobi and Jacobi's work is itself very strong . So I've been interested in revisiting and picking your brain about it a bit , just because I know you've been working on this stuff in a lot greater depth than I have and because it's come up recently in the context of Anselm Yop's Self-Devouring Society , which is a very interesting book . I'd be curious to know what you make of that as well .
C. Derick VarnI haven't read Yop's book yet but it's definitely on
Debating Christopher Lash's Intellectual Legacy
C. Derick Varnthing . Since I'm writing like a book that requires me to read both . I mean , I have now read as far as I know . I'm always finding stuff that I haven't read , like there was a marxist perspectives article from 1978 that I had not read and I read last week .
Ross WolfeBut um , almost everything lash has ever published , so I can even do stuff like this chapter of uh of culture of narcissism was actually written uh kind of sort of as a paragraph and an essay he wrote in um , uh , a new york review of books article like you could just you know stuff from new york review of books and like he wrote an interesting sort of follow-up , a review of a french book called the policing of families , or translated as the policing of families , by jacques donzello , um which it's interesting that uh , uh , barrett and mackintosh , I believe uh , who wrote a book called the antisocial Family , they kind of they criticized at length both Lash's Haven in a Heartless World and Don Zalot's Policing of Families . And so I mean what's interesting is Lash is kind of a Freudian Marxist of the Frankfurt School , at least variety , or at least clearly inspired by the Frankfurt School . Donzelode he's a Foucauldian . They actually prefer Lash to Donzelode in this , even though they're very critical of him . They at least think that he states his case more plainly than Donzelode does .
C. Derick VarnSo if you've read the minimal self , which most people haven't , unfortunately , even though it was supposed to be the easy book , you actually get into all these debates and French psychoanalysis , of which Lash picks aside with someone whose last name is almost pronounced . Unpronounceable for me to say . Who fought with Lacan ? Oh man , but it's interesting who isn't in there . So , for one of the things , there's tons of French psychoanalysis in Lash's Minimal Self . Lacan is mentioned once in a footnote .
Ross WolfeYeah , jacoby only ever mentions him briefly in like , I think the uh , the introduction of like , the uh , the addition from the 90s of uh , uh , uh , amnesia , the social amnesia , um , he has . I think jacoby has no interest in actually delving into lacon and any further , which is I find hilarious , and you know , I'm fine , I'm perfectly fine with that , um , but yeah , it's like , yeah , it's just like what's great , like I mean , in talking to you , who you know , you clearly know like all these different phases of it are so much more familiar with it is , I've just been like extremely dissatisfied with both the anti-lashians and the pro-Lashians of the last five years , it's like on both sides .
Ross WolfeIt's really because I don't think Lash is somebody who really deserves to be defended in any vigorous way . I think he's more wrong than he is right , though he's an interesting figure to sort of grapple with .
C. Derick VarnI would actually . My caveat to that is I actually think early Lash is very , very interesting . So like Lash , from his dissertation on American liberals up through On the Russian Revolution . Yeah , that's an interesting book Not read by anybody .
Ross WolfeBarely and I only read it like insofar as , like you know , I'm , you know I studied the history of the russian revolution and I thought it was an interesting sort of attempt to like look at the way that people reacted to which I , you know , not a lot of people did right I mean , I was appreciative of that uh , I think his first four books , from that book up through um world of nations , are solid .
C. Derick VarnI think heavy in a heartless world to to minimum self are fascinating parts of . But I know why people like you know Anna Keshian of Red Scare , like love lash , because if you read like his stuff from the late seventies he'll say something about feminist , encouraging social discord and blah , blah , blah , um , and they'll pick up on that and they'll miss everything else like and actually they're kind of guilty of the same reading of lash that lash was complaining about when everybody saw him as like richard wolf um in the 70s , which is like um , just a moralistic condemnation of today's , you know , narcissistic left that failed , which is not really what he was interested in , at least at first um , and one of the things I would say about his 80s period is he's out in the wilderness . There's one thing , though , I really want to emphasize about him that I'd be interested , as Anson Jopp actually picks up something about this is it's something that Doug Lane actually also caught on to Lash is that Lash's view um is basically that of Suzy and Barong , so he kind of thinks that whatever's happening um , uh , in , uh in the the reaction to the 1970s crisis , that the fundamental contradictions of capital were solved negatively by fourism . Um , which is interesting to me because , uh , that's not totally copacetic with his reading of like , uh , the the societal narcissism being based in , like primary and secondary narcissism , and and secondary narcissism and and secondary narcissism . Uh , primary , secondary narcissism is , uh , primarily understood as the psychology of fortism , and I mean it's interesting when people try to use lash today too , when I talk about oh , today is like , just like culture of narcissism . Like you should go back and read the book again , because he actually says that this culture is ending .
C. Derick VarnThey're like this is on its dying legs . Like that's the number one assumption . Um , in the 80s , he's totally lost as to what to do . Like it's one of these periods where where , like , he seems totally disgusted by like he's initially , for example , a big . In the 60s , he's actually a big , uh early proponent of foucault , um , which is surprising , um , but it's it's true , they participated in a conference together .
C. Derick VarnYep um , he uses him to analyze , uh the the beginnings of the american sanitary , uh sanitarium system and the 19th century , and he definitely is straight up just using Foucault and does reference him .
Ross WolfeFoucault is actually somewhat . I mean , he didn't mention him many times , but the times that he did mention last he was quite appreciative of his , of his writings .
C. Derick VarnRight , so it's . It's interesting to me like , but by the by the late 80s , he seems very turned off by where the left is going , and even when he engages with partisan Marxists , they tend to be Trotskyists who are talking about the false consciousness of the US working class , and I think we forget that because we are living in a time where we're not blaming the working class for the problems of the working class , we're blaming everybody else um , the pmc , whatever , whatever theory of the week you want to resurrect , um , but uh , uh , it's , it's interesting to see it . I also would say one of the things that's frustrating about Lash , as opposed to someone like Gouldner , is Lash doesn't have a clear and coherent conception of what class is .
Ross WolfeI mean his understanding of . I mean , yeah , I would not be surprised if it was lifted from Buran and Sweezy . That was definitely the sort of prevailing new left interpretation of capitalism . Their book monopoly capitalism incredibly influential or monopoly capital rather , um , yeah , um , but yeah , in any case , like I'm very curious to to um , read what you and your co-author have to say about lash . Just because I've been so dissatisfied with both the the pro lash and the anti-lash people in online discourse there . There was one book , um that dealt with the family through a kind of neo-lashian lens . That was kind of ambivalent but trying to take up lash in a kind of um , a positive way . Uh , uh , the daniel tutt book . But I really could not make heads or tails of that book I had for the life of me . I could not understand what he was driving at , but I know that he he seemed to sort of argue in favor of some of lashes theories about the family yeah , he also Lash a neoconservative at one point .
C. Derick VarnI mean Ted's a friend that was just on the show talking about Eugene Genovese , so you know .
Ross WolfeYeah , no , I mean , he's a smart guy and I just I wasn't clear exactly what his argument was .
C. Derick VarnI read the same book and I was also like , okay , are we supposed to like Lash , what Tut's basic argument is is the family abolition . People have have not really understood all the implications of their own argument and that also that like capital's perfectly fine at destroying the family . Thank you very much .
Ross WolfeWhich is an old canard , but also like that is like that is one of the points that lash harps on quite a bit , and I know , like I know , he has this bit . I think probably the thing I was most confused by was his um . Maybe it's just because he's invoking concepts with which I'm not that familiar , but he was talking about how the family abolition , uh , authors are stuck in a mimetic rivalry , um with um , with , you know , the the more conservative , uh , pro-family , uh elements , and that the two are just feeding off of each other in some way .
C. Derick VarnUm , yeah , I mean uh , not to bring us too far afield . I actually think that that's kind of true in Sophie Lewis's recent book .
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean , I personally , like I just found Lewis's book a bit like just like some of her turns of phrase were a bit like too high-flown poetic . I thought that what she was most of the things that she was trying to argue , I think were put in a much more sober and just thought-out way , obviously in a much longer book by Michelle O'Brien . It's just yeah .
C. Derick VarnI would say reading Melinda cooper's book on the family , uh , was a good answer to some of the stuff lash doesn't see in the beginnings of neoliberalism as far as like what it's actually doing . Um , and I would tell people , read that . What's that book called ? I think it's like family values .
Ross WolfeYeah , family values it's like Family Values , yeah , Family Values . It's like , yeah , she's just she's very interested in the sort of deep history of neoliberalism and like in terms of just like the historical origins of it and it's like highest expressions of thought , which , yeah , that was an interesting book too Quite different from a lot of the more straightforward family abolition texts . They invoke that book , Cooper's book , a lot .
C. Derick VarnBut I'm also with you , I think the pro-Lashians right now who walk , who talk about his stuff on the family , I mean , there's pro-lashians like his students , uh , chris layman and kevin mattson , who are more interested in his writings on populism , uh , that will defend him as roughly remaining a leftist . And I would say that even even after his de coon article , if you actually read the preface to , uh , the true and only heaven , even though it's a critique of progress , he still sees himself as trying to revitalize some sort of left populist tradition . Um , and he , he's really mad at marxism for abandoning the working class , like that's his big gripe . Um , but he also whites marxism off way too fast later on , like it's just um , uh , by by the minimal self he's already talking about , like you know , this and this and this has been shown to be not true , and um , you feel like he's internalized a lot of the reaction to the new left from the new left itself actually .
Ross WolfeSo it's a , it's an interesting kind of development , um , yeah , I mean , aside from just like this sort of pop podcasts , like uh , sphere of , like , uh , you know , popular repopularization of lash's ideas and the , the sort of orbit of red scare , um , you've seen some authors and uh , well , I mean , like angel the nagel had a piece in the lamp and which is like a catholic , um , quarterly , um and uh , there's part of lash in uh in , uh in um kill all normies too , actually so yeah , yeah , that doesn't surprise me .
Ross Wolfeum , and uh , even nina power , in an article for for compact , which it's just , it's funny like reading her , like I think it's an article left and right versus mom and think it's an article Left and Right versus Mom and Dad . It's basically Lash's argument stated much more succinctly , trying to boil it down , but again , like it's just funny , because Power , you know , like 10 years ago , was like writing essays in favor of Shulamith Firestone's like abolition of the family , like , or at least of the nuclear family , like abolition of the family like , or at least of the nuclear family .
C. Derick Varnum , so yeah , it's just interesting the way that that these things have turned , the way that online discourse has kind of just uh , scrambled everybody's coordinates and you know well , yeah , and maybe to tie this back into guldner , I mean , like when I was saying , like amy terese , before she went full reactionary just outright , um was somehow trying to thread the needle between left communism and lash , and daniel bell , um , like you know , and the only thing I can see that they share is a critique of the , of the , of the social democratic to marciLeninist , back to progressive social democracy , left , like that is consistent on both sides . They're both very frustrated with that movement and how it leads most people into like atomized consumption of politics as an expression of self . I mean , like that is something lashes on too early . That is not .
C. Derick VarnYou know , I think we talk a lot more about it now . I mean , I know I talk a lot about it , but like , like people whose politics it like they don't really have , they don't do anything in regards to politics they like have twitter forums and stuff they follow , and I mean , even when we talk about this rebirth of marxist leninism that's happening over the past five years , uh , it hasn't led to like massive marxist leninist parties . It's not like I think that psl has 20 000 members because it doesn't um , uh or uh , and you know , we all see , we all know the psl was originally Trotskyist anyway .
Ross WolfeThe long history of Marcyism .
C. Derick VarnYeah , my favorite thing is watching all the edits on Sam Marcy's Wikipedia page where they keep on trying to say that he gave up on Trotskyism in like 52 . It's just funny . But I see that frustration and it's kind of a shadow or counter tendency to what I would like to call the re , the , the eternal return of Peter Kameho . Return of Peter Kameho , where you have , like these Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyist unity groups that try to like I don't know , peter Kameho is like Marcyite Light , you know , but then they try to enter in Popular fronts with social democrats and it's another fucking mess . And I mean Peter Kameho , both gave us the Green Party and the New American movement , which is part of the other side of the founding of the dsa .
C. Derick VarnI mean , like it's uh , you see this and I , I understand how someone like lash and someone like bordiga if you're just alienated by that , you could definitely end up , uh , trying to hybridize them . And I , you know , I think we've seen this before and that's why I brought up the stuff about france . Now , uh , in no way would I imply that lash is anywhere near a negationist or anything like that . In fact , if anything , that stuff would terrify the shit out of him
Leftist Dissatisfaction and Political Responses
C. Derick Varn. But um , uh , it is interesting that the frustration with the mainstream left kind of well , when I call it mainstream , that's probably a little bit too optimistic but this frustration with the social democratic slash , marxist-leninist , popular frontist orientation towards progressivism kind of leads to both tendencies , sometimes in the same people .
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean , actually it's funny , like , in terms of like Lashian French connections , I would say that the one kind of intelligent interpreter of Lash again , like , like you know , he's very conservative , I think he calls himself a tory anarchist this guy , jean-claude michet , um , he's , he's one of the , the few who's kind of like taken up lash um and tried to build upon his theories in a more , um , I guess , comprehensive , I guess comprehensive way .
Ross WolfeAgain , I know of him , you know , through a book he wrote on liberalism , but also insofar , again , as Anselm Jop has kind of engaged with his writings as well . But , yeah , I understand it , it's probably a bit of a 180 pivot from Goldner to Lash , but I don't know , it's been interesting Like , yeah , the dissatisfactions with the prevailing tendencies on the left can go any number of directions . I certainly am much more of the goldener cast of minds in terms of just like , well , not just because he's had such a profound influence on my own way of thinking , but just in terms of my own predilections . But you know , there clearly are many pathologies that exist . There is much to be dissatisfied with , um , and we can see , we can see it , um , you know that we really are , you know a friend of mine recently said you know we're entering the years of lead here , um , where you know it's , it's pretty bleak , um , and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of an organized , coherent response to the problems that society is facing today .
C. Derick VarnThe only organized left we seem to have right now is in resistance to the occupation of Palestine . Have a clear way forward other than to hope that a BDS-like movement would lead to a similar scenario , as it would to South Africa , which I take the very unpopular view of . While the BDS movement is worth supporting , it's not going to . The similarities with Israel to South Africa is the apartheid situation , and that's pretty much it .
Ross WolfeAnd I mean in many ways the situation for the Palestinians is much worse than it was for the black South Africans . And so far Israel , since the end of the Second Intifada , has kind of done away with its dependency on Palestinian labor and so it's dispensed with , like , any kind of dependence that they had and thus any kind of leverage that the Palestinian working class might've had is vaporized , and so far as , like , they've moved to towards employ , employing Eastern European and East Asian migrants Right , so the number the political economy is is very different .
C. Derick VarnUm , obviously , like , it's like the , the backlash on the the university campuses has been stark and very disturbing , um , disturbing and more extreme than even for BLM , which were arguably more dangerous to the status quo if they had actually yeah , I mean it was surreal , honestly , like going down to Washington Square Park the other night and seeing the walls that had been erected .
Ross WolfeI mean just the fact that uh university administrations are willing to go to such lengths and to create such like what could so easily be like seen as like a sort of parallel to the kinds of border walls that are being set up , that have been set up between israel and uh parts of the occupied territories . Yeah , it's just yeah .
C. Derick VarnBut it's interesting to me that I would agree with you that this left . Actually , you know , Goudner was so old by the time we saw the Bernie movement , although he did write about it .
Ross WolfeYeah , he wrote a really interesting interesting , like his response to the 2016 election . I thought was one of the best ones . The editorial that he wrote , uh about he was . He was trying to say that there are , um , there are people who you know in terms of who we're looking to appeal to . There are enemies and uh who voted for hillary , and there are friends who might have voted for trump . Um , in terms of looking to people like you know , these are the choices that people have made within this extremely , extremely , uh limited framework of uh bourgeois electoral politics . That , yeah , his his interest . Yeah , and he pointed out that , like at least in the 2016 election , uh , 17% of uh the people who voted for Trump uh had supported uh Bernie in the in the uh primaries against uh Hillary . So , yeah , he was , he was still like for 2016 , he was , he was still like Goldner was still , you know , quite active . Um , uh , in terms of just like Goldner was still , you know , quite active in terms of just like keeping up with events , I think , around 2020 , 2021 .
Left Communist Intellectual Evolution
C. Derick VarnHe just wasn't in good enough health from what I could tell .
Ross WolfeYeah , his health declined and I think he was just you know understanding he was kind of ancient to be fair .
Ross WolfeWell , he was , I I just think , quite quite just uh distressed at the state of the world . Just , I mean , he , like he , um , I think that he'd been doing this research on china um for close to a decade , a little over a decade at that point , and either it wasn't adding up to what he wanted to be able to say theoretically about it , or he wasn't able to sort of bring it into the kind of order that he wanted to , or some combination of that , and that , I think , also deeply upset him toward the end of his life uh , it was interesting to me .
C. Derick VarnI've been , you know , uh sean , uh , you know , mutual comrade of both of ours . Um and I have argued on china multiple times because I am a mild and I I mean this very mild china defensist , but I've also been very much like I don't get what the left , like every prediction I hear about China makes it sound like it's Big Rock Candy Mountain and they barely have the social services and healthcare that the US does . So like what are you on ? You know that there's also been this conflation of Xi and Deng , as if they have the same policy , which , of course , xi himself promotes . But it's actually not true .
C. Derick VarnXi's big thing was to take some of the policies of Bo Xilai and some of the early Aten's neo-malice and to reincorporate them and reincorporate their rhetoric and actually do social welfare in the parts of the country . They still have a pretty significant peasantry , um , and that's why it's popular or was popular . I mean , it's getting hard to tell because , um , the financials outside of china look pretty dire right now and the access has definitely decreased . You've noticed that I haven't seen as much out of swung , for example , these days , um , or also , oddly , I also haven't seen as much out of like explicitly pro china outlets like red sails and what was that ?
Ross Wolfewhat was the ? Yeah , what was the anti-chong ? Uh , the jiao collective , or whatever . That's it .
C. Derick VarnThat's it that was like on uh or whatever . That was like on uh , it was like the confucius institute , but for communists , um , uh , yeah , I mean there's been that . I mean we have seen this weird . One of the things that makes the current moment I would love to have gildner write about this is the liquidation of the differences in maism , because one of the things about the Maoism that you and I encountered in the aughts hated China . It was weird , but basically everything after 1978 was considered revisionist garbage .
Ross WolfeYeah , like the hard FRSO and the Avakianites . Again , just on the subject of the university protests , when I went up to Columbia a few days ago I was amazed by there was this big Revolution Books newsstand bookstand like two blocks away from campus . Everything was locked down . But to see the Avakianites out in force like that , I wasn't even aware that they still had that many members , especially since they're weird like pro-Democrat Avakian had this inexplicable obituary eulogy really , of Ruth Bader Ginsburg which just blew my mind .
C. Derick VarnI guess he's just picking up the spirit of his old former comrade Rob Reich .
Ross WolfeI mean Bob Reich .
C. Derick VarnFor those of you who don't know , I think Robert Reich was either in or adjacent to a proto-Revolutionary Comics Party organization , hilarious . It's interesting what Gildner called , though I mean like when guldner's critiquing this malice . How many of the malice of the 70s and 80s ended up like progressive democrats in the aughts . Like gene kwan is the one I bring up all the time . Mayor woke , a former mayor like there's tons of them . Like , like there's just so many of them just became like standard box standard democrats . Um , what's her name ? Uh , bill de blasio's wife . Like there's just so many of them just became like standard , bog-standard Democrats .
Ross WolfeWhat's her name ? Bill de Blasio's wife .
C. Derick VarnYeah .
Ross WolfeIt was in the Combahee River . Collective .
C. Derick VarnIt's , and I would also have loved to know what he thought about the Renaissance in 2017 , 2018 , 2019 , 2020 of the Combahee River Collective , without acknowledging that most of those people were still alive and had politics that we weren't discussing today . It was a very weird moment , I mean . I would be despairing too if I was Gouldner and I was so upset about the way a lot of the new left ended up and then to see it all resurrected , brother communization were going to be a major tendency in the American left they seem to be gearing up for that and then by 2017 , they , like we're back to a similar not we're not all the way back to like the 90s , where like five people know who these people are , but like , like , we're back to basically the ict , icc , uh , uh , pci , etc . Representing the PCI , international excuse me , international , not the Italy representing , you know , the sectarian movement and them being about it , and then a lot of former I mean I think we do have to admit a lot of former left communists cut right like they did .
Ross WolfeWell , I mean , many of them were swept up in . You know what they thought was perhaps possible Corbyn , sanders , like they , I mean I don't know People from all sorts . Every single sectarian tendency seemed to liquidate themselves , not just the attitude of left communism towards electoralism . That it's perhaps more surprising to me than Stalinist or Trotskyist , sort of like soft Trotskyist , you know , getting drawn into the Sanders movement or the Corbyn movement or whatnot , or even like communizationists in the DSA , the Sanders movement or the Corbyn movement or whatnot , or Melanchthon in France or whatever In the DSA .
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean there is some of the communist caucus out in California .
C. Derick VarnI have no idea . They're not communizationists anymore . They are now pretty strongly Mao-influenced . I mean , I'm sure somebody would not tell me they were Maoist They'd probably get mad at me for saying that . But it was very interesting . Like if you read their reading list it starts off with like kind of left communist adjacent and ends up very like workers inquiry , which is good , Maoism , structural , all too Syrianism and like , to be fair to all , to Sarah , and there's a there's kind of a late alt-Syrian left in a mayor period , alt-Syrian Stalinism . I mean , like you can go out like alt-Syrian is a fucking wild figure himself , so you can go all over the place with it , but , um , you know that's where they ended up . Um , I have no idea . You know , uh , where this is all going to go . One of the things that I was laughing about a little bit is it feels like the the book on Bordiga that came out by Braille came out a little bit too late , so it's you know , bordiga had kind of passed .
Ross WolfeYeah , yeah , I mean we'll see . Like I , you know , I , of course you know , intellectually I was interested in uh trotskyism , the history . I learned about that largely through the first of all , the study of uh early soviet history and then through the anti-war movement , just coming into contact with trotskyist sects and studying critical theory in undergrad and then grad school . But then , you know , really , 2013 , 2014 , beginning to study the left communist traditions , with which I was a lot less familiar , particularly the Bordiga stuff , but also the sort of fusion , the 70s fusion , that the ICT and others attempted .
Ross WolfeI found interesting , and I still do think that the ICT puts out some out of the various I mean they don't claim to be a party but out of the various formations that exist on the organized communist left . I mean , I think that they still do extremely high quality work and a lot of stuff worth engaging with . But , yeah , it does seem like a lot of the interest in that . Just as , like most of the various Trotskyist sects , apart from , like the really hardcore ones , I guess the sparts have even softened a bit . They aren't just denouncing people left and right anymore . The IBT has always been a bit friendlier . But the IG people , I guess they have a big section , at least in the CUNY campus in New York and in Mexico .
C. Derick VarnAnd the IMT is still pretty big . The IMT is still for big .
Ross WolfeThe IMT is still like forging its own path or whatever . But yeah , I mean most of them , like the ISO is gone , socialist Alternative seems to have largely just liquidated itself . Socialist Appeal a lot of those like I mean , if they're not in the DSA then they're basically writing in publications with a lot of people like I mean they're , if they're not in the DSA then they're basically writing in publications with a lot of people who are members . But I mean I know there was a big hullabaloo within the DSA about entryism and whatnot .
C. Derick VarnBut it's kind of a sad end of like a well one's vibrant political host of political traditions but you know , such as the state of political host of political traditions , but you know , such as the state of that's , the danger of liquidating yourself into a clearinghouse of sex is , if the clearinghouse of sex goes down , all the sex in it go down too yeah , I mean it's .
Ross WolfeIt's also like it's . I mean it's also tough , because I I do view a lot most of sects as like clear dead ends , clearly disconnected from reality , even if they bore some like distant relation to a once living tradition . It's just like it's . So , on the one hand , like why should I be sad to see these sort of living fossils , kind of like , the living fossils that survived are worse .
Ross WolfeYeah , I mean kind of like the living fossils that survived are worse . Yeah , I mean for the living fossils that have finally like come to the realization of their own extinction , I mean I guess they've I mean good on them for for understanding that , uh , conditions no longer correspond to . You know the various theories that they concocted to try and claim lineage with whatever revolutionary tradition they did , but at the same time , by just giving that up in order to just back some bourgeois party in what is functionally just a wing of the Democratic Party . I don't view that as an improvement .
C. Derick VarnSo it's , it's difficult it's hard to for us to go back . I recently uh on my patreon ad , for my patreon uh put a uh an archive episode when I was talking to uh luigi , I can't remember his name from the IWW , from the IWW about where the left should clear into , and we were arguing at the time that it should have been the IWW because it didn't have an established relationship to any party and we were not yet quite in a party . Yeah , I'm not anti-party , for those of you who come at me , but I I do . A premature party formation becomes a sect , like that's what it does .
Ross WolfeYeah , Interestingly , like on the subject , Goldner Goldner had nothing but love for the wild lease . I mean he understood that they were a shell of what they once had been , but he's still like . He's still , you know , spoke quite fondly of just the what , what the iww had represented , and still thought that , like out of what existed , the iww was not the worst game in town no , I I think that's where I kind of am now is the iww like sucks , probably the least um , which is not saying much , uh , but it it is .
C. Derick VarnIt would have been interesting because , in some ways , one of the things that that I think that Gugner was kind of aware of is this attempt and and left politics to bypass the need to build up a larger working class support base by going directly for the executive , and because the critique seemed to have been from the Gen X left to talk about a left no one ever talks about , because it barely existed , went hyper localist and hyper cultural and hyper issue driven right , and I think that's all true . Actually , um , and so much of there wasn't gen x left , that's what they did and that it didn't go anywhere so that we needed to go for a national subject , but that led to one high methodological nationalism . I mean , one of the weird things about 2015 to 2019 is the left barely talked about other countries , except maybe talking about Latin America as other examples of things we could do .
Ross WolfeYeah , or they would like yeah , they Well , I mean there was Bernie was like look at the Corbyn movement . Corbyn was like look at the Bernie movement . They were both like look , look , isn't it great what Syriza has done ?
C. Derick VarnPodemos .
Ross WolfeI mean , that was the extent of their internationalism , or I guess they would look to Brazil .
C. Derick VarnYou know that everybody still looks to Lula , even though we have to forget the Dilma Rousseff thing happened like it's , I guess people have soured a bit on Amlo since he even though we have to forget the Dilma Rousseff thing happened .
Ross WolfeI guess people have soured a bit on AMLO since he worked so closely with Trump and seems to still praise Trump .
C. Derick VarnThe funny thing for me is that's not actually the greatest reason to be sour on AMLO . There's other good reasons to be sour on AMLO .
Ross WolfeThere's a whole bunch . I mean .
C. Derick VarnI mean I just , I just think that's the reason why a lot of american leftists , uh , no longer are as excited about him as they once were but it does feel like in a world without these kind of critics , be they the kind of right deviationist of lash which there's , I mean to be fair , there's probably a lot more of those still um , uh , some of them have just become outright reactionaries , which I will say lash never did . I'm going to defend lash on that to
Navigating Anti-Americanism and Geopolitics
C. Derick Varnthe end .
Ross WolfeHe was not actually a reactionary , yeah I , I don't know , like after the , you know much more after like the , I've read the true and only heaven . Um , I've read the True and Only Heaven , which .
C. Derick VarnI don't consider reactionary text . I consider it a pretty liberal text and also his Critique of Progress was the same one the post-structuralists were making actually , so I don't even see why people are mad about that . The Revolt of the Elites is an unfinished , unfinished posthumous text and that needs to be taken to account . He did not feel comfortable with it during his lifetime .
Ross WolfeAs far as I understand , he was a lifelong Democrat , like he , yeah , and I think he was even close with like I know he wrote a critical article about Hillary Clinton , but I , I think , like wasn't he invited by jimmy carter to the white house ?
C. Derick Varnoh , yeah , yeah he was invited by the right house . Uh , he , um , I mean , like most of those new leftists , he there was a period where he wasn't . He tried to form a party with barbara aaron reich and adolpholph Reed and stuff in 68 . So so you know , so that wing of like the , the , the new left , that is kind of still with us . Well , I guess Adolph is the only one left , but he must've been the youngest at the time , probably .
C. Derick VarnYeah , he would have been very young um , that that wing was very much uh in his orbit , so I guess you could say , like the center of the dsa uh today was his , was his tendency . So that also puts him as kind of a lifelong democrat . When they gave up on building a workers party which he did actually think that they should do so , but yeah , he had a he had very jaundiced opinions of the Clintons actually , but he never totally gave up the project and that's , you know , that's . I mean anyone with a brain probably had a fairly jaundiced opinion of the Clifton's in the 90s .
Ross WolfeOh yeah , anyone who just was even aware it was sentient at the time .
C. Derick VarnBut I do think , like this tendency , because what happens when you shut these critiques out this left communist critique and this right divinationist critique is that the only thing you can do is double down on developmentalism and social democracy in more and more violent seeming forms and more and more punitive forms , which then you will downplay the punitive nature of , and I think that was something guldner and lash both saw as a problem with neo-maoism like um , that like it was basically a revenge fantasy , um , and I I kind of still think , I see , I mean like we see a lot of that today . And I remember , you know , for me it was actually Ron Tabor , another former Draperite , who ended up an anarchist and an anti-communist anarchist . I want to put a pin in that because I don't want to fully endorse Ron Tabor . But Ron Tabor's argument that Graeber's failure would lead to a rebirth of social democracy and the rebirth of social democracy would lead to a rebirth of Stalinism when social democracy went on , the , you know , wash up on the shores of history for failing to do the same thing it had failed to done , you know , five other times historically , was right and uh , it , it , it , and he called that in 2012 . So it's , uh , it's one of these things that that I think we have to to look at , and what I find very interesting about the marxist leninism of today , or the stalinism of today , if we call it what it actually is , um is that we're not even dealing with , like classical popular front Stalinism or any coherent form of Maoism . We're basically dealing with an incoherent quasi third worldism or an incoherent patriotic socialist movement that seems to like winners just because they're winners , even though they lost ultimately . So it's a very strange like pragmatist response . It's also like revenge-centered and ultra-violent . Even though they don't actually do any of the violence , it's projected elsewhere at all times . So it's a very strange movement that we have right now , yeah , and I think that's an interesting thing .
C. Derick VarnI think one of the things that another thing that Lash and Gugner share a little bit is Lash was really worried about anti-Americanism leading to an anti-orient orientation , hostile to working class Americans . He did not have a problem with being anti-American government , and Goudner seems to have a similar weariness of what we might call mere anti-Americanism , our mere anti-imperialism . Like there is a reactionary core to some of that not all of it and that , and that we should be wary of it Now , at the same time , if anyone's celebrating fucking NATO today unfortunately , like some anarchists do , I think they're very deluded . So I don't know .
Ross WolfeI don't know how you feel about all that oh , I mean , clearly , you know , I it was like it's been , like it's been difficult because because , like I , I am close to the number of like ukrainian leftists . But to see , uh , I think there have been some on the ukrainian left is shenko and others who've been very principled in their anti-NATO stance and who've been very written quite well on the issue . There's a guy who I edited the last issue of Insurgent Notes , which is on the Ukraine-Russia war , and it had a host of different opinions . Russia war um and it had a host of different opinions . Uh , I definitely fell into the um no war , but the class war um sort of classical left , communist , again classical , even leninist , if they're , if leninists were consistent , but go ahead yeah , yeah , exactly , but um , there were others .
Ross WolfeJohn Garvey contributed a very long textual argument trying to reinterpret Rosa Luxemburg's criticisms of national liberation In a way I'm not sure that Goldner himself would have been comfortable with , but he did locate some very interesting articles that she had written early on about the Polish party . But in any case , I'm very Just to be clear John Garvey is not like pro-NATO or anything . His argument was that insofar as there is resistance , homegrown resistance to Russian imperialism , that's worth supporting . Know , you know that's worth supporting . I'm more ambivalent about that , but yeah , I mean , I have seen the pro-NATO cheerleading among some anarchists , among some Ukrainian leftists , but also .
C. Derick VarnPlenty of Russian cheerleading amongst .
Ross WolfeMore Russian imperialist cheerleading from certainly from Stalinists , but also various trots and others , to say nothing of just the sort of mega-communists and the various isolationists .
C. Derick VarnWatching Stalinists celebrate the Orthodox Church has been a wild thing that I did not expect to see in my lifetime .
Ross WolfeIt also is incoherent insofar as Putin has jailed many Russian communists , you know , for their opposition to him domestically . Again , for them it's all a game of geopolitics . It doesn't matter , as long as they're opposed to America , which is the big baddie in the room .
C. Derick VarnSo I think everybody needs to oppose that To me this is the elephant in the room is when you give up on political , economic analysis for driving geopolitics , you end up just picking sides in geopolitics .
Ross WolfeYeah , it's just football's like who are you rooting for ? Not that you really have any tangible effect on any of it . I mean , there are people who are more intelligently saying , like you know , like the us needs to stop funding wars overseas , uh , and that's something like people from the isolationist right to . I think a more , a more principled communist stance can get behind . I mean , just like opposition of you know one's own domestic government funding these foreign wars , on whatever side they happen to be on .
C. Derick VarnYeah , that's basically where I am actually is like we should not it , like I don't think we should definitely be putting the finger on the scale of russia , but like , um , I am very , I am very much on team . Uh , we should be wrapping down the financial and military support for our and our fucking arms industry , which basically runs the country at this point , in some way , and , and that will mean objectively staying out of things like Ukraine , et cetera , and I also do think that the U ? S played a major role in baiting the Russians into that situation , but that does not excuse them for , you know , an expansionist orientation at all , like , and because if you believe that you also are like structurally agreeing with George Bush in like 19, . In like 2001 , about like preemptive strike , basically , is what that is , and if you are completely a-principled about that , then there you go .
C. Derick VarnI mean , this is why it's so hard , though , to have a peace movement right now , even a non-pacifist peace movement is . People are kind of incoherent about what they want and how they want these things to wrap up , because it's not like in the past , where american imperialism was like direct and we could just get out , um , you know , uh , like in the iraq and afghanistan situations . This is all proxy war , indirect funding , shit , um , which is also also structurally predictable for anyone who's actually studied geopolitics and what multipolarity would lead to , if there's not some vision for what multipolar interaction would be . And , as I also like to remind people , there's nothing about the Zimmerwald left and thus Lenin , that ends up supporting one imperial pole over another . In fact , that's Lenin's very clear on this and it's consistent his entire life . So , like it's , it is what it is , all right . Thank you so much ,
Marxism and Family Research Plans
C. Derick Varnross . Where can people find your work ?
Ross WolfeWell , I haven't written anything in a while but I'm hoping I've been doing all this research on Marxism and the family , probably going to pitch that to Brooklyn Rail . I've written for them . I've written for mediations , situations , a bunch of other places . I had a blog . I have a blog , I just don't update it very often the Charnel House . But in any case , look for that essay , series of essays on Marxism and the family , hopefully coming out in the next year or so .
C. Derick VarnAll right .
Ross WolfeThank you All right . Thanks again , man .
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