Varn Vlog
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.
Varn Vlog
From Dawn to Decadence, Part 3: Is Samir Amin's Challenge to Eurocentric Narratives About Decadence?
What if the concept of decadence holds the key to understanding our societal and political structures today? This episode challenges traditional narratives by dissecting Samir Amin's unfinished work on revolution and decadence through a Marxist lens. We navigate through Afibung's critique of decadence theory, contrasting Marxist views with more coherent conservative critiques of current institutions. Furthermore, we tackle the pressing issues in the education systems of the U.S. and Britain and ponder how the normalization of capitalist problems by the left may hinder societal progress. Our dialogue draws on insights from Christopher Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism" to suggest that the root of societal issues may go deeper than mere narcissism.
Join us on a journey through historical socio-political frameworks as we question Eurocentric grand narratives and explore the tributary mode of production. With a critical eye, we scrutinize the tendency of Marxist scholars to generalize historical categories and contrast this with the nuanced perspectives of civilizations like the Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Ottoman empires. This discussion probes the coherence of these generalizations and their role in understanding the evolution of productive forces and state structures, challenging the utility of broad historical categorizations.
Imperialism and socialism's past and present dynamics take center stage as we analyze the challenges of forming anti-imperialist alliances in today's fragmented world. Reflecting on historical parallels, from the Roman Empire to modern Western capitalism, we examine the enduring divisions of labor and the pressures facing nations like China and Cuba. Through the lens of global socialist states, we explore Hugo Chavez's vision for a Fifth International and the ongoing struggles of socialism in the context of economic development and class struggle. This episode invites listeners to reconsider the nature of revolutions and the implications of bourgeois ideologies in shaping new modes of production.
Check out Revolution or Decadence by Samir Amin.
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Hello, welcome to Regrettable Century and Barb Vlogs from Dong to Decadence series, and we will hopefully knock on desk complete Samira Means of Revolution or Decadence from 2018 in the month of review, part of a book that he never finished, which is a kind of third world world systems. Take on things. We have gotten through all of section one, part of section two, and we've been debating whether or not this has anything to do with Marxism whatsoever. We're going to try to finish that today. I am also going to put a little caveat in this for health reasons, and you guys may notice that my beard is gone. That is for health reasons. Weirdly, we may or may not have a long hiatus on this. We record so far ahead that it might actually not affect anything, but we will definitely be taking a probably month or two month break on recording. Um, but, like I said, I've got so much of a backlog the world may not even notice, so I'm just saying that in case they do.
Speaker 2:Um not gonna get your machine, man your machine. You record like crazy. Yeah, we're always like we've got to record something right now, so we have something for two days from now.
Speaker 1:I actually have episodes once a week all the way into January, and we're recording this before the election, which is good for this scenario because, like I said, I might be offline for a while. When we come back, we'll be going through Afibung's critique of decadence theory. We're going to go into the ICC, that is, the International Communist Current Theory of Decadence, and then we're going to get into some conservative writers on decadence theory, because they're not all stupid, despite what you might think.
Speaker 2:No, they're actually, in some cases, more coherent than some of the Marxists that we're reading.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, here's the thing I feel like one of the things about the Marxists is they don't actually talk about the effects on actually existing actual institutions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's the thing that conservatives definitely try to do is relate to a reader who's not trying to, not looking for some grand totalizing theory that they can speculate about, but how things are being affected in the now.
Speaker 1:Right things are being affected, like in the now right, and as a person who's a believer in capital t theory, I also do get frustrated with like like leftists don't talk about education, they don't talk about domestic health care, they don't talk like, or they only talk about it as a suite of goodies that they gave up on the moment that bernie sanders capitulated or whatever.
Speaker 2:yeah, um well, I mean, uh, looking at the discourse around, uh, that article that you posted about how kids at elite college, elite colleges can't read um the you know some of the comments that I saw, uh, about that, not just with you but elsewhere, we're just totally blowing off the idea that there's anything wrong with education. Yeah, they're like, oh, the kids will be fine. This is all moral panic about nothing. I'm like, wow, you tell me that you have no idea what the fuck is going on in our education system without telling me, yeah, I mean no seriously it's, it's, it's, this is oh, it's just a technological problem?
Speaker 1:no, it isn't. Um, oh, this is just a cultural problem. No, it's not. They intersect. You can't separate the two out. Um, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, I've got functionally illiterate students in my college classes and me, and me talking about like, why even liberal families are going to stuff like homeschooling and not just silly stuff like radical unschooling, which doesn't have to be silly, but it's like, since it's been turned on TikTok and TikTok makes everything dumb. Talk about the decadence of our society, right?
Speaker 2:I mean this is all very relevant to the decadence of our society. I mean this is all very relevant to the decadence of our society. The United States constantly dropping in the rankings education system is a pretty good example of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean here's the.
Speaker 2:Thing.
Speaker 1:The first bourgeois powers France, england, the United States have all had bad education systems for not quite 100 years since, since the end of the post-war boom, for sure, um, but we're 70 years, yeah, yeah, but we're. We and britain are collapsing faster. Yeah, it used to be like france, britain and the us were all clustered together at like 15 16, but we're just dropping through the floor and Britain's following us down. Um, uh, I mean, and I mean, britain has a slightly more rigorous and and coherent educational system than the United States does, for a variety of reasons, one of which is it's federalized as opposed to right, uh, our national as opposed to our weird quasi federal, not system.
Speaker 2:Whatever the fuck we're doing, our totally incoherent and adversarial system that makes sure that nothing is ever accomplished right.
Speaker 1:I mean the we're so adversarial that it's like hard to do anything. Um, but I've just been. I've been surprised that when I talk about this, it's conservatives who agree with me and like leftists will make excuses for it. And I'm like, as we've all said before, when is the left just to make you feel good about what's happening to you under capitalism? Why is it fucking good that you like? Why is everything normalized?
Speaker 3:Well, when did, when did lash write the culture, culture of Narcissism Since around then?
Speaker 1:78? I mean with the thing that's over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say Lash is talking about the new left, but I think it's more applicable to now than it even was to the new left. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1:I would even go more than you. We're not in a culture of narcissism anymore, if you actually follow his analogy out, we're in a culture of total psychic, psychic devastation. Because, yeah, fortism is was for him secondary narcissism. He didn't say this outright, but when he was describing the society of the 80s and the minimal self, he saw that as primary narcissism. Well, the next step in the freudian schema is total self dilute, uh, total self dissolution.
Speaker 2:Um, so are we in a culture of schizophrenia.
Speaker 1:Now then, maybe um um a culture of some cluster b personality disorder yeah, yeah, I was about to say like it's just, it's just all cluster b now all the way down um, that's why when, like jordan peterson would hit you with that insult, it stings because, even though jordan peterson's also probably a cluster b person talking out of his ass like you're always like, yeah, but that is everyone I know nonetheless, um, let's get into grand theories that don't tell us much. Uh, we've gone through, uh, samir amin using his tributary mode of production to get out of the problems of basing all the assumptions of the modes on Europe, and we have the modes listed. We've already talked about ourselves. We believe that the feudal mode was not coherent, but it is meaningful to talk about. We've talked about that on no Roll Road a lot, but this tributary mode literally seems to encompass every fucking thing.
Speaker 1:Right, it flattens it flattens everything out and uh, that way marx doesn't look eurocentric right but of course it wasn't marx that said any of this, so right it's also like a negation of a whole lot of marxism right um and it doesn't mean.
Speaker 3:It means that it makes it so that it doesn't mean anything right, it's, it's a way of uh, it's basically trying to deal with the asiatic mode of production without saying that, because it's, it's a whatever, an unfortunate term, but uh, in doing so it just makes a new problem by just in whatever. It's just not clear, it's not coherent right, I mean what happens when you let yeah, I'm sorry
Speaker 1:I was just gonna make a dumb joke about woke oh one thing I want to say about samir amin.
Speaker 1:I mean, we talked about this last time. He also isn't super, unlike a lot of the people who are anti-eurocentric. He also isn't super unlike a lot of the people who are anti-Eurocentric. He also isn't super like like he was against Islamist and sided with like developmentalist liberals in Egypt, for example, and Senegal and stuff like that. So he doesn't cut the way people think he would. It doesn't cut the way people think he would. For example, he had very mixed opinions on Hamas, to bring up something relevant to today. But the problem with this tributary mode, so his whole thesis is the West was backwards because it was politically divided, didn't have a centralized tributary empire, that it caught up and created a capitalist mode of production to catch up mainly in England and France, but also in the Italian city-states, but that it has decayed back into a tributary mode. But then I'm like, well then, what isn't a tributary mode Like? If modern like this is not neo-feudalism, it's even broader Right, like you think about our critique of neo-feudalism.
Speaker 2:Broader less coherent, less useful.
Speaker 1:Right. So we get to this. And the other thing is he's taught like he's talking in. Such grand generalizations are almost impossible to say anything about. I'll just read this paragraph at the end of section two Dallas, to the Roman Western case. It is not only an example of an abortive tributary construction. He said the West was backwards because the Romans developed too fast but couldn't develop a tributary mode of production. Um, and so they, we, they collapsed, and then that led to capitalism. 150 years later, um, we can identify three other cases of this type, with its own specific condition the Byzantine, arab Ottoman case. That's one case. So all of the Islamicate world and all of the Eastern Roman Empire are seen as and the Ottomans which are somehow uniting them both, which, I mean that sort of actually does make sense.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, depending on which period of time you're talking about, because once the Ottoman Empire absorbs the Byzantine Empire, it looks a lot like the Byzantine Empire because it takes over its civic infrastructure, but like not before that, I guess that's what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say because he just gives us one massive case of three different empires, that kind of work in succession, like I, you know, like like. So I guess in the roman western case we were talking about christendom, but western christendom, aka western europe, and then the bison case. We're talking about eastern christendom, then the islamicate arab world and then the ottomans.
Speaker 2:Okay, then he says like, if you remember your I'm sorry, if you remember your Rodney Hilton, the difference between the Anglo-Saxons and the French was night and day, completely just antagonistic systems. You could not ever characterize them as having been the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Right, and even when I've talked to Adnan Hussein, we talked about the Mediterranean quote, world system unquote, and he mentioned how much the Sicilians, in the English case, probably brought over some tributary stuff from the Arabs because of their exposure to them in Sicily and in Spain, which might, I mean, I think actually fits with Hinton. But like it makes these grand generalizations about what the West was and then like what all the Bisington slash Arab, slash Ottoman case was, is and people who wonder how this gets sucked into, like Samuel Huntington, duke and civilizational politics, can you get like that? This reads more like that than it does like Marxism, sure, sure.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that always annoyed me about medieval scholars that were not Marxist is that they insist that every minute difference means there's a new category, so that you can't conceivably call it like the feudalism of the Loire Valley and the feudalism of the Eastern Holy Roman Empire. You can't call those feudalism because they differ in insignificant ways. But Marxists do the exact opposite thing. Yeah Right, the.
Speaker 3:Marxists do the exact opposite thing. Yeah Right, the Marxists definitely do the opposite thing.
Speaker 1:We're just like there is no difference at all. I mean, to me this is like a degenerated successor to some of the worst stuff we saw in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3:Sure, yes, it makes sense that it would be that, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess I mean the Byzantine Arab case, the Indian case and the Mongol case. Those are civilizational cases, that's the other thing. I'm reading this and I'm like what does this have to do with historical materialism? In each of these instances, attempts to install a tributary system of centralization were too far ahead of the requirement of the development of productive forces to be firmly established, which is, which I think, is a very fancy marxist way of saying they couldn't centralize because they, because, for whatever reason and that I think, whatever reason is doing a lot of work here um, they couldn't develop unified productive forces within the empire, right, but like that's true in most empires, frankly right and you could argue they couldn't do it in the ussr either, so like, in fact, hillel tickton did so yeah um, so yeah, in each case the forms of centralization were probably specific combinations of state, parafeudal and commodity means.
Speaker 1:What does that mean?
Speaker 3:State, parafeudal and commodity. Yeah, that's everything. Yeah, that's a sentence that deserves a follow-up sentence, or paragraph or essay and how are those things mutually exclusive?
Speaker 1:right, like how is the state totally separated from commodities? That's only the only reason we even think the state is separated from commodities is capitalism makes it appear to be so, even though it's not, even though that's not totally real, like and are you gonna know what else is?
Speaker 3:it says they were probably specific combinations.
Speaker 2:I was like this sentence is uh, it doesn't really do anything actually, and are you gonna tell me that, like the prussian empire didn't have, uh, that the Prussian Empire didn't have parafeudal elements? Yeah, exactly. And if so, are you going to tell me that the Prussian Empire wasn't a state?
Speaker 1:Right, I mean like state, parafeudal and commodity means even applies to the French and English modernity, it applies to the Prussian Empire, it doesn't apply to the United States, although arguably, maybe our rentier system in regards to mining and sharecropping is parafutal. But then at that point, what are we talking about? I can make it work, but the fact that this seems to be saying something, and then when I go, what is it actually saying? It's like, well, let's break down the state, so the government, I guess, uh, because we're not also dealing with nation states yet um, parafeudal, so, uh, relations of obligation that are not the state exactly but sometimes inform the state in commodity. So trade played. Of course, it fucking did. That would be true for, like, that would be true for those of citizens, hunter-gatherers, except for the state part.
Speaker 3:I mean like in fact, it seems like what he's just this sentence is saying there this the forms of centralization were probably varied. That's what it should be saying, because state, pre-feudal and commodity means are just uh, adjectives. Further descriptions of the previous description.
Speaker 2:Did he mean pre-feudal?
Speaker 1:I don't know. He said in para-feudal so I guess also vague. In the Islamic State, for instance, which one, but nonetheless, commodity centralization played a decisive role. Okay, but what role? What's the role? So there's commodity centralization in the UMIeds and the FATIMeds, etc. But what role and why could they have centralization but the Byzantine Arab like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is another sentence which should be followed by a whole separate paragraph or even essay, or else it could just be deleted.
Speaker 1:Successive Indian failures must be related to the contents of Hindu ideology, which I have contrasted with Confucianism as the centralization of the empire gingus khan, as we know it was extremely short-lived. Those are non-sequiturs. What about hindu ideology? I guess he's talking about something else. He's written, and again this sounds like civilizational ideological critique, not historical materialism at all ideological critique, not historical materialism at all.
Speaker 3:I would even, I'm I am willing to even grant that there's possibly a confluence, a meeting of those two uh frameworks, but again, but without a, without a separate paragraph to explain how, then I would just have to assume that there's a unification of subcontinent hindustan.
Speaker 1:Thought into hinduism as a religion is a post-colonial phenomenon in and of itself. Well, yeah, so like what hindu ideology are we fucking talking about? Yeah, like I don't know this. This seems like I'm. I'm sorry if, if a student turned this into me, they would have gotten notes to rewrite this, this section, because it I have. I don't know what it's saying, and and like it seems like we should automatically know what he's referring to. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'll be quite honest with you. This seems like exotic mystifications to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have no idea what he's trying to say here and I'm not like clear on what he's referencing.
Speaker 1:And he's not even like telling us what, what like, like I have spoken about. Okay, give me the footnote where I can go look up that essay. Where did you speak about it, dude?
Speaker 3:yeah, like yeah, I'm kind of surprised that there aren't a lot of footnotes here.
Speaker 1:Are there in notes there's no, no, no, it's not here, no, and I mean I'm not in this this is like. I'm just like.
Speaker 3:This is kind of this just feels sloppy and I, I don't think sloppy like this is a part of missive that which seems like it'd be a facebook post yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking it was like a blog post almost, and this was like uh, this is like an introduction to the book that never, that we never got.
Speaker 3:So I mean, maybe that's part of it, I'm gonna be charitable, but it's just well then, my criticisms have to do with the editors, then right, if you're editing the monthly review website and you're like, oh, this is a thing which deserves a footnote, you could just add a footnote right all right for sure, but no wonder people get marxist, leninism and duganism confused reading.
Speaker 1:I mean, jason, do you see what I'm talking about here? Because you're on the Duganism reading group too.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like this whole, like civilizations, do this because the row of ideology not that I don't think ideology is important, but usually we don't give ideology causal significance for why centralization is impossible.
Speaker 3:Right. It's always one precedes the other and ideology is always secondary. Well, I think so, yeah, but not here. That's what it means to me, and that's what it also means to all Marxists before 1999. What the materialist conception of history. That's what it means.
Speaker 1:So let's get to section three. Also, the first section is like way long and the other sections aren't, which is also not a great sign. Um, the contemporary imperialist system is also a system of centralization of surplus in the world scale, in so much that the united states and china and the eu mostly germ Germany were centralizing production, and that this has high, low organic capital needs because of automation. I think I know what he's talking about, but again, I'm having the fixes for him. Yeah, the centralization operates on the basis of the fundamental laws of the capitalist mode Sure, although okay, which are they? And in the conditions of its domination over pre-capitalist modes of the subject periphery.
Speaker 3:Are there still pre-capitalist modes anywhere in the?
Speaker 2:world, not anywhere of any consequence. Like I mean, we've got like in deep papua new guinean in the amazon right, yeah, and like maybe in like the sahara and you know.
Speaker 1:But in general, there's nobody like.
Speaker 1:Even the actually existing socialist societies have to participate in the capitalist world market, even if they're trying to build an alternative one right yeah I don't know who he's talking about here um, I have formulated a law of accumulation of capital on the world scale as a form of the expression of the law of value operating on scale. I've actually read that book but, uh, again, I'm not quite sure what he talks about here. The imperialist system for centralization of value is characterized by the acceleration of accumulation and by the development of productive forces in the center of the system, while the periphery and these are held back and deformed that probably was true, but I don't think it's true anymore.
Speaker 2:It feels like productive forces.
Speaker 3:The basis of my contention that we're no longer talking about the same thing. Imperialism is maybe a different thing than what exists now, and this is why.
Speaker 1:So there's a Cosmonaut article about the definition of the proletariat versus the formal and informal sector by Joshua Lou McDermott, which I tell people to read even though I don't agree with its malice conclusions and everything. But he makes a point in a letter that he responds to someone, joshua Lou McDermott, about the three functions of deindustrialization. About the three functions of deindustrialization. So industrial output's one thing you can measure and talk about industrialization, in which case industrial output has increased in all parts of the world. So there's no deindustrialization. The number of workers involved in industrialization that has radically decreased in the developed world and even decreased a little bit in China. And then industrialization as proportion of GDP it has decreased as proportion, but only like by like 10%. So basically, what you see there, if we put those things together, we do not see de-industrialization of production sorry neo-feudalist. But we do see de-industrialization of production sorry neo-feudalist. But we do see deindustrialization of the percentage of the economy that is that is obviously tied into industrial production in the west. We don't see that in china. And then everywhere, including the developing world, we see the decline of the need of high numbers of people in industrial production. You can't conceptualize that, just as centralization of value and accumulation of the means of productive forces. Also, if you do that, then you should.
Speaker 1:The logical conclusion for Samir Amin is that China is an imperialist power by this definition. Right, and I know that they would not argue that no, not at all. Right, but ironically, china is the most centralized and has the newest means of development of forces. Does it have what the United States has? No, but it's got a ton and it outproduces the US. So, and then we're second, but it's got a ton and it outproduces the US, and then we're second. And then Germany slash, the EU is third. All right. Thus we can see, the further development of productive forces in the periphery requires the destruction of the imperialist system of centralization of the surplus.
Speaker 1:Why? Not that I disagree with that, but why? This? Is this whole decoupling argument? Right? If decoupling was so obvious, why is it forced on people by the imperial powers, not the other way around? Think about it. Who decoupled from China first? We did, yeah, who you know? And sometimes like, when you decouple like Russia, it makes you develop. Like Russia under the Ukraine war. It makes you develop a military Keynesian economy and develop your domestic economy. Some because you're being shut out. Right, but that's not something Russia asked for.
Speaker 2:Right, they didn't want it. In fact, they wanted the exact opposite. They wanted further integration, especially with Europe, europe. But I remember, I remember whenever the, the, the sanctions first hit and uh, russia closed down, uh, all the mcdonald's and then shut off access to facebook and instagram and stuff, I was like, wow, russia's getting instantly cooler they're creating a utopia over there that's a joke yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Some people actually believe that uh no, they.
Speaker 2:All they did was open russian mcdonald's and russian social media, so it's not like they're doing anything.
Speaker 1:Uh, better, just different right, which, of course, will lead to industrial development and produce a lot of gdp and actual wealth also. Since it's a closed system, we'll also be really given to inflationary and deflationary shocks, which we're seeing as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, unless, and until they can export it into places that don't have it right now.
Speaker 1:Right, but who's going to do it? I guess India could. India right now is actually the most GDP productive major economy. I think that's actually part of the gambit going to do. I guess india could india has. A india right now is actually the most gdp productive major economy I.
Speaker 3:I think that's actually part of the gambit, is that? Uh, that's part of this.
Speaker 1:The, the brick system is like the idea that russian and indian collaboration can overcome russian I mean chinese and indian hostility on economic terms.
Speaker 1:But I mean again this I think this was true for the 20th century. But whenever I'm reading a lot of this Third Worldist literature I'm like, are you describing the 1950s or are you describing now? There is a lot of deliberate underdevelopment that's happening, imposed upon the world by the imf. So I that part of it I see. But the idea that we're still centralizing production forces, that's kind of true and kind of not, because we're totally integrated with these other words and if we really take this seriously, this really does indicate that china is an imperialist power, which I don't think we would argue. I don't think Samir Amin would argue, but that is the logical conclusion of what he's saying.
Speaker 3:Right, I think that's I mean. I know this is a. I'll try to not say this every time we pause, but it's part of my argument that for the last several decades we're talking about a different we have been laboring under a different system of production and accumulation and circulation than was operative before and right after the Second World War. It's just different.
Speaker 1:Right, I agree, but it isn't 19th century entrepreneurial production either, which, weirdly what a lot of people, even a lot of socialists, seem to want, which I don't even know why they do. But anyway, a necessary phrase of decentralization, the establishment of a socialist transition within natures must precede the reunification at a higher level of development which the planetary clash of society would constitute. The central thesis has several consequences for the theory and strategy of the socialist transition, aka it's the opposite of what socialists historically believed, which Samir Amin admits. I will say that In the prayer theory the socialist transition is not distinct from national liberation. Of course it's not.
Speaker 3:That's quite the claim, that is, I have a different theory of everything, but I call it marxism still, for some reason yeah, it has, because this year go ahead.
Speaker 2:I said, and this right here folds uh over well into third positionism yeah, it does uh, which is why they're.
Speaker 1:Which is why, like my malice friend from 10 years ago who told me like one of the problems with malism is it can easily become national bolshevism, but people don't recognize it as such because it's brown yeah, um, I think it's a good red brown instead of the bad right it becomes clear that the latter is impossible under local bourgeois leadership, and thus a democratic stage in the process of uninterrupted revolution by stages led by a peasant and workers. This is just Maoism. But which form of Maoism? He's not even saying that.
Speaker 3:It's Mao Zedong thought, as opposed to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Speaker 1:Right, so it's not third world, Except it is third worldism, but it's not the third worldism.
Speaker 3:It's a new third world. It's third worldism, part two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, third worldism, world systems edition. Yeah, this fusion of the goals of national liberation and socialism and genders in a turn of series of new production we must evaluate, have a question why don't we ever talk about the fact that most of the national liberation movements of the 19 I mean he, he says it under one thing this later is impossible under local bourgeois leadership. But the problem is both, uh, malice dung thought and dung ism encourage local bourgeois leadership. It's the fourth star on the goddamn flag. People don't know what those stars mean.
Speaker 2:That's what I've always said about Maoism and the national liberation movements in general the red colored national liberation movements in general is that it was the most effective and successful wave of bourgeois revolutions in history.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is going to make a lot of people mad, but I just think we, even if you think China is socialist and I don't think China has achieved socialism neither do they, by the way but I do think we can argue that there's a real socialist core there, but nonetheless it exists in the capitalist world. And for people who are like, what does it mean? Well, as soon as the Sido-Sedio split happened, how did they get their development of production? They didn't decouple from the capitalist world. No, they tried that in the 50s and 60s. They did the opposite. They totally coupled with the capitalist world. Yeah, you can't deny that.
Speaker 2:And I want to just to say that when I called them bourgeois revolutions I'm not putting a value judgment on that thing. Well, it's not bad I think the bourgeois revolutions were good, okay Right, they just weren't socialist. They didn't create socialism. Weren't socialist. They didn't create socialism, even if they did try to, and I will definitely agree that they were all trying to commit socialism, ultimately they didn't.
Speaker 1:No, and the only ones that kind of did were the ones that were shut out of the international system by not themselves. So the DPRK and Cuba, sure Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm a big cuba apologist, by the way, me too, and I've actually pointed out that china is has has lately been putting pressure on cuba to liberalize. But market liberalize, yeah, um, for the emphasis shifts from one aspect to another due to the real movement of society alternates between progress and regression, ambivalences and alienation, particularly in the nationalist form. Here again we can make a comparison with the attitude of barbarians towards the Roman Empire. They were ambivalent towards it, notably in their formal, even Slavist, imitation of the Roman model, against which they were revolting. I mean, that's true-ish, but he's saying it in in such broad terms. I actually can't say if it's true in every case. Um, right, I think for the most part it is, but, like the, the rest of this is just rhetoric. For if there's just from one thing to another do the real movement of society I know we use that from marx, but what the fuck does that mean here Alternates between progress and regression. Progress towards what and regression from what? Communism, then say it. Ambivalence is an alienation, particularly in the nationalist form. But then it can't be about communism, because we see this all the way back in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1:At the same time, the parasitical character of the central society intensifies and some imperialist tribute. Corrupted by plebeians and paralyzed by their revolt In societies of imperialist center, the growing portions of the population benefit from unproductive employment and from privileged positions, both concentrated there by the effects of unequal international division of labor. The problem with that is that most of the production doesn't happen in the developing world Right. What is the developing world used for? It's not used for cheap labor. That's why you have massive urbanization without industrialization in Africa and in Latin America. The global South is not the world's production workshop. That's China. It's pretty much only China, and maybe now finally India, after like 120 years of that not happening Right. And so what's he talking about?
Speaker 3:he's talking about, uh, the roman empire he's talking about colonialism he's talking about, like how all the rubber trees on the plantations in the congo in the 1890s but or the or the roman empire what happened back?
Speaker 2:here is the Roman Empire and, like you're mentioning, yeah, so stuff that's at minimum 150 years out of date.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and maximum more like 1,000 years out of date.
Speaker 2:No, like 2,500.
Speaker 1:Unproductive employment, okay, one. I just want to remind him that people weren't in that, except for soldiers, were not employed in the roman empire, like um free, free labor was not the predominant form of fucking labor, um, but I this this seems to be reading like from a historical materialist perspective. This is irresponsible, because there's reading the past onto the future and the future onto the past and ways that are trans-historicization, right, yeah, but which also makes sense if you think his ultimate goal is to say everything's decadence into tributary production, and that's the normal form of centralized empire, I guess. But that has nothing to do with marxism at all, just fucking on the fact that you've left that, you, you've left the tradition. At this point, um, I guess the only thing is anti-imperialism. But even this, like I'm not even quite like what he means by imperialism seems to be shifting all the time. I don't know what form of imperialism we're dealing with here. If Roman imperialism is the same as modern Western capitalist imperialism, which it isn't, it doesn't work the same way.
Speaker 3:Even modern Western capitalism is different in its imperialist ventures than it was 100 years ago yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Thus, it is hard to envision disengagement from the imperialist system and the formation of an anti-imperialist alliance capable of underlining the hegemonic alliance and integrating a transition into socialism. Well, the problem is like who's got like? You guys don't like the common turn, and we don't even have one anymore, nor do we even have a common form. China hasn't done either of those things. Bricks is not mostly got socialist in it. What the fuck is gonna lead to what you think?
Speaker 3:well, in the very last attempt at such a an alliance was when Hugo Chavez mentioned, when he talked about the need for a fifth international, which never got off the ground and which he even said, like really, I hope we can do this someday, and that was 2010?.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And now we've got Lula, the nominally socialist president of Brazil, trying to get sanctions put on Venezuela, the nominally socialist extractive economy.
Speaker 1:I hate to point out. I think both those societies are nominally socialist.
Speaker 2:Right, there was definitely a huge movement of people trying to create socialism in Venezuela, definitely Especially when Chavez was still alive, but I think that the project has soured considerably.
Speaker 1:And this is why Maduro is just looking for trading partners for their energy policy, right, because that's what their socialism was based off, of which, by the way, socialism on one commodity is inherently unstable, and anyone who studied any kind of economic system should know that, particularly if you're a fucking Marxist. But nonetheless, it's not like everyone hasn't tried it, including Norway. So, whatever, the introduction of the new relations of production seem easier in the periphery than in the center of the system. Is that true? Seems like it, kind of is true, but then again not really Like, I don't know. In the Roman Empire, feudal relations took hold rapidly in Gaul and Germany, but only slowly in Italy and the East.
Speaker 1:You know, what I kind of think that. I think that actually is true, but I'm not sure what he means. Go ahead.
Speaker 3:I think I might. I might think that the that first sentence is right. It seems easier in the periphery than in the center, just because it's a because there's less old production.
Speaker 1:There's left dead labor you have to get rid of, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, old production. There's left dead labor you have to get rid of, right? Yeah, also because they're like no, uh, there are no barriers politically to like whatever violence is necessary to force a change, and I think that's uh again part of trotsky's uh combined uneven development. It's central to it. What's interesting, though, is that uh just many other sentences. This is a sentence which should be followed by at least a couple, at least a paragraph.
Speaker 1:Right Like this is stated as if it's obvious, and I'm like I think I actually I agree with you, jason. I think it's true, but particularly since we're talking about seems and not is right, right, yeah, exactly. And particularly since we're talking about seems and not is Right, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:He's not actually making a statement about the actual ease of development in the periphery, because that's going to vary depending on where in the periphery you're at. And again you could settle this with a footnote. You could just say at the end of that sentence you could put like a one, and then at the bottom you could give a sentence, explanation about why and a link, and that's it.
Speaker 1:But this is not unique to capitalism. We've got to see here he's not talking about capitalism, here he's talking about any mode of production.
Speaker 2:In the Roman.
Speaker 1:Empire. The feudal relations took hold rapidly in Gaul and Germany, the periphery, I guess, was slowly in Italy and the East, the core, I guess it is Rome which invented serfdom, which replaced slavery. Is that true?
Speaker 2:I don't think that's true. Chris Wickham would have us say that Rome accidentally invented serfdom as it was collapsing right, and that would be right. And that would be like accidentally invented serfdom as it was collapsing Right In the West, and that was specifically Right. And that would be like because, like the Latifundia was broken up into smaller holdings and then they charged rent rents to their peasants. How many?
Speaker 1:slaves were in the Byzantine empire, though that's another question. I don't actually know, but I know there's a ton of slaves in the Arab and early Ottoman one, although there's less and less as the Ottomans develop. Our slaves become more of a technical position actually. But go ahead.
Speaker 2:I don't necessarily think that what he said about feudalism never taking hold in Italy is actually correct. Feudalism never taking hold in Italy is actually correct. I think that it transitioned out of it into a sort of semi-free labor system earlier, rather than it never took hold. I'm not a Northern Italian guy. I studied French and German feudalism whenever that was my thing, many, many, many years ago.
Speaker 1:Either it only slowly in Italy. If it's only slowly, then it only developed in fucking Sicily and the South.
Speaker 2:Well, I know it developed in the definitely in the kingdom of two Sicilies, which was a Norman kingdom, right Right, but even in the North of Italy it did develop, but by the time of the communes it had sort of moved to a rent system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think that I think you know this is just. This is the opposite of we get super annoyed when liberal historians want to make like every tiny detail a sign that we can't talk about anything, but also everything's internally the same somehow. Yeah, um, this is the opposite of that, um, where I'm just like I think what you're saying here is kind of true, but I'm not 100 on the specifics and you're not giving me enough of a definition to even say Like we might be nitpicking something that he's going to explain later in the book.
Speaker 2:That was never written.
Speaker 1:Right, like it could be that this gets fixed in a longer text. Usually, samir Amin doesn't make me this angry. So, like Right, alright Blah, like Alright Blah, blah, blah. Today, this going back and forth, like this tributary mode that he's using, is actually interesting, because one he's arguing that we're not in a capitalist epoch right now. He said that earlier, but then he keeps on talking about capitalist relations today. Today, the feeling of latent revolt against capitalist relations is very strong in the center, but it is powerless. People want to change their lives, but cannot even change the government. Thus, progress occurs in the arena of the area of social life more than it is in the organization of production and state. The silent revolution and lifestyle, the breakup of the family, the collapse of the bourgeois values, demonstrated by contradictory aspects of progress In the periphery. Customs and ideas are often far less advanced, but socialist states have nonetheless been established there. Okay, where though? Cuba? Sure Venezuela? Nah, really, but kind of.
Speaker 3:But also Cuba really can't qualify as periphery if they are shut out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So who are the states? Who are we talking about? China? China's not periphery. Even the other, like Arigi and Wallerstein, have to admit that China is at least semi-periphery at best. And I'm like how is the most productive industrial society on Earth semi-periphery Like?
Speaker 2:using basic, just accepted world systems. Classification of periphery world systems. Classification of periphery Periphery is like the developing world, not the Eastern Bloc and its former satellites, nor China, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Although they try to maintain China as part of the.
Speaker 3:Periphery is a I mean periphery. To be peripheral means you have to have a relationship. You are tied to a center and you have to do.
Speaker 1:China is semi-periphery, which was kind of defensible in the 1990s when Arrigi was writing. But the fact that they've maintained it to now is like what.
Speaker 3:That just doesn't make any sense. China is literally this the core of industrial capitalist production and also politically speaking, china calls uh a lot of shots.
Speaker 1:So it's in no way peripheral to any anything that's what one of the interesting things, when people try to combine like this with multi-polarity theory and like, oh, they're doing the same thing, no, they aren't. Like the other, multipolar hegemons are not periphery by definition.
Speaker 3:Right, that is, the logical basis of multipolarity is that there are other poles. Poles are by by definition not peripheral.
Speaker 1:Right. I don't see why this. Even if you argue that they're not imperialist, which I think you're not correct on, at least if you're basing your ideas on what multipolarity means in Dugan or EH Carr or Hans Margenthau or anybody who actually wrote about multipolarity, it does not seem like you could say you can't say they're peripheral Right. Okay, so this is his critique of Marxism, although he's not going to call it a critique of Marxism, vulgar Marxist tradition.
Speaker 1:I like how people invoke Marxist traditions without saying which ones they're talking about, but anyway, vulgar Marxist tradition has affected a mechanistic reduction of the dialectic of social change. I mean, I would say that's true for the Soviet Union, harder to say that for Western Marxism, if you think that's the evil villain. Though the revolution, the objective content of which the abolition of older relations of production and the establishment of new relations, the precondition for the further development of productive forces, is made into a natural law. Okay, by the way, the revolution in marx is not initially like you don't start with relations of production first, and actually I don't think a single Marxist revolution.
Speaker 3:Well, maybe, like actually ultra leftist would, but I don't know what do you guys make of that, like the very fact that, like the marxist tradition, has transitional programs and mim-macked programs, indicates that that's not true yeah, I kind of think that this is a it's, it's a way of trying to retrofit, older the whole of what what we can call the Marxist tradition to his developmentalist, uh, it's the difference to his new, uh, non-marxist philosophy. Like, even though they're not the same thing, they're trying to glom them on together.
Speaker 1:Right, so okay, then we get this. His weird other thing Um the application of social realm, of the law by which quantity becomes quality. So we have an evocation of Hegel, but without meaning. The class struggle reveals its objective necessity. Only the vanguard, the party, is above the fray. Now is this supposed to be vulgar Marxist? Or are we supposed to agree with this? Makes and dominates. History is de-alienated. In what world is the vanguard party de-alienated?
Speaker 3:I think just to be charitable. Yeah, try to fix this for me. I think it's trying to. I think it should read like this the vulgar Marxist tradition has whatever affected mechanistic reduction and then also all of the rest of this paragraph. That's all what we can call the vulgar Marxist tradition.
Speaker 1:Right, except I actually don't think he's saying that because of the last sentence. This is why this goddamn needs an editor. The political moment defining the revolution is that the vanguard seizes the state. Leninism itself is not devoid of the positivistic reviction of marxism with sick international. Okay, so he's.
Speaker 3:He's actually criticizing leninism here okay, yeah, I mean, he's criticizing basically, uh, the whole of marxism, as the bold, I mean, and in to his credit, that's true that vulgar marxism is to be found all throughout. But again, like, like you just said, an editor would help a lot.
Speaker 1:Right, because he's not saying the party is de-alienated. He's saying that vulgar Marx is presented as de-alienated, although I've never known anyone who would actually say that.
Speaker 3:But they do act like it. Yeah, and definitely like 1930s and 40s. Pro-soviet communist texts will argue that Sort of it's interesting how this.
Speaker 1:I think it'd be interesting to know what he thinks about all the productivist reductions of productive forces that come out in the monthly review now, Just six years from this. This theory that separates the vanguard from the class is not applicable to the revolutions of the past. The bourgeois revolution did not take this form and the bourgeoisie co-opted the struggle of the peasants against the feudal lords. Totally agree, Absolutely true. The ideology that enabled them to do this, far from being the means of the manipulation, was itself alienating. Also true. See also capitalism.
Speaker 2:Our bourgeois society, yeah.
Speaker 1:In this sense, there is no bourgeois revolution Uh-oh, a term that is itself a product of bourgeois ideology but only class struggle led by the bourgeoisie. What the it is a bourgeois revolution. There's a change in the mode of production.
Speaker 3:Eventually, I mean, it wasn't gradual. But the bourgeois revolution is the what we can call class struggle led by the bourgeoisie to usher in the bourgeois motor production. That's what a revolution is or at times.
Speaker 1:So I see what he's doing here?
Speaker 2:I see what he's doing here is if, uh, there's no such thing as a bourgeois revolution, just class struggle led by the bourgeoisie, class struggle led by a communist party, even though it's not proletarian, is a socialist revolution, ah yeah, yeah, maybe so and just retroactively cleanses lots of sense there right, we can speak even less of a feudal revolution where the transmission was made unconsciously.
Speaker 1:We have unconscious revolutions all the fucking time. Yep, if the mode of production significantly changed. Like the industrial revolution was an unconscious revolution, yep, and the agricultural revolution, yeah right. Um, like I don't know all the revolutions prior.
Speaker 2:Like the only conscious revolution and marx is the, actually Not even the bourgeoisie one, yeah, the bourgeois revolution was not conceived of as anything but a rearranging of who was on top To better facilitate the way that society already worked Right.
Speaker 1:Alright, right, ugh, alright. The socialist revolution will be of a different type, presuming a de-alienated consciousness, because it will aim, for the first time, at the evolution of all exploitation and not at the substitution of new forms of old exploitation. I mean, yeah, thank you, at least that's the goal. But this will only be possible only if the ideology animating it becomes something other than the consciousness of the requirement of development of productive forces.
Speaker 3:This is to say, this will only be possible if the ideology animated it becomes anything. I think, I agree with him here. Revolution is dependent upon ideology. That's something I can't agree with him here. Is dependent upon ideology. That's something I can't agree with.
Speaker 1:Well, it depends on whether or not you accrue the political determinist error or the are, the are the economistic error, which are the two opposed errors in our narrow path. But here's the thing is I don't. I agree. I think, if we, if we bracket out whether or not ideology emerges from or is the cause of, I think I agree with this, but this is radically different than what he's arguing elsewhere the socialist revolution will will be of a different type presuming de-alienated consciousness.
Speaker 1:I actually don't believe we're presuming de-alienated consciousness, but whatever, in fact I would argue, de-alienated consciousness is not possible until you get beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat Right.
Speaker 3:It's actually the result of, or it's one of the results of the socialist revolution. It's not a precondition he's getting it backwards.
Speaker 1:This has all the.
Speaker 1:I agree with him until I think about what he's seeing as causal here, because it will aim, for the first time, for the abolition of all exploitation and not only a substitution of new forms of exploitation, but this will only be possible if the ideology animating it becomes something other than the consciousness of the requirement of the development of production forces.
Speaker 1:Is actually a critique of dungism, I think. Yeah, I think it is actually okay, but that's weird, because he sure as hell ain't stating that outright, but like, if you think about the way dung has to argue, he this would be aimed directly at them that there is nothing to say, in fact, that the status mode of production as a new form of relations of exploitation is not a possible response to the requirements of this development. Ultimately, though, you're right, chris, even though he's saying a bunch of stuff, I, I am. I am saying he's saying well, since the bourgeoisie could steal the peasants rebellions and make the bourgeois revolution out of it, then the statist rebellions could be ways of getting beyond that. Even if the statist is a new form of exploitation, which he's not saying, it isn't Right, right. So he is doing what he seems to be making, an ultra left point and then, at the very end, he's doing the opposite, opposite, even though he's critiquing dungism.
Speaker 3:okay, very sly, very sly, it seems like he's trying to um, draw a lot of lines, to draw it all together, like you know, very disparate kind of uh, I don't know it's like. I guess I can kind of. If this is what he's doing, I can kind of appreciate the desire to draw everything in and say, hey, it's something different than what you thought, it was all right. I just feel like it would be more, um, just be better if he said outright all right.
Speaker 1:Well, we're almost done. Finally, uh, we're on section five, which is the last section, but then we get to even broader generalizations, although the generalizations that do have. I mean, he's explicitly alluding to Marx without citing him. Only people make their own history. I mean sometimes Big asterisk on that, but I agree with it. But this is the only people make their own history, but not but history is not of their own making, like that's a hell of that's a hell of a caveat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um, neither animals nor inanimate objects control their own evolution. They are subject to it. That's a little bit actually scientifically. A bigger question on animals If animals have technology, they have some control over their evolution, and we are not the only animals with technology. Sorry, that's true. He needs to go back and read his angles. Yeah, he does. Actually. The concept of praxis is proper to society as an expression of the synthesis of determinism and human intervention. So praxis is the magic way out of the determinism, economism problem. How we're not going to say and, by the way, I'd also I'm not sure that marx is actually clear on that either, but this is something you see in Marx.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the dialectic relation of infrastructure and superstructure is also proper to society and has no equivalent in nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, sure, I mean that we know, of yeah but like, so what. Yeah, like. So humans do human things, cool man. This relation is not unilateral. The superstructure is not the reflection of the needs of the infrastructure.
Speaker 2:If it were, society would always be alienated and I cannot see how it could become liberated.
Speaker 1:Okay, I mean, I agree with the basic gist of this. It's basic Marxism, but it's Marxism at such a level that you can squeeze almost anything into it. This is all the highest level of abstractions of Marxism. This is not NCM Prime, this is like the Bas, the basin superstructure or feedback loop. Well, no shit, I hope, of course, unless you're economistic. I mean, this is like a good attack on, like the, the productivism.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, right now is the tradition which would be most likely to sign on to this are productivist, right, I'm just confused. I'm confused at like who is even taking aim at here? This is why I propose to distinguish between two qualitatively different types of transition from one mode to another. When the transition is made unconsciously are by alienated consciousness, that is, when the ideology animate in the classes does not allow them to master the process of change later appears to be operating like natural change, the ideology being part of nature for this type of transition, we can imply the expression mode of decadence. In contrast, if, and only if, the ideology expresses the total and real definition of desired change, we can speak of revolution.
Speaker 3:So he just made all prior revolutions non-revolutionary yeah, he basically just contended that uh, thus far there has not been a revolution except for socialism and everything. Socialist revolution and everything else like revolution as a concept belongs to uh socialist ideology, not to the socialist proletariat but to the socialist ideas, right only I.
Speaker 2:I don't understand what the point of any of this is like. This isn't clarifying, it's not no?
Speaker 1:I mean it's revolutionary phrase mongering in my opinion, but like also it makes it where we can say all prior revolutions they're not revolutions, they're their models of decadence, right I mean, I think that decadence is part of like what can be seen as a precursor to a revolutionary situation yeah, right, I mean, if we go, back to lenin and actually talk about subjective and objective conditions needing to align. What brings them into alignment is decadence. Yeah, I was going to say.
Speaker 3:Actually, so far, that's what all revolutions have been.
Speaker 1:It is not just a miseration. If we take Lenin, not Marx, by the way, marx's immiseration thesis in Capital, volume 1, chapter 25, and in the pre-1850 letters, but he doesn't seem to be later on.
Speaker 2:So make of that what you will.
Speaker 1:We are not people here to say that Marx is always consistent. I'm not of that kind of Marxist tradition, but I do think this is to label all non-intentional modes as modes, as models of decadence seems to me to just say that like okay, all the past is just a society decaying into another society, in which case we can't speak of revolution, because revolution is intentional. But then that would only apply to national liberation and socialist revolutions. But then national liberation isn't necessarily revolutionary, because he said that it also has to change the mode of production and national liberations do not inherently do that.
Speaker 2:Right, Not intentionally anyway.
Speaker 3:They would, though, if they had disalienated consciousness Right so intentionally anyway.
Speaker 2:They would, though, if they had disalienated consciousness, right? So this is kind of like what Trotskyists do when they determine whether or not something was a revolution or wasn't a revolution, right? Yes, not all Trotskyists, okay. I often accidentally say Trotsky, it's when I mean like third campus or Cliff Heights.
Speaker 3:It's really it's post 60s radicals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because.
Speaker 3:Maoists do this too honestly.
Speaker 2:It's like incorrect whatever. If it's got correct leadership, then it's a revolution, and if it doesn't have correct leadership or correct ideology, then it's not a revolution.
Speaker 1:Right, which makes it all sectarian Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, like the Cliffites, would say that basically the only socialist revolution that ever happened was the October Revolution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but only till 1921 or 1927 or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Depending on what kind of third campus you are 21, 27, whatever.
Speaker 1:There was one that was Sorry, 1917?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember which one it was, though, one of the ultra-left sects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's weird to me that there. Here's my thing about ideological variance in socialism that I get from a neocot. But I think it's actually an accurate description the fact that I can come up with a Maoist, a Marxist-Leninist and a Trotskyist position on everything that's identical but separate from each other and the only difference is the revolutionary verbiage. And we can even see this and I'm picking, picking on a psl, but we know the psl comes from the workers war party and the workers war party was a marciite trotskyist. It was a tanky trotskyist group, and I use tanky here specifically in that they sided with khrushchev in the crushing of the hungarian uprising right there they are, in fact, the reason why the term exists right, um.
Speaker 1:And the marciites, however, did not abandon their trotskyism until, like, the split between the wwp and the psl happened. I mean, like it's that late, uh, so like 2004, so just 20 years ago, yeah, and I've been told by some people, if you get into the inner circles, they still believe in permanent revolution, even though they're Marxist-Leninist now. So you know, I don't know if that's true, I'm not in this secret esoteric circles of the PSL, but I've been told that all right and good thing too, um, inner esoteric circles of the PSL, but I've been told that All right.
Speaker 3:Right and good thing too.
Speaker 1:So is a socialist revolution in which our area is engaged, of a decadent or revolutionary type? Doubtless, we cannot answer this question. Definitely. In certain aspects, the transformation of the modern world is incontestably has a revolutionary character Blah, blah, blah. Paris Commune revolutions, revolutions in Russia and China, particularly the Cultural Revolution. Okay, so this is definitely not Dungist if you're celebrating the Cultural Revolution, because the Cultural Revolution is a hard thing for Dungist to deal with Intense, de-alienated social consciousness. But are we not engaged in another trap, as Enchison? The difficulty to make the disengagement of imperialist countries nearly inconceivable today and the negative impact of the peripheral countries following the socialist road calls into question the old Bolshevik model what are the peripheral countries following the socialist road?
Speaker 3:like which? Which countries? Yeah, which ones?
Speaker 1:I mean cuba and the dprk are the only ones that have not market liberalized. And cuba's market liberalized some but like, and the dprk's market liberalized some too. Actually Right, but because the DPRK had market liberalization in their relations with China and Russia and Cuba has had small market reintroduction with co-op firms, right reintroduction you know, with co-op firms Right and they even never really got rid of like single family or single employee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, petite bourgeoisie, it's fine, yeah, yeah. Which, honestly, is why they didn't have like a mass decoulogization or anything that required a bunch of slaughter. Um, that's why we like Cuba. Here we're kind of, we realize there are limitations to the Cuban revolution, but but it's one of the ones that's easier to like celebrate. Clearly, dprk is a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to square their weird sort of Confucian dynasty with Marxism.
Speaker 3:Well, neither do they. That's why they officially say we're not so much Marxist-Leninist, we are a new thing which is better than that.
Speaker 1:Which is based on national, on national autonomy.
Speaker 2:You know because that was forced on us anyway uh, right, I mean, I recognize that the dprk is a result of the country being bombed into the stone age and isolated and starved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do not fault them for their strangeness but I mean, you know, other countries that have been bombed in the stone age, isolated and starved, go reactionary and we would say that I know, I'm and I, just I. I also know a lot about dprk and some of it's hard to defend and some of it isn't.
Speaker 3:I also just think um, my, I take the position that's uh the east german position, which is like. These people are weird. Their philosophy is not, uh, recognizable to us. You know the romanians, the chinese, they have differences in what their version of communism, but but the North Koreans are doing something else.
Speaker 1:Right. I would I always point out that, like Hanukkah and the and the and the DDR had weird relations with North Korea. Like they were the, basically the DDR declared themselves like non-hostile and like brothers and something, but the specific wording actually made it clear that they didn't see each other as as like total comrades. I'm trying to remember what the wording is, but it was very specific. When I talk about the DPRK, I'm kind of similar. We need to leave it the fuck alone. But I'm not celebrating it either.
Speaker 2:I'm happy they got nukes. I'm happy they got nukes because it means they won't become the next iraq anytime soon but also, may they never use them, may they never use them may mutually assured destruction. Uh, keep working. Yeah, um uh. This is all tongue-in-cheek, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yes, but actually yes. But actually also, yes, look if the DPRK was to have an internal, relatively bloodless revolution. I honestly do think there's been a massive change in production and orientation in the Kim Jong-un, but it's so hard to talk about because we have so little access to what they're doing. But we do know that part of how their economy has improved since 2014 they were still having famines before then was like integrating in some market stuff with with uh, china and russia right um, and people who are, who could get around the un sanctions, um, but even that's pretty fucking limited.
Speaker 2:Well, their economy's cranking now that they're selling all kinds of Cold War era weaponry to Russia to use in Ukraine.
Speaker 1:And also sending troops there. Now, right, that's what I hear. Not sure they are sending troops there. That's been confirmed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean, I don't doubt that they are. I'm just I'm not sure what the fuck that they're going to use them for, when you think about, like combat doctrine, integration and language barriers, and I don't know what they're going to actually be doing. I don't know, but it going to actually be doing?
Speaker 1:I don't know, but it's not like throwing armies that can't communicate with each other and have different combat doctrines is unknown to the West either.
Speaker 2:No, but when it comes to NATO, it's.
Speaker 3:Well, North Korea and Russia have longstanding military relations where they send troops back and forth to do training exercises and stuff.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:There's actually a fairly large working population of North Koreans in Russia too, actually.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, Some commentators have been like I don't really know if this is even. Yes, it's confirmed that there are North Korean troops, but like it might not even be a change of policy Right exactly.
Speaker 2:Right we just don't know, we don't know Well, so, North Koreans have like the most advanced system of tunnels and ground fortifications in the world. They've been developing it for like years and that's partially why hamas and uh um hezbollah had such good underground fortifications is because they got like advisors from north korea in the 2000s, right. So, um, I don't know, maybe there's something to do with that going on in um in russia, because I know they have been using like trench systems and like basically world war one tunneling to uh get underneath ukrainian positions and like blow them up and then infiltrate them and stuff like that, so that that that would make sense to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah totally.
Speaker 2:This is all speculation on my part, though.
Speaker 1:We don't know, but there's stuff that makes, I will say this Russia started winning a lot more when they went back, when they realized that the American style of warfare only really works when you don't care about hurting territory.
Speaker 2:Right, they're, they're like now they're offensive, which you always talk about, like there being a culmination point of an offensive and then diminishing returns, but they've applied like steady pressure on, like a like the entire front for like an entire year. However, elimination point it's pretty wild.
Speaker 1:Year, However, elimination point it's pretty wild that said I mean using class whiskey and calculus is. I'm actually surprised he claims last as long as it has.
Speaker 2:I mean it wouldn't have without all of the, the, the weapons being dumped in by the West. But I think that, like, this is a war of attrition, and that's what it it's. It's set up to be now, at this point, like since right, since uh, 2023, anyway, it's although things get complicated, if they actually win, believe it or not. That's when oh for sure. Uh, I don't. I don't know what I have. No, I can't conceive of what the end of this war looks like. Uh, I don't think anyone else can either.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's actually a problem for russia.
Speaker 1:That's a big problem for russia because if you break like, like, if you think about the us model and and people are like, oh, the us lost in iraq.
Speaker 1:And I hate to tell people, no, it didn't, it failed, it didn't lose, right it won the iraqi forces did not beat the united states forces, right, um, it had no clear objectives, right, and it couldn't re-establish a good government there. That failed, um, whereas it lost in vietnam. Like, like I just want people to like, look at, there's a difference between those set conditions. The United States won in neither category, but it lost in Vietnam. It failed in Iraq and I guess it kind of lost in Afghanistan, but that's an even weirder scenario.
Speaker 2:They lost a 20-year-long war of attrition.
Speaker 1:Right, Well, but also because we wouldn't. I hate, I mean, this is gonna sound brutal, but because we we weren't, we weren't fighting a war of attrition. And they were right, we didn't know we were fighting a war of attrition. Wait, because if we're fighting a war of attrition and we know that we can, we can stuff really quickly.
Speaker 2:So I mean part of part of the calculus that goes into a grand strategy of a of a war, is the uh termination point right, like when you what your war goals are, when you've achieved them and when you know how to, yeah, to to stop hostilities.
Speaker 2:The last time we had a termination point on any fucking thing that's, we have been strategy deficient strategy, deficient like the vermont, basically you know, uh for the past war yeah, since the korean, yeah, essentially yeah, but also, like the United States, amazingly, however, didn't take into consideration in with Afghanistan specifically, that the attrition doesn't just apply to soldiers killed and weapons and machinery destroyed. Civil society, civil society, exactly yeah, which? Yeah, that's a lesson we should have learned in Vietnam, and yet we did not.
Speaker 1:I mean, but yeah, if you, the problem with Iraq is there's no term, there was no termination point. The problem with Afghanistan is also there was no termination point. The problem with Afghanistan is also there was no termination point, but it actually led to a war of attrition on our proxies which we allowed to just dissolve into nothing, right, um, so you know, I don't want to get like. These are semantic differences, but they kind of matter. And the reason why they kind of matter is like I, I don't know, like like I, I don't think you, you queen, I've been on team ukraine can't win from moment one.
Speaker 1:Uh, not which is not even that's not a moral judgment, like people have like listened to me talk about it. I, I think the west set it up, but what tootin did was still right. You know, not wise wise, but they're fighting this war really well because they switched from the kind of style of warfare that we do, which they were trying to do in the beginning, right To World War II style attrition and territory holding.
Speaker 2:Go ahead attrition and territory holding and I do think, go ahead. They took, instead of trying to be doing Operation Desert Shield, which is essentially what they were trying to do here. They were trying to do a Gulf War type situation Cause a strike to the heart that caused a collapse and possibly a regime change.
Speaker 1:Didn't work and so they decided to do uh, you know, rakasovsky instead you know, right which totally works, um, but you know, people would actually have to study warfare to understand this.
Speaker 3:Uh, the other but they switch from blitzkrieg to deep operations right.
Speaker 1:The issue that you get, however, is that if you totally break the Ukrainian state, then you go into fourth generation warfare mode with irregulars and things get a lot weirder. Yeah, think they want to do. I mean, I really do believe like there's no evidence that they want to do that. If they wanted to do that, they could make uh, they could make ukraine look like gaza.
Speaker 2:They don't so contrary to what all the anarcho-liberals that support ukraine have to say, that is not what russia wants to do no, and there's no if.
Speaker 1:if they wanted to do that, they'd be carpet bombing Kiev Right. They aren't.
Speaker 2:No. So they've been rather judicious, actually, contra what you see in the media about civilian casualty. They've been actually judicious about the way that they've deployed their strikes, even though and I will admit this, you know hands down here before someone calls me out on this later any war in which you're relying heavily on artillery barrages is going to have heavy civilian casualties, and that is definitely the case here.
Speaker 3:Right but they are not they are not.
Speaker 1:it is still different than what you see in Gaza, where you see when you're bombing hospitals and schools first.
Speaker 2:And what you're seeing in Gaza is what Germany did to Warsaw in 1939.
Speaker 1:I was about to say which is Germany and Warsaw, germany and Belarusia.
Speaker 2:Germany and Minsk and.
Speaker 1:And Kiev as well.
Speaker 2:Germany and Belarusia, germany and Minsk, yeah.
Speaker 1:And Kiev as well. We should be towards wrapping up. All right, we're almost done. Anyway. We're literally almost at the last second. Okay, so some people are resigned to believe this and believe that our time is not one of socialist transition but a worldwide expansion of capitalism, which, starting from a little corner of Europe, is just beginning to extend south and to the east. That was last century, dude. We're not there anymore.
Speaker 1:Capitalism's already done that, motherfucker. At the end of the transfer of the imperialist phase, we'll have appeared. Not the last, but the highest stage of capitalism, we hope, but the central phase towards the universal capitalism. Even if it continues to believe that the Leninist theory of imperialism is true and that national liberation is part of the socialist and not of the bourgeois revolution sorry, national liberation is part of both would not be exceptions. That is the appearance of the capitalist sinners be possible. This theory emphasizes the restorations or evolutions towards a status mode in the Eastern countries. He's got such a weird stance towards Dungism. He's like taking half of it and dropping the other half of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that, like whenever I said earlier that the national liberation struggles were successful bourgeois revolutions, that does not mean that I don't think that in somewhere like vietnam or china there could be some sort of shuffling of social arrangements at the top of society that could implement socialism right, we should be defense I.
Speaker 1:I get people mad at me because I say we should be critical, and I mean that seriously, not like either the MLs or the campus do. We should be critical but supportive and defenseless of China. Yes, I absolutely agree. But we also have to be honest about where China is and not like smoke up people's asses and particularly not make claims that even the Chinese state doesn't similar with these other cis and socialist countries. But this is interesting because that also means you have to criticize, because which faction in these countries wins then really matters. Yes, because there aren't capital restorationist factions in all of these countries. Sorry, and we know it like uh, particularly since they're all having to. Since the fall of the soviet union, the sign of soviet split, there is no non-socialist world, even BRICS, you know, and we can be pro-BRICS if we want to be. But even BRICS has enough capitalists in it that you can't say that it's a non-capitalist organization.
Speaker 2:Right, like I mean it's only got what like China and socialists.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Who else is in BRICS that is nominally socialist, at very least?
Speaker 1:I don't even know, I don't think anyone is for sure. Uh, brazil is not claiming I mean, even though lula claims to be a socialist, brazil is not claiming to even kind of overcome capitalism.
Speaker 2:Maybe the United Arab Emirates?
Speaker 1:Sure, I mean, I don't know man In the standpoint of other other Anyway. So even if one continues to believe in literacy, I've already read that, uh, those who hold the opinion believe we must wait until the level of development of productive forces at the center is capable of spreading to the entire world before the question of the abolition of classes can really be put to agenda. Other than the platypus affiliated society, who believes that? Nobody this century. I mean, it was the second international position, yeah, but, and it was plakanov position, but that was early in the last century and it was kind of lenin's position sometimes, but not always yeah, um.
Speaker 3:So let's say we'll be very generous and say this position that he's countering is only 100 years out of date.
Speaker 1:Right. Europeans should thus allow the creation of a supranational Europe so that the state structure can be adjusted to the productive forces. So he wants globalism and Europe and maybe America, but not imperialism. See, this is why he's luck right. But maybe he doesn't want that actually. But this is. Europeans should thus allow for a supranational Europe with the state structure can be adjusted to productive forces. It will doubtless be necessary to await the establishment of a planetary state corresponding to the level of production forces on the world scale before the objective conditions superseding it will obtain. Others myself among them see things differently. Okay, good, because I'm like that's, that's. I mean, I know people who think that. But it wouldn't be Europe either, it'd be the United States. The uninterrupted revolution by stages is still on the agenda for the periphery restoration in the course of the social transition are not irrevocable and breaks in the imperious front are not inconceivable. And and the weak lines of the center, all which I agree with. But that says nothing about how they become socialist.
Speaker 2:I just love to say I I agree with this paragraph, but with like no caveats, except for it doesn't tell us anything.
Speaker 3:This concluding paragraph by itself is great. Yeah, I have one quibble, which is that, rather than saying uninterrupted revolution by sages a couple of times in the article, what if you just said permanent revolution instead?
Speaker 1:don't don't get people to realize that permanent revolution actually isn't all that exotic and it's just a phrasing of trotsky, but does have pretty clear background and even stalin didn't totally disagree with it. He just didn't like the phrasing shush right, um, um. But my, my problem here? My problem here is like I get an argument with anti-imperialists. It's like the first world should do nothing and I'm like you have to have more than anti-imperialism as your agenda, because A there are fascists who are anti-imperialists. My friend, no, there are. It's just liberalism. Nope, there are liberals who are anti-imperialist too.
Speaker 2:so yeah, I mean, and in in the united states. I would say that most of the actual fascists in the united states uh, you know, not just people that are meaner and also republican, but actual fascists in the united states are anti-imperialist, and the milieu in which they swim is one that you're familiar with, derek.
Speaker 1:They're hyper-nationalist.
Speaker 2:Right, the paleocon right and anti-imperialist as well.
Speaker 1:I actually pointed out that the neo-confederates were split between whatever those people who tried to go and take over states in Latin America to expand slavery. Free booters, free jackers I can't remember what they're called, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like Walker was one of them.
Speaker 2:The vast Southern Empire, people Right.
Speaker 1:But the other thing I point out is the neo-confederates were also anti-imperialist too. They were split. They were either really for imperializing slavery. But there's this whole other tradition that leftists do not like to talk about um, that were like opposed to the mexican-american war. Because they didn't, because they thought that mexico should be left alone, because we didn't want all those brown people. Yeah, exactly, and they're like empire equals integrating with brown people. We don't't want that.
Speaker 3:That's what I was trying to explain to someone the other day. Don't tell the British that the thing is. That is true, it just is.
Speaker 1:This was the thing I was saying the other day to someone. I don't understand how someone can be MAGA and pro-Palestinian. I don't get it in terms of Trump's actual Israel policy. But I totally get it in terms of trump's actual israel policy. But I totally get it in terms of, yeah, palestinians should have their own nation and we should protect it, but also they should stay the fuck away from here.
Speaker 2:Like that's a consistent point of view, like I have a I have a friend who's syrian and uh opposes syrian refugees being allowed into the United States, and I asked him why? And he said because they need to stay in Syria and fix Syria. Because they're Syrians, they shouldn't be leaving Syria.
Speaker 1:But then you go why are you here, motherfucker? Nonetheless, I mean like, yeah, there is a way you could do this, and I think, like this idea that anti-imperialism and the other thing is is just automatically progressive. It's not true. That doesn't mean we should shun it. That does mean sometimes we have to accept that there's going to be reactionary people in our movement, right Like yep it's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's okay. And honestly, this is where I'm. I'm neither with the let's tell the right or let's kick everybody who doesn't like. All the people who complain about what was it? The teamsters being, uh, speaking at the trump, even though they didn't endorse trump ultimately, but the tell the two shawn's, as I like to mention it.
Speaker 1:It seems pretty clear to me that, like Sean, sean Fane is a subject to the democratic party for obvious reasons, because of industrial policy, and and Sean O'Brien is in a place that has more strategic significance and is allowed to do whatever, but also might end up being kind of nationalist too. But they're both forms of nationalism and in the core it is weird to promote nationalism. Like, even if you take this core, periphery stuff seriously, promoting nationalism in the core is kind of crazy. But if you're just anti-imperialist, you could do that. So I'm like you know, you have to have more substance than that. And they're like well, pro-genocide, you know, ending a genocide is enough. And then the guy I saw this was like I'm a leftist and I'm anti-imperialist, but I'm also a bioregionalist and I'm bioregionalist and I'm like get out, out out yeah there's a there's a whole, you know.
Speaker 2:I guess I haven't heard from much about them in a while, but in the early 2000s there were a bunch of like anarcho, uh primitivist types that were like borderline fascist in their uh bioregionalism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were bioregionalists who, like the guy who wrote the book, the guy who wrote the good book on the Luddites, who also was a bioregionalist, who was, like, also willing to work with neo-Confederates and shit. I mean, like you know, now the advent of the return of J Sakai has made that a little bit more complicated. But the thing is like I actually am not going to say Samir Amin doesn't have this, but it seems to me that both the we only do things in the first world and we'll spread it out position which, by the way, we should have already been able to meet the uh, like Ingalls, it says that by 1880, we had the conditions to have socialism. So like just want to put that out there.
Speaker 2:So the productive forces argument is weird but, also isn't that a position of like the mega communists? Yes it is.
Speaker 1:We need a national revolution in the core because reasons. Um, we need a national revolution in the core because reasons. But then the other position that I sort of struggle with is how do you think the third world revolutions are going to overcome the productive forces of a hostile developing world?
Speaker 3:well, they just don't think that right, so so what is it?
Speaker 1:what? So it seems like instead of like, oh, the only revolutionary force is going to be in the third world, you got to have something for them to hook up with, just like the socialists have to hook up with the working class, the developing world and developed world, socialist and working class need to be on the same fucking team right now. That doesn't mean that we should support or not support like neoliberal globalization obviously we shouldn't but it just seems to me like saying that there's no role for the proletariat and also socialist in the developed world. That just seems like dumb. You know, like I. Like we have to have like one we need to stop our own imperial projects. I agree with him, that's something we can do. But two, we need to develop socialist frameworks and stuff here to join up with there, even if the mode of production is more possible there, because they're going to need our resources.
Speaker 1:If that wasn't true, china wouldn't take in the developmental path it took in the 1980s. I'm sorry, like, so I don't know, man, I'm, I'm, uh, and none of this. I just want to say at the end none of this is what we mean by decadence. I don't think decadence is just that.
Speaker 1:It's just an unintentional revolution versus an intentional one.
Speaker 2:So is it decadence theory.
Speaker 1:No, or like he has this has. What I find interesting is this has nothing to do with the standard meaning of decadence, nor does it have anything to do with the various socialist meanings of decadence which are tied into, like modes of production and profit rates and shit. Right Like there's no discussion of profits or anything in here.
Speaker 2:I like how, in this series on decadence theory, we spent three episodes talking about something that we ultimately decide doesn't have anything to do with decadence theory, I mean, but it's an influential piece though, so it's definitely something that we should deal with, right.
Speaker 1:It's Samir Amin. Samir is super important and still cited, but it's interesting to me that this did not get picked up because even the Monthly Review socialists have gone a different route, right.
Speaker 2:And this is actually something that we dealt with less critically earlier, because we included it in a I mean me, I mean me and Jason, and I guess Kevin, kevin, just Kevin and we included it into a bigger group of readings and dealt with it all in a one hour episode, whereas in in this one, we're breaking it down much more slowly and critically yeah, I mean, there's stuff to like in this.
Speaker 1:I know we were really harsh in the beginning and people who listen to from don the decades since part two are going to hear me tear this apart, whereas this one I'm like I think I agree with this, but maybe the order of operations is wrong. Or I think I agree with this, but, like this last part, what are we supposed to do in the core?
Speaker 2:that's my biggest problem with third worldism is that the most powerful and productive uh countries in the world have no. The working classes of those have no role to play whatsoever.
Speaker 1:I mean, this isn't the kind of third worldism that's like there's no proletariat in the first world. I mean, Samir Amin isn't that kind of third worldism. I give him credit for that. He's not saying there's no exploitation in the developed world. So he's actually a step above the kind of like the leading white communist organization or our marxist internationalist maoism. For those of you don't know, there's like five kinds of maoism I miss the mim guys, yeah there was a.
Speaker 2:There was a guy in austin and they hated everything guy in austin and they hated everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, man, they used to. He you remember this guy, jason. This just, yeah, absolute weirdo that would show up and drop off the newspapers and bookstores and stuff like that. Just the strangest person you've ever seen. Never had a conversation with them. You just see him every once in a while when you're in a, an independent bookstore dropping off uh, the mim newspapers right, I remember the mimers in the leading lights comics organization. What in an independent bookstore dropping off the MIM newspapers, right?
Speaker 1:I remember the MIMers in the Leading Lights Commerce Organization went to say that labor theory of value had nothing to say, so they could maintain their idea that their productivity had nothing to do with the fact that there was no exploited proletariat in the developed world at all. Yeah, like. So I want to give Samir Amin a lot of credit. But his theory, like. Okay, so this is set up so we can choose decadence, which is an accidental shift into another mode of production, I guess a tributary one, right, if I actually what he's saying here.
Speaker 1:Or we can choose socialism, but then who's doing the choosing? Because it doesn't seem like there's anything for the developed world to do, or he actually doesn't say that, but he doesn't give us any idea what we should be doing, like, except for maybe fighting imperialism, maybe, which again I agree, but I don't think that's all we should be doing. Like I, I'm not a pro-imperial leftist, that that's such a weird. There are people who believe it, or at least the Platypus Affiliated Society would deny that they're pro-imperial. They are somewhere between imperial and anti-imperial, whatever the fuck that means.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think there's really very much of a between.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing. Campism kind of made sense when there's a non-aligned movement or something.
Speaker 3:Well, even just when there were camps. Right, I can, at least I could. I could see why you would say I. Even if there was not a third camp, you could at least wish that there was well, I mean, they're kind of what I mean.
Speaker 1:ironically, it wasn't the Trotskyists who were arguably third campest, it was the Maoist. Yeah, but because you know, siding with the unaligned movement versus the socialist movement, that would be a third camp, right, I don't. I mean, this is the thing Most campism in the Cliffite tradition seems to be an excuse to support the imperial core. I agree with that. It unfortunately it's come to dominate trotskyism, so much that trotskyist anti-imperialism has been written out of history. And that was very real, um, but uh, the other thing is this stuff is still very vague, because I think if I asked who marxist went in today, what they mean by anti-imperialist, I get radically different answers.
Speaker 2:yeah, like that's something that we've been wanting to, to talk about for a while. Is the what, what is the definition of imperialism and how, as a marxist now, can one be anti-imperialist, and what does that mean?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I still want to do that.
Speaker 1:We all know that we shouldn't support NATO, I hope. Sorry, people Anarcho-liberals and the few former cliffhites in the world, but beyond that, that's one prohibition right and even how we don't support NATO seems to be very different, and I've often pointed out that American imperialism often works better when it's not operating militarily even though it's based on the huge military industrial apparatus.
Speaker 1:But whenever Europe gets out of line, we get them in line with economic incentives, not with military ones yeah, the american, american uh empire has definitely utilized soft power much more effectively than it has utilized.
Speaker 2:It's like military.
Speaker 1:That is absolutely true we haven't been hard power, strong since like war. What war two probably, but you.
Speaker 2:The 19th century was our hard Paris century there is a gray area there, where assassinations and coups mixed with soft power end up being pretty successful in a lot of instances.
Speaker 1:But we don't do that many assassinations anymore either. We do coups, no not anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do do coups, but I don't necessarily know how successful they are.
Speaker 1:Like it, like el salvador seems to have backed up.
Speaker 2:It's not gone the way anyone wanted um the same thing with uh el salvador as well, right, yeah, and uh bolivia. That didn't work out for him and even the I don't. I won't necessarily say that Maidan was engineered by the United States so much as it was just seized upon by the United States, but that didn't seem to work out for anyone either.
Speaker 1:I also say I think Maidan has a lot. I think it was seized upon by the United States, but I think it actually was more set up by Europe than the US. I don't think the US was actually paying that much attention.
Speaker 2:It was definitely on the ground as soon as it happened, though Absolutely as soon as Maidan happened, you had US intelligence was just lousy in Ukraine.
Speaker 1:I'll be quite fair. As soon as there's an interruption anywhere, us intelligence is already on both sides. I mean that's what they do, but I don't want to say that what I won't say, as Maidan was engineered, because, talking to people in Ukraine, it does seem like it developed organically from a setup that Merkel saying that Yushchenko, what's the name? Yushchenko the former, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yushchenko, yeah, yushchenko, what's?
Speaker 1:the name yushinko, the uh the former. Yeah, yeah, yushinko, yeah, the yushinko um wait a minute, is it? Yanukovych yanukovych is who you're thinking of yeah, yes, yanukovych, okay, yeah you're thinking you have to shinko right, yeah, I gotta keep my shinkos and kovitches apart. Um uh, no, I was like. Yanukovych is like ability to join the eu but also stay in the eurasian union was scuttled by germany, and that's what prompted my dawn so victor yushenko was uh prime minister before yanukovych okay, yes, I I get my okay, my shinkos and Koviches confused.
Speaker 3:You weren't quite as confused as all of them.
Speaker 2:All them Shinkos and dang Koviches and whatever.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, usually the Shinkos actually indicate a certain part of Ukraine and the Koviches in a part of Ukraine, but nonetheless I mean, what about the Chooks?
Speaker 2:Where do the Chooks come from? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Are the Selinskys, which is also confusing because there's a similar name on the Russian side. I don't want to sound unsympathetic to the Ukrainian plight. I actually don't.
Speaker 2:They've been screwed around from both sides since their inception.
Speaker 1:They've been screwed around from both sides since their inception and my biggest moment of mistaken punditry was thinking that, like Solinsky wouldn't play into NATO, in some ways he doesn't have a choice, not just because of needing weapons, but also because his right would kill him.
Speaker 2:But I don't necessarily know if that's true anymore, because I think that there's been a lot of initially yeah, that is absolutely true but there's been a lot of pro ceasefire sentiment coming from even like Azalvite circles, you know yeah, because they know they're going to lose but Zelensky will not stay in power if the war ends. So I think that he's going to probably prolong the war for as long as possible.
Speaker 3:He's going to probably prolong the war for as long as possible.
Speaker 1:Gonna ride it all the way into the ground here's the thing is I think, uh, I I think the west is going to pivot what it might not pivot as quickly with harris versus trump and we're recording like three days before the election, but it's gonna pivot like, yeah, like it. It like particularly if I can see us like trying to set up something like where they can go after iran or whatever.
Speaker 1:They're not going to give a shit about what's going on in ukraine for sure um but I'm gonna say all this with a grain of salt, because everything, if we've tried to predict the future on any of these geopolitical stuff, we've all been wrong on part of. Yeah, so like uh I wrote a.
Speaker 2:I wrote a paper, though, uh, about a year and a half ago, predicting exactly what happened, what has happened in ukraine, um, and that happened. So, like there's one thing I got right, but I don't think that that takes like a magician to figure that out no, I think, I think you just follow.
Speaker 1:Follow Eastern European stuff for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2:And this was for a military strategy class that I was taking. So, like you know, I follow military things and Eastern European things.
Speaker 1:My actual initial prediction was that the Ukrainian government would fall and this would become a fourth generation war quicker than it has. And that's actually partly because of russian and I'm gonna get called a russia apologist but it's partly because of russian restraint. And I think if you look at what's going on in the middle east versus you, look what's going on in russia, even in terms of like, not just in terms of israel, palestine, but like turkey versus Even in terms of like, not just in terms of Israel, palestine, but like Turkey versus Kurdistan or whatever it starts becoming clear that, like Russia, actually is respecting rules of war.
Speaker 2:Or Syria versus itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for the last fucking 15 years Also, and everyone else versus Syria versus itself, because Syria has been used as a pin cushion for bombs for a decade now.
Speaker 2:And while it is absolutely true that Russia has targeted civilian infrastructure throughout the war, which is a war crime and it's bad and definitely should not happen it is standard operating procedure for the United States and all of its nato allies when they go into, say, iraq, afghanistan.
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly here's the thing I hate to tell people, but you can't fight war without committing war crimes no what did general?
Speaker 2:sherman say about it that war is hell and uh. Any attempt to make it less so.
Speaker 1:Is it a a good way to lose, or whatever I'm paraphrasing here or to make it worse, because you're just going to drag it out longer, like well, I know you can use that in bad, in bad faith, and like look, the one thing I worry about is all these wars dragging out way longer than anyone wants them to. I mean, like, the last thing I want to see is like eastern europe go out fucking like afghanistan, and we're still talking about this in 20 years, right um?
Speaker 2:but I mean, I mean, just like the immiseration of the ukrainian people, you really have to feel bad for them. No, you really have to feel bad for them being used as a cat's paw, uh to to weaken russia openly by the united states, you know right. And uh, they're like their society is collapsing, their uh, soldiers are diverting, diverting, are deserting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, on mass there's like the opposite, reasons of why people are deserting in israel, where, like you know, killing children actually does take a toll on you right it's a bummer yeah hey I gotta go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's end this yeah, yes, I have to go too, I can hear on that note. Bath water running baby's about to get in.
Speaker 1:All right, let us go be a dad and we will do this again at some uninterrupted time, and we'll actually talk about the history of at least the socialist form of decadence theory, as opposed to whatever this was. Alright, bye-bye.
