Flowers for Marx Symposium, Part 2: Daniel Tutt and Matt McManus

From theoretical battles to publishing controversies, this episode dives deep into the fault lines dividing today's left through the lens of "Flowers for Marx," a new collection exploring Marxist humanism and scientism. Contributors Daniel Tutt and Matt McManus share the book's tumultuous journey—rejected by its original publisher because contributors appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast and wrote for Compact Magazine, revealing how cancel culture operates even within leftist publishing.

At the heart of our conversation lies a crucial question: can Marxists ground their politics in universal ethical principles, or should they focus solely on structural critique and historical analysis? This isn't merely academic—it shapes how leftists communicate, strategize, and build coalitions. While McManus approaches this through analytical philosophy (Cohen and Rawls), Tutt draws on Lukácsian traditions emphasizing class struggle as the source of moral orientation.

The discussion takes unexpected turns as we explore how American puritanical tendencies have infected leftist discourse, creating what Irving Howe identified as a moralistic withdrawal from strategic engagement. Both guests argue passionately that the left must overcome its tendency toward fragmentation and internal policing if it hopes to address today's urgent crises. Against emerging anti-freedom tendencies on parts of the left, they advocate for maintaining solidarity across theoretical divides while engaging in "comradely debate" that avoids personalizing disagreements.

Whether you're navigating factional disputes in your own organizing or trying to understand why the left seems perpetually divided, this episode offers both theoretical depth and practical wisdom. As ecological collapse accelerates and far-right movements gain strength, can the left move beyond purity politics toward a more strategic unity? The answer may determine whether socialism remains a viable alternative to our current predicament.

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

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C. Derick Varn 0:50

Hello and welcome to VarmBlog . And today we have Daniel Tutt and Matt McManus , both regular guests of the show . You're both up there in appearances . I think both of you have been here at least four times and we're talking about Flowers for Marks , where Daniel wrote the preface and introduction and Matt wrote an article . This is the second in a series .

C. Derick Varn 1:13

If you want to catch Conrad Hamilton , ben Burgess and poor Ernesto Vargas and I say poor because Ben Burgess and Cameron Hamilton argued with each other for an hour . I heard they were prepared . It was funny because I was like I was like I was asking

Introduction to Flowers for Marx

C. Derick Varn 1:38

them about the way humanism affected the debate between Ernesto and Ben , and what actually happened was a hour debate about the nature of China . So you know , you would kind of predict if you know them , but nonetheless , for those who haven't caught the first episode , I do suggest you go listen to it , because part of what Matt will be referring to today is covered from Conrad's perspective .

C. Derick Varn 2:10

On the other episode , this book is somewhat controversial and I , when I got sent it from Revo Press which also , for those of you who caught on , I need to disclose I am also associated with Revo Press . I have a contract with them , which makes me part of the co-op . So that's just a little bit of disclosure . I had a contract with them , which makes me part of the co-op . So that's just a little bit of disclosure .

C. Derick Varn 2:39

I had no editorial input or control over this , but a funny thing happened when I got this book and we didn't talk about this in the last episode , so I will I said I'd seen it before and I realized that I was part of a team that reviewed it and maybe didn't accept it at Zero Books before it was bought out by the crew over at Repeater and Watson Publishing . So what I was going to ask you is how do you feel about your argument about humanism and Marx , when I know this article is actually quite old and when we first got this suggestion , I think that was around . It must have been like 2019 , 2020 . So this book's been kicking around for a while . Um , so would you like to go into where it went after I looked at it and why ? You know why it ended up being controversial ? Because it's not about its contents . I mean , even though it's a debate book , I don't find the debates to be particularly controversial no , and they weren't intended to be right .

Matt McManus 3:50

Um , so the kind of origins of the book , as you point out , date back to 2019 . Because we'd all worked together on Myth and Mayhem , a leftist critique of Jordan Peterson that came out in 2020 , right in time for the pandemic and him going crazy . So it sold pretty well . Conrad thought I was going to sell 10,000 copies , which I always thought was a bit of a pipe dream , but you know , dream big , you know what they say . But we were happy enough with it . It had been an enjoyable experience . So we decided , you know , want to get back the band back together and do something else . And Conrad was the one who really had the idea of writing about Marx and the humanism scientism debate . So actually , originally I wasn't supposed to really do all that much because I was working on some other things . Don't need to go into all the BS around that . So

Origins and Publishing Challenges

Matt McManus 4:36

I was just going to write what I thought was going to be like a little kind of Jacobin article . You know , 2,000 words , talk a little bit about Marxist humanism , cite , you know , a contribution to a critique of Hegel's philosophy of right or something , and then call it a day . But by the time , 2022 had rolled around . So we're already two years after , you know , launching this project .

Matt McManus 4:59

The book was in a bit of trouble and Conrad really suggested that I take over some editorial duties and asked if I wanted to produce more content . Right , kind of give my little essay a bit of a granular problem so it would be expanded , and then engage in this debate back and forth with him and help look over some of the papers . So , you know , in socialist fashion , and also because I had just moved and my wife was gone because she wasn't going to join me for another three weeks , I was like , well , I'm bored , so sure , fuck it , why not ? You know what I mean . So workshop some of the essays , increase the . You know , my own contribution Went on a bet with Conrad and then I figured that would pretty much be the end of it , and then the publisher that we were supposed to go with , punkdom that Conrad had found , decided , after many , many , many , many months of basically going back and forth , to drop us , two big reasons being that they didn't like that Bennett appeared on Joe Rogan and they didn't like that Ben and I had written for a magazine called Compact Magazine .

Matt McManus 6:00

Some of you might be familiar with it . Once upon a time it was the kind of flagship of people like Sarabha Mari , the post-liberals . It's a pretty eclectic magazine , right . People like Sam Moyn and me and Ben write for it , but you also get more conservative figures like Deneen who will write for it . Whatever else you say , five or six years since the project was first floated before it ended up getting published , but I'm really happy it's finally seen the light of day and I'm really happy that Dan wrote a great introduction to it . Actually it was the one , I guess , silver lining on the otherwise dark cloud of this production to collaborate with some interesting people .

C. Derick Varn 6:56

All right , Daniel . My next question is addressed to you . You were not part of the names on the proposal I read six years ago in A Different Life .

Matt McManus 7:05

Pre-pandemic .

C. Derick Varn 7:06

Yeah , pre-pandemic , pre-me . I still work for Zero Books . I left for people who don't know . I left Zero Books a year before it was bought out . How did you get involved , daniel ?

C. Derick Varn 7:27

One of the things that happened is when I realized that I was talking about a book that I had been involved in an early editorial process of , I went back and looked at what my notes on it were and I remember what I said . As I said , it looked like an interesting book , but the scientism , humanism debates and the analytic versus post-colonial slash , non-aligned movement debate , which is less of a debate . Actually , the second half of the book is not as much a direct response to each other as the first half . I remember my commentary was that these were old debates . I think it would be fine , but these are largely old debates and I don't know why we're rehashing the same debates we've had since the 50s on Marxism .

C. Derick Varn 8:19

And having now read the finished product , which I did not do when I had the initial pitch , I didn't have the whole text in front of me . Some of the essays , as you've indicated , weren't even finished yet . I actually do think this has original things to say on the debate , but I wanted to ask Daniel like how he got involved and why . Why bring these debates back up now ?

Daniel Tutt 8:41

Yeah , well , I felt that it was a good intervention in the sense of a hybrid academic public social media sort of , because , you know , I think that one of the things that interested me about writing on the left for publications like zero or revol is that sort of public niche that they , that they situate us in . It allows you to write in a more informal way than academic convention allows for , and so I seized on that opportunity . But I mean , there was a a much deeper , almost like moral , ethical rationale for me to contribute the forward , and that actually had to do with the um decision on behalf of punkdom , which at first blush we could um shrug off as a frivolous , but I think it actually is a little more serious and a little more frankly , a little more concerning , because I think that you asked why this debate ? Perhaps the better question to ask would be why not other debates ? Why not debates between Marxists and like the kinds of people that would insist that such a book should be , should be effectively censored ? Can we qualify that decision as gatekeeping , as censorship ? What does it signify ? What kind of control is it about Ultimately ? Is it about a reinforcement of a kind of division of labor around the control of individual intellectuals and a perception that they should not gain notoriety . Is it therefore narcissistic ? Is it therefore narcissistic ? Is it substantive ? Is it a reflection of a kind of complicity with a liberal ideology which itself is somehow illegitimate or defunct or in a sort of state of decadence ? And so I was seeing this not only here , but I was seeing this trend , kind of frankly , all over the place , which is something between what we might call gatekeeping and censorship .

Daniel Tutt 10:57

Censorship is a strong word . It's usually associated on the left , with bureaucratic Stalinism , but I think one of the things I try to show is that we've seen a historical dialectical reversal right Whereby censorship a historical dialectical reversal right whereby censorship a is theorized by marx in a very elaborate way , very elaborate , and it is very seldomly talked about what marx actually had to say about it and b . There is a type of gatekeeping that occurs on the uh , on the on the left , which behooves our attention , like necessitates our thinking , which of course is a difficult conversation to have for a whole host of reasons , but that was what drove me to it . So it's kind of like that sort of um concern

Censorship, Gatekeeping, and the Left

Daniel Tutt 11:45

which , again at face , at sort of at face value , may appear kind of like oh well , why would you cancel somebody for going on Rogan ? But it's like , well , kamala Harris didn't go on Rogan for the same rationale for that that these people decided to cancel this book , and those things are the same . Those things are linked in my view , and I think that that has undermined the radical . So , as I see it , censorship is an issue there is .

Daniel Tutt 12:18

You know , one of the things I address in the foreword is the kind of question and I'm not fully decided on this but I think that there is a correlation between the type of gatekeeping and no platforming tactics that were used by the radical left and the way that that has seeped into influence , even centrist , liberal policy , and I have grown to become very critical of this , to put it mildly . And I think there , you know , one of the things that interests me is how marxists should respond to no platforming in ways that um are thoughtful . That's what I was trying to do in my , in my forward , and you know happy to elaborate my , my position , my view on all of that um , but in essence , yeah , that's my , that's my contribution to the piece is to sort of actually say wait , wait a second . It's not so much about the substance of the debate in the book , but it's actually about the fact that the book was canceled on spurious grounds . That necessitates our attention .

Daniel Tutt 13:22

As it pertains to your first point , derek , I'll just say something briefly . I mean , all through , sarah had the idea that humanism is reformism , althusser had the idea that humanism is reformism , which is a very abstract , almost logical fallacy at first blush . But in a way there's something to it and I think it sort of calls , it represents a sort of consistency of reform or revolution of these kind of debates that yeah , they've been happening , you said , for 50 years , but I think really probably since the mid-60s to the present , and um , and they revolve around and they repeat certain problematics and I think that that that those problematics often don't get like aired in public . So perhaps , perhaps that is part of the impetus also of why this book was perceived as dangerous , because it is actually not afraid to get at the jugular All right , internal to Marxism , yeah , so I think it's on those two , two points that I found the book worth contributing to , and then I found it interesting .

C. Derick Varn 14:38

Yeah , my response to that is one I think people really do need to look at what Mark's brought on censorship , because it's pretty extensive , believe it or not . And , as Hal Draper points out , in Karl Marx's theory revolutions , volume one , two and three , it comes up over and , as Hal Draper points out , in Karl Marx's Theory of Revolutions , volume 1 , 2 , and 3 , it comes up over and over again and is one of the first things Marx wrote about . For those of you who don't know , more or less he's anti-censorship , although there are complications to that in regards to how you handle bourgeois positions and the bourgeois press , but nonetheless , regards to , like , how you handle bourgeois positions in the bourgeois press , um , but nonetheless , um . One other thing I find interesting about punk them in particular is that it is an open humanities journal , uh , public , um , it's an open humanities press attached to open humanities journals , and so , um , censoring people for non-content reasons , I mean it would be bad enough if it was because of the content of the book being controversial , right ? Not because you disagree with it , not because you think it's an old debate . You know which was my initial response .

C. Derick Varn 15:59

It's another thing when you're censoring it for , like , you printed an article in a paying journal that has also printed right wingers , that has a mixed ideological line staff . You know , um , I don't want anyone to now engage with you at all , not even for what you've said and done , but because by it , by some theory of miasma and association , um , the fact that you were willing to talk to right-wingers at all is a problem . But what I find fascinating about this , if we're quite honest , this is always selective . Um , uh , people canceled norman finkelstein for years , but also , like I promise you that his publishers today , if he was to write a new book , would turn a blind eye to his association with , say , ron Oontz , and that is just a bottom line decision . So who gets this treatment is also highly selective , even on the left . But it would be like saying we couldn't talk to chomsky because he appeared on crossfire , because that's associated with , with , you know , william buckley .

Daniel Tutt 17:21

I mean that just that wouldn't make sense to the historical left all that much which is why , which is why censorship is tied into a logic that ultimately links to state power and the division of labor , and one of the things that marx argued was you know , he had this phrase that um , who will monitor the gatekeepers , to paraphrase right , and that becomes the issue . In other words , it doesn't become an issue of hierarchy , it becomes an issue of a strange paternalistic horizontalism amongst the liberal intelligentsia , where they have lost a grip on the rationale as to why they are gatekeeping and censoring to begin with , and it kind of becomes a system run amok and censoring to begin with . And it kind of becomes a system run amok . Okay , and that is what led marx's early journal , the rheinische zeitung , it basically to fold , okay and um . So what I try to show is that there's a kind of historical analogy to um , the early marxist time and some of these issues that we're dealing with today . I will say this which is ?

Daniel Tutt 18:34

It matters , I think , a great deal how we as marxists , as socialists , respond to this issue , because I think that the pernicious repression that drives censorship is enough to drive somebody into like a dissident left position or a type of maybe even quasi reactionary position , you know , because you feel arbitrarily persecuted and you feel as if it's an indictment on the left , on the irrationalism of the left , on the incoherence of the left , and so it becomes , therefore , a crisis of the left . Censorship causes a fundamental crisis of the meaning of the left itself Right , and also of the evacuation of the responsibility of intellectuals within the left Right . So these are the reasons why . Actually , because it's quite easy to shrug it off as kind of like silly , because Rogan is an entertainer , but , um , I think , at the end of the day , perhaps a more serious approach , and I'd love to see what matt mcmanus thinks about this . Um , you know , that's part of the question .

Daniel Tutt 19:45

It's like how actually do we respond to ? This becomes a question because , at first blush , of course , punctum is going to say oh well , what we were doing was not censorship , right , of course . So there's a lot of disavowals that go on in the whole at the same time , and I think that what happened was bashkar sankara , members of the young turks and huge public figures on the . When they learned about what happened with punctum , they called it out . Because the truth is this , I think strategy of no platforming , the strategy of gatekeeping and censorship , when it is exposed to the light of day , it is revealed to actually have hardly any public support in my view . I don't know how you see it , matt or Derek .

Matt McManus 20:37

Yeah , I had a couple of complicated feelings about this , and then I'll kind of shamelessly segue to the humanism-scientism debate , because you said something , dan , that I want to respond to . So I had actually somewhat mixed feelings personally not politically about the cancellation of this book . I know I'm very happy it's found a new and better home . On the one hand , obviously it was frustrating , after many , many years when we were anticipating publication , to find out that now we needed to go through the process of finding a new publisher again after that was already quite tedious . On the other hand , it's kind of like dating or being with someone who doesn't want to be with you , right ? You know , if they really sincerely feel that way , then sometimes the best thing really is just to part ways . So my feeling is , if Punkdom really doesn't want to promote this book or have anything to do with it , really we shouldn't want to have anything to do with them . So that was my kind of personal feeling about what ended up happening .

Matt McManus 21:34

In terms of politically , I think it demonstrates something that is extremely objectionable about today's American left , and I single out the American left for a number of reasons .

Matt McManus 21:43

Now I have a superficial point to make about this , and one that's a little bit more cultural .

Matt McManus 21:48

The superficial point is , with regards to my own reaching out to people in Compact or Ben's going on Joe Rogan , my feeling is , if you're going to catch fish , you have to go where there are fish right , and the reality is that simply repeating talking points to left-wingers that they're all familiar with is valuable , certainly in terms of mobilizing support , opening up new avenues of inquiry , but if you want to convert people , then you need to go where there are people who aren't leftists right , and that's one of the reasons why I wrote for Compact Magazine , since a lot of these people have dissident

The Humanism-Scientism Debate in Marxism

Matt McManus 22:21

views , they're dissatisfied with the status quo , they're at least curious about certain kinds of socialist ideas and , while I disagree with them about many of their more reactionary conservative social views , I think that there is a way of trying to offer an attractive vision of leftism that can invite Julie , invite them into the camp , and I know that Ben was doing something very , very similar when he went on Joe Rogan .

Matt McManus 22:43

Right Now , rogan , whatever you think about him and I have mixed feelings , to put it mildly he has a platform with millions and millions of people who listen to him . There's a reason Bernie Sanders has gone on , et cetera , et cetera , and Ben going on there and promoting democratic socialism and a plausible version of it to that mass audience can really only help us in the long run . So that's my perspective . In terms of the more cultural reason for this , irving Howe had a very , very sharp observation where he juxtaposed the American left against the European left and he pointed out that the influence of evangelism and Puritanism on the American left , including the American socialist left , has been wildly understudied and I think that's as true today as it was back when he wrote those words in the mid-20th century .

Matt McManus 23:34

In the mid-20th century , because there's this very let's call it moralistic attitude that emerges periodically on the American left , where people seem pretty convinced that we're not actually going to ever win power , so we don't have to involve ourselves in any of the strategic efforts that are required to actually obtain it . So we might as well kind of embrace this puritanical attitude of policing who we're going to associate with and trying to maintain our integrity by withdrawing from anyone who might happen to have negative or toxic viewpoints . Right , you know , there's this kind of attitude of I'll never win and I'll never actually be able to instantiate my worldview , but it's only because my worldview is so good and so pure and so holy that it's never actually going to be achievable in this world . And , by extension , because I am too good and too holy and too pure , which is precisely why I can withdraw from interacting with all the boobs and the charlatans that I want nothing to do with , and I think that that's a terrible idea . Right , the reality is that when you're in politics , it's not exclusively a numbers game , but you should be trying to get as many people on side as possible , and that doesn't mean compromising your principles , but it does to use my earlier metaphor definitely mean going fishing where there are fish Right , not constantly going back to the same shell pond again and again and again and eventually being disappointed when you can't catch anything . So that's my kind of point . Just talk about the the censorship issue .

Matt McManus 24:52

In terms of the humanism-scientism debate , I agree with what Derek said earlier . When Conrad first pitched me the idea back in I think it was 2019 , I thought , well , isn't this kind of a dead horse ? Do we really need to come back to this again ? But I'd like to point out that recently there's been a lot more juice that's been injected into this debate , not just by us , indeed , I wouldn't say even primarily by us . Just to give two examples Soren Mao released a seminal work in Marxist theory , mute Compulsion , and if you read that book , it's quite doggedly , if not scientistic , at least wary of any kind of Marxist humanism or Marxist moralism .

Matt McManus 25:30

Now , we were fortunate enough , when I was at Mute , michigan , to have Soren come and present on his book at a conference that myself and Dr David Zegman organized , and I asked him you know what's the kind of moral underpinning your book and Mao was just like . I don't really think there's any need to offer moral arguments at all if you're a Marxist , right , the critique of power , the analysis of political economy is sufficient . I pushed him a little bit further . He's like look , I just think it's obvious that we should refer a freer society to a less free society , which made the analytical philosopher in me furious , right , because I'm like , well , it's an obvious and all that stuff , but we don't need to get into that right now .

Matt McManus 26:04

By contrast , right Vanessa Wills released a seminal work on Marx's ethical theory , kind of drawing very heavily on Aristotle and other interlocutors to point out that there's an account of human flourishing and the good in Marxism , within Marxism , that deserves to be unpacked and certainly reintroduced for a new generation .

Matt McManus 26:24

So I think when you juxtapose these two seminal works of Marx's theory against one another , it shows that this debate is not over , right , there are still very different perspectives on whether we should move towards a critique of power and analysis of history and political economy and that's the road forward for Marxist theory or whether we should lean in more heavily on ethical arguments concerning freedom , equality , the free development of each being preconditioned for the freedom of all as the kind of foundation for Marxist agitation , and a beach being preconditioned for the freedom of all as the kind of foundation for Marxist agitation . I personally would like to do both , but that in itself already kind of includes me in the humanist camp , since I don't think that Marxism is , or ever will be , a kind of pure science of history or society or whatever you want to call it . I think that making the argument for socialism is always going to require ultimately making ethical arguments and trying to plausibly argue for the superiority of socialism over other social forms .

C. Derick Varn 27:16

There's a bunch of things that come to mind there , and one thing I'm going to say is I agree with you about this American tendency towards puritanism . However , I do think we can say that this has been picked up by the European left , because , you know , I mean , the vampire castle was written about Britain , not the US .

Matt McManus 27:34

That's fair .

C. Derick Varn 27:36

But I do think it comes from here , like one of the shittier American exports right . Basically , what we get is French theory read back through American moral lenses and then shipped back to Europe in even more pernicious forms a lot of the times Right , I do think that's undeniable for the Anglosphere , particularly in the UK . I actually don't know . The Canadian left is kind of odd and maybe , matt , you can talk more about that later .

Matt McManus 28:09

I'd say a lot of the same accusations could apply .

C. Derick Varn 28:11

Let's just put it there for now . But I do think the theoretical underpinning , though , does come from mostly the United States , from critical not critical theory so much as critical legal theory , or from American uses of Foucault are , from American uses of privilege theory , which then get reinterpreted and sent back to the rest of the broader left . And I actually have found this quite funny because I've also argued with people about , like how come all the European anti-Americanists used American logics and American definitions of race and American um tactics for your issues with the United States . I just find that hilarious and contradictory , um , um . But I broadly agree with you on the humanism and scientism debate . I was actually . I wanted to tease this out and I'll have Daniel and you both respond to it , and then you can also respond to any other remarks that I had .

C. Derick Varn 29:18

One of the things I think about at stake at the humanism debate is what you think counts as Marxist humanism . So for one side you have someone like Vanessa Wills , but there's also like Ruta Doniskaya and the Marxist hyphen humanist in specific , who people often think are some kind of knockdown drag out battle with Althusser , but Althusser barely knew they existed . Althusser was arguing with the French Communist Party , which he was in the Italian Communist Party and with the post-Secret Speech , common . Well , common Form , because the Common Term didn't exist anymore under Khrushchev variants , to the point that , if we look at , a lot of these countries are in latin america the , the , the former common turn align , and I'm being careful here because the common term was abolished in 1942 but the former common turn align parties were taking reformist positions to the right , of the socialist parties in the same nation , and that's that , and that's a weird historical anomaly that I often feel is left out of this debate , for why it was framed in the way .

C. Derick Varn 30:34

Specifically it was framed in France and when I've seen this brought up from the , you know , I think Daniel's right that this really kicks off in the late 60s I was reading Alvin Goudner talking about this debate in 1976 , and it both hasn't changed and has dramatically changed , because I do think , like Sorin Mao versus Vanessa Rills versus , let's say , bruno Leibold , the Citizen Marx author and historian , what you see here is , at the very minimum , you have to deal with the fact that there are contradictory positions that emerge , structural forms of two of the most structural forms of marxism world systems theory and analytic marxism , which you know um are more on the humanist side of this debate . Um against structural marxism .

Daniel Tutt 31:38

But you gotta go ahead daniel yeah , well , I think there's a couple couple things to unpack , because all through Syrian anti-humanism is anti-Hegelian Marxism . First of all , right , frederick Jameson kind of simplifies this . I can just refer to this for folks that are not steeped in these . They're not esoteric debates , but they're high theory debates . Right , that's for sure . A high theory debate , right , um , that's for sure it is . It's really between lukach and althusser , at the level of marxist theoretical um prisms by which we foundationalize an understanding of dialectics , because althusser , of course , is still trying to expunge Hegel from dialectics , but maintain a theory of dialectics , right , and maintain an understanding of how we understand a contradiction . So you have to balance that off of existing movements , from Stalinism and Maoism in particular , but to a lesser extent Trotskyism , right , but it really internal to the Orthodox camp , all through Seren , lukács , it's Hegelian dialectics which still has a radical humanism associated with it . For example , lukács is not shy to invoke the moral , he's not shy to invoke the moral , he's not shy to invoke the ethical right , but his incorporation of hegel is of a very particular , what I would call socially engaged version of hegel , whereby the task of incorporating philosophy is to help the proletariat , the working class , gain a sort of access to social reality so they can change the world . Like you know , theses on feuerbach kind of idea is like hegel helps us with that project .

Daniel Tutt 33:33

I think the interesting thing about this effort here and what we're talking about censorship and french theory is that if you , if you understand the marxism of the french theorists , it it was Althusserian Largely anti-Hegelian . Here I'm talking about Jacques Ranciere , etienne Balibar and even Derrida Foucault and Deleuze . They were all trained in their Marxism by Althusser . We should never forget that . That's extremely important . Althusser is a major name . That's extremely important . Althusser is a major name and as such , what I find very interesting is the way that the legacy of Althusser has allowed for many leftists that have their philosophical foundation in French theory to have what you might call a kind of easy Marxism right , a kind of non-rigorous Marxism , in which Marxism can be kind of like this thing that you try out , like the late Deleuze experiments with grandeurs of Marx . It's unfinished , he's friendly to Marx , so therefore it's kind of qualified , or rather what they give you is a kind of Marxism in the plural . It's like there's many different Marxes and most Marxism , according to the French theory model of course , is authoritarian . They will never be able to to expunge Stalinism Right .

Daniel Tutt 34:54

And so what I find interesting is that that voice is missing from this debate . Why is it missing from this debate ? I would contend that it's missing from this debate in part because of the puritan tendency you mentioned on the one hand , but on the other hand , I think that leftism of french theory has now given us what you might call a sort of nascent or sort of uh , sort of uh diffuse idea of left , diffused idea of leftism that doesn't see itself as necessarily needing the theoretical anchor , fundamentally pluralist . Right , to the extent that they lean on theoretical models , it would be pluralistic , maybe a little bit of Foucault , maybe a little bit of Deleuze , but for them leftism is a pure entity which actually cannot really be debated . Right , and reactionaries to be a reactionary is kind of like a monstrous other , which , of course , I think , if we are honest , necessitates a class analysis of why they would see the listeners of Joe Rogan to be immediately fascist . I think it is a class analysis because they lack the familiarity with those subject positions in their everyday middle-class lives , right ? So as a result , everything is fascist , which of course was the thesis of Foucault , that was Foucault's notion , yeah , and this has , I think , created massive problems . Right , it has created massive problems and , you know , there's a lot of ways to get out those problems . There's a lot of reactionary ways to get out those problems . I try to be very diplomatic while at the same time remaining principled , right ? So that's how I see that issue .

Daniel Tutt 36:41

I think the humanism piece is interesting because Matt and Ben Burgess and McManus really are interesting to me , because what you guys are trying to do is actually something quite different . I think it's different than the lucas . I'll say everything entirely . It's actually rather , we as social democrat oriented leftists , confuse the best elements of liberal historiography and philosophy , namely Rawls and Cohen , and that can serve as our ethical and moral foundation for Marxism . Right , and I think that's the rub of the debate of Flowers for Marx .

Daniel Tutt 37:18

The book , right , it's coming from the Althusserian , lukács Conrad is an Althusserian , I'm a Luk Lukachian and this other version that you guys are trying to do and I think that you should be credited for your originality and then , you know , obviously ruthlessly criticized in the world of ideas , as we try to do in the book , right , in comradely ways , of course , not trying to kill or cancel one another , because I think that's the other thing is that it becomes very difficult to discern whether gatekeeping , cancellation and censorship is in fact itself a reflection of an impotent market competition gone awry which it is . It's kind of a mirror of bad neoliberal market competition , I think right . In that sense it's like a blind acting out right and as such there's another reason why it should be assessed as thoughtless , especially if it's coming from a group of leftists who are so pluralistic that they think if somebody has an orthodox foundation that that must be associated with

Ethical Foundations of Socialist Politics

Daniel Tutt 38:25

some authoritarian tendency , which I think is really problematic .

Matt McManus 38:30

If I could just make a comment about that , Derek . I mean , do you really want to jump in on ?

C. Derick Varn 38:36

this I do , but I want you to make your comment first before I say my part , because it's going to probably blow up a dichotomy . Sure , well , I wanted to say first off I think that your characterization of the fault lines off .

Matt McManus 38:46

I think that your characterization of the fault lines and I think there are numerous fault lines in the book is very accurate , right . Certainly , you know , ben and I have our disagreements , but we're very sympathetic in critical terms to this kind of Cohen-Rawls fusion and without a doubt , you know , conrad and yourself adopt more of a kind of European style of Marxism that's friendlier to Althusser , lukács , etc . Although I want to point out , you know , I spent a lot of time with those figures also and I certainly have nothing but praise and criticism in equal measure for them , much like I have praise and criticism in equal measure for Colin Rawls . But I'd like to point out that sometimes we can overemphasize this stratification , that sometimes we can overemphasize this stratification . So here I'm going to draw very heavily on Alan Wood and his pioneering reading of Kant and Marx . So one of the things that would who's kind of a Kantian Marxist , of all things , foregrounds in his analysis , is the origin of critical theory .

Matt McManus 39:40

Certainly modern critical theory has to lie in Kant , in particular this idea that the generative conditions of the mind give us access to certain kinds of truth , right , that are objective for all human beings but don't necessarily comport with the world the way that it really is right . And this is obviously going to be picked up by Hegel and historicized and then by Marx , who's going to invert a lot of this fundamental way of thinking about things , while retaining in many ways the architectonic structure . So for me , a kind of core phenomenological insight of Marxism is to stress that the social illusions that bind us aren't just illusions , right , they're characterized by the history into which we find ourselves and they are recursively generative of the world as we apprehend it , while at the same time impose limits on our ability to see the world the way that it actually is , namely as something that is historical , open-ended , contingent , etc . Etc . And the reason why I bring up this kind of Kantian origin is we can talk about this epistemologically and historically the way that I just have , which goes on to influence an enormous amount of continental philosophy .

Matt McManus 40:50

But of course there's also the moral side , which one finds very directly in Kant , because the core Kantian insight is , of course , once we recognize that we cannot derive ethics or morality from the nature of things as they are , because we never apprehend them directly .

Matt McManus 41:04

That means that the source of morality has to lie somewhere else .

Matt McManus 41:07

And you know , kant and Hegel have differing arguments about this , and this is something that Rawls also picks up , not following Red of Wood , but in parallel with Wood , where he says look , one of the great insights of Marxism is precisely to recognize that morality is fungible and historical , which doesn't mean that we should abandon the quest to find , if not objective , at least plausible moral principles .

Matt McManus 41:33

It just means that there are certain kinds of problems that are going to be thrown up by ideology that we have to be sensitive to , that earlier moral philosophers , going all the way back to Socrates , just wouldn't have been aware of because of their class situatedness . So I think that there is room for a dialogue between these kinds of Rawlsian , kohenian approaches to socialism and the continental tradition that you're talking about , because they share a kind of genealogical or genetic lineage In this approach . You can call it critical or you can call it emphasizing the importance of critique , going back to Kant , and I think that looking at the symmetries between them rather than foregrounding differences can sometimes be just as generative as a ruthless criticism of one another .

C. Derick Varn 42:17

So I mean there's a bunch of things to pick apart there . But I'm going to go back for a second and talk about what I was about to talk about , which is the everything is fascism argument does not just emerge from the Althusserian side . I mean , we also see the cul-de-sac of Frankfurt School critical theory arriving there and then jumping the shark effectively in my opinion , with the exception of Raymond Geist into literal discursive theory immediately once it hits that wall , and that is the implication of negative dialectics is basically , and also the top of the egalitarian personality is basically there is no way out of fascist thought once you have identity thinking , and that is done through a purely hegelian argument , like almost like a , like a maybe almost perfectly negatively Hegelian argument . But to bring this back a little bit , I do think it's interesting to have this debate about Marxist humanism because when I was reading you and Conrad's debate , part of me was like well , some of the criterion of this debate , if I brought a different kind of structural Marxist , a different kind of Althusserian to the debate , you get a completely different answer . And I'll just give you the example Both you and Conrad and Ben would agree on stage as productivism . But if I bring a 70s Maoist from France to the debate today , somehow , or I get someone who was a diehard revolutionary communist party Bob vacuum , not the other one by the car , yes , or the other . One other one by the Trotskyist , or the other one other . One other one by the Trotskyist , cause everyone likes to call themselves a revolutionary communist party for some reason . Um , uh , but the Bob vacuum nights . If I found a couple around Berkeley today or around New York today and threw them in there , they would be fighting all of you on the samegel versus Althusser argument .

C. Derick Varn 44:34

The analytical Marxist and I also mentioned the world systems theory Marxist , because they're also not really all that Hegelian are odd people out because they're not . They're both involved in this debate but their fundamental terms are actually entirely separate . And you're right , because for the most part , matt , I would say that the structural Marxist who actually have an ethical theory so Cohen and maybe Vivek Chibber today , you know , analytical Marxist excuse me , I said structural but actually have an ethical theory would bristle at Hegelian ethical arguments , like if you throw Lukács at them , they're just . I mean , ja , cohen's just going to call it bullshit . And then you have a different set of analytical marxist , romer perswarski , who's not really a marxist anymore . Um , uh , some of the ones that uh are associated more than 1980s versus the people associated later . Um , they're also gonna throw out the humanism and the ethical argument , like they're going to use game theory to to say that that's not really something we should care about . They're in , they're all part of analytical Marxism .

C. Derick Varn 45:55

Interestingly enough , when I read Emmanuel Righi , samir , I mean Giovanni Righi and and Emmanuel Wallerstein . And my God , can other than Samir , I meanin can these people have different names ? It is super maddening that that , like three relatively rare names show up amongst the same cohort of thinkers over and , over and over again , but but nonetheless that that you also would have a hard time pinning down which one of those people are picking up . On the moral valence versus the structural valence of Marxism , I would argue , for example , there's a lot of morality in Samir Amin and Emanuel Wallerstein , but I don't so much see it in giovanni righi and righi emmanuel , um so this is an important point , though , right , um , just kind of segue from there .

Matt McManus 46:55

Um really the . You know , the heart of the debate between myself and conrad is this um , humanism versus scientism , uh dispute , uh , at least in the book , but I think it goes deeper than that . So in later editions of Karl Marx's theory of history , and in particular books like Wrestling , justice and Equality , cohen emphasizes the fact that a lot of classical Marxism depended for its power upon what fundamentally can only be understood as a kind of deterministic or teleological understanding of history , which , I want to point out , althusser also repudiates by the time he writes about aleatory materialism , right . So Cohen wasn't in bad company in suggesting that by the 1990s this idea that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards communism just was not convincing anyone any longer . And once you take that away , it's not that the Marxist critique of economic domination , or even that the Marxist theory of history , understood in softer terms , ceases to be plausible or intellectually very powerful . It just makes it incumbent upon us to have to offer reasons for why it is that a socialist society that might or might not replace a capitalist society is to be preferred . And that's something , as Cohen points out , that certainly a lot of analytical or a lot of analytical philosophers with a socialist inclination just never really took seriously up until the 1990s .

Matt McManus 48:27

And I think that you see this continuation of this problem down into the present day with some of the people who are more militantly anti-humanist or anti-moral right . So just to go back to my earlier example , I have a profound respect for what Sir Mao has accomplished in Mute Compulsion . I think he offers the most granular and rich account of economic power , really on a various set of things that we've seen in quite a long time . But we cannot just presume A that a socialist society will be a freer society than a capitalist society unless we have a good conception of what we mean by free and how capitalism inhibits freedom . And then , at an even deeper level , we have to actually offer arguments for why it is that more freedom is actually to be morally preferred to less freedom . Now I think for a lot of people on the left this might seem like a banal argument because we all just instinctively , as good inheritors of the Enlightenment , assume that more freedom must be more beneficial than less freedom . But , derek , you're very learned in the reactionary tradition . You'll know that it's by no means the case that intelligent people just see more freedom as self-evidently a good thing .

Matt McManus 49:28

There are plenty of people even liberals , but certainly reactionaries who insist that actually one of the major problems with both liberalism and socialism is this emphasis on freedom or , if you want , freedom , equality and solidarity . That's the root of the moral rot that's led to liberty nihilism in our society . So what we should go back to is a society characterized by less freedom , right , whether that means authoritarianism or deference to church authorities , etc . Etc . Etc . So we cannot just assume that more freedom is prima facie a good thing . The argument has to be made for why it is that freedom is preferable and why it is that equality is preferable . And once we've established that freedom and equality are to be preferred , how it is that a socialist society , in whatever flavor you prefer , will do a better job of instantiating those values or principles in a more real way than what we find right now under the capitalist mode of production , which , I agree with Mao and many others , inhibits freedom and equality and solidarity in profound and alienating ways .

Daniel Tutt 50:27

So I'll just say a couple of things on the notion of freedom and morals .

Daniel Tutt 50:31

Historically this is handled through the analysis of a class and of expression of class power , not reliant on the categories from Marx's Capital per se , but primarily of the formation of class formation and of the possible class consciousness of the proletariat which , importantly , is affected by things like imperialism right , or things like the disintegration of the bourgeoisie or things like the disintegration of the bourgeoisie . So meaning that , say today , liberals no longer have a vocabulary which maintains a kind of connection to any kind of universality of moral commitment and there is a kind of decadence not only of liberalism as a class formation but , I think , as in a certain way Marxism emerges in an interesting way perhaps as the only philosophical orientation , politically speaking , that might be capable of holding liberalism to its better ideals . And I think that that is also what interests me about this book and what interests me about dialoguing with people who are open to an engagement between Marxism and liberalism in a real way , because it's only through that engagement that I think we can reopen um , a different vantage point that a lot of anti-humanist Marxism . A different vantage point that a lot of anti-humanist Marxism because it subtracts the cultural domain from its understanding of historicism . It gets too scientific at times and I think that we lose track of these questions about the historical formation of class ideologies , class worldviews and class moralities which classical Marxism was always thinking ethics and morality vis-a-vis how it is lived through , class oppression , right .

Daniel Tutt 52:39

So the question that befuddles people on the Marxist left is a symptom of the over-scienticization , mainly the question of like why do we fight ? What's our rationale ? To fight right ? Does Marxism require a theory of the overcoming of alienation , right ? These are actually debates that people in contemporary academia are having . Contemporary academia is wondering whether uh , not , not . They're not asking the question of , like you know , can reified social forms be overcome ? In a way , there's almost the . The impetus of a lot of contemporary left-wing academic work is far more pessimistic about things like the possibility of a society beyond forms of constitutive alienation right , a society that has abolished the value form , a society that would put forward a plank for the abolition of wage labor , for example , which used to be the standard question of what was called the social question right , and therefore of the social revolution . So in a certain way , I feel that this discussion between liberalism and Marxism is the only way that we could actually A bring back something about universalism as expressed through class , which also requires , in my opinion , the supplement of ethnographic , anthropological and sociological studies of class , because we need to understand where we are going and why our appeals to freedom are not , like Kantian , a priori appeals , I mean . Otherwise socialism would be everything Marx despised in the utopian socialists .

Daniel Tutt 54:28

And it's here where I think that you know , I know you're fond of edward bernstein , but you know he was a figure who thought that the fusion of kant with marx was hunky-dory and he thought it was fine . I for one don't . That doesn't mean I'm going to excommunicate you , but I do think that , philosophically and practically , the fusion of Kant with Marx actually can lead to disastrous results , the biggest one being this abstract idea . This abstract idea which reproduces a kind of Christian notion that ultimately , morals just comes from an abstract interiority .

Daniel Tutt 55:09

You know , I think the Marxist point on the origin of morals is that it's found in the class struggle , right , and so we have to be class struggle-centric , I think , in order to broach these things , and we should avoid that Kantianism because that Kantian approach . And we should avoid that Kantianism because that Kantian approach it has a tendency to lead to a type of abstraction spiritualism and a type of Christian moralism . So I'm just going to be a little bit spicy there and a little polemical . But again we're in comradely company , so I'm not afraid that you're going to kill me or try to cancel me .

Matt McManus 55:47

We'll see . Actually , if I could push back on that just a tiny little bit , I want to say first off , I agree with a lot of what you said about the dangers of trying to let's call it Kantianize Marx excessively or liberalize socialism . And just to give one example of this , I thought that Derek made a very sharp observation earlier on . I thought that Derek made a very sharp observation earlier on where he pointed out about how a lot of the kind of American approaches to Marx , marxism , critical theory , tend to be found in things like critical legal studies or critical race theory , et cetera , et cetera . Now , one of the interesting consequences of this is invariably the insights of these critical traditions tend to become very , very distinctly Americanized , appropriately enough , and in a bad way . They tend to interiorize a lot of bourgeois norms about potential alternative societies in a way that I think is regressive . Just to give an example what Derek said Kimberly Crenshaw right , many people are familiar with Kimberly Crenshaw for her seminal work on intersectional theory . A woman , there's no doubt about it , right , and there's a lot to learn from her . But when she was pressed about , well , what kind of society is it that you're envisioning ? She gave this metaphor of a race and said look , the reality is that right now , america claims to be a meritocracy , but some people start 400 yards ahead of the line , other people start 200 yards behind the line and we want to bring everyone to the same starting point . Now , I often teach this in class because it's a very vivid metaphor that I think surfaces as a deep , imminent critique of meritocracy . But that's precisely it . It's an

Puritanism and Strategy on the Left

Matt McManus 57:21

imminent critique of meritocracy that draws quite a lot of insight from black Marxism , etc . Of meritocracy that draws quite a lot of insight from black Marxism , et cetera , because meritocracy itself is not challenged . The bourgeois idea that you should get ahead because of your merits is fundamentally left intact . When you boil it down , the argument is that we don't live in a meritocracy and we should try to become one , right , by putting everyone at the same starting point of the line . When everyone's at the same starting point of the line , then we can actually run a fair race and whoever gets to the end will actually be said to deserve what they've earned right Now . I think that this is a terrible idea , right ? But this is what brings me to Rawls and Rawlsianism . Right Now I'll bracket the broader debate about Kant as a kind of origin figure for critical theory , which I think is to a certain extent indisputable .

Matt McManus 58:05

Rawls is , without a doubt , a universalist and there's a case he could make that a kind of Rawlsianism , certainly with Cohenian amendments , might actually be more universalistic than at least crude or vulgar Marxism . This is a point that Katrina Forrester makes in her recent book In the Shadows of Justice . So she points out how many left critics of Rawls contended that the problem with Rawlsianism was that it didn't pay enough attention to the working class and what it was owed . Now , I think that there's a lot that can be said about Rawls not being attentive to class power , although he certainly was attentive to it at the end . But think about the moral structure there .

Matt McManus 58:41

Right , the implication is almost always that the working class has been treated unfairly , always that the working class has been treated unfairly , and it requires a more fair system that is free of domination , free of alienation and exploitation , and doing so will produce more justice . Well , rawls was actually quite indifferent to those kinds of issues , for sophisticated reasons , in addition to the crude ones that I mentioned before , because from a Rawlsian perspective he'd say look , these issues of paying people what you're owed or asking have you been treated unfairly in this crude sense is largely irrelevant to questions of justice . Questions of justice need to be comprehended from this extremely universalistic standpoint , behind the veil of ignorance in the original position . And ultimately , the right way to think about the distribution of goods in society has nothing to do with how hard you worked to produce commodities or whatever . It has everything to do with how do we make sure that the lease wall off our wall taken care of , Because these are the kinds of moral principles that a rational person would agree to under these special epistemic conditions .

Matt McManus 59:42

Right , and that's a very universalistic way of looking at things , so universalistic , in fact , that it eschews any kind of strong identification with any recognizable social groups in society , whether the working class or the black population or women , et cetera , et cetera . And Rawls has been very criticized for this . But I don't think that you can attack him on the basis of being insufficiently universalistic . You could be critical of him for being too focused , to use the Hegelian term , on abstract universalism rather than concrete universalism , but that's another question .

C. Derick Varn 1:00:15

So we all know my opinion about Rawls , so we won't focus in on that . I will briefly state it as I think it took some of the best in Kantianism and some of the best in utilitarianism and added it together in a way that makes liberals feel good about their positions . But I would agree with you that it is not a meritocratic liberal argument in any way , form or fashion , and it has been used towards those ends . Oh , it absolutely has . It absolutely has . Um , um . One thing I would say about the the arguments from justice and marxism and maybe this will make everyone's hackles goes up . I consider myself a person very concerned with ethics , um , and . But I do believe that ethics come out of your class positionality in a lot of ways , in your general community and other more specific ways . Um , I'm a virtue ethicist , which pushed me out of touch with most post-enlightenment ideas , although I do not actually do think . If there's any ethics in marx at all , it is virtue ethical , not anything else that's cool , though I didn't know that about you .

C. Derick Varn 1:01:30

Yeah , it's not something that comes up a lot on the show , but what I will say is I don't give a shit about justice , and when I say that as a shock to people a lot of the time , but it's also because I want the pernicious thing that I view from a moral and a political reason to end . I do not care about balancing the scales about what happened before we end it , because I actually don't even think that's possible . It , you know , I think like trying to redeem the angel of history in this benjaminian sense is a waste of time . Um , and that puts me at odds with like 90 of the marxist debates right now . Uh , I kind of feel they're more at odds with the way mark talked .

C. Derick Varn 1:02:20

Marx talked about this stuff , because I will I have pointed out that justice not that it never comes up in any Marxist letters or whatever , but even if you go through and read the Vanessa Wills work , that particular virtue framing is really absent from Marxism , but it is not absent from the way most Marxists talk , which I do agree with you ends up having a shadow conception of the meritocracy that the working class gets what it's owed . Well , marx actually says the working class gets what it's owed . I agree , like that's what he says .

Matt McManus 1:02:56

I mean labor is always paid the fair value for its produce under contemporary historical conditions . Right , because right can only be as high as the mode of production at any time .

C. Derick Varn 1:03:07

Right under contemporary historical conditions . Right , because right can only be as high as the mode of production at any time , right ? So when you think about that , a whole lot of the way the current Marxist debates are framed , I mean I don't think it matters if you're a humanist or a structuralist , they're poor framings from either perspective . Now I have some probably genetic fallacy adjacent , uh , critiques of Kantianism , because I I I don't just think of the Kantians we like in liberal society , I also think of the Kantians we don't like , like the German historical school fascists , um , uh , would you know , I do not think Kant is inherently fascist , uh , but you know , and I was think Kant is inherently fascist , uh , but you know , and I was also thinking about this emergence of a left tradition that is anti-freedom , explicitly , not implicitly , not accidentally . Um , because whatever you may say about the historical realities of Marxist Leninism under Stalin and Stalinist forms of Marxist Leninism , um , they did not conceive of themselves as anti-freedom as such . They did not .

C. Derick Varn 1:04:10

But there are people who do today . I've even had some of them on my show . I mean , colin Drum is famous for asking like why should we just forgo , why shouldn't we just forgo the concepts of freedom altogether for the concept of survival , which I , you know , and why don't we just have a legitimate form of authority and why can't leftists and everybody else just follow the rules ? Probably from an Afro pessimist perspective , quite honestly , probably from an Afro-pessimist perspective , quite honestly , I actually think this is contingent with a degenerate liberal position that is developing today , and what I think is fascinating about it is it doesn't ask even how you justify the rules , because this is not even a social , harmonious argument here , because if you had social harmony , you wouldn't need to enforce these rules this way . This is , this is a to me , putting a cart before the horse on norms and assuming that there is an ideal form of of norms that would ensure survival , usually some austere one that would also increase equity , but probably equity in the most negative sense .

Matt McManus 1:05:24

I should say I've seen a lot of what you've been talking about recently , since Trump's second election , especially right , where a large number of liberals and not a small number of leftists have just lost faith in ordinary people and their ability to reason what they consider to be appropriately , and so they've given into this kind of authoritarian impulse to just say everyone should follow the rules , and of course the rules should be more progressive , but people shouldn't have a say in that . So that's just to kind of affirm what you're saying .

Daniel Tutt 1:06:00

And I think it's also . I mean , it's interesting because I feel like in ecological Marxism there is this idea that society and it's actually an idea generated from Lukács , right . So Saito initiates the notion of understanding the system of capitalism as a metabolic system . That's a Lukácsian idea , but what's missed there is also that social relations are also metabolic , meaning that one of the presuppositions of Marxist political strategy is that solidarity of the proletariat will produce a system of cooperation that will be more rational than immediate bourgeois society is . So in that sense there is a fundamental optimism to the political Marxist tradition I would claim right which would go against Colin Drum's kind of immediate . To me it's kind of a non-dialectical point in the sense that every political coalition is the expression of a contradictory class assortment . And I think that one of the arguments that is true in Marxism is that in capitalism the working class has a unique organizing possibility . Right , it's not that the working class can be personified .

Daniel Tutt 1:07:15

That was Marx's debate with Proudhon . Proudhon basically thought that classes were like people , you know , like the cover of the Leviathan , right . He thought that classes were like kind of expressions of things . In a certain way Marx thought that classes were relations . So there's a strategic reason why the organization of the working class can produce a greater metabolic harmony , of planning society right In a universe for the universal interests of all .

Daniel Tutt 1:07:45

And I feel like if we extinguish that optimism , I don't I lose track with what we're doing on the left . You know what I mean , and I felt that that's almost , if you like , the kind of kernel of Marxism that keeps me grounded and keeps nihilism at bay , if you will , or decadence at bay , which is that , yeah , a better form of political organization is possible . I'm not going to say a better world in some abstract sense , but like , do you see what I mean ? Think frankly , because most of the big thinkers that we're talking about , from , like , the french theorists to cohen and rawls , were marked by their distinct relation to the welfare state and as such , they put forward an understanding of the world and of society that , presupposed that , couldn't articulate the type of social fragmentation that we live with and , as such , their theoretical worldviews have a degree of inherent limitation to us .

Matt McManus 1:09:05

Yeah , I would fundamentally agree with that . I mean , I think that if you're going to talk about a basic problem with , let's call it , the Rawls-Cohen nexus , it's the presupposition that there's a kind of fundamental unity or , to use the Rawlsian term , consensus around certain kinds of basic principles that should be found in a just society , and that the job of philosophy or critical theory is to carry forward those principles to a higher level of theoretical abstraction and then potentially move them in a merrier direction or a more radical direction than has long been appreciated by citizens . Right , and that's kind of draws this whole project right . Basically , if you take liberalism seriously , the way that Americans claim to take it seriously , then you should do liberal socialism or property-owning democracy , not liberal capitalism . And I think that , to your point , daniel , this marks a basic limitation to the ideal theoretic or moral project that underpins a lot of analytical philosophy , because it constitutes a failure of nerve to take seriously issues of economic power and domination in particular , and potentially even more granularly , the nature of ideology let's just use that term , we can substitute with synonyms the Gemini discourse , whatever you prefer Because ideology , as Gillian Rose really rightly points out again , has always just been presumed to be something that will disappear with the advent of the right principles or the instantiation of the right principles in society .

Matt McManus 1:10:32

Now , any sufficiently sophisticated Marxist or critical theorist will tell you no , you can't just make a rational argument for these principles and then assume that everyone is going to accept them because you explained the original position to them in sufficient detail and they've kind of internalized the parameters of the thought experiment . The reality is that this is not a kind of epiphenomenal feature of the social form . It's a set of illusions that are necessary to the social form , and so , consequently , what you need to do is engage in a praxis to open up spaces where more cognitive freedom is available , so that people will be more receptive to principled arguments for why it is that we should advance towards a more free and egalitarian society , a more democratic society . I think that's a very basic limitation . Um , to let's just call again the brawls common nexus , uh no , it's , totally , it's so .

Daniel Tutt 1:11:20

I mean , I think there's been one strong criticism of lukach that I've taken to heart recently that reminds me of exactly what you're saying . It's from his number one disciple , um . This figure named um may sorrows and my sorrow said look , really , what the problem was was that in the lukachian understanding of the political organization of the proletariat , there was actually way too much of an onus placed on the um moral status and moral , uh , correction of the working class by the members of the working class themselves . And this is actually very similar to a point that our comrade Benjamin Studebaker makes , which I think is very sound and he makes it in a very general way , but it's very correct which is that if you look at the tradition of critical theory , one of the presuppositions kind of post-enlightenment presuppositions is that to regain the dignity of citizenship that is eroded by the fragmentation of capitalism necessitates a huge onus on each citizen to assume this educative plank .

Daniel Tutt 1:12:32

And Studebaker's position is like well , actually , we need to make it easier on people and actually and I think his , his argument is very much in line with this inequality of education and how that's affected class dynamics in our time , right of working class to middle class , if you want to use that dichotomy is for your degree . So are these old models of these great thinkers , are they requiring too much ? And it is , I think , a very pertinent and relevant question for us to ask . I don't know if that makes sense or if that kind of hits the mark at all , but it's something that I've been thinking about a lot , that I'm trying to currently figure out myself .

Matt McManus 1:13:16

Yeah , I absolutely agree . I mean , look , the reality is , to put it very crudely , that the powers that be have a vested interest in keeping people as uneducated as possible and as fixated on their one-dimensional distractions as possible . And I don't think it's any kind of coincidence that when you create the cognitive space and the time for people to deliberate upon the kind of society that they want , yeah , without a doubt it raises the prospect of more fragmentation , particularly damaging fragmentation of the sort that you're talking about .

Daniel Tutt 1:13:52

The thing with our generation , though , that's very unique is that the models of liberation that most leftism was defined by in the 20th century because it was born in conditions of the welfare state , in the core regions at least and I'm not talking about the global south here , but I'm talking about the nexus of the core regions was largely formed off of a conception of freedom which was very libertine based right , which was very like 68 , like expand consciousness , expand um sort of like this , um , almost like a kind of uh , a form of freedom which has basically been consumed by consumptive capitalism right , and been totally marketized , commodified and all of that .

Daniel Tutt 1:14:42

And I think that the challenge for us now is to shift our attention to a far more economic domain of freedom . And then the problems then emerge from that are very clear in my mind , which revolve around the fact that most visions of freedom economically are kind of taken over by the right or sort of abused by some petty bourgeois cooptation in a certain way . So it's

Class Analysis and Liberal Decadence

Daniel Tutt 1:15:11

like we haven't figured out how to achieve broad solidarity for bread and butter , economic freedom issues , um , outside of a paradigm of left populism . And I think that that remains , like the , the question . I'm not , I'm not sure , um , if , if and when socialist parties can begin to seriously contend and rival bourgeois parties . I hope that happens in our lifetime . We better get busy on it if it's going to happen , I think . That , to me , is the question .

Matt McManus 1:15:47

I think I'm less pessimistic than you are about this , though , so let's just talk in the level of theory and then at the level of practice , right ? I mean and I'll just use a be a bit America centric for a little while , since that's where I'm guessing most of our audience is located . At the level of theory , right ? If you had told me 10 years ago that you'd see major liberal theorists even left liberal theorists talking about things like economic democracy and the tyranny of private government , I would have laughed in your face right ? Even within the kind of broadly left Rawlsian paradigm , that was just completely a non-starter . Well , now there's an enormous amount of theoretical work that's being done on just those kinds of questions , and I think that part of that is because of a generational shift . To go back to your earlier point , I don't want to put too much stock on this , but for a lot of people who came of age during the Great Recession , the idea that we should take market society or market capitalism for granted and be uncritical of it , while trying to ameliorate it with a welfare state , just doesn't cut it any longer . The critique of liberalism is very well internalized by now , which is why you have people like Helen McCabe , or people like excuse me Edmondson , or people like Dan Chandler , who are writing books about the importance of economic democracy or , for that matter , even people outside the older generation , like Liz Anderson , who wrote a very regression to authoritarianism , does seem to have had a kind of radicalizing impetus on the part of American society . So just to give two examples I was in Warren , michigan , just a couple of weeks ago , in March , right , to go see the Bernie Sanders rally , and there we had a spillover room .

Matt McManus 1:17:33

For the spillover room , there weren't 4't 4000 people there , there were 9000 . And this is in a swing county and everyone was there . Right , there were a couple of academics and activists , but I talked to teachers , nurses , an awful lot of blue collar workers who worked in the auto industry who said they just had enough with oligarchic control . And the rallies have only gotten bigger and bigger and bigger right since then .

Matt McManus 1:17:56

Or you know , look at Zoran's campaign in New York , again focusing on very much bread and butter issues of the sort you're talking about right , trying to make housing affordable for people in Brooklyn , making buses free in the event that he gets elected for mayor . I think that we're , if not , if we haven't cracked the formula . There's intimations that we're getting better at trying to pitch the socialist message to people in the United States and to kind of invoke your own words , from earlier on . I think it's important to be consciously aware of these reasons for optimism , because I think that the minute that socialism liberalism for that matter regresses to a kind of pessimism about the future , and certainly a pessimism about human nature , then the road to reactionary dispositions or to quietism is well paved .

Daniel Tutt 1:18:50

We haven't seen serious mobilization of class-independent socialist organizing . We have a lot of people desiring it , we have a lot of thinkers that can articulate the historical basis and theoretical need for it , but we haven't seen it emerge yet . I think that its emergence would interact with the types of social democratic or kind of like liberal , leftist coalitions , left populist coalitions you're referring to in probably very interesting ways . And I think that that kind of goes back to the larger theme of the Flowers for Marks book , which is the dialogical need on the left to engage one another in a certain way . And I felt like perhaps one of the tragic points about this book was that there is a contingent of the left that actually is hostile to a socialism that would be for this kind of engagement . And again , we never really articulated the basis by which we are for this engagement and I think it bears some I mean you , you articulate it , but for myself , I mean it's pretty clear which is my position , largely having to do with where I grew up is that if you don't have an educative openness to convincing people of your vision of politics , I just lose clarity on what it is you're actually doing , and I would argue that that should go . That should go for everybody , but it obviously doesn't in our time and that's just really weird that it's gotten to this point .

Daniel Tutt 1:20:41

I really think that it needs to end at manipulating this weak point on the left . The fact that we do this to each other is abused by them a lot , and I think , more than we even know , frankly , in a similar way to the way that the Gaza encampments , as Norman Finkelstein points out , the financial class at the elite universities used the left's no platforming attitudes against the left right . So the minute you become critical of like free speech or you become sensorial , your enemies will absolutely take advantage of you . Is all I'm trying to say and I'll stop . Sorry , I've talked a lot yeah , absolutely .

Matt McManus 1:21:34

I mean , look , I grew up in um , you in .

Matt McManus 1:21:37

It was a small town , now it's a suburb , unfortunately in Ottawa , mostly with conservative guys and blue collar conservative guys .

Matt McManus 1:21:44

So I just have to admit that a lot of the kind of interesting debates that appear on the left , that people vest a lot of emotional energy and just never seemed as relevant to me , that people vest a lot of emotional energy in just never seemed as relevant to me , bluntly , as arguing with the right . Because to me , you know , if you look at conservatives and you look at right-wingers , it's very clear that they have a very different vision of what the world should look like than most people on the left . Now there are overlaps and there's opportunity to dialogue and again when Convert's there , right , and there's opportunity to dialogue and again win converts there . But you know , compared to what Patrick Deneen wants , let alone Julius Evola wants , the difference between what Gia Cohen aspires to and what Althusser aspires to just seemed comparatively minor . Comparatively minor , uh , even if the theoretical underpinnings , uh , of why it is that , um , they regard whatever it happens to be to be the ideal form of society , are quite substantially . That's the other thing .

Daniel Tutt 1:22:42

And then I'm just quick to quick response to that . The conditions they face were , in a sense , far less urgent than what we face , given the ecological situation , given the fact that we actually have the clear index to amass mobilization and desire for socialistic politics . There is like a void . So our urgency is like deserved and present , I think , in ways that , like when you look at Cohen , the urgency was was not as palpable because it wasn't there . Like you know what I'm saying , he was emerging right at a transition point where neoliberalism was just starting and the inequality had not sunk into like the finer grain of all of our social life as it has today . You know , it's very different .

Matt McManus 1:23:35

No , I think that's very true . I mean , when he published karl marx's theory of history , um , there was a labor party in the united kingdom taught at oxford university . Uh , that you could actually pause the call a label labor party , right , you know ?

Daniel Tutt 1:23:45

and you knew who one of his students was care starmer yeah , there you go .

Matt McManus 1:23:50

Uh , I mean , probably didn't really pay very much attention in those lectures , right , uh , but but you know this is kind of too .

Daniel Tutt 1:23:54

He was a former Trotskyist .

Matt McManus 1:23:56

Yes , I know , and he was a former . Everything else as well before . I just decided to be nothing at all . But you know , exactly . Yeah , I mean to the kind of point that you're getting at .

Matt McManus 1:24:04

Look , I agree that the moment is extremely urgent , right , but this is especially practical mistakes .

Matt McManus 1:24:18

But I think that the intense animosity that leftists can sometimes show one another , what is the metaphor we like to use ? Right , you know , gather in a circle and fire inward To purify , you know , the left before we go after the right , that is something that we cannot afford at this point , if we ever could . Right , because at the moment , you know , we see reactionary and neo or para-fascist farces on the march everywhere . The environment is continuing to decline for the reasons that you mentioned . I would actually argue , in many ways that we're seeing is a mutation of neoliberalism that is , in many ways , much more invidious and certainly insidious than what came before , precisely because it has allied so successfully with any of these kinds of reactionary dispositions . So the clock is ticking and we can continue to debate the merits of Cohenian analytical Marxism versus Lukashen Hegelian Marxism , and I think that those are going to be valuable , but we should never allow those debates to become so acrimonious that we're unable to cooperate together for our shared objectives . That's my viewpoint .

C. Derick Varn 1:25:19

My viewpoint is we need to broad left is willing to fight within itself without ripping each other's face off , which is a both literal and metaphorical stance , that you know . I'm not here to police who's a Marxist-Leninist or not . I'm not here to police who's a good Marxist or not . I'm not here to kick out the social Democrats . I'm not here to kick out the Dungist . I'm not here to kick out the third worldist although some of them probably wouldn't care if I did the third worldest , although some of them probably wouldn't care if I did . But you know , there I do think there has to be a line . I actually do . There is a line that you can't go past and there have been groups that have gone past it . But that line should be relatively thin . And , for example , I am a I'm a working class independentist . I don't I do not generally promote class collaborationism . But if I was to kick out what I consider class collaborationism from the movement , both sides of the debate and flowers for marks would would be booted . I mean to be completely honest . Um , with , with maybe the exception of vargas and I'm not sure yet I'm gonna have to reread his essay so like I think that's a ridiculous notion to have . These are good comrades . They should be treated like good comrades . Um , it's , it's you .

C. Derick Varn 1:26:55

Knowrors are errors in the realm of politics . Divisions are divisions of the realm of politics . They are not assumed to be dishonesty . I have this response all the time with both rightists and many leftists . The moment they disagree with you , they will accuse you of lying about a normative condition that you disagree with them in , as if . As if stating a different norm is lying about a fact , which also means that they cannot deal with the difference between a norm and a description at a fundamental level . Or are there bad faith factors ? Those are your two options , and I'm going to pick the more charitable one 90 percent of the time , even though it does kind of make them look like idiots . It would still , however , mean that they are not reprobate moral actors .

Matt McManus 1:27:43

To your point , though I always think that being called a liar is better than being called an idiot . I think both are wrong . Right because a liar means that they can think that you're probably smart enough to realize that theirs is clearly the right position . You just refuse to acknowledge that because you're selfish or you have other kind of subversive reasons . If you're an idiot right , then you just aren't smart enough to realize what the right position is , and I tend to think that all these accusations don't get us very far . I think that as a species , really we have a hard time appreciating that intelligent and thoughtful people can hold wildly different viewpoints than we do .

Daniel Tutt 1:28:15

Well , I think part of the problem , though , is that there's a large contingent of the contemporary left that doesn't have a self-critical . They have a reflexive understanding of the left , not a self-critical understanding of the left . So , as such , it's very difficult to even engage them on this point , because we are presupposing a rational , deliberative model of engagement , where maybe we're trying to convince them of a particular point of view , whereas I think , for a lot of folks , the left is a kind of liminal thing , that sort of just is . It has an ontological status , and , in that sense , there is nothing to be critical of Right , and that becomes perverse in a certain way , because you have to kind of make an argument that , in fact , actually there's a lot to be critical of , and we have a certain responsibility to this project . This is what I see a lot from , maybe you could say , the culture of leftist academia , in certain ways , that I've experienced and engaged with , and , um , I think that that that becomes a challenge , and , um , I'm not I don't need to like name names , but this is certainly something that I don't know if this makes sense to you , but it's like a leftism which doesn't have really a strong point of view , I mean , you know , for example , a lot of French theorists held the view that debate is to be avoided . This was one of Deleuze's main points in a certain way . So's , yeah , that that becomes a bit tricky for me . Um , it's not clear exactly what the , what the debate is to be had with certain pockets on the left is all I'm trying to say , um , but maybe , maybe that's fine my own kind of theoretical perception of this .

Matt McManus 1:30:12

Um , this is a theorist . I was actually just floating the other day because I was rereading plato uh , to teach classical political thought in the fall . Um , what are the kind of theoretical perception of this ? This is a theorist . I was actually just floating the other day because I was rereading Plato to teach classical political thought in the fall .

Matt McManus 1:30:19

One of the kind of interesting things about Deleuze is the extent to which he seems to seriously internalize the Nietzschean kind of dictum that Nietzsche was the anti-Plato , because he's not concerned with dialectic and he's not concerned with truth . What he's concerned with is the creation of truths plural right and the problem is , of course , if you're creating truths or you're creating concepts , then there's really no point in deliberating about them because they're not true in the sense that other people will apprehend them the same way that you do . If you reason about them for a sufficiently long time , they're aesthetically true or they're aesthetically edifying , if you prefer , right . And there's just always something that I found deeply problematic about that , probably because , as you know , somebody who's very sympathetic to Marxism , I do think that is important to remain committed to this idea that truth has a democratic quality and the sense that , if we reason about it sufficiently and together we can come up with a better way of apprehending the world , a more accurate way of apprehending the world than we would otherwise .

Daniel Tutt 1:31:23

I think that's valid . I think that there's a Nietzschean , I think that transvaluation of values often can result in a sense in which the left , it's under a kind of constant cultural revolution . So it's defined by its lack of anchor , it's defined by its lack of a project . There's a lot of like anti-programmatic ultra-leftism . That's a part of that . But I can see how the nichian thrust would contribute to that formulation . So I think you've helped me understand a frustration that I have with that element of the left , because I do think that and of course you know a lot of people um ridicule , uh , you and to a lesser extent me , but definitely Ben Burgess , has been what's called a debate bro From that .

Daniel Tutt 1:32:17

Why do they do that ? It's basically a kind of vulgarization of like a dialectic of enlightenment , which is that like rationality is , is kind of uh , antiquated or maybe patriarchal or something silly like that , right . So there's these kinds of old paradigms that have really not aged well for confronting the reality of our time and I think that that behooves a really critical analysis of how people have kind of internalized these frameworks of philosophy , and

French Theory's Impact on Modern Leftism

Daniel Tutt 1:32:48

in uncritical ways perhaps , I don't know , although , matt , I know that you are an ecumenical person and you have a lot of maybe careful admiration for left Nietzscheanism . Sure , in some ways , yeah , yeah , no , absolutely . I've been writing about that recently .

Matt McManus 1:33:07

Yeah , yeah , no , look , I'm not here to cancel Nietzsche . I know that some people have written to me angrily suggesting that that's the case , right . But I actually tend to take to use the metaphor of your book that attitude right , we can read Nietzsche like a parasite and draw selective and deep insights from his work that are essential to any kind of left-wing project . And I mean , I've given examples before . I think that you do that successfully . I think that Wendy Brown does that successfully . I would point to Sheldon Mullen . I think he does that very successfully , right . All that I've ever insisted upon Not that I want to veer the conversation too far in this direction is that we recognize the reactionary impulse that Nietzsche himself ascribed to his philosophical orientation . Once we do that , there is no reason why we can't selectively take aspects of his thinking and put them to let's call it better uses .

Daniel Tutt 1:33:58

Yeah , he's too much of a mad genius to let him go . There's too much going on in there .

Matt McManus 1:34:07

Yeah . Why would you want to ? Why would we deny ourselves that resource ?

Daniel Tutt 1:34:10

He's too clever .

C. Derick Varn 1:34:13

I feel that way about Carl Smith , but then I'm not trying to make a Smithian leftism , though I mean , which there are people who are there are people who were . Yeah , and people who were I mean I mean both , both in the past and probably in the future , thanks to Gomben .

Daniel Tutt 1:34:28

But Right , right , right . Well , you see , sort of like diffuse Carl Schmitt tendencies all over the place , for example this distinction between politics and the political , which is kind of a Heideggerian distinction , but it really comes up in his Schmitt's writing on liberalism , where it's like , well , all we care about is like the political , and it's rare , it's very rare is like the political , and it's rare . It's very rare , and it leads to kind of like a mystical leftism . That I've seen a lot , the whole other conversation , but you're right , but left Nietzscheanism is its own distinct tendency , it's , you don't see .

Matt McManus 1:35:10

Actually did you ever read ? I was reading about this just the other day , so it's such an interesting observation that I read about that I thought maybe bring it up . Heidegger , apparently , was actually very critical of Schmitt , and you want to know why . He used to say that Schmitt was incapable of not thinking like a liberal Right . He was very critical of liberalism but remained bound by its fundamental preconceptions preconceptions and the example he gave was actually precisely that .

Matt McManus 1:35:38

Schmitt's decisionism echoes this kind of liberal nihilistic attitude that morals are just largely a matter of choice , right , and the purpose of politics is to arbitrate and settle which choice we're ultimately going to basically get behind as a society . Whereas , of course , for Heidegger , the whole idea was that being would speak through the spiritually attuned people who would fulfill their destiny , in this case the people at the center , the Germans , who existed between Russia and America and were intended , by being , apparently , to bring about the civilization .

Daniel Tutt 1:36:09

That doesn't sound problematic at all . That sounds totally fine .

Matt McManus 1:36:13

No , yeah , totally yeah . I mean , I've always thought that myself . Actually , it reminds me of what Derek was saying earlier about where people draw the line For me and this is actually a debate I've had with Conrad and we had it when we were writing Flowers for Mark Any kind of Duganism or Eurasianism or that stuff , it's like no , that's a hard cut out for me . If you have sympathy for any kind of fascism , eco-fascism , left fascism , whatever you want to call it , then you could just get the hell out of my big tent .

Daniel Tutt 1:36:37

Right , right .

Matt McManus 1:36:39

That's my line too .

C. Derick Varn 1:36:40

actually , If you're an ultra net , I get national liberation movements , but if you're an ultra nationalist arguing for civilizational empires as the left-wing project , go fuck yourself .

Matt McManus 1:36:50

Thank you .

C. Derick Varn 1:36:51

We can all agree on that I know some people who have appropriated Dugan's language , his particular framework of multiplicity , his and not say EH , carr's or Morgenthau's or one of the older frameworks . I just have a hard time reappropriating a guy who , in his most famous book in english , says explicitly he wants to use us as a fifth column yeah I know he's not even subtle about it , right , he's like all the leftists will be useful idiots for fascism .

C. Derick Varn 1:37:23

It's like wow yeah , I mean like it's . He says it pretty much for whatever post-fascism he's trying to to argue about , because his definition of fascism is essentially liberal . But he knows that and he's hiding it anyway . Not that's another rant . We've had open up three cans of worms . We haven't even talked about china .

C. Derick Varn 1:37:41

Now it plays um , uh , so you know , I I actually am not like I do have a hard line on who's on the out , um , that doesn't . But even then I don't maintain this . When someone has gone over there , we just treat them totally as a pariah . I have no problem engaging with someone who I think will engage with me in good faith , to try them talk them out of a bad position . My , my problem , what my personal line is for who I will engage with is not a political or moral line , is whether or not you have a habit of being honest , um , and if I feel like you are a dishonest and a low critter , I do not see the point . But that's not a um , that's not , that's not a council . I mean , I guess it is a cancellation of moral lines , but it's really more about like , if I can't trust you , uh , to state your actual position in a way I can debate . I don't see the purpose of debate , and but even there I will not call for the censorship of other groups of you , um of you so like , for example , if I really won't have someone on my show because I don't trust them in some key way , that does not mean that I want them to have no platform anywhere , and um , that I actually do think I still have to fight them in the field of politics first , um , hopefully , to avoid fighting them in a more literal , actual , you know , fist to cuffs and or worse sense .

C. Derick Varn 1:39:20

And one of the things that I think is missed in the liberal framework and all this and I don't mean this in the like Enlightenment liberal framework , I mean the liberal framework as it exists today , in whatever form that it's currently in today , in whatever form that it's currently in is that , when that is your primary means of political control , you are not realizing that Marx's claim about equal claims here and forced to sides , well , you guys don't have the force to enforce these edicts anyway . So not just is it a moral problematic or a political problematic or a pernicious effect , it's also tactically stupid , and I don't mean that to say that these people are stupid , but that , like if you think you can control the spear of the public , it means you also believe that you're in control of the public , and if you're fundamentally wrong about that , then you are . You are just setting up oppressive apparatuses for other people to use on you , and you know yeah , that's exactly .

Daniel Tutt 1:40:29

That's exactly where in my forward , I introduced the concept from queer theory of what's called the counter public , where in my foreword I introduced the concept from queer theory of what's called the counterpublic and I make an argument that the only leverage we have , given that we experience a privatization of the commons and the tyranny of finance capital over the public sphere as such sphere as such is actually kind of like the moral space that we open in left-wing counterpublics , which , frankly , where debates go is that they land in the persuadability of the within those counterpublics , right ?

Daniel Tutt 1:41:09

So I think it's an experience that we've all had , which is we've developed in our time on the left , like perspectives that we probably try to at least for myself , I think you , matt , and you , derrick , probably do as well I try to kind of convince people of my point of view , often , right , I don't think we should be ashamed of that . I think actually that's very healthy , that's something that should be encouraged . But you know , when you have a protracted debate with another tendency , the better thing to do ethically and from the standpoint of like , let's just say , conflict management , frankly , is to keep it at the level of theory and not personalized , right ? That's actually where theory matters , because the personalization of it is a sign of an anti-intellectual timidity , in my opinion , um right , or a reflection of the fact that maybe you have a hollow theoretical foundation , which is your problem to deal with , right ? In other words , it'd be very , it's very telling who personalizes and who doesn't when you have those kinds of debates .

Matt McManus 1:42:08

I think personalization is a sign of weakness yeah , and I've seen people talk shit about uh , derek , and I've definitely seen them talk shit about you , daniel , and your book , um , and Lord knows uh , every now and then I get a couple of tankies uh , who want to say crappy things about me , and I've seen some really quite funny actually , like kind of uh inferences about who I grew up and what I am and all that stuff . I think , um , to your point , that's almost always a sign that you don't really have much of an intellectual leg to stand on , because you need to regress down to these personalized forms of attack .

C. Derick Varn 1:42:38

Also , if you're going to attack me personally , just actually attack me , but then you might get shot back at .

C. Derick Varn 1:42:44

Yeah , totally , and I mean that both metaphorically and maybe literally . It's just something that I find really problematic and I also find you know anyone who's been in this bear for a long time , including some of the people who are counseling people have attempted to counsel . If you've been on the left for more than three years and someone has not attempted to counsel you , then you just don't know that someone's attempted to counsel you . And and I do think that , like that is a problem in so much that for some of these debates , I , you know I have very strong opinions on certain ones of them , but like , for example , on how much humanism or structuralism is in Marxism , or even something as big and as live as what do we mean by the nature of China , I actually do think these are open questions that do really have to be debated , that I don't have an a priori or worked out answer to in all cases or um you , and you also don't have an , as far as I know , an unchanging position on them no , they , these things move around like , like .

C. Derick Varn 1:44:03

If you ask me about the nature of china in 1985 versus the nature of china in 1992 , versus the nature of china in 2010 , versus the nature of china now , I will give you , and would have given you , china in 2010 versus the nature of China now , I will give you , and would have given you radically different answers . Also , like , what is the nature of the right ? Or how should we feel about the welfare state ? I really do think that , like this idea that we have a fixed position that can be deduced from a I'll use bordegas language explicitly an invariant program , or something , is frankly not materialistic , not particularly humanist and not particularly helpful um , also not in accord with what mcintyre , in the aristotelian tradition he operates in , calls the use of our practical reason right .

Daniel Tutt 1:45:02

And , like it or not , I think that we all inhabit shifting kind of valences and expressions of our practical reason . As long as you have a consistency of that , you still are definable , right . I mean there are , there are individuals who sort of lack a fundamental grounding . I mean , you know , I think it's important you have a grounding right , you have an orientation , but within that orientation , like , you're making decisions and you can be wrong . But sometimes you can be wrong because the conjunctural moment didn't go the way you thought it was going to go . So you have to have the humility to acknowledge that Right . And that's often very hard to do because we live in a time on the left where there's a lot of uncritical thought Right , and so to admit that you made an error or that you changed your mind is frowned upon , and I think that sucks .

Matt McManus 1:45:59

Yeah , I think that this operates on various different dimensions .

Matt McManus 1:46:02

Right To Derek's point about China , right , I think that , certainly when it comes to empirical and historical circumstances , the idea that there's a trans historical set of commitments that we're going to take is just nonsensical , right ?

Matt McManus 1:46:17

Obviously , the changing circumstances of the world , changing opportunities , changing threats , should dictate how we think about different circumstances , right ? I think things do get a little bit more complicated when we're talking at the level of theoretical principle , whether we're talking about epistemic or , for that matter , ethical principles . Because there , to Daniel's point , I think that we tend to admire people who have a certain constancy to them right , principle , whether we're talking about epistemic or , for that matter , ethical principles . Because there to Daniel's point , I think that we tend to admire people who have a certain constancy to them right , somebody who claims to be a Marxist one day and then a Heideggerian the next and then a Buddhist , you know , on Friday we tend to think as being intellectually and potentially even ethically fickle , right ? Unless they're very young , where it tends to be a little bit more excusable , because I was like that in my 20s ?

C. Derick Varn 1:46:57

Yeah , exactly .

Matt McManus 1:46:58

Then you just kind of read something online and you're like , well , this is what I am now right . I think that on the one hand , you have this kind of , on the other hand , right , you have this kind of Ayn Randian ideal that sometimes people put up , where Rand was famous for claiming that , by and large , her ethics had been set by the time she was a child and that she never altered them in any meaningful way . And that seems to me to be a very adolescent and puerile kind of approach to ethics appropriate for someone like Ayn Rand , right ? While I think we should admire a degree of constancy in principle , in epistemology , in logic , etc . Etc . Without a doubt we should always be sufficiently reflective to change even fundamental principles when we are convinced of the better argument , and I think sometimes an awareness of historical circumstances and material conditions can also bear upon that 100% .

C. Derick Varn 1:47:56

Yeah , yeah , I'm with you upon that 100% . Yeah , yeah , I'm with you with that . One thing I would repeat from from both sessions of these debates , and I'm also going to say that , of course , matt and Daniel are going to be back . I extended invitations to to Ernesto and Conrad to continue their debates and also to come back and talk about their own particular passions , because I didn't feel like we had enough time .

C. Derick Varn 1:48:21

We can all just debate China , yeah , and we can all debate China forever , and I'm going to frustrate everyone by saying I'm like in the middle of everyone's position on it . Trust me , it comes up a lot . But one thing I would say is that , uh , people should be coming back here to hear some of these develop . Um and uh , conrad will come back and I'm sure , like I said , I'm sure Matt and Daniel are gonna come back . They come back , they come on all the time . Um , I would also say that , uh , we haven't talked about the specifics of the book as much in this one as in the other one , because partly I want you guys to read it , but also partly , we don't have two debate interlocutors here in the same way . But I will reiterate that one of the interesting things about this is one of my , one of my strategies for debate when I have a performative debate , right Is that we need to share a worldview . Now I will have a writing debate , like writing out debates , and I'm going to not cancel people and I'll talk to , I'll have a conversation with pretty damn near almost anyone . Conversation with pretty damn near almost anyone . Um , you know , like I'm probably not going to have a classmate on the show . But uh , you know , I've even talked to them in my various times in my life to just try to get feel what the hell they actually think , um , the uh . But when it comes to formal debate , I tend to think that it's most productive when you share about 70 to 80 percent of a worldview and that . But the reason why it's most productive is you can agree on definitions , um , whereas when I'm debating , uh , on heideggerian liberal uh , we're they're going to get me on some

Building Solidarity Across Theoretical Divides

C. Derick Varn 1:50:09

technical reading of heidegger , but we're not going to agree on terms about anything . And while I still think that's a willful dialogue to have for the public , in some scenarios or I will interview those kind of people to draw out their ideas , because I think they have their own imminent critique just to me having them expressed fully I won't do those debates .

C. Derick Varn 1:50:32

But I like this book because even within the realm of Marxism , mostly interlocutors share enough of a framework that these debates are meaningful a purely voluntaristic notion of , let's say , romantic Marxist communism where we could just declare the Cultural Revolution tomorrow and everything will be fine . There's not a single interlocutor who would believe that . There are plenty of people who do . I know I didn't state the position entirely fairly in the way I just said it , but I think that's one of the important things about the book is , even even in these things where people seem fairly distant , a lot of the times , we still actually are within a framework of about 70% of a shallow worldview .

C. Derick Varn 1:51:27

I think everyone here is , even though Rawls makes me kind of turn green and and Daniel had to convince me that lukash was not an enemy to history . Um , and so , like which I , which I am of the , I am of the dubious marxist school that has a problem with both lukash and altus air at the same time . Um , so you know , uh , you know , there you go . Um , but I do think it's really important to engage in these debates . Um , so I'm going to let you guys have your last word . Uh , plug anything you guys need to plug and we'll wrap this up . And also , uh , we're going to have you back on the show . I'm going to , if nothing else , man and I are going to have to talk about right wingers again . Daniel and I are probably going to have to talk about public intellectuals um new piece on san francis coming out soon .

C. Derick Varn 1:52:18

Uh , derek , that I think will tickle you so oh , yes , uh , you and I , yeah , I'm definitely at least going to cover that in radical engagements , because , uh , you know san francis's work and I know san francis's work and very few people seem to realize that that man has been like , uh , his vision of conservatism has been slowly chipping away at a lot of stuff for a long time . Um , but anyway , uh , daniel matt , where can people find your work and where can they find your book ? And , uh , whatever else you want to plug , you can plug someone else's stuff . I don't care , go ahead , matt , you can go sure , uh , well , right now .

Matt McManus 1:52:53

Uh , sure . Well , right now , ben Burgess and I are working on finalizing a collection on GI Cohen reintroducing him and democratic socialism from an analytical perspective in the 21st century . That should be out pretty soon . I'm very excited about this , and I'm actually working on another book on the right right now with my collaborator , jason Hanan at the University of Winnipeg . This is kind of a spiritual sequel to Hirschman's the Rhetoric Reaction , which looks at different ways that the writer tried to rhetorically justify his position , but updated for the digital age . So we're hoping to have an announcement for that soon with the title . But we're just about finished at this point and I think we're eyeing Pluto Press or Cambridge University Press two very different presses for that , so we'll announce it .

Daniel Tutt 1:53:41

I have a book coming out on Marxist debates in class theory , sort of bringing some Lukachian clarity to these debates . I hope I'm working on a big conference with a really great scholar named Tiana Okic and we'll be presenting at the end of the summer with the School for Materialist Research on sort of like 21st century class politics and Marxist philosophy , which will be very much related to this book I'm working on . I'm probably going to publish it at a more popular press , not so much an academic press . I'm also working on a book on Freudian Marxism . I've written a book on kind of like the theory of what I'm calling kind of like building off of Christopher Lash's theory of liberal paternalism and some of these questions about sort of like what psychoanalysis is very compelling to me because it offers a very interesting theory of power , like psychic power . So I'm trying to offer a more descriptive theoretical analysis of like systems of power through psychoanalytic lens . So this summer I hope to do a lot of writing . I obviously have emancipations podcast , which is also a study collective , so we do study groups and and bring on scholars . Um , I think some very cool things happening in that world .

Daniel Tutt 1:55:04

Um , I wrote a book on the family and a book on on Nietzsche and the left . Um , you can check both of those out . I sub stack . I'm going to be sub stacking more at . Uh , out I substack . I'm gonna be substacking more at just my name on substack . And um , yeah , it was great to have derrick on last week on my show . That was very enjoyable . We were talking about riots and communization theory and that's actually kind of in line with this whole notion of changing your mind on the left , given that varn and I both kind of changed our minds in different ways , I recognize about communization theory .

C. Derick Varn 1:55:41

Right , yeah , we were both well , we were both communizer adjacent but I don't think I was ever like a pure communizer , but yeah and that's the other thing I wanted to say .

Daniel Tutt 1:55:51

You know , maybe a final point for me is the more theoretical relationships you form on the left , the more differences emerge that are productive , and that you learn about yourself from close engagements with comrades Right and a lot of that's topical . Say , when I investigated for many years the history of the family and socialism and sort of all of these different perspectives , I found all of these debates that I was having with people that I wouldn't expect to have . So I suppose that's a rich point about the importance of intellectual difference , that it's definitely something that we should valorize more , perhaps , than we do .

Matt McManus 1:56:39

Yeah , yeah . Well , it's an interesting place for everyone to agree .

C. Derick Varn 1:56:42

Yeah , um , like subscribe , hit the bell . Uh , blah , blah blah . I have a blog , um , and a blog , and uh , you're on sub stack now I'm on sub stack .

C. Derick Varn 1:56:53

My sub stack is free . Uh , it's actually me not writing about high marxism for once , but , um , uh , but it is there . Um , it's actually . I haven't written it for a while because I'm currently packing up my studio . I'm moving , but , um , uh , in the next month and a half , when that's done , um , I will uh be back blogging and vlogging again . Um , but , yeah , check it out . There .

C. Derick Varn 1:57:19

I'm trying to engage with some more interesting non-marxist thinkers that I think actually we should take more seriously , one of whom is william volman , who's uh hubristic text , uh , rising up and rising down and and andologies I think is actually something Marxists should probably look at more strenuously and seriously . And I also find myself really wanting people to read Revo books with Rebecca L Smith on the limitations of liberal concepts and attempts to clarify Marxian concepts in a more rigorous way that make them articulatable to liberals without removing their substance . I just sometimes think expecting people to speak either Lacanian ease or Hegelian ease is a little bit much , and sometimes just trying to go back to what these concepts mean and apply them in a direct way and why . Liberal strategies of things like social justice and what and whatnot are often putting the cart before the horse , conceptually as well as tactically . Um , and that's what our book will be about .

C. Derick Varn 1:58:44

I haven't really talked about it on air , but if you listen to my solos , just imagine that . But like , more logically oriented , because I'm working with a person who's actually of a technical writer and won't let me ramble for 15 to 20 pages , which is probably good . So if anyone's ever listened to me talk , I tend to want to start with , like , when we talk about the history of dialectics , we must start with Heraclitus .

C. Derick Varn 1:59:13

Just like and then , like , then we go to nargajuna and then you know , you know , like 24 lectures later , someone would be like , aren't you talking about marxism ? I'm like , yeah , but we're not . We're not there yet . Um , and so , which is why I haven't finished so many books that I've started um , so people should be looking out for that . Uh , people should pick up this book when it's out .

C. Derick Varn 1:59:37

I think it's actually really interesting for a variety of reasons . Um , I , I really liked I I weirdly , weirdly like all the essays in it , including essays that you shouldn't like together . Um , like , I liked both yours and Conrad's response , and I thought I wasn't quite sure what the debate was between Ben and Ernesto , exactly ,

The Future of Left Unity and Debate

C. Derick Varn 2:00:03

because Ernesto was running about something very specifically Mexican and Ben was running something very specifically analytic Marxism . But I found both those essays to be very interesting . You guys still haven't convinced me that analytic Marxism , but I found both those essays to be very interesting . You guys still haven't convinced me that analytic Marxism is not a deviation , but I'm not kicking you out of the tent and on that note , we're done . Have a great day .

Matt McManus 2:00:26

Take care Solidarity .

Daniel Tutt 2:00:28

Thanks guys .