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Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
The People's Era: How France Unbowed Reimagines Leftist Politics
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What makes a radical left movement actually succeed in the 21st century? In this deeply illuminating conversation, Henry Wallis of New International Magazine breaks down how France Unbowed has become one of Europe's most significant left formations while avoiding the collapse that befell similar movements.
Unlike traditional leftist organizations fixated on ideological purity or social democratic parties comfortable with existing institutions, France Unbowed has pioneered a "radical left" approach that combines electoral participation with revolutionary aims. At its core lies a sophisticated theory recognizing our era's unique material conditions: unprecedented urbanization, ecological crisis, and complete dependence on networks capitalism controls.
Wallace reveals how France Unbowed's organizational model builds power through osmosis rather than rigid party structures. Their "action groups" federate across France, creating an accessible movement where anyone can participate without ideological litmus tests. Most critically, they maintain unwavering commitment to their program, holding elected officials strictly accountable - something American movements like DSA have failed to achieve.
The conversation explores urgent questions facing left movements globally: How do we balance electoral strategy with systemic transformation? Can we build internationalism without retreating into nationalism? What organizational forms actually deliver victories rather than moral posturing? And perhaps most importantly, how do we create movements that speak to people's immediate needs while maintaining revolutionary integrity?
For anyone frustrated by the American left's fragmentation, France Unbowed offers practical lessons. Their focus on programmatic unity over ideological purity, their strategic electoral engagement, and their ability to address 21st-century crises like climate change provide a roadmap for building mass movements capable of challenging power.
Whether you're a seasoned organizer or simply seeking alternatives to our broken political system, this episode offers rare insights into a movement that's actually winning. The question remains: can we learn from their example?
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He's at it again yeah , and we're talking with uh , henry , or henry um uh , who I know from a couple different things , um , but today we're talking about france Unbowed and the difference between what's going on there and France . What has gone on with other European left populist movements , like Podemos and Syriza , both now over a decade old , and the differences between them and France Unbowed , and the differences between France Unbowed and the democratic socialist , them and friends and about , and the differences between friends and about and the democratic socialist movement here in America , since they have had
Introduction to France Unbowed
C. Derick Varna , let's say , the beginnings of a possible electoral victory in New York at the time of this recording , which is in July of 2025 . Hi , henry , let's talk about friends and about a bit . What is it Weirdly of the European left populist movements , it seems to be A one of the biggest and B one of the least talked about in the United States .
Henry WallaceWell , derek , I want to thank you for having me on your show so graciously to talk about France Unbowed , as well as just the radical left , as you said , across the world . The way I would think about the France Unbowed is to contextualize it in a sort of broader emergence of let's call it , let's put it in American terms of like post-occupy electoral politics on the left right , ticks on the left right , and we've seen , as you mentioned , there's been Syriza , podemos , delinque , there's DSA , there's all these different things . I think what makes the Unbowed stand out is there's a particular theory that guides what they're doing , there is a particular form of organization and there's a particular strategy . Now , all of these three things go together . Obviously , I think they make sense the most together , but they can be separated and we should probably , you know , go through them one by one . But to put it briefly , I would say the biggest difference between something like dsa and the friends unbowed is going to come down to these three points um .
C. Derick Varnso to ask a little bit of a clarifying question friends about had a a really big moment last year . Uh , unfortunately , um macron kind of uh , parliament out parliamentaried them because of the nature of the French Constitution , and yet it hasn't suffered from the same kind of deflation that a lot of these other left populist movements did . So I think it's interesting that it does have a specific theory , a specific strategy and a specific organizational form , have a specific theory , a specific strategy and a specific organizational form , and its theory doesn't seem to be the same as the theory operating under Podemos and Syriza , and maybe even D'Alenka until relatively recently , which seem to be , broadly speaking , more of a condensation of a bunch of left populist theories from the late 1990s and early aughts , as seen through a kind of post-occupy , post-arab spring lens . Uh , franzenboud does seem to be doing something different , even theoretically . So can you talk about how it is not the same as the other forms of european left populism that emerge out of occupy ?
Henry Wallaceyeah , so I can go through this relatively quickly if you want . Uh , I think , first of all , the franzenboud would not want to call themselves populist or left populist , and part of that is about the sort of framing of the movement and how it's all built in terms of its ideology , so to speak . The idea of the Unbowed is basically I'll just go through the three points if you want , and then we can talk about how they're different . So , when it comes to what are we talking about ? Well , the Unbowed started in 2016 around basically the person of Jean-Luc Mélenchon , who was multiple times run for president of the country , just fundamentally busted . It's undemocratic . There's all kinds of problems with it and , for a more radical section of the French left , in order to overcome that , there needs to be some kind of institutional change with the constitution . We can't just simply elect a good slate of candidates and have them do a good program , given the situation as it is . There has to be actual institutional change , and that's what makes it more radical than something like , I don't know , just your run-of-the-mill progressive electoral force that wants to do like Keynesian economics . Do you see what I mean ? There's a fundamental . I think people like the Marxist Unity Group and DSA
Theoretical Foundations of a New Left
Henry Wallacehave a similar observation about the US Constitution , which is that it's busted in such a fundamental way that any kind of pro-social , liberatory , pro-revolutionary movement would need to overcome that impasse . So there's been this sort of gurgling on the French left for a long time .
Henry WallaceWe can see that there have been a lot of social movements in France through the 1990s and 2000s . There were big strikes in 1995 . There were basically periodic like 2006 , 2008 , um uprisings with the LVS . Recently we had the , the movement against retirement reform . So neoliberalism in France has always been kind of a troubled story where there's been more resistance to it vis-a-vis other countries . And , like at the turn of the millennium when we had the quote-unquote plural left government , we got a reduction of working hours to 35 per week , which was unusual and I don't think any other European country did that . So there's an ability for Trotskyist candidates at certain points to come together and get like 10% of the presidential vote altogether right . So there's more of a left energy in France in general . That's like a baseline .
Henry WallaceMoving from that , the sort of strategy was to look at well , what's common to all of these ? Occupy Arab Spring . You know the different events going on in the world . What brings them all together , and sort of Mélenenchon . The people around him realized that there were common features and that there was a sort of new change in the material conditions of our time , such that the theories of 100 years ago no longer really apply , because capital has changed , human society has changed and there are new features . Basically , there's a new historical , materialist theory being developed that has to be attended to . Does that make sense on the sort of theoretical ground level , or do we not do this about that ?
C. Derick Varnwell , um , what are some of these major changes like ? Um ? One of them would be population .
Henry WallaceHuman population doubled , basically in the 20th century . It doubled twice , I think . So that is unheard of . It's unheard of in the history of humanity . Think about it anthropologically that's just never occurred in the history of the human species . In the 21st century , the human species became majority urban In 2008 was the tipping point for that and that brings with it , along with the history of industrial capitalism .
Henry WallaceI'm sure I don't need to repeat for your audience what is like ecocide and climate change , but all of these things come together to create a particular condition of contemporary life where we are all completely dependent on these networks . You know , capitalism has become fully networked , or , as we say in French , there's a tributary capitalism we are fully dependent on . You know , I need to go turn on the tap to get water . I don't have a well . I have to go to the supermarket to get food . I don't have goats . Nobody is really autarkic anymore , not even people that live in the countryside . Even people live in the countryside . They have AC , they have indoor plumbing . You know what I mean . They have the electricity . They're dependent on these things , and all of these networks that maintain and sustain our lives are threatened by climate change . So there's actually a new general interest produced globally , because obviously climate change as a global problem cannot be addressed only in one country or one city . You see what I mean . So there's actually more than just , oh , france has this particular political configuration .
Henry WallaceThe theory is that we've entered into a new historical era called the people's era , and in this people's era era where , for the first time , an urbanized , interconnected world and you can see that even with , like , the expansion of the internet I post on twitter the other day a map of like 10 year like 2000 , I think it's 2012 versus 2022 who has internet access ? And that's a whole revolution . Right there , all of these movements , like in egypt , what were they using to organize whatsapp , the yellow vest , what they use on to organize like whatsapp , telegram all these apps actually have a very critical role in the development of uh , uprisings , revolutions , wherever you want to call them , and beyond just the apps , and like the information age and all that stuff , the way capital works today is different than it was 150 years ago . We're not talking about the point of production anymore so much as networks of flux of commodities , and the workers who have the most leverage are the workers in those logistical sectors . Right , it's the truck drivers who are coming around and passing messages when the internet gets shut down to the different assemblies or the different occupations and stuff like that . It's the dock workers in Marseille who are able to shut down the shipment of arms to Israel , right , and I think all of these things come together and it's not like the unbound are the only people thinking this through .
Henry WallaceLots of people have attempted to theorize the 21st century , but when I go back and reread my end notes and different stuff like that , I just don't come up with a comprehensive program or concrete proposal for really what to do . In the same way , because this theory , if you think about it , what does it lead to ? Inexorably , it leads to a conflict between those who need access to the networks and those who pretend , uh , or really do own and control them . Right , that's , that's the real . That's the real conflict .
Henry WallaceI mean , right now we're in a heat wave in france . People are , people are passing out and dying because they don't have AC . So if the electric company shuts you off , that's a real . Like that , even before you think about your boss , you need the water to run to live . You see what I mean . Notion of what's at stake takes on a different sort of valence in the 21st century , and how we respond to it is different , because we're no longer just organizing with people in our workplace , but all of our lives . It's almost like a post-situationist critique , like the all of daily life is at stake and so we have to have a movement that can organize the greatest number , etc . Etc . But now I'm getting into the , the organizational model . Do you have more question about the theory part ? Was that unclear there ?
C. Derick Varnno , I mean , it's fairly clear . I think it's interesting you bring up of communization .
Henry WallaceI guess there's also an implied critique of uh of traditional um marxist , leninist and marxist orthodox party building um , yeah , we don't believe in that , like we , or I guess they , we , uh , the the france unbowed doesn't believe in the traditional form of the party . And actually melancholy . Just last saturday was at the historical materialism conference in paris and he quoted lenin to the effect of saying that he , you know , radically opposes uh , what it was how do you say this in english ?
Henry Wallaceuh , substitutism uh , yeah , substitutionism or substitutism , either one would work yeah , so he's very concerned about substitutism and as he put it . You know my perspective on this puts me at the limits of uh , libertarian , like uh what he means by this , like anarchist thought right um there's idea that the
The Four Steps of Revolution
Henry Wallaceparty not only did the party not replace the class .
Henry WallaceWe don't really or the unbowed don't really think that there is a need for the form of the party , that actually the form of the party and the forms of the old left are not apt for this moment . So what they propose I guess I'll jump into the organizational form what they propose instead is the movement form , which is a gaseous network based on again , based on the observance of how these revolts actually happen , which is like through whatsapp and telegram and all this stuff , right . So they built a social network where people can , above ground , set up little assemblies called action groups , and these little groups get together and you know they can do as stuff , as basic as go door-to-door , knocking , passing out flyers , putting up posters , having conference , having a protest , whatever , going to a picket line , whatever you need to do , you can do in the popular action social network . And then there's a whole bunch of telegram groups and WhatsApp groups and stuff like that that people use to coordinate and it's basically it's not horizontalist in the sense it's not like a dogma of the horizontality , it is really horizontal and that you have , you know , you have , uh , people who are like the point people , the co animators , as they say , the co-facilitators of each group . That's usually a man and a woman . Generally speaking , the unbowed , everything is one man , one woman . It can also be two , two women or , you know , a non-binary person or whatever .
Henry WallaceBut we generally try to prevent it's being from a boys club as much as possible and then from there , uh , it works up through the national , through , basically , as we say in french , co-optation you might call it organic centralism . There's not a party congress there , not internal tendencies , there's no caucuses like in DSA , there's no votes over those kind of things . There are biannual assemblies of people in the movement where there's like , the national proposes an orientation text and some detailed documents about , like , how the budget is spent , etc . Etc . And people are selected by sortition to go to that and that is approved in a yes , you know , an up down , yes , no vote and there are amendments that can be made , etc . But it's not , you know , it's not a congress in which anybody can just bring whatever right . It's a consultative process and this is something that's critiqued in france like .
Henry WallaceA common critique of the unbowed is that they're calling for all this democracy and like a radically democratic society , but they don't prefigure that internally . And the response is that they don't prefigure that internally because they don't believe that , uh , running a political movement is the same thing as running a state . So there's there's reasons for that we can go into , but generally speaking , the form of the movement is such that , you know , there's only a few people who , formally , like , have their card with the movement and those are the people at the top level and everybody else is just like a user of the , the application , or someone who shows up to events and there are roles that people fulfill . But none of these things are formal in the way that they are with a political party , right ? They're not .
Henry WallaceUh , you don't get uh voted in to be like the uh county , you know boss or something like that . They try . They try to avoid creating what they call local notables and avoid creating these kind of power structures . And I would say that there's , I think there's currently like 500,000 or so people who are actively organizing in the movement . And if you look at a map you'll like , if you go on the popular action website , you can see there are groups all over the world . There's thousands and thousands of these groups .
C. Derick VarnSo I was going to ask you then , since this is a very programmatic movement that seems to put the program above any kind of form of which the program might be manifested in , say , a party , what is the program of France , unbound at the current ?
Henry WallaceThe program is really long and I don't have time to go through it with you right now . People can go on the well . It needs to be translated , but in English it's translated into Japanese . But the program is very long and detailed and it has there's like a core document which , if people speak French or willing to use Google Translate , they can look in it . And then there are thematic booklets which cover in detail further things , and I guess this goes into the strategy which I should talk about .
Henry WallaceSo I mentioned that there's this theory of the people's era , there's this organizational form of the movement which and to just cap off on that , we would say that one of the goals of the movement form is to be osmosis oriented . We want the unbowed to be so present in society , so present in social movements , that it's unclear where it begins and ends . That's just a sort of omnipresent force in every union , without doing entryism , right Present in human rights struggles , without trying to tell the human rights organizations what to do , what to do . And it also can pull from those movements and learn from them and take their demands up into the program , without becoming simply their servants . So that's part of the organization . But , as opposed to the strategy .
Henry WallaceThe radical left strategy is basically saying how do we do electoralism ? In the most conflictual way possible . We want a rupture with the existing order . So this is similar to like a revolutionary . You know , traditional Marxist-Leninist party would agree with this , and probably where they would break from the radical left is that the radical left believes in taking power within existing public institutions .
Henry WallaceSo concretely , in France , the France Unbowed runs candidates and proposes to be elected and to take power within the actually existing structure of society . The point of doing that is to enact an emergency program , which I just mentioned , that has all of these different points , and to call for a constituent assembly where the Sixth Republic can be deliberated , developed , built etc . At that point , that's basically the horizon of the movement . At that point I don't really know what would . Would happen to it . Like the unbowed would either transform or cease to exist or I don't know what , occur after that . But once you get to the sixth republic , you're in a new political situation , and so , and are you , do you think your listeners are familiar with what a constituent assembly really entails ?
Henry WallaceNo , I don't think they are Okay . So just to put it very briefly , a constituent assembly means that all of the current institutions in society , like the public institutions , are put in the trash and you have a big legislature that decides what the new ones are . And you have a big legislature that decides what the new ones are . So you get people together from all across the country and they decide . You know , in the US context , for example , a constituent assembly could just get rid of the Supreme Court . Just say we don't have a Supreme Court anymore . All questions that would have gone to the Supreme Court now go , I don't know , to Congress or something . Or could get rid of the Senate , or could get rid of the presidency , or could replace the presidency with , you know , a bi-weekly rotation of peasants in the mud or what you know what I mean ? Like it's in the constituent assembly . Basically anything is possible . This is different from a constitutional convention . Did you cover Chile on the show ? I don't remember if you did I did .
C. Derick VarnI did uh um , during , uh , during borix , uh , two constitutional referendums and um our during burke's rise in his constitutional referendum , which failed .
Henry WallaceYeah , and the history behind that and how it was against constitutional convention and not a constituent assembly . Right , yeah , okay . So then people can go back and listen . Also , people should listen to your talk with and and Sean from Antifada . It was very good about Zoran
Movement, Not Party: Organizational Form
Henry Wallaceand I also talked to them about the election .
Henry WallaceSo if people are confused as to what we're talking about , go back and listen to Varn and Antifada episodes and stuff , to a constituent assembly in a sixth republic and in a radical left strategy . The way you do that is by saying you know politics is fundamentally what the census , it's fundamentally conflictual . So if you elect us to go to the assembly , to go to the congress or whatever , we are going to fight like hell every step of the way . We'll , you know , pull up palestinian guess in the American context . You would filibuster , you would use every possible measure to obstruct the negative aspects of your opponents and to promote your positive program .
Henry WallaceThe role of the program is really and I think this is where the biggest break from the old left is going to be for radical left . The radical left , the radical left , sees the program as the source of unity . So what allows me and you to be in the same movement or the same party or whatever , is that we agree on what is to be done . We agree that we need a sixth republic . We agree that we need , you know , an end to austerity . We agree that , you know , trans people should be able to just go to City Hall and get their papers changed as they want , et cetera , et cetera . And that's what brings us unity , not our opinion on Kronstadt or the nature of the Soviet Union , et cetera . And that's why fidelity to the program is paramount .
C. Derick VarnThis is interesting because one I , the the american idea of a constituent assembly is non-existent like there's there . It is not an understood tradition here in the states , as you all know , and you're originally from here .
Henry WallaceUm , and I wanted I'm glad you pointed out the difference between a constitutional convention , because that's the closest thing most americans can think of uh to this and just to say the constitutional convention does not throw out all of the existing institutions , like it doesn't start from a clean slate , basically and I think from there , um , we can kind of see some big differences where there are movements that have elements of this .
C. Derick VarnIn the United States , marxist Unity Group , for example , is really big on programmatism , but it's also very oriented to building a traditional Marxist party based roughly off of their understanding of the late , second , early third international . There are , you know , organic centralists , but they're usually associated with left communists and communization groups that are , to put it mildly , tiny , um , you know , usually less than like 100 people . I was being a bit cheeky with that .
Henry WallaceSomebody might like rip me a new one for saying organic centralism , but I it's the only thing I think I have to describe the internal structure where it's possible to like , get promoted or to get modifications changed , but there is not a systematic internal democracy like in DSA .
C. Derick VarnWell , I mean , it's interesting because it deals with , uh , the the problem that you have of basically what the dsa has , which are these caucuses but which are effectively micro parties within a larger non-party organization .
Henry WallaceUm , yeah , just to speak on that briefly . I think dsa when I try to explain it to uh french comrades , it really has the worst of the party form , because it has all the disadvantages that you just mentioned of having internal factions , having internal democracy , having these congresses , having all this stuff , but they have no control . As far as I know , they actually don't have any control over their electeds None . Whereas in , like the friend's unbowed , if you break with the program , you will be purged , you will be removed from the list , right , you will no longer be invested in the in the legislature . You see what I mean .
C. Derick VarnAnd I think that's a big problem . Well , I mean yeah , I mean big problem . Well , I mean yeah , I mean basically , um and the , the , the candidates that the dsa endorses are still democratic party candidates .
Henry WallaceI mean effectively , uh , with rare exception and ironically , the democratic party is not really a party form organization . No , not . People don't have democratic party congress . That people . You know what I it's ? It's a little bit , uh , kaleidoscopic , absurd , the American situations .
C. Derick VarnI mean , yeah , the Democratic Party is basically a uh , a private corporation . It's like a private , not really for profit , but it's not NGO either , it's it's . It's a private company , a corporation that doesn't make money , um , and it's internal leadership .
Henry WallaceYou lose this ability to actually when you have no like . If you know , I support Zoran Mamdani . Melenchon endorsed him . I'm glad that he won . We are learning a lot from him in terms of his . You know how he did his campaign . I think it was very impressive , especially the ground game and all the ads and stuff that he did , his sort of overall happy warrior present like . I think he did a very good campaign and I have a lot of respect for him and and the people that supported him and pushed him over the edge right . So I'm not trying to come down on him at all . However , were he to , I don't know , pull a fetterman somehow , I just don't know pull a Fetterman somehow , I just don't know what the DSA would do about that . Maybe I'm ignorant , but do they actually have any mechanism to to respond ? They can stop giving them .
C. Derick VarnThey can stop endorsing them . That's all they can do , and they're I mean . They can also stop giving him money , but of the money that that candidates might get from the DSA is minor , and then they can stop canvassing for him . But again , I guess 50,000 canvassers in New York is important , although I like to point out that even those canvassersers , only a fraction of them , can actually be dsa members , because the dsa is only 78 000 down from 100 000 , and that's their official numbers . And another thing about the dsa that people need to know is that active membership and total membership are quite different . It basically takes a year to fall off the membership rolls entirely once you stop paying dues . So , whatever the total number is usually subtract about 10 to 20 000 to that , depending on the moment .
Henry WallaceIf , uh , if democrats are in power uh , like an obama for america style or a bernie what was the bernie for america thing called ?
C. Derick VarnI don't um , was it a democratic revolution or whatever .
Henry WallaceOur revolution or something yeah , so did zoron have one of these kind of like made to order , uh , activist campaigns ? Or was it actually the dsa that organized all those people ?
C. Derick Varnum , it seems like the dsa organized all those people , although zoran's campaign apparatus is separate from the dsa .
Henry WallaceOkay , um anyway , not to get in the weeds about zoran . I think , as I said , he did a a remarkable job and I applaud him . I just think it speaks to the problem within these kind of organizations , when you don't actually have any way to call in your elected rights absolutely .
C. Derick VarnI mean and it and and with the dsa in the united states , it leads to kind of um incoherence , um . So , for example , when democrats are in power , the dsa the dsa hates alexandria ocasio-cortez . When , when the republicans are in power , the DSA hates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . When the Republicans are in power , she becomes a darling again . And it's not just the DSA that does this and the DSA has its own internal points on this . But you see this over and over and over again . And because of the structure of the DSA and this is why I think it's good that you point out the differences in organizational form here , the DSA , it's kind of at war with itself between the people who want a party , the people who want a movement that may or may not be a party , such as a communist carcass and libertarian socialist carcass , and then the libertarian socialist carcass is crazy .
Henry WallaceThey're gonna come to you for that yeah , um sorry .
C. Derick VarnUh , that's a , that's a Freudian slip , but they're just out there withering away .
Henry WallaceThere are caucuses within the SA that that have opposing organizational aims . Really .
C. Derick VarnYeah , directly , and it's also hyper-federated . So the locals have a lot of power outside of the caucus system and in fact the caucus system really fills in for the fact that there is no regional organization or governance in the DSA . Regional , uh , organization or governance in the DSA . So the caucuses are how the locals kind of communicate with the national , which are just uh , otherwise constitutionally in separate . It is a mess , um uh . What makes it even weirder is there are some areas that try to have regional DSA coalitions . I think there is one in California and they were trying to form one in the Southeast at one point , but they don't really exist . The other thing is , and I want to point this out , france Unbowed is way , way , way , way larger than the DSA , particularly when you compare the population of France to the population of the United States .
Henry WallaceImagine if you had 500,000 DSA people just in Texas . You compare the population of france to the population of the united states like um . Imagine if you had 500 000 dsa people just in texas right and you had 71 texas state reps um I mean how ?
Henry Wallacebig is your blocks ? The unbound are one of the bigger blocks , even taken alone , without the the new popular front . With the new popular front , it's the hegemonic force within the single largest block of deputies in the national assembly . So it's not like marginal , weird quixotic thing . Like melancholy was within a margin of error of being in the second round of the last presidential election and he was really only undermined because the left didn't unite behind him . Right , there were people that were getting one percent of the vote that spoiled it for him . So this is a movement that is , you know , uh , has not won .
Henry WallaceRight , I'm not going to sit here and say everything that about is confirmed . The great , you know , revolution has arrived , we've done everything . But I do believe the unbowed
Programmatic Politics vs. Ideological Purity
Henry Wallacehave shown that what they're talking about isn't nonsense . Like it has real material incarnation and it actually works . And if you think about , like , think about the theory of the people's era , right , what is ? What is the process ? I didn't mention this before . What is the revolutionary process that we've seen over the last decade or so ?
Henry WallaceMelanchon would say there's four steps . There's the institutant step . We are the people . Right , people come out . There's some kind of event like a raising of a price to transportation or some kind of other trigger for unrest , people come out brandishing national flags and claiming that they are the people . That's why he talks about the people's era . It's because he's reading what people actually do and say in struggle . It's a theory based on observation . The second step is we want them all to go right . The people want the fall of the regime . It's the destituent step and that's when you have , you know , big conflagration , people pushing to get you know whoever's in power out of there .
Henry WallaceThe third step is some kind of dual power scenario where people form these popular assemblies and look , I lived through this process , derek . I was in the yellow vest . I saw this happen firsthand . I was part of these assemblies that were formed and they were even federating on their own , like there were , you know . There was a neighborhood assembly and then there was a kind of , like you know , broader assembly of the general area and of the region , and then , finally , there was a national assembly right that I attended and it was nuts . I mean it was crazy . There was a National Assembly right that I attended and it was nuts , I mean it was crazy . There were moments in the LVS that I really believed that Macron was going to flee the country because people were chanting hey , emmanuel Macron , we know where you live , we're coming to your house , the streets of paris and anger .
Henry WallaceAnd then the fourth step of this sort of theory of the people's era would be the constituent step , where some new regime arises from all of this right . In the french case , we believe to do that requires winning the presidency , basically . Basically , because the presidency in the Fifth French Republic has a lot of power . It's like a semi-monarchical situation . With that in hand , you can push things to the next step , which is to have the constituent assembly .
Henry WallaceAnd with the presidency , you can assure that the constituent assembly will occur on good terms , which is not what happened in Chile . That's just not what happened there . They had a hostile president . The president was basically forced to do the constituent assembly against his will or the constitutional convention , right . So that's the overall structure . People can poke holes in it and say that maybe it doesn't make sense or it's not really like that . I welcome critique , but I I think this is a lot more solid . Like I don't see Bernie going to historical materialism and talking for an hour and a half with Marxist academics about how his approach you know it elaborated in his books , his theory of revolution works .
C. Derick VarnYeah .
Henry WallaceYeah , and like I think that Mellon Sean says all the time , without clear theory there is no clear action . Like that would be . I think the big challenge from the unbowed to sympathetic left electoralists all over the world is like what's your revolutionary theory ?
C. Derick VarnIt does seem like Mbao gets out of the problem that both the European left populist and the American democratic socialist have , which is a kind of quixotic relationship to the current regime in the state and Coe Do here and maybe I should . We can speak more about Cerise and Podemos , but Do here is , you know , frankly incoherent and it's based on defending prior gains and maybe , you know , the goal is to extend them out . But it doesn't deal with a fundamental distrust and hostility towards the state itself . It doesn't deal with the , the anti-democratic elements of the American Democrat , democratic and quotation mark regime . No-transcript . And I will say this One thing I've been impressed with Melo Sean the more I've learned about .
C. Derick VarnIt is Press and Bell does not have that same problem . It might have other problems . I'd love to hear what people think about it but it doesn't have that problem because it starts off with the demand for constituent assembly and an admission of the fundamental problems of of the current french republic , um , in a way that , say , the socialist party of of France could not do under Hollande or any of its people .
Henry WallaceNo , and we did an article from my friend Ali Haynes for New International where he compared Hollande's recent book , the Challenge of Governing , to Mélenchon's recent book Now the People . And like Hollande , it's third way ism , that's the dominant socialist party ideology , is some kind of you know , we want to govern the existing institutions .
C. Derick VarnWell , so the one critique that I know is going to get thrown at you from a kind of traditional um uh , leftist that I I know that you have an answer to , but I but I want that answer to be articulated is how is this not a left nationalist approach ? Like what is the internationalism here and where's the strategy for that ?
Henry Wallaceuh , what's the strategy for internationalism ? So there is a I guess you could say it's a nationalist in the sense that it's a political party based in a single country that , you know , is invested in a sort of narrative about France , and so some people are going to say that that's questionable or whatever . But the way that this sort of French identity is negotiated within the France Unbowbowed is , in my view , subversive of what most people are going to call nationalism . For example , the question about the national flag . I remember when the lvs began , a lot of people on the left were complaining that the lvs protesters were all far right reactionaries . And look , the proof is that they're waving the you know the tricolor . But when you listen to people , when they they fly the tricolor , they fly the national flag of algeria or egypt or whatever in the protest . It's not . I mean , some of them , yeah , are xenophobes or racists , whatever , bigots , but for a lot of people it's about that institut moment of claiming legitimacy , like the flag represents the country , the nation , the people , and they're saying , look , this is us , we're the ones with it . Right , it's like they're claiming the symbol to claim legitimacy for their action .
Henry WallaceRight , and the way that's been negotiated the unbowed is by saying that , like , we'll fly , you know , uh , some people will fly the red flag at a protest , some people will fly the tricolor , because the tricolor really has its origins in a uh , you know , anti-racist revolt and blah , blah , blah . And whether or not that's historically true , or you believe that , or whatever , the idea , the , the narrative of the , the , the whole republican history of France always has this liberatory teleology in it . So the true meaning of the Marseillaise is really the same as l'international . The true meaning of the tricolor and the true meaning of the red flag are the same . And actually , if you go back and read , like blanqui or you know other figures from the 19th century , you can see the moment where they shifted their discourse on this . It was based on , basically , the royalists and the liberals appropriating the french revolution for their own symbolic ends .
Henry WallaceRight , but blanqui , as a young man was , you know , waving the tricolor , trying to make an insurrection , and I don't really see any reason why waving the tricolor has to be interpreted as a neocolonialist , nationalist move , especially when the France Unbowed is the force within French politics the most favorable to Canak . Liberation to kanak , like liberation that is . You know , we're going to senegal and meeting with you know , senegalese uh movements similar to our own , on a fraternal basis . There's this whole european left alliance where there's basically a decision from have you covered european parliamentary politics at all ? Not really not really .
C. Derick VarnNo , okay , so there's , but I haven't covered it .
Henry WallaceThere's an existing left block in the European Parliament with , like Dylanka and all these other forces in it , and recently the Unbowed led a kind of scission from that , or a new block emerging from that , however you want to put it , that is more radical and has , like there's a . I think there's Finlandland , denmark , sweden , poland , portugal , spain uh , am I forgetting some ? I don't remember what other ones are in it . I would have to look it up on wikipedia . I forget all the countries that are in there . But yeah , there's , there's this move . I mean , there are moves to , to a more international orientation . No-transcript .
Henry WallaceSo rather than doing something very formal like that , I think the idea for the unbowed is , like you know , melancholy . Went to quebec , he came to the us . Uh , other members of the movement went to Hungary , they go to Poland , like Rima Hassan , one of our European deputies , got on the Freedom Flotilla to put her body on the line to bring food to Gaza . You know what I mean . So I think the internationalism is there . The internationalism is the fact that people go around and try to build international solidarity wherever they can go around and try to build international solidarity wherever they can . But at the end of the day , the france unbowed is a french movement and you can't , you know , it's not really possible to have uh , I'm not sure how it could be more international at this stage
Internationalism Without Nationalism
Henry Wallacewell , I mean , it's not getting some of the overall international politics in front of non-alignment , like france unbowed wants people to come out of nato .
Henry WallaceThat's like part of the program is leave nato , have a non-aligned politics , try to build a non-aligned poll , build on international law right . Have the un send like blue helmets to uh you know , cover uh nuclear sites in ukraine to build like a demilitarized zone . Like there's a lot in the program about internationalism , so they do that . It's a nationalist movement and specifically when it comes to migration , it's also probably the most radical left-wing electoral line on immigration I've ever heard . Like , basically , the response to immigration for france unbowed is yeah , in 2050 , half the population is going to be mixed and creolization is just a fact of life and it's a good thing and it's always occurred .
Henry WallaceAnd you know , everybody's role in france is not based on your , your , you know genes , your blood or something it's based on . Do you have this shared ? You know life in common ? Do you have this shared , uh common good with your neighbors ? I mean , melancholy went so far recently as to say that the French language should be renamed because it doesn't belong to France , because France is only a minority of people that speak French . So people on tv are like calling him the antichrist uh , every day , you know , because he went so far as to say the french language shouldn't be called french anymore .
C. Derick VarnI don't know how to be less nationalist than that yeah , as an american who speaks english , um , as my primary language and who knows that my language is , like what ? The number one second language in the world , it does feel weird that we're still calling it a language based on an island empire from 200 years ago . But anyway .
Henry WallaceYeah , it really doesn't belong to the English , like it actually doesn't , Right .
C. Derick VarnSo it should get a new name .
Henry WallaceWe should rename it . Varn is now proposing formally to rename English .
C. Derick VarnI'm okay with that . So it is . I think this you get it . There's some implications about the common trend that I think you brought up that I want to zoom in here because it is a problem historically and that is like . The common trend enabled a lot of international cooperation , but it was also basically under the province of one country's foreign policy by the middle of the 1930s and um , and that becomes a real problem , including its disillusion in 1942 to make the allied powers feel better . So it it .
C. Derick VarnOne of the problems with such a formal organization like that as a form of internationalism is whoever heads it up really gets to set the terms of it . So I get why there would be a legitimate , let's say , fear about bringing that kind of internationalism back . That's part of why , for my critique of modern , for the People's Republic of China , that I've always criticized them for not being internationalist enough . But one of their points that I think is valid is that you know the common term was used against them and that's part of why they don't bring it back , um , and , and they want to respect international , uh , national sovereignty . Now I admit that national sovereignty is a sticky wicket for leftist because , um , because it can be . On one hand , it's going to be a force for , like you know , it's a force for trying to liberate , say , gazans and other Palestinians and the Levant . In another way , it is , you know , the calling card of some of the most reactionary forces in Europe and North America right now , and one was covered in the manifesto .
C. Derick VarnYeah , you would think so .
Henry WallaceBut like I mean , you know we want , we don't want big old empires as part of the sort of process . You know , I don't know . To me it seems like not that hard in In the 21st century today , unless you're a crazy blue labor metaphysician . I don't know who is really pining for the British Empire on the left . You have to be some kind of crazy reactionary for that .
C. Derick VarnNo , One would hope that you wouldn't see that I mean . One of the weird things , though , is , like right now , for example , the critique of NATO in the United States has been pretty much in most circles , left to the right . So when someone like me says you know , basically , that NATO has , like , even from the standpoint of NATO's original terms , even from , like , a standpoint of America's , you know , original interest in the creation of the organization , if you think that's legitimate which I don't but even if you did , that like NATO doesn't serve that purpose anymore . That purpose no longer really exists . There's no soviet union to curtail .
Henry WallaceOh yeah nato should have been abolished , I mean , but it's a tool of us imperialism . But I think the the correct line on that . I actually think the unbowed are basically right on nato , that member countries need to leave nato and develop a non-aligned foreign policy . Yeah , that's obvious . That's an obvious move . Where it gets complicated with stuff like Ukraine , because on the one hand you want to , you know , if you accept and I know a lot of anarchists are not going to accept anything that I'm saying because it assumes certain things about the state that they don't believe , namely that the state is a kind of terrain of struggle in itself , that there is something to be fought over within the state . Right ? If you don't believe that , if you think the state has to just be destroyed in the kind of cataclysmic eruption in which all aspects of present society are suspended and some either an escape is possible from that or some new form of society can emerge in that , then you're not going to like what I'm about to say . But you know , for those of us who do believe that there is something to fight over within the state , how do you respond to one state invading another right ? How do you respond to that kind of aggression .
Henry WallaceI think if you have a republican , uh political ideology , well , you're going to say well , no , no state has the right to invade a republic and , you know , attempt to make a regime change . That's an illegitimate move , that's not allowed , right ? So obviously we support ukraine because the ukrainian people have a right to self-determination , etc . Etc . Now , articulating that without articulating and that's why we need austerity to buy more tanks to send to Ukraine , you see what I mean ? That's the sort of problem that we have now is we have to walk this fine line between not going over and being like actually it's all a scam to sabotage our dear friend Putin . You see what I mean ?
Henry WallaceYou want to avoid that error and also avoid the error of buying into a war economy . Essentially , yeah , which is why all we can do is really push on diplomatic negotiations , international law , the role of the UN , blah , blah , blah , and it's , I mean , mean it sucks . It's not a great position , but it's , I think it's , the only thing that's coherent . It's the same thing with the two-state solution . The other day I there was a debate with some uh , unbowed comrades like why are people still talking about the two-state solution ? That's because if you're going to do politics right now , what is the like diplomatic avenue for a one-state solution ? Just wait for the IDF to finish the job . You know what I mean . Wait for all of the West Bank to be fully Swiss-cheesed . We know that that's what's happening , right . But if you're actually in the institutions trying to do something now , the two-state solution rhetoric , for better or worse , seems to be the only move immediately .
C. Derick VarnSort of like the only move immediately is to try to do bds and , to you know , recognize the state of palestine and stuff like that and , to you know , do the ban on arms and everything well , I think this is important because , um , uh , part of the reason why I have such a hard time with , like let's just say , nationalism in the national question is , I freely admit , that if you're going to use any kind of uh , international law appeal , uh , you pretty much have to have legitimacy as a nation to do that . Legitimacy as a nation to do that , hopefully one with the state . If not , you at least have to be a formally recognized nation by the international powers . If you aren't , you don't really have anything to appeal to . We can see this clearly in the case of Palestine , and I mean we can see this , and I mean we can really see this clearly in the , in the case of Palestine , but , but also to some degree with the Kurds , and there's a lot of other groups that this comes up with .
C. Derick VarnI will say , though , the , the . The problem for me is I've never find a good place to to figure out exactly which nations that don't have historical states are legitimate or not , and where . The where did your claim ? Like ? How small of a unit ?
Henry Wallaceare you doing the absolute or how to actually do it right ? Because I'm talking about how to actually do politics right now .
C. Derick VarnI mean , I mean I mean in the absolute , I mean both in the absolute and and and right , like , for example do you , do you support Catalan independence ? Yes , no , like me . I mean it's . It's an abstract question , but I would . I would .
Henry WallaceI probably would say yes because I , like the Catalan people , and I , you know , enjoy going to Barcelona and everything , and I enjoy going to Barcelona and everything . I don't know , actually , I'm not sure what is the line on Catalan independence , but I assume that how do you put this , the problem between ? There's a big gap between the absolute and the practical in this issue , though , like for me , the way to cut through this would be for the and I think I can say this would be sort of an unbowed way to think about the problem would be to say an unbowed way to think about the problem would be to say , well , we have to defend it's the same thing actually , on the domestic level , right , you were talking earlier before about bernie and like defending the uh , fdr , you know , great society , new deal , lyndon johnson , legacy of the democrats , right ? So , like those things should be defended , like I want my grandma to have Social Security , so we need to defend Social Security right now . But Social Security is not the be all , end all . So you have to do two things at once you have to defend Social Security and try to expand the .
Henry WallaceI guess we'll say it . Can I say the O word ?
Henry WallaceGo ahead the overton window maybe we shouldn't put the overton window in this context , but you know you have to like , you have to fight to expand what is within the realm of the sort of common good while defending what's already in that right . So like rights . Rights is a really easy domain to see . This in human rights talk like there's a good critique of human rights . Human rights is all like , metaphysically based in the declaration of rights of men and citizens , 1789 it's . You know , the french people , under the auspices of the supreme being , declare that this stuff exists . You see what I mean ? That's the fund of the foundation of it , and at the beginning you know it wasn't . Uh , you know women didn't have the right to vote , and blah , blah , blah . And over time all that right stuff got expanded out and expanded out and expanded out .
Henry WallaceAnd I don't see why this is any different on the international stage . We want to take power away from the us and russia and china as big , strong countries and try to transfer it as much as possible to neutral , quote , unquote . They're not really , but you know what I mean . You try to get that . You try to get or actually forget it . Forget this sort of idealistic way of putting it . Let's put it in terms of raw power . We want conflicts to be handled diplomatically and not with nuclear weapons , right ? So we want there to be international fora like the UN for handling problems , and we keep working on that . Or I mean and maybe I'm rambling , I'm not making sense , but I just it seems to me that's clearly . The solution here is to , just as we're , trying to overcome the institutions in this country , you have to do the same as at the international level , but you can't do that until you have like , until we have the foreign policy of france in hand . We can't .
C. Derick VarnThere's not much to do other than to protest well , this actually brings up a point , because you kept on using non-aligned movement and I was like , okay , I , I understand metaphorically what you mean , but very practically what you mean is like , uh , when people posit the bipolar world or the unipolar world or the multipolar world , um , the multipolar world is still a world , in most cases , where there's four or five major imperial poles . That's why there's , that's why there are poles . You know , that's the implication of that , and that regional dominance is considered legitimate , even of other republics . So the United States , you know , the United States has , you know , will have , regional dominance under the Monroe Doctrine , blah , blah , blah . And a lot of right-wing anti-imperialism in America is actually under the valence of this , this Monroe Doctrine , which is itself still still it's imperial , it's just much more limited in scope , similar to Russia . The Ruski Mir is a similar claim , the Chinese regional homogeny in East Asia is a similar claim . And it seems like what you guys are proposing is a non-polar world and I laugh . But I laugh because non-aligned would be that we're not aligning to any of the major poles that currently exist , although we might work with them in in a certain capacity and to flip as to , to kind of elaborate as to why is that ?
C. Derick VarnOne of the implications of , of the multipolar world , where there's these uh three to five great powers vying for each other , is , historically , um ,
Electoral Strategy and Popular Front
C. Derick Varnthese and I know there's lots of multi-polar marxist leninists who utterly disagree with me on this but , uh , historically , um , there is a , there's a game , theoretical logic for these polls to try to pull uh people far away off of the local hegemon , to weaken a major competitor , and this leads to things like the societies trap which we're seeing with the United States and China right now . It leads to , it leads to increased conflicts by proxy and there is a chance , a real chance , that these conflicts by proxy , particularly with a lack of international mediating force , become hot wars between great powers . That is definitely what happened in the 19th century . That's also what happened in the Warring States period . That's what happened in the 13th century in Europe .
C. Derick Varn13th century in europe , um , uh , if your major concern is that we not nuke each other and that we keep us , you know , uh , death and war to a minimum , uh , you know , at best , um , uh , it does seem like international mitigating forces , plus limiting the , the influence of major powers , seems important , just so they can't undermine each other and increase the likelihood of direct conflict yeah , and think about , think about the overall , think about what I was saying with the people's era .
Henry WallaceRight , and this isn't in the program . This is beyond the program . Right , because the program is not a total document that addresses every problem that can potentially be considered . But let me just speak for myself , based on my understanding of the sort of principles of the movement and the overall theory behind it . Climate change is a major problem . It's a very serious issue . It's a global issue . It can only be handled globally . There's no way to locally fix it right .
Henry WallaceSo , in order to actually address climate change like , imagine , derek , for a moment that we were actually going to try to stop anthropogenic climate change , like stop contributing , stop making it worse . Imagine if people were seriously going to do that . What would that require ? That would require global coordination . Are the existing international institutions sufficient for such coordination ? My argument would be no , they are not . What would be sufficient ? You would need a lot more intense global coordination and institutions to power that than we currently have . Right , it would almost be like a global republic would be needed . I think that's the sort of logic of what I'm saying .
Henry WallaceWrit large Is that eventually we have to strengthen the international institutions such that they can operate more and more like a sort of supranational structure for this kind of coordination . However , given the actual existing state of things , right , that is a bit utopian , and so the immediate sort of move is to say , for example , france actually needs to exercise more sovereignty vis-a-vis the European Union and NATO because these supranational forces are dominating and drag us into this kind of polar orientation you're talking about , right ? So , ironically , the first step is to not exit in the sense of Brexit , but to like , really , really well , I guess it would be an exit for nato . So , yeah , you would exit nato and you would defy the european union where necessary . And this actually goes back , if I can just briefly do a detour , to something that was very instructive in the formation of the like the pre-history of the unbowed , which was the 2005 european constitutional referendum , which the french peopleed , which was the 2005 european constitutional referendum , which the french people rejected . They rejected the european constitution and the neoliberal uh measures that would impose .
C. Derick VarnAnd you know what ? Happened eric it was ignored . They did it anyway . I must say , I think in almost every european nation it was rejected .
Henry WallaceLike I don't , know , in france it was rejected anyway , right ? So , like that's , the fundamental issue is , when it comes to all these supranational things or international things , there has to be a respect for popular sovereignty , and that's the sort of republican socialist heritage , right which I think popular sovereignty is not opposed to internationalism .
Henry WallaceDo you think it's opposed ? Um , like when blanqui was in the national assembly and I believe this was during 1848 . It might have been in the 1830s and the crowd was overwhelming and calling for him to take the Tribune . They were all calling for him . Blanqui , tell us about Poland . Blanqui , tell us about Ireland . Right ? I don't see a reason why a popular sovereignty movement has to be nationalistic in a xenophobic or jingoistic sense .
C. Derick VarnSo I'm going to repeat what I said on on Antifada for those of you listening in the future , because we're not going to release this . I think it's a full communism summer episode , but that in the 19th century there was very little incentive for the working class to be pro-war and particularly nationalistic and jingoistic . In the 20th century there was a lot of incentive for that . In the 21st century , I think , there's a lot less . But it's kind of a path dependency that a lot of people have , kind of a path dependency that a lot of people have . And and so I think I think a lot of people that a lot of popular movements probably wouldn't ultimately end up being hyper nationalistic or anti-internationalism .
C. Derick VarnI , I really don't think that , like most american uh workers , even some of the most uh xenophobic ones , really don't want to hurt Mexicans in Mexico . Their misunderstanding is that they think that they are losing trade leverage due to immigration , which is , a in many cases false I will say not in all cases false , I will say not in all cases and b , um , um , as we see in that they're quickly learning uh , they don't really like the outcomes of when you actually try to apply this stuff . Um , because all of a sudden , you got people raiding uh uh , you know your cities and you got troops called in on the ground to do immigration raids . So that it's deliberately more theatrical .
Henry WallaceI mean that's where I would start if I was listening to this episode and I was like how can we build a radical left in the us ? That is where I begin . Like you can either say crazy stuff like we need a new constitution , which I believe the us does the new constitution and we need to , like you know , make conflictual everything in american politics , or you can have the conflict in the street with random guys and masks coming to like grab your grandma right . Like you have to have the conflict somewhere . I would say the radical left needs to just assume the conflictuality and say the conflict is what the democrats and the republicans and to like name the enemy and to fight the enemy . And that's where I think to go back to your stuff about syriza , podemos and even people like aoc . Where they they , they have fallen down right . Syriza balked , they balked absolutely , almost delinca . What did they do ? They ended up compromising with the center left and tailing the center left . What did aoc do ? Compromise with the center and tail the center , and what is that resultant ? In my view , that makes them less credible and then people support them less and energy deflates . People get defeated . I know you don't like the word hope , derek .
Henry WallaceBut allow me to speak about affect here a little bit . There is something affective in like look , zoran can win , right , whoa , we can win . Now people are motivated even more than they were before because it's real . It's not just like wouldn't it be nice ? Look , we did it , we won something . And if you can win and then win and then win and build , like if you look at unbowed 2016 till now , the score has only gone up over time because they keep winning and fighting .
Henry WallaceAnd you know you have a guy that looks like you , who comes from your neighborhood , who's talking about you know the stress of the pressures of rent . You know wondering if I'm going to be homeless and getting evicted from my apartment when I was a kid and he's in the parliament talking about this . And you know telling off the bougie rich guy from the private school that you hate right , and that all contributes to a movement that seems real , that can fight . When you've got people out there saying you know we , you know the like , when you actively defend the Palestinian people , when you actively defend migrants , when you actively go out there and you're fighting for trans people and you never budge right , when you plant the flag and you fight for it . That's a rallying cry where people can come in and join and actually build a movement .
Henry WallaceI would say that's what America is missing . There is no radical left like that in the US . I would agree . Maybe Zoran can be like the occasion for it to be built . Maybe DSA has this embryonically within it , but but I don't see . This doesn't to me seem to be what bernie did or what aoc did , and that would be my critique of both of them is that they are too . They tail the center too much . I mean , we saw that with biden , harris no yeah , we did .
C. Derick VarnI mean , this is this is what I was trying to get at in that conversation and yeah , I don't love the word hope , but I do think I do affect . Affect matters , just yeah , I don't love the word hope , but I do think affect matters . I also don't know what dignity means , but I know it really motivates people . I don't know what justice is , but I know it really motivates people .
Henry WallaceDo people die for a 10% increase in their wage ? Or do they die for liberty ?
C. Derick VarnA little bit of both , but yes , No'm saying like liberty is a very motivating thing for people no affect matters and and um , I think my skepticism of this has always been tinged with the fact that I know , for example , that , uh , even though I don't know what dignity means , I know that it was one of the motivating factors in any day's victories in chile that the french communist party just not the french communist party , chilean communist party although the french communist party had the same problem actually couldn't really contend with , because they just wanted to bracket out effective , um , motivation for people because it's too abstract or not material yeah , I mean we break the unbowed break with that tradition radically , just like they break with productivism .
Henry WallaceThe unbowed is not a productivist model . Like the unbowed are saying , how do we deal with climate change ? We need a ecological bifurcation , and like massive planning , yeah , like it's , it's not . I mean I don't know if it's , it's not . I mean I don't know if it's exactly . The future is degrowth . Maybe that is how it would be translated in in American context , but it's
Climate Change and Ecological Transition
Henry Wallace. And to this day , the PCF is still in that line . The French communist party is still on a productivist .
Henry WallaceYou know everything you're saying . I think that I think it's a major issue . Everything you're saying , I think that I think it's a major issue . And the thing about affect and hope , as I was saying , to bring it back to our you know the line of conversation we had a moment ago is when AOC comes out and says working tirelessly for a ceasefire and then Ilhan Omar comes out and says , yeah , everyone knows that was a lie .
Henry WallaceThat is highly effectively damaging . That's extremely demotivating , especially for the most committed activists and militants that you have . I don't know , Can I trust this person ? Why did they do that ? That's the opposite of what you want to do and that's the product . That's when you do Cereza , that's when you do Podemos or delinca , in the negative sense . You see what I mean . Right now I think delinca and pademos are changing my I'm not following them very closely . My understanding is that pademos is , uh , turning away from that tailing of the center strategy and I think delinca also is turning away from it . So we'll see if they can kind of correct course , you know . But I mean obviously , I mean you saw the fruit of it . No , yeah , absolutely .
C. Derick VarnAnd I mean that's what I've been trying to hint at when I talk about Mondani is is not like we should be , like celebrating him uncritically , because how are you going to hold them accountable ? How you're not going to accidentally create another AOC ? He does have , he does have more message discipline than AOC actually . But like , one of the things I like to tell people is like , even like me personally , if I want to exercise and I want to actually hold myself to do it , so I defeat my own procrastination tendencies , what do I do ? I tell people socially that I'm going to do it . So I defeat my own procrastination tendencies . What do I do ? I tell people socially that I'm going to do it and they'll shame me if I don't . And I've chosen that like , I have chosen that relationship , so I accept that shame , as opposed to like some rando on the internet trying to shame me . I don't give a shit about them .
C. Derick VarnUm , and it's a way to hold yourself accountable to your own initial movement . Um , when you don't have a way to do that and you don't have a program , I mean that's one of the big things that I would . That I have said about the , about all American left movements , is a very few of them have a stated program that's not ideological , and by that I mean like that , aren't about like me arguing about past . You know , I mean , but if you like you look at marx is why dsa has 75 000 people is because democratic socialism is vague and what does it really mean ?
Henry Wallaceand then , once you're in it , then you're in this like organizational soup . I really am not . I think there's a lot of great people in dsa . I'm not trying to like undermine them at all , I just you had , what did you have like the liberation caucus , make a public statement . Then it was like I in favor of like assassinating people in the street yeah , I mean like it's just , it's completely incoherent and I don't know , I don't want to be , an asshole about it .
C. Derick VarnI just think I , I think the , the , the people who want to like be trotskyist in the 21st century , I just don't understand no , I mean I've had the same thought , like people will accuse me of being a trotskyite or this or that and I'm just like , it's just not . I mean I hate to tell you and I know there are a lot of people who listen to the show who disagree with me , but like once , once 1992 happened , none of that's relevant , like why am I arguing with marxist winning us about other ?
Henry Wallacethan his like socialist revolution anywhere in the world . It's been a while . Has there been one since 1992 um ?
C. Derick Varnso , specifically socialist revolution , I would say no , there's been national liberation movements that may or may not have some socialist elements to them , but you're right , I don't think there's been a so like .
Henry WallaceWhat is the explanation for that ? The unbowed have an explanation for that . The unbowed explanation is that the workers movement , you know , historically was a kind of you know the proletariat was a minority socially , you know what I mean . And so the the proletariat had to constantly have these sort of strategic questions about how to orient to the peasantry and , you know , the artisans and the petit bourgeoisie and how to do all these fronts and things like this right . And today the material conditions have changed .
Henry WallaceIt's not that the proletariat , like , is abolished or superseded in a way , it's just that the notion of how capital affects our lives is or not the notion , the reality of how capital affects our lives , has changed such that the proletariat is no longer the subject , right ?
Henry WallaceIt's part of this broader thing that dunbow called the people , or really the populace , I guess , is one way of putting is that you have the populace , because the populace is those who are subjected to network capitalism , right , and they're only become the people as like the active subject of , of their own sort of common destiny , when they , they organize , you see what I mean , that's when they become like , that's sort of like the proletariat in itself versus for itself . Distinction is . If I was going to translate the unbowed theory , it'd be that the , the proletariat for itself is the people and the proletariat in itself is just like the population of these , like urban , urban urbanites , basically , and this goes back also to 19th century revolutionary history , because where did all of the big , you know , conflagrations happen ? They happen in cities , yeah , they did . And like now , cities are everywhere . So this issue of like , like , for example , varn , do you really believe that the division of town and country needs to be abolished in the 21st century ?
C. Derick VarnI mean , I think it mostly has been , to be quite honest , although we do have to deal with incorporating agriculture more effectively into urban thought .
Henry WallaceSo imagine , amadeo Bordiga is here with us now , right , and we're talking about the immortal science and the invariant program , and you're going to tell him actually , the division of town and country has already been abolished . How does he respond to that ?
Henry WallaceI mean it probably splits with me immediately but because that's part of the marxist like the program , right , but it's abolished already . So how do you respond ? I think this is where people like the communizers made a good point of to say , like capital's already done a lot of you know , things have changed where I think that line of theory kind of falls apart , is like okay , so what ? Like you've read all the end notes , now what do you do ? I don't know .
C. Derick VarnUm , maybe I'm just you're better well , I've read all the end notes and what do I do ? I think they want me to wait for either a riot or our ecological crisis to force everyone to get along , because a lot of us start dying . That's really what that's . That's all I can take from them , to be quite honest . So there's nothing to do now , not ? I mean I'm sure that jasper burns or feel neil would say that there probably is things to do , but I can't figure out from their own theory what there would be to do .
Henry WallaceNo , Well , there's at least . You have to do , like the , the workers inquiry and the infrastructure inquiry . You have to do that kind of thinking stuff , right .
C. Derick VarnRight . But but again , if you really believe like , like , like Joshua , the late Joshua Clover did , then even that doesn't seem to matter . It's like well , the riots will happen in response to capital . And I agree they are , and the strike is less effective because there's less than centralized manufacturer that involves mass amounts of workers . There's still plenty of centralized manufacturer , but and I agree with that too . But then I'm like okay , but what does a riot inherently turn into ? And I agree with that too . But then I'm like OK , but what does a riot inherently turn into ?
C. Derick VarnAnd I mean , I have to like I don't know , pull a weird like Alain Badiou to talk about another Frenchman theory about like , when riots are non corruptible and how they , how they could lead to other new organizational forms beyond even the party , blah , blah , blah . But then and I actually kind of agree with that , but I can't know when that's going to happen preemptively . So that still leads to a very passive politics where I'm just waiting for the right event to emerge out of the right riot and that's like the most charitable reading I can get out of some of that . I feel like burns lately has sort of changed some of where they're going . But , um , you know , yeah , I agree with a lot of their critiques of the way the historical communist movement hasn't answered certain things . There are a few things I disagree with them on , but , um , today it just seems , uh , it seems weirdly passive . Except for we should riot when people riot , which I'm just like okay , cool , but I so let me articulate something here .
Henry WallaceLet me just narrate a little bit about the lvs because we'll be clarifying . So . When we're in the middle of such an uprising , it's very unclear what's happening , agreed , it's very chaotic . A lot of the actual study of how these things work happens after the fact . When you go over video and photos and news reports . You know what I mean . That's when you actually get in the weeds and you study what were people , what did they have on their signs , what was written . You know what I mean . When you're in the middle of it , I just remember oh shit , something's on fire . Oh God , the police are coming here . Oh , they're firing . We better run . You know what I mean . That's what it's actually like in the moment .
Henry WallaceBut I do remember , because the yellow vests took so long I think I personally participated in I think it was 30 or 35 weeks of mobilization . That's a lot of mobilization , derek . Yes , it is , that's a lot of mobilization . And what occurred is you have this initial explosion where , like , oh God , people are on top of the Arc de Triomphe oh , what's happening's happening . Oh , is the president going to flee the country . And in those moments at first people are just like running to where they think the action is like they're running downtown to join the protest or to march or whatever , right over time .
Henry WallaceAnd I believe this does bear out the unbowed theory , like Melanchon's theory , about the instituent-distituent , dual-power constituent four steps . Because I remember , all of a sudden people said , hey , down the road there's a local yellow vest group that's formed . Because they formed in all these , in the rural areas it was in the roundabouts , but in urban areas they would just form in different locations throughout the , the city or the suburbs . And so you go , and what is
Learning from French Politics for America
Henry Wallacethis is a council . So up until here , I think , like me and jasper on the same page , no , like we basically have a little council right . And then it was federating . So there was , like you know , federating up regionally , nationally or whatever , and then the problem was that the movement ran out of steam .
C. Derick VarnWhy did it run out of steam ?
Henry WallaceBecause they were fucking . And sorry , I don't know if I can cuss on your show . You definitely can . I swear all the time . Go ahead , okay . So people were like getting their fucking eyes blown out . I saw eyeballs rolling on the pavement , there's blood everywhere , people getting arrested , people getting cuddled , people getting deported People you know all this shit was going on . It was very fucking violent . I saw like , do you know what are these ? There's this kind of motorcycle cop where , like one is on the front and one is on the back with like a gun , or maybe not a gun , but like a launcher of some kind or like a club , and they just , yeah , they speed through and like hit people with the club . That happened in france .
Henry WallaceSo once you get to that level of conflict , we're like , oh shit , it's really going down . Now this is not just like a pro , a cool protest thing , right , I remember and like , look , I've always been on the more mass politics , pro-social , you know , kind of of politics . I'm not somebody that is like an adventurist by political orientation , I've never been that way , and so I would go to the elvest stuff , you know , and see like the grandmas of the neighborhood have their banner right and the grandmas of the neighborhood have their banner right and the grandmas of the neighborhood are getting menaced by the guys on the motorcycles . You see what I'm saying . Like it got so real , so fast and so intense and the repression was so hard that when it sort of like collapsed , it collapsed all around you in an exhausted pile and it was very hard to continue , especially with COVID , you in an exhausted pile and it was very hard to continue , especially with covid .
Henry WallaceSo , like covid was really the nail in the coffin of the yellow vest movement , to the point where some of the yellow vest guys were , you know , conspiratorial thinking that like , oh , the lockdowns are really just to stop us right , which maybe in a way they were about stopping everybody from moving around in general . So what do you do , given that nature of social movement , that it comes in waves , like that , do you just wait for waves ? Or is it possible to have something like the unbowed that can have osmosis with the movement ? It doesn't try to dominate the movement , it doesn't try to do entryism into the movement , it doesn't try to dominate the movement , it doesn't try to do entryism into the movement , but it's just sort of there in and with the movement .
Henry WallaceAnd when a movement expends itself or when a movement needs reinforcement , like when the Earth Uprisings Movement , the Sous-le-Monde de la Terre , had this big battle in Saint-Solene over these mega water basins , the Unbowed supported it . They were providing support . So is it possible to have this kind of political above ground , normie friendly , electoralist movement that has what I consider to be a revolutionary orientation , because I consider this idea that we need to rupture with capitalism and you know the the the prevailing , like we need a new political and economic order , to me that's a revolutionary program , right ? So it's a pro-revolutionary movement that exists in and with the social movements and gives them a kind of backbone or a kind of continuity over time , or a kind of continuity over time so that when the yellow vests , you know whatever happens , whether they win or or , you know uh , lose or whatever their demands , like one of the lvs demands was for the citizens initiative referendum , the idea that ordinary citizens should be able to do like a petition to force a national referendum on various subjects . So , demo , maybe it's a good idea , maybe it's a bad idea , but something a lot of the ls .
Henry WallaceWell , the unbowed can bring that to fruition in a constituent assembly , you see what I mean , or even as a normal law , like as part of the temporary program , you could do uh , you could pass this as a law or something like that , right ? So I think that's that would be my response to , to folks who maybe feel like they want to be in a pro-revolutionary thing , but they're not Marxist , leninists and they don't want to sell a journal and they don't want to sit around and wait that you can actually just continue and this is going back to your conversation with Andy and Sean like what would it mean for Zoran's mobilization to be permanent ? Because that's basically what the unbound is , it's Mel and Sean's campaign , transmogrified and made permanent , all right , and so is that . Is that too much ? What did I go on for too long there ?
C. Derick Varnno , no , no , you went fine . Uh , I'm just , I'm , I'm thinking about it and I I mean , the issue is , is exactly what you , what you thought ? I kept on , I kept on wanting to point out , both in terms of social democracy and the way we mobilize our election , and in terms of these anti-systemic riots that get recuperated over and over again because of exactly what you're saying . Because of exactly what you're saying , people start getting beat , they get arrested , people die . That also inspires reaction , even amongst people who may have been supportive generally .
C. Derick VarnI mean , if you want to talk about similar things in America , like the discussions around Black Lives Matter after the George Floyd uprising slash , insurrection , slash , whatever you want to call it um , uh , you saw a lot of that . You just saw recuperation , etc . Etc . And the question is like , how do you maintain it without just being , like , frankly , a kind of grifty ngo that just takes the name and and that happened with Occupy here too and that leads to also people not being able to look at those movements really in a real way ? So , like there's , there's like people talking about Occupy , where all street seems passe now , even though this would be the time to really study it . We're over 10 years out . We can really look at it objectively .
Henry WallaceAnd a successful political movement like I'm talking about , like a radical left political movement like the Unbowed , can provide the forum for that . One of the things that the Unbowed has is the Boissy Institute , which is what Melanchon actually runs with Clémence Guettet , so his official role in the movement . Are you still there ?
Henry WallaceYeah , I'm still here large radical left popular movement is that you can create poles of attraction that allow people to actually work on stuff over time , reflect , build , et cetera . And you know Melenchon's technical role in the movement is as the co-president of the Boise Institute with Clémence Guettet , and the Boise institute is basically the unbound think tank . So it publishes books . There have been a couple books , one about the rise of the far right and how to stop it , another book about what some people call techno feudalism . And they do conferences , they do events , they do you know , webinars , all this stuff . And they also do a cadre training program where hundreds of people every year go to paris and do like a 10-month intensive training on everything from historical materialism to how to , you know , effectively do door-to-door campaigning and set up , uh , electric generators . And you know tents and everything . So that is a place in which sympathetic , sympathetic academics can come and reflect on stuff like Occupy , or reflect on things like the Arab Spring , or reflect on things like the Yellow Vest and generate together new insights for the movement , both in terms of what needs to be done right now and as well as develop the program , because the program is not static .
Henry WallaceThe program develops over time and one of the things , for example , a change in in the unbowed has been , uh , increasing orientation of , uh , I would say , a better anti-racist line over time , a more and more clear anti-racist line where , you know , in like 2016 , 2017 , maybe certain questions weren't fully clarified and now they are , and some people had to leave the movement because they're , you know , more attached to a , a notion of secularism that is substantively islamophobic , right ? Just one example . We don't have to get into the weeds on that , but something like having a boise institute or having , like , one thing that the movement has I didn't mention this in the form of the organization , but there there are committees to handle things like violence within the movement or deviation from the program , right , these are things that you know affinity groups that don't necessarily have and you can't like locally , when you have a consensus that goes awry , you can go up to the national and say , hey , there's this problem , there's this blockage , whatever , and the national can kind of keep an eye and prevent local situations from getting too toxic or too out of hand . And all of this is possible because you have this overall radical left orientation , right , you don't even like people participate in the boas institute , don't necessarily even have to consider themselves unbowed . That's how far the osmosis goes .
Henry WallacePeople can come and get , participate in the cadre formation of the unbowed without considering themselves to be unbowed , and that's how I think that's like a winning recipe right . That's something that you need for a real left to be strong , and that's why a lot of people say that right now is the closest thing to the sort of post-World War II heyday of the French Communist Party in terms of a left that's actually mass and , you know , successful all right , I mean , I , I can see that and I'm one of the things that I I liked when I talked to you about it , because you know my knee-jerk reaction to anything with the words popular and front in it um , you're a big supporter of the popular front yeah , totally , um , uh uh , we you explained to me the difference between the new popular front and the historical popular front once um in a in a private , in a private message , and it actually was comforting .
C. Derick VarnI was just like , ah well , the new popular front is specifically .
Henry WallaceSo . It's this thing that happened last summer . Right , and the cynical way to describe it is it's an electoral alliance of the different forces on the left to prevent the far right from coming to power , and it's also a life preserver for groups like the socialist party . We didn't really talk about this in in our talk , but just very briefly . The socialist party and the communist party and the green party and all these guys on the left this like historical old left are collapsing , just like the center-right party . You know , traditional political parties are not doing well in france . Right , and so you have like macron , who is kind of a new centrist force , you have the rise of the far right and you have the rise of the unbowed , and it was getting so bad that in the last presidential election , melancholy got something like 22 of the vote and the socialist candidate didn't even get two percent of the vote . So it so really , these people are on their sort of last leg , and it's very ironic because the unbowed basically comes out of the left wing of the Socialist Party .
Henry WallaceBreaking off is one way of looking at it . Right and yeah , so we kept them alive . The France Unbowed kept the other left forces alive in exchange for programmatic concessions . So the France Unbowed gave up seats in the assembly to the Socialists and the Communists in exchange for programmatic concessions . So the France Unbowed gave up seats in the assembly to the socialists and the communists in exchange for programmatic concessions . And what do you think happened after that ?
C. Derick VarnWhat happened .
Henry WallaceThe socialists did not maintain their commitments . So , you know , the first time there was a government brought in by macron against the , the nfp , the socialists did support , you know , making it fall . And so this is the first time a government's fallen without a you know barricade going up in a long time in this country . The second time they didn't . They didn't maintain the same line the second time . And so we've had this sort of weird zombie cabinet for months and months and months now , as the socialists try to triangulate away back into relevance . But for us and you might say well , look , you
Moving Beyond Identity to Program
Henry Wallacesee , your strategy is stupid why did you ever trust them in anything ? I don't think the unbound ever trusted the Socialist Party in anything .
Henry WallaceWe understood that it was a , as we say in French , un rapport de force . It was a question of relative strength and I'm kind of strong-arming them into behaving . And now people see what they do , and now people see that they don't maintain their commitments , right . So the New Popular Front for was a . It was worth doing . It prevented the far right from coming to power , it increased our strength within the , the institutions , and it put the center in a hard place where it's hard for them to maneuver . They just yes , I think it was literally yesterday they lost a vote to like , uh , condense or privatize or whatever to mess with , like public broadcasting . So you can think that's small ball but , like within the ball of electoral politics , if you can prevent the people who are supposedly in power and supposedly have the government from enacting their program , that's good . You want to deny your enemy the ability to do what they want to do right right so well yeah , this is the funny thing .
C. Derick VarnWhen you described it to me , I'm like , well , that's what I mean by by united front , and I'm not here , I'm not going to tell the french what they should call what they do . Also , because the popular front has a history longer than even the communist one specifically , the communist notion yeah , it is , but it's not relevant today , like all those considerations aren't .
Henry WallaceThere is no workers movement like that today , right ? So it's just kind of like you know , it's historically whatever , and the the new popular front . There's a risk that it's going to be used against the unbowed because there is a kind of I I hear . What I see happening is I see an attempt by the other forces on the left to try to counter the unbowed hegemony , because the unbowed do basically have programmatic and militant hegemony . Like in any given town there's way more unbowed militants than there are for all the other forces combined . But because the unbowbound have always been solid on gaza , like we've seen with mamdani , they're called anti-semites every day . Like people go on tv and call them anti-semites every day , and hamas and everything you know , and it's it's bullshit , but it doesn't , you know , it doesn't matter , right ? The truth about these things isn't important and so , um , I think there's going to be an attempt to do a kind of like left primary , like an nfp primary , which is really a way to try to prevent the unbowed or to like counter an unbowed candidacy . But at the end of the day , it's sort of a game of chicken of like . Are the socialists really going to commit to a strategy that means le pen or bardella comes to power . That might be their interest , I don't know right . But I mean for , for the unbowed , the question really isn't about them like . That's another . That's another thing . We didn't talk about that .
Henry WallaceMaybe we should , the unbowed , also have a specific electoral approach , which is an analysis of electoral blocks where basically they see there's a bourgeois block we can call it the center block if you want and then there is there's . I won't go into the whole thing , but the big strategy of the unbowed is to go to what in American English we would call the ghetto , to go to the poor neighborhoods , to go to the popular neighborhoods . To go to the popular neighborhoods , as we say in french , where people actually live , and to say let's get you registered to vote , let's get you on the rolls , let's get you in an action group , let's , you know , let's mobilize people as much as possible and try to change the electorate , basically by getting people who are abstentionist to participate . We're not trying to win over convinced socialist party voters as much as we're trying to reach people that don't usually vote . Um well , I mean , which some people call the great replacement yeah , funny , great lovely um no , I mean that's the , that's the discourse .
Henry WallaceWe're like the agents of islamism and I mean that's the discourse . So mamdani , like this , is going to be something he has to face . He is going to be treated like that , yeah no , absolutely anti-semite . He's going to be asked to condemn things he never said every single day . And if he's strong , I think he is strong like I have some confidence .
C. Derick VarnHe seems like strong on this no yeah , he's good on this , on this area in specific , I actually do have some faith in him .
Henry WallaceYeah , and he's smart and , like you know , he uh . People ask him like do you condemn uh things you never said ? And he said , like you know , I want , I want New York . That's good for everybody and that means we need to freeze the rent . He's just really good at bringing it back to the bread and butter , so that's what you got to do . Do you have other questions ? I feel like I rambled a bit because we got cut off there . I'm sorry .
C. Derick VarnNo , no , that's okay . No , I don't really have that many other questions . My point about the popular front is that you have to be clear on what you're doing and so like who's tailing ? Who they were tailing us . I don't know that anyone's tailing anybody I mean in the new popular ?
Henry Wallacethat's the question to ask who is giving the concessions ? We gave up seats in exchange for programmatic concessions , because we don't care about having seats , we care about advancing the program . There was even a point in the nfp discussions when macron was like waffling about who to name for government where melancholy came out and said we support an nfp government with no unbowed in it , no unbowed ministers , because we were . We were standing on the program , not on . We need ministers . What do we need ministers for ?
C. Derick Varnwe have the hegemony right now that that's , I mean , my my point on that is just that what you there is push a program and and stop a counter program , like and my , when I talk about the united front , which I agree with you , doesn't really make that much sense now because we're not in that moment .
C. Derick VarnBut then I also kind of feel that about the , the historical use of the term popular front . But that's what we should do , like , that's , that's even like what Mark said we should do is , like you know , coalitions of our own interest . We have a programmatic interest for what we're doing and and most of our coalitions are to stop other things from happening while we build up our own positive programs when we take power . That's that , that , that's it . So me getting like all huffy about whether we call it the popular front and again I also want to point out that term in specific has a longer tradition in france that predates even its communist usage in 1936 , than it does , say , in the united states . Oh yeah , and and so like I'm not here to tell rich people what they should call their- stuff I'm happy to hear critique .
Henry WallaceI think the key thing I want to transmit to the audience is let's talk less about personalities and ideology and more about program . Ideology to me is interesting insofar as it informs the program . Everything is about the program actually thing . Insofar as it informs the program , everything is about the program actually . Because at the end of the day , like I , I've been recently reading in the russian revolution about the russian constituent assembly and I think I might have takes about that . Might piss derrick off , right , but does it actually matter ? Is there any programmatic cash out to that ?
C. Derick Varnno , I mean , and this is my thought when I do , when I do , uh , union and workers organizing is is the same thing ? Like are you ? Are we aiming for the same practical goal ? Do I care about why you believe in that goal ?
Henry Wallacenot really like if I was in DSA I would be trying to get all social Democrats out of it . Yes , I mean it's funny because not because I'm opposed to them as people . Let me put it this way If I was in DSA , I would be trying to make very clear that the program of DSA is not social democracy .
C. Derick VarnThat's a better way to go yeah , yeah , and if you can get on with that , then fine , if not , screw off .
Henry Wallacebasically what I'm calling social democracy just so I'm very clear to the listener is this idea that the way we handle social inequality is by growing the economic pie and better redistributing that growth . That's what social democracy in the 21st century means . I'll ask you a question , derrick , if you , if you want , do you can I ask you ? A question sure go ahead . How much of what I'm espousing as what I'm calling the radical left do you think is just classical social democracy ?
C. Derick VarnI think I mean honestly , I think about probably 50 to 60 percent of it is . I mean because one of the things that we have to talk when we talk about social democracy is like what I call a social democrat . Today has very little to do with that . What historically was before world war ii ? Why ?
Henry Wallaceare we doing a new classical liberalism ?
C. Derick Varnkind of um , I mean , what ? What we can say to me right now is that these changes that that Mellon Shaw zooms in on are changes that have changed the way that both the left and even , let's say , liberals took court respond to . Much affects the right . It affects the right in weird ways , and I think there's this in America . I can't , I don't want to talk about you know how European leftists and say let's just stick to American examples , that's fine .
C. Derick VarnRight . There's this assumption that because there is a strong loyalty to a demagogic figure , that the right is unified and in a superstitional sense it is . But that demagogic figure Trump or Bush for the neoconservatives , reagan for the Reagan coalition , the Reagan coalition is actually papering , papering over in his person profound programmatic differences that lead to total incoherence when they go to actually do anything beyond .
C. Derick VarnYou talked about General Boulanger , right Exactly . And this is why understanding French history actually is really helpful , as just just for people who want to know , like , why do you want to get Americans to learn about French revolutionary history ? Because , well , it's France . If you believe the American Revolution was even kind of a revolution at all and I do , I know I'm actually becoming a minority on the American left for saying that , although it was an unfinished , highly partially reactionary one , blah , blah , blah . I'll give all the appropriate caveats .
Henry WallaceWell , obviously the American revolution is our people that think it's just not a revolution . That's insane , that's ridiculous .
C. Derick VarnYeah , they're just like . Oh , they don't like the content .
Henry WallaceIt was a colony that became a Republic . What are you talking about , right I ?
C. Derick Varnknow but uh , but the republic was a settler republic and that settler republic was bad .
Henry WallaceTherefore , yeah , revolution could be bad . You can have a revolution that installs I don't know some kind of nasty , uh demagogic dictator . Uh , you know what I mean . Like I don't know , it's uh right .
C. Derick VarnRevolution doesn't necessarily equal happy well , I mean , for me this is just like a weird moral thing and also like the contradictions that you talk about in france also exist in the united states . There were , uh , there was non-settlerist elements to it . Um , and when people are like , oh , we should have stayed , we should have stayed with the british empire , what are you on ?
Henry Wallaceum , I mean , that might have been a position like if we're doing a historical evaluation for certain , you know indian groups it would have been a british empire right ? No , it would have made total sense and that's why they did like , that's why they fought with them , you know . So I think we can have a critical analysis the american revolution , without pretending , like pasquale Paoli is a liberal , he's still a revolutionary .
C. Derick VarnRight . Well , I mean my point about this , though in so much that you have this in the US tradition . We are seeing that play out and the one thing we , you know , I think we've had , I think we've had four republics . I know that probably other people would disagree with me , but but most of the American shifts in our , in our , in our role of government and the way we define our institutions have been , um , been ,
The Future of Left Movement Building
C. Derick Varnlet's just say , informal to the point of being hard to talk about this is where you do radical engagements on Master of the Senate with Andy ?
C. Derick VarnRight , that's a good idea actually . Um , because the way the American Republic worked from like , uh , let's say , 1781 to 1830 , from 1838 to the civil war , from the civil war to 19 to 19 , say , maybe 1912 . Uh , then the interwar , the interwar period , and then from the interwar period to now and then post 9-11 , actually I should actually say that's five republics are very , very different and that's not understood by a lot of people , because we haven't had the formal , we've never had a constituent assembly , we've never . We've kind of bullshitted our way out of dealing with our constitution , to be quite frank , which is why everything has been among militants Because , as I say , america doesn't have a strong radical left , so without a strong left that can do like cadre formation , like every like in France .
Henry WallaceI know I'm precipitating you a little bit here , I'm sorry , but like . Obviously in France we have more explicit changes in governance than the us , but like a lot of french people don't know all that until they join a movement and do the popular education right .
C. Derick VarnYes , there you go but go on with your story no , I mean , but because , because there's a massive rupture in the us , you know , the us far left , that's never really recovered . Uh , since , probably I'd say the probably since , like world war ii , there is no historical memory of this stuff like at all , like you know .
Henry WallaceI mean , yeah , there's that's why it's nominated by academics . It has this sort of bad I don't want to say bad faith like a bad conscience about being academic .
C. Derick VarnYou know what I mean bingo because , the academics are people who know right , I mean and , and , but we're not trusted by the people who this is relevant to , and , and I say we , I mean I'm not . I'm not formally an academic anymore , but I was .
Henry WallaceThat's why I learned this stuff um and obviously people in prison like educate themselves and there's prisoner support networks and stuff , but it's obviously , you know , being in uh , angola is not the best place to learn about all these things .
C. Derick VarnNo , absolutely not , and it's getting harder and harder by the day , honestly , um so so it's just um , I , I think this is where the French really do have an advantage . But also , understanding French history gives us a way to view ourselves , because , you know , since I was a teenager , you might get a , you know , as someone who's dealt with both countries for a long time . But I've always thought that the weird american hatred of the french uh was this strange form of self-recognition like that we have more in common with with , with like republican france , than we do with imperial britain . But , uh , we're also deeply embarrassed by it because it messes up our own history . I mean , republican france is , you know , pre-republican france , is part of why we have a united states in the first place .
Henry WallaceOh yeah , um , and so it's kind of a weird form of bad conscience that we don't really engage with the french uh , revolutionary traditions and learn , you know , uh , it's , you know the reason why we hold my bolshevism , like I actually blame the bolsheviks for a lot of this in terms of the broader consciousness , because I think part of the , the dominance of bolshevism in the 20 , 20th century led to the second and first internationals in the 19th century , 18th century , in really previous like do you know that when they did the russian revolution , they , they put this obelisk up and on the obelisk was inscribed the names of all , like the precursors of the revolution you know I'm talking about ? Yeah , I believe . Right now it's in moscow , not far from the kremlin , and like on the names is like thomas moore , kremlin , and like on the names is like thomas moore , right , you know what I mean . Like thomas , you know jean jerez is on there , right , and like people don't even know who jean jerez is because the second international is not known , because the first international is not known , and so like blanqui exists as a caricature of armed , uh , uprising , but like nobody knows that aren't that ?
Henry WallaceBlanqui considered that the , the french revolution was this sublime , you know , daughter of the gospel and philosophy , and it's , uh , you know , ultimate declaration of the rights of man and citizen , contains within it the seeds of the future communist society . Yeah , I know so , like the negotiating liberalism and socialism and like this is why I'm very happy for people like bruno leopold and his book citizen marx , and you actually did a number of interviews . I forget his name , it's matthew who did the liberal , the radical liberal and uh matthew mcmanus , uh the liberal socialism .
Henry WallaceThose discussions were very interesting and useful , so I thank you for for doing that right . But I just think it's people need to think through , like do you really like ? Is your as a leftist , what is your goal here ? What does democratic socialism mean ? How does it cash out ? Are you really gonna propose that there's no human rights in the revolution , like ? What is your line ? Like what actually think about that stuff ?
Henry WallaceI would , I would say people should do that and I think that's a republican socialist orientation is useful is is it draws a line from the bill of rights to a revolutionary future . That's more than just like bill of rights socialism , whatever that means yeah , well , I think that's important .
C. Derick VarnI mean , I've even pointed out that , like like uh , the american revolutionaries play a key role in um uh as good liberal bourgeois revolutionaries for like ho chi minh , and it's part of like ho chi minh thought of vietnam today and and uh .
Henry WallaceCo-founder of the french communist party yep funny enough . I think he thought in total yeah , he did a lot .
C. Derick VarnUm , so these things are , are super important , and I I do think right now the American left is in this weird discourse with itself where it's still not willing to look at its own history , its relationship to European revolutions .
C. Derick VarnUm , I mean , one time when I pointed out , like Marx's uh uh , difficulties in dealing with Simon Boulevard , the , the response I got well , marx was racist , and I'm like , well , but so was simon boulevard , and like , so was napoleon . What's your fucking point ? Like I mean , yes , but that's not gonna help you much when we try to figure out what to pull from these traditions , because also , yes , they are racist by our standards and I actually think we should admit that , but by the standards of the time they're really not terribly bad in that , like they think that all races have the potential to be joined the , the nation of humanity , and they have , like usually some cosmical rasa notions going on that everyone's going to blend together . We're going to get over these racial differences in the long term anyway . And I bring that up because in the US these seem to be like real impediments to discussion about the way these traditions interact and what we do now and the reason why Because there's no radical left .
C. Derick VarnI would agree with you . There really isn't a radical left tradition here . That isn't basically weird sectarian movements . I mean because the average left move , the app , the average left organization in america that isn't part of , say , a center , but a centrist liberal coalition for , like quasi left-wing social values , um has historically been under 5 000 people , usually between three and five and 5,000 people , and even though in those movements , you know , in the late 70s for example , there was probably a million people in those movements altogether , but they were so disorganized and refused to work together in even a negative capacity , I mean , even to stop something from from happening , that it's basically a lost tradition . And you know what all those groups shared and to bring it back to your initial point , is that there , if they had a program , their program was ideological . You had to agree on an ideological interpretation of history , um , and you know , maybe it had implications for what to do , but there was not immediate implications for what to do other than some nebulous notion of revolution most of the time yeah , like this .
Henry WallaceThis , I think , ties into two things . The first is I need to clarify what I mean by the radical left . I should have done this at the beginning . I'm sorry , varn . I got done with work today . I sent my kids off with my mother-in-law and my wife so I could have some peace to do this recording , and I was a bit discombobulated with the internet access issues we were having . So I did not clearly define the radical left . I don't mean the word radical left in a general way when I say it , I mean in a very specific way .
Henry WallaceIn French politics , we can talk about three lefts . There's the social democratic or center left , which I think we've discussed already . I don't need to elaborate . There's the extreme left or far left you can say ultra left if you want to piss people off and these are the people who are on the sort of fringe , these sort of fringe groups you're talking about right . What separates the center left and the far left ? Well , this is known in america , because these are the only lefts that exist . The center left is your , your bernie aoc . Basically , the far left is your , I don't know your psl or uh , uh , I don't know . The iso doesn't exist anymore , but the ISO would have been a good example , or like Crimethink or something . Right On the far left , the debate is like do we participate in elections at all ? Right On the center left is how do we win ? And then the radical left is the specific orientation that says we are participating in elections to win . So that's similar to the center left , because they actually want to win . However , like the far left , they want to do it for a revolutionary purpose .
Henry WallaceYou see , and that's the specific thing that's missing , and when you don't have that , you don't have programmatic emphasis and unity and there's no like programmatic outlet . There's no outlet for political energy or the desire for change . People don't think there's any way to change , and I remember being like a young anarchist in america , varne , and having old heads tell me that there will never be a revolution . I mean , that's like pure lifestyle-ism and I think it would have been assumed as such . I can't go back in time and ask this question , but I think it would have been assumed as such , with the idea that , no , the situation is screwed , there's not going to be a revolution , we're not going to get to a better society . So the question is how do we live ethically now , given this situation , and there's a romanticism and a heroism in a sort of nihilistic facing , the . You see what I mean , but that's not something that can build a mass movement . And so in that context , when revolutionary potential is foreclosed , there is no revolutionary horizon that's really possible .
Henry WallaceThen your political identification becomes on your interpretation of the situation and , uh , you know of history , because you have no programmatic outlet . There is no . What are you going to apply a program to ? What are we going to eat for dinner ? Right , yeah , there's correct , it's all identitarian , because that's all people have , and that doesn't mean like in the unbowed , their identity conflicts , like if you come to a a thing , and like there are people that are veiled Muslim women and virulent Trotskyist atheists . It's not obvious that these people are going to get along and we shouldn't paper over that , but they get along well enough because they have a common , there is a general interest and there's a particular interest in the program for both of them right , yeah , okay um I'm fired up I'm holding the mic in my hand .
C. Derick VarnI'm not ready to go jump in the ring and box well , I mean , I think this focus on programmatic unity is like that's where I've been at , and and my specific instance in this is , uh , my intervention maybe not instance , that's not the right word uh , is that Union did should not be the arbitrator of whether or not we're in political allegiance . It is our goals that are that decide that and when . When you have no goals and your goals are like , oh , there's no revolution because it's not going to live up to this , you know abstract ideological conception , immediately , I don't know how you're not just a lifestyle . I mean , I don't know how you don't become just a lifestyle . I totally agree with you , because what are you going to do ?
C. Derick VarnHave to agree with my uh , particular brand of second international , um , hard leninism , are my , are my particular understanding of , I don't know , labor aristocracy and its relationship to the 1950s and which period of now I like the most . Uh , and and what my personal opinion is about shining path or something , um , that's , that's a fandom , it's , you know , like it's an identity if you want to talk about star trek , derek , right , exactly it's .
Henry WallaceBut the thing was the thing with the radical left , and I want to be careful because I know you've got a lot of listeners that are highly ideological . I don't want to like just piss on them . We can still learn stuff from left history and we do right like I have an old . There's an old guy that I work with here and where I live and uh , you know he is an ex-malext and he always brings some like wild citations of to meeting , but often they're pertinent . For example , reduce the target , neutralize the intermediaries , that's just sound strategy .
Henry WallaceThat's why for example , when the Unbowed talk about Palestine , they don't talk about it like certain axis of resistance types . They focus in on the figure of Netanyahu . It's Netanyahu and Netanyahu's government is the consistent focus . Why ? Because it's strategically advantageous to do that . We put all of the emphasis on the person at the summit whose downfall would be critical for the situation to actually change right . The downfall of Netanyahu would be a major cataclysm in israeli politics and it would open a way to destabilize the genocide . So we focus everything on the icc warrants and you see what I mean . We focus everything on the israeli government and you know people criticize israel more broadly , but we know that , uh , it did . The war didn't start in october 7th and all this stuff . But politically you use those kind of insights of reduce the target , neutralize the intermediaries . That's one of the reasons why , for example , I doubt the DSA strategy of being proud socialists . Did you see the interview with Zoran Mamdani and Charlemagne the God and Ibro in the morning and everything on Power 105 , the breakfast ?
Henry WallaceNo I have not yet . Okay , so basically they go on . And do you know who Charlemagne is ? Yeah , I do .
C. Derick VarnI know who Charlemagne , the God is .
Henry WallaceYeah , okay . So Charlemagne , you know he got up and was talking and obviously he's very favorable to Mamdani . He was giving him a very favorable interview , Clearly showing and Charlemagne and I should talk about this also with the Unbowed . The Unbowed also does cultural hegemony stuff . I was in Paris recently and there was the music , the big national music festival , where basically everywhere in the streets there's different bands and stuff . The Unbowed had a stage and on the stage was a pretty serious french rap act called medine and like that's actually cool . There was like young people there . You know what I mean . It was like a pretty big show in the street and it demonstrated the connection between the unbowed and the youth . And you know so that that kind of like cultural projection is also very important , right .
Henry WallaceBut anyway , charlemagne was clearly supporting mamdani at a certain point said but you know everything you're talking about , it's just common sense , uh , you know , uh , the the stuff about making sure there are grocery stores in all the neighborhoods where there's food desks . I forgot exactly what he said , but he's basically going through zoran's program , right . And he said but why do you have to get hung up on all this talk about socialism ? I actually think charlemagne's right . What does talking about socialism actually help mamdani with ? It seems to me like it's just a pure downside .
Henry WallaceTalking about socialism only alienates people because they have some preconceived notion about what it is . They think it's the soviet union or castro or something which is not what mamdani is proposing . So why does he need to present himself as a socialist ? What does that have to be his presentation ? That's like an unbowed way of thinking about public communication , because the unbowed is not the french socialist party right . The unbowed is this like new . You know , the term in French is insoumis . Insoumission is not a historic term of the left . The France Unbowed doesn't plaster red everywhere and Mélenchon tried to do that before . Before the Unbowed , there was the left party , which still exists , which is like a typical red and green alliance type branding , and they don't do that branding anymore because it doesn't speak to people . That's fair why ?
Henry Wallacewhy are you ? Do you see what I'm saying ? Like ? Why , politically it doesn't mean you don't be a historic . Like when melanchon does an interview with academics , he'll very obviously say I consider myself , you know , part of the historic current , of historical materialism , that's my intellectual family . And he'll talk about Marx and Seytschrotsky and blah , blah , blah . You know what I mean , but I think that's actually that would . Is that kind of a truth nuke that Charlemagne's right and that DSA doesn't ? Actually that branding doesn't speak to people .
C. Derick VarnWell , the goal seemed to be for a while to make that branding work better , and for a little and and and . For a little while , and , weirdly , with a very particular generation , it seems to work , but that socialism has been repoliticized again in a in a way , uh , in a way that reflects fears about all kinds of stuff , and I'm not sure that it really helped to link yourself up with either socialists even if you were trying to make them more popular or general progressives in America , because they're , frankly , not a super popular coalition outside of a few key urban areas , a super popular coalition outside of , um , a few key urban areas , um , but , as I've said , as a lot of people say , I mean chomps . He's been on about this for god , like 50 years , but he's not . This is one thing I agree with him on .
C. Derick VarnUh , socialist policies are popular and in fact , some of them are more popular in areas where socialists aren't are less popular as soon as you say the s word um , and conversely , uh , like , if you're in , say , the bay area in california , socialist policies actually aren't popular , but socialism is super popular as a , as a wash word , and that paradox just seems to like go over people's heads , seems to like go over people's heads , and so I don't always care what people call me like um . You know , there's all these debates about whether or not I mean I consider myself part of the marxist tradition , but I'm not an orthodox marxist , because I don't know what that means .
Henry WallaceI'll be quite frank , I'm not sure that's relevant anymore I don't know that you can be in a marxist unity group , derrick well , yeah , like what would that ?
C. Derick VarnI actually have thought about that because , um , because I am sort of like well , what is it like ? What is marxist unity as opposed to like left unity or workers unity ? Um , and that you know and like , I have my criterion for , for example , entering the DSA , and if they had a program I agreed with , I would get over even the fact that they give money to candidates I don't always support .
Henry WallaceThat's because you're sold on the radical left principle of programmatic unity Right , which I'm're sold on , the radical left principle of programmatic unity Right , right , which I'm also sold on . And I would say , because I know I'm giving a little heat to the socialists . Within the unbowed , there does exist the unbowed communist association , but it's not a tendency or a faction . It's basically a discussion group of people who either came from the communist party or reclaim communism and , in some sense , who , who that term speaks to right . So it's not like the word communism or socialism is verboten . It's just not something that's projected in terms of public communications , and you see what I mean absolutely well , yeah , I would in in the united states , even with , even with other socialists .
C. Derick VarnLike the moment I say the c word , that freaks people out still . I mean , yes , there's people who own it with pride um , but like like I was talking to somebody the other day agree with like 80 of what I wanted do , which for me is always like well , we're in the same coalition and we could , we could , we could agree on a program . And the moment I said , you know well , they asked me what I thought about communism . I'm like God kind of a . I'm tired of it . You know , I view myself as's the legacy of Bolshevism .
Henry WallaceIn 1900 , you tell a socialist , you're a communist , and they're like me too . You know , For me it's an impasse that we have to get over . Right . Like you , I also use the term communism liberally , right , which is why we use it in New International . But New International isn't a political force , right . New international , like we use the term communism and new international to clarify that there's a commitment to a particular vision , like a . There's a historical vision that the , the , the magazine , sees itself as participating in .
Henry WallaceRight , right which is fine for a journal or a publication or a you know like end notes , as a informal , like discussion group or whatever . Can you know what I mean ? That's fine , but when you're a political organization trying to actually change institutions , I think it falls short yeah , and and I just I don't see the point of getting hung up on names .
C. Derick VarnI just really don't Like it . You know , I know I know there's some people going to yell at me , me about that , and I just I think if he the programs , the program is the more important thing and getting that program out and that , and I I do think that program has to be responsive and dynamic and stuff like that . This is my difference from a lot of ultra leftists who think like the program was discovered in like I don't know 1927 and will forever be whatever it is forever be whatever it is .
Henry WallaceUm , the program changes over time , but the , the , the . The problem is that you have to have some way of maintaining its integrity . And this is where we come back to the problem of internal democracy , because if you just like get everybody that's pissed off like you go to occupy wall street . Okay , are you ready , derek ? All right , we're gonna step into the , the , the time travel machine and we're going back .
Henry WallaceOkay , ready , okay , now we're stepping out . We're in zuccotti . Now , derrick , you go do a poll and you ask everybody , what ? What do they want to be in the program ? And you tell me what you got .
C. Derick VarnOh , dear god um , probably uh profits over people , uh , a returning uh share back to , to the , to the , from the , from the one percent to the 99% . Let's see Humane productivism , some form of anti-racism that would immediately start a fight .
Henry WallaceSo there's no programmatic unity over anti-racism .
C. Derick VarnI mean the only programmatic unity over anti-racism . I mean the only programmatic unity about anti-racism would be that racism is bad .
Henry WallaceThat would have been the programmatic it's a problem of internal democracy , and if you and me form an executive committee in 2011 and we're like , all right , here we go , we've got the program , let's go . Well , who are we ? We're not legitimate to propose anything . So to me there's a big chicken and egg problem with the program , where somebody like Melenchon was already well-known and capable of building a competent team that could credibly , you know , build a movement Right , and that's where the , in the American context , I think it's going to be . It's going to be a hard , a hard lift and I don't know , maybe DSA can like transform into that . I mean , what do you think the prospects are for a radical left in america ?
C. Derick Varnlet me just ask you that question I mean I will say stuff like anger at the constitution is becoming much more real . Uh , so being able to talk about that directly is real . There there are people , there are various groups I mean we talked about marxist union group as one of them but there are various groups that realize that programmatic unity has to come out of something real , and by real I mean stuff that actually delivers immediately , not just a nebulous promise of overthrowing everything . But right now the orientation seems to be . The orientation seems to be it'd be hard right now here , because there is such a fear over , over the right . But I will also say , for the first time in my lifetime , even quote normal progressives are also fed up with the Democratic Party . They're no longer just making excuses for them . In the same way , they're really angry . So there is a space for it to emerge . But it would require people to get over what they think they're already doing zoron might be able to do it .
Henry WallaceLet's say zoron gets elected as mayor of new york and is a big success . Zoron might be able to without like abolishing dsa . He might be able to surpass dsa in the same way that melancholy surpassed the left party . The left party still exists and participates in the Unbowed , but it's just a small organization that also participates in the Unbowed . There's also a post-Trotskyist party how do I translate this into English ? The Workers' Independent Party , which is like a Lambertist group that also participates in the Unbound . So there's ways for like legacy left organizations to participate in the Unbound without totally abolishing themselves .
Henry WallaceSo it could be possible for Zoran to do something where he builds a radical left movement based on his success and like whirlwind popularity that doesn't have all the baggage of DSA , but that DSA can like seed the fundamental , like cadres , into . So imagine you got like the most competent people from I don't know the DSA left and right who listen to this episode and understand that actually you know we need something better than this . Those people could seed such a movement and then start to like build it up right Without you know having to abolish the DSA . I think that that's one way it could be done , but I think it would require . I have said aoc , but after am I over reading how damaging the whole uh , working tireless thing , working tirelessly thing was for her my , my , okay , it was really damaging .
C. Derick VarnI will say that it's kind of been forgotten . My thing is , I don't think she wants to do that . I think she wants to be a standard democratic party politician with a more progressive bent . I mean , I really do , really do , and I think , unfortunately , bernie has decided that she has the most name recognition and this anti-oligarchy tour has effectively patched his torch to her , which has , in some ways , with a lot of people who weren't following American politics very closely , have caused them to just not pay attention to what happened , because both the thing on on on Israel and and her stuff with the , with the suppression of the of the railroad strike , really hurt her with with a lot of people who are in tune on the American left , but the general public did barely knows that stuff happened , so she could .
Henry WallaceI mean , maybe she could turn it around and , you know , lead something like what I'm talking about , who knows ? But let's say she doesn't , let's say you're right and let's just like play out this , this political fiction , just for a minute . Just humor me for a minute . Let's say zoran does it . Zoran is a good mayor . He builds this kind of broader movement and then it grows across the country and now we see zorons spreading .
Henry WallaceYou know people are doing copycat , uh campaigns . They learn from him how to do the good door-to-door . You know what I mean . They learn and this is actually something I kind of breezed over with you earlier , but I want to pause . Can I just say it's incredibly empowering for people who have no political experience to be part of that kind of campaign .
Henry WallaceLike I think this is a big problem . That , like ultras have , is like you have to go from zero to 100 real quick . You have to be like and now you're gonna lose an eye . You know right , yeah , whereas when you , when you do like stupid electoralism , quote unquote people can gain confidence and like learn how to do a meeting , learn how to go put up posters , learn how to talk to your neighbors about politics . You know what I mean . Learn that stuff is important and it also makes people feel like there is hope or they're doing . They're actually doing something . You know what I mean ? They go from being spectators to actors . That's very important , but imagine that zoran does that . Imagine that zoran leads this , you know , helps this mass movement grow . Well , that's obviously going to lead to a conflict if it maintains a radical left orientation with a center left like a social democratic orientation of somebody like cortez .
C. Derick VarnYeah , yeah , well , no In .
Henry WallaceFrance . This played out by people that were with Melenchon for a long time being purged from the movement because they weren't programmatically solid .
C. Derick VarnI think the key here , though , is you need a program . I mean , you do need a leader to bring that program about . I mean , like , as much as I would love for all this to just organically emerge , you and I both know that's not likely to happen .
Henry WallaceIt's part of the current time we live in . If you look at all the new political forces , like Five Star Movement in Italy , it's Beppe Grillo , le know le pen with the , the , the national front , and marine le pen with the national rally . Melancholy with the france unbowed . Macron with his center block that's been renamed multiple times . Trump basically did it with republicans , bernie did it with the like . It's just part of contemporary politics , this kind of like celebrity factor , and I don't like it and we have to fight against .
C. Derick VarnYou know , people like worshiping politicians like celebrities , but I just think that's how politics works today yeah , unfortunately we we are in a , we are in a quasi-caesarist moment , so we we do have to deal with that . Who's going to go on ?
Henry WallaceTV who's going ?
C. Derick Varnto go on the media and incarnate the thing . Yeah , no , you need someone to stand in for . I mean , you need someone to at least speak for the movement , and when you don't have that , it doesn't really go anywhere .
Henry WallaceIt doesn't really go anywhere . It doesn't really go anywhere and you can counter it Like the Unbowed , for example , like Melenchon is getting old right and he's been cultivating people around him . So there's like multiple people I could have talked to more about , you know , manuel Bampard and Mathieu Pannot and Clémence Guethe and paul vannier and antoine leomond and daniel obono . You know there's lots of people I could have mentioned I didn't mention that are in the movement , that are on tv , that are . You know what I mean .
Henry WallaceBut that's part of like trying to overcome the system internally is by like , by getting 71 deputies , you allow more people like that to emerge . I mean , look at how fast Zoran emerged . He won a fucking primary . Like you need people to win . That's actually one of the reasons why electoralism is good is because it allows for figures like this to emerge and to enter the national stage . Otherwise , how do you get a national leader ? How do you get anybody that's like qualified to go on tv and talk ? I mean , haven't you talked about this in the past ? The like reliance on the uh , the end of the new left cadres for everything yeah , yeah , that's the problem .
Henry WallaceIt's a big problem you can't fix that unless you replace them with people generally , generally . So I guess for you what is like the the ? I know we agree on a lot of this , but give me some heat here . What am I ? What am I wrong about ? What am I unclear about ? What are my contradictions ?
C. Derick VarnThe thing I think you you do have to look at is there . Like you keep on talking about how to hold these people accountable . There is something . Holding mel and sean accountable beyond his own integrity , right , um , what she does has another thing you actually do need politicians with integrity , because one of the things is , when we speculate on aoc , um , my problem with her is like like , yeah , she's popular enough , she got enough name recognition , but I have ample evidence that she doesn't comport herself with any integrity whatsoever In regards to no , no , no , I'm not going to coast .
Henry WallaceThat's to me a bit extreme .
C. Derick VarnI'm not going to say I'm willing to go that far because and for me it was both the stuff in Gaza and the and the railway strike , stuff that like , beyond the , the obvious electoralism , um , with making promises and talking about fighting democrats and making concessions when they're in power , um , but you know , she might have personal integrity , I don't care , like that doesn't affect me .
Henry WallaceUm political integrity political plane yeah , on the political plane . She's lost your trust .
C. Derick VarnI understand that right , right and um and uh and frankly it worries me when people trust her , but I , um , I do . I do know that you've got to have somebody to coalesce around and we have been trying to just coalesce around . Movementism in and of itself , without any figureheads , end up with informal academic figureheads . I mean , we think about this with Occupy . What emerged out of Occupy ? The informal figurehead and anarchism of David Graeber , for good and ill , mostly , in my opinion , for ill . But Graeber Graeber , you know , did have personal integrity in a lot of ways and I know people might be surprised to hear me that I think he had political integrity in some bad ways , but he did have it .
Henry WallaceWas Zizek big before Occupy , before Occupy .
C. Derick VarnYeah , he was . Zizek was growing as a response to I mean as a response to left academia in the early aughts , in 1990 . So Zizek kind of was already getting his seminars passed on social media in 2009 because he was funny , but on social media , like in 2009 , because he was funny . But I think , when we look at Zizek really , though , has never posited himself as an actual political figure . It's all ideological discussion all the time , and I think , when it comes to Occupy , we didn't really have a real political figure to stand up and embody around , and so Obama remained the kind of even though , arguably , occupy is a rebellion against him himself he remained a figure for them to coalesce around , and so , as other people broke off and became more radicalized and moved away from the Occupy brand or movementism or whatever you want to call it , he was the figurehead that remained , and so , without a counter figurehead I mean , as much as I don't love it , you don't really have a lot , and Bernie crystallized that I don't think we'd be talking about the DSA even though Bosh , carson , cara and Jacobin Magazine brought it back into some relevance before the Sanders campaign , but I don't think we'd be talking about them at all if the Sanders campaign did not happen .
C. Derick VarnWhether I like that or not is irrelevant , it's just a fact . And um , whereas , uh , you know , I have my theories to why communization got popular in the united states and if I'm completely , and if I'm completely honest with you , it was because of negative polarization , because otherwise , why would people care about left-wing academics , many of whom are poets in New York and California , who were not known for their theory ? And this is not to slam their theory . I actually think a lot of that stuff , a lot of that stuff is brilliant , even if I don't agree with it .
C. Derick VarnYou think it was negative polarization against Jacobin ? No , no , I think it was negative polarization because it was mentioned explicitly by glenn beck on air with takun and people started researching what takun was , and then people started researching what these other things were and then in notes published in notes volume one with the duvet uh theory communist debate at exactly the moment that was beginning to gain steam and people have read the invisible committee and people wanted and that also came out precipitous , timingly after occupies . It was kind of an answer to why .
Henry WallaceFor a lot of people . It's why I think it was also the nadir of the traditional left , with , like o'lan basically doing the austerity bullshit in exchange .
Henry WallaceLike the only positive thing I can think that o'lan did off the top of my head was , uh , like gay marriage basically right , yeah , similar to obama we got gay marriage similar to obama , and I think this was a moment in which , in france , um , it really did seem like , I mean , there was no way out . I remember Julien Coppard , and who was the other guy , the other main tycoon guy I'm blanking on his name , mathieu , I think it's Bernal , or Bernal were interviewed in Le Monde , unless I'm mistaken , were interviewed in Le Monde , unless I'm mistaken , and during the beginning of the Unbowed movement and they were asked and they're like , yeah , melanchon's never going to amount to anything and , as far as I know , their movement is kind of broken apart into different groups .
Henry WallaceAs far as I know , and I just think , like you know , whether it was negative polarization , I think it was responding to real things happening at the time and people absolutely and I mean there were and I look , I've been a part of , uh , like the , the zod at notre dame de london , which was a really huge autonomous ecological struggle that won . So I think there's a lot of truth in in that and uh , or that was , you know , demonstrated and revealed in that struggle . But I think the limits are , you know , we've discussed some of them . It seems pretty clear to me that like I go over and I , like I said I was rereading end notes , I just don't , I don't .
C. Derick VarnI don't know what the takeaway is . No , I mean , that's been my , my thing too . I've actually argued with , you know , some back in back in the the odds . I argue with some of these people directly online and was totally at a loss for , like you know , they tell me I mischaracterized their politics and I'm like , okay , but what's your politic , what is your politics ? And I really didn't get an answer . I mean , I had an altercation with somebody .
Henry WallaceAn altercation makes it sound too hostile . But somebody was replying in a thread I saw the other day was , like you know , the , basically people complaining that Zoran is taking too much attention on the left . They're like we need to learn the lessons of LA . I just replied to them like what are the lessons of LA ? Right , what are they ? I'm open to learning the lessons . I invite people to teach me the lessons of LA , and I mean that 100% , in all honesty , because obviously there's a problem with masked , masked armed men stealing people off the street and we can't in good conscience just allow that to go on unopposed . But I don't know what the lessons are . I don't like I've read about the Chaz , chop stuff from the and , um , yeah , I I don't know what the lessons are .
Henry WallaceAnd I listened actually to uh brunel recently , the same guy , matthew brunel , who has a uh media called lundi matin and one of their their it's a french media and they have a youtube channel called lundi soir where they do uh interviews and he talked about the chop and chas and it kind of shrugged because like yeah , in america there's a lot of guns . So like what do you do about that ? Right , I don't know , like I don't , I'm not sure where that's supposed to lead and like , how do we make sense of the riot is an interesting question . I think the you know , rather than think about strike and riot as like that , like it , um , actually I think jasper talked about this on antifada recently , where jasper burns when he was talking about his new book where basically , you can think about like a circle , a political circle , uh , around the point of production , where , like , the strike is like the central mode of struggle , and now we have an ellipse where there's like two centers there's a center of the point of production and then there's like the riot is the struggle on a different pole , right ? And I guess my response to that would be to say why stop at two points , why not draw a bigger graph , right , where more aspects of everyday life are drawn in , and understand the riot as a symptom of this people's era of , like , when you of the fact that the city is the , the locus of , of this particular , you know , material condition of urban life and and the threat that our life-giving networks are under .
Henry WallaceYou see what I mean , because to me it's like the , the theory that I've been elaborating , and like , look , I , you can go . The book has been translated by david broder , you can go read it if you want , like more details . We didn't even talk today about the noosphere or like , uh , space time or you know what I mean . There's a lot of stuff that we talk about in the theory that we could have , but , like , I just see that theory as richer and kind of integrating the insights into it . You see what I mean . It's like a super set of insights which leads to a politics that is maybe somebody like jasper burns wouldn't support or wouldn't like or whatever .
Henry WallaceBut I just I don't really know what else I can see and look like , uh , derek , I'm a father , you know , uh , I have a job , I have a family to take care of and a lot of people in that kind of context want to do something politically and like , above ground electoral organizing is relatively safe to do , right , yeah , and if you want to have a mass movement , I just don't know how you have a mass movement without doing it .
Henry WallaceLike , I can't imagine a mass movement in which we tell people that what happens with the laws and like the , the , the , where the army goes , and everything
Final Thoughts and Resources
Henry Wallacedoesn't matter . Yeah , that's nuts , because that's basically when you do . Electoral abstentionism that's what you're saying is like the , the parliament and everything is completely spectacular and the real power is elsewhere . So where is the real power ? Is it in the point of production ? I would argue it is not my , my , like , my workplace like it . If I went on strike , what would that impact in the economy ? I work at a subway , you know what I mean , like a lot of people in this , am I , am I off ? Am I going too far ?
C. Derick Varnno , no , this is actually a key point because , even if you assume that this is a point from communization , that I actually think they're not wrong about that , like , like I've been pointing out , you guys are talking about you guys being Jacob magazine mostly , but a few other people the rebirth of unions . When you're talking about Starbucks unions and , yes , I believe that Starbucks workers deserve a union I'm not some people who have some weird hang up about baristas with blue hair having , uh , having , employment rights . Um , blah , blah , blah . Something production that you might hear , but I also would like to point out that it's just not structurally the same , as I don't know , the entire iron industry are the ? Are the steel workers union ?
Henry Wallaceare . Let's be specific . The dock workers have a choke point . That right the starbucks workers do not have . That is not to denigrate the starbucks workers . They're important , they matter , like morally , ethically , politically , they can be mobilized , they can do important things . But as just an objective fact that , how are the starbucks workers supposed to like prevent the shipment of arms to israel ?
C. Derick Varnyeah , they're not .
Henry WallaceThey can't really do that right , and the logistics , the people that work in tech , the people that work in logistics . These are the people that actually have like choke point .
C. Derick VarnUm influence , or choke point is the wrong word , but you know what I mean , right , and these are people who have been relatively privileged in capitalist society compared to other workers for a long time .
Henry WallaceAnd that's ending like because I get the end of the day , like I have an ac unit now I didn't use to , I have one now what happens when the electric goes out ? And this is also where a lot of like left ideology bullshit and I'm sorry if I I keep jumping into talk , I'm just really hyped , so please forgive me there like okay , when it comes to like the nuclear question this is a big question . In france we have big nuclear . One of the reasons why the unbowed are like anti-nuclear , but in a sort of progressive way progressive meaning that it's like a progressive phase-out is because when rivers get too hot , you can't use the water to cool the fucking reactors , so you have to just turn them off . Yes , you're right .
Henry WallaceAnd so it doesn't work . Actually , it doesn't actually solve the problem . So , like my AC unit allows me to have a comfortable job where I can be like in remote work you know what I mean I might have like a good position now , but if we don't do something about climate change , I won't , right , and like that's the thing that's like . I think that's where , like the eco-socialist orientation from the unbowed Like think that's just , if you don't have that , you're not doing anything worthwhile , like . I'm sorry you have to put that ecology has to be foundational because it's the biggest material condition change in our lifetime absolutely , and I I'm with you on that .
C. Derick VarnThis is something I think a lot about . Um , for a variety of reasons , and in america , you know , even even the tech oligarchs are freaking out because they're going so hard against um , uh , clean energy here that they're , you know , crushing red state jobs and and uh , endangering the ai revolution . They're all supported , like you know , ai revolution in quotation marks .
Henry WallaceBut , and that's also something that is waiting for organizing . I'm sorry , but what's happening in Memphis is insane . All these data centers , just like AI slop . This is easy . Okay , easy is the wrong word , but this is an obvious place where people should be organizing . Do you want your water contaminated to produce ?
C. Derick Varnthe slop right for nothing , and and uh and . Do you want to have no energy ? Because , frankly , once they start cutting these green energy options out , what's going to happen is those ai uh things , which may not be as inefficient as I thought originally , but it doesn't matter if you're also shrinking the power grid at the same time . Um , which effectively our consumption . It's still making the whole energy situation worse oh , absolutely , and so there are use cases for it where we could use it , make it better , but we're not doing that , we're just not .
Henry WallaceAnd has the right to build a data center , like that's a political question . Who owns the data center ? Who controls it ? Under what conditions ? Operating right ?
C. Derick Varnyeah , I would say something crazy , because this is this affects my daily life here . I live in a place that I shit , you not all right has pushed because of investment . Home building for , for , effectively , two-person apartments has pushed families of three and four out of the city into one area where there's literally two access roads I'm not joking um , so they're pushing families and the poor into the suburbs , effectively , um , and in these suburbs , they want to build three or four data centers and a nuclear power plant .
Henry WallaceHenry , I live in the goddamn desert yeah , it's nuts , this is nuts and this is why , again , this is why a radical left movement is needed . Maybe people are going to listen to this and say , well , the unbound theory is interesting . Go get melancholy's book now the people from verso read it . Let us know what you think . Maybe the form of the movement , the organizational form , is interesting because that could be deployed for a maybe you don't give a shit about electoral politics , but the movement form is something kind of interesting . You know these are assemblies that federate but they're still like a vertical structure to kind of keep things from getting too hairy , you know , know what I mean . Maybe that's interesting to people and they can take that and run with it Great . Maybe the radical left part we've been talking about , the programmatism , is interesting to people Great , run with it .
Henry WallaceRight , I'm not on your show to preach to people and tell them you better do the unbowed in America , but obviously I think that it's very important and good and there's a lot to learn from it and I hope people learn things right or take things away or think about things , because obviously there's a lot of work to be done , as you're saying , and I want people to be able to run campaigns and to politically organize in a way that's successful . I was recently criticized for being too evangelical about this , so I apologize if I was too evangelical about it with you , but I really appreciate you and the show and your time and everything . I hope it's clear that I'm saying all my critiques and mentioning everything I'm mentioning from a position of solidarity and support . I want things to succeed . I would be happy if the , the socialist branding of dsa works . You know what I mean .
C. Derick Varnthat would be great , but I just don't know that it will yeah , I mean it would be awesome , but uh , I , I , I think I don't care about the branding at all anymore .
Henry WallaceYeah , I'm just giving one example , like maybe I'm , maybe , I don't know , maybe if people just I don't know apply themselves in the existing organizational structure , that it will work . And everything I've said about the form of the movement isn't necessary , right , that's possible . But I feel it's sort of incumbent upon me to translate and to transmit as much of these things as I can , because clearly there's a differential in terms of the amount of success . Right like , and if we and if we win in france , we're gonna need solid , like international solidarity , otherwise , otherwise we're just going to get INDade . You know what I mean . We're going to need people to help us , so you can't build the people's revolution in only one country .
C. Derick VarnNo , you cannot .
Henry WallaceThe citizens' revolution .
C. Derick VarnYeah , the citizens' revolution in only one country . Thank you so much for coming on , Henry . Where can people find your work in English ?
Henry WallacePeople should go to New International Magazine , newintermagcom . Contributor Derek C Varn or C Derek Varn .
C. Derick VarnC Derek Varn we're waiting for your review .
Henry WallaceWhen is your review of Jasper Burns book coming out ?
C. Derick VarnWe'll see . Actually , I'm reading . I'm reading the book right now for you to review it , because I am . I am . I do feel like there's been a substantive evolution in Jasper's thought , and this may be where I figure out where he's actually at now . From his interviews , I feel like I have hints but no real answer . So I'm hoping this book you know his under , getting his specific understanding of of what cancel communism was and why , why we should care about it , um , seems important to me . Um , and I'm about halfway through it . I have some technical nitpicks here and there , but I'm just just . I'll tell you more when I write it .
Henry WallaceOkay , sounds good . People can also listen to my podcast , which is not as frequent as yours . Formspodcastcom . Forms F-O-R-M-S . I'm also I have a blog at helotagecom , but it's very infrequently updated , especially now that we have a new international . But it's very infrequently updated , especially now that we have a new international and obviously I'm on Twitter . Blue sky , henry JK .
C. Derick VarnWallace Okay , yeah , cool , thank you I appreciate you , Derek .
Henry WallaceThank you for your friendship and for this discussion . I hope it was productive and interesting for everybody .
C. Derick VarnYeah , it was for me . Thank you so much .
Henry WallaceAll right , ciao , ciao .
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