From Catechism To Class Consciousness: How Marxism Was Taught with Edward Barring

What if the real engine of socialist history wasn’t just theory, but teaching? We sit down with historian Edward Baring to trace a vivid, often-misread story: Marxism as a mass educational project designed to turn scattered grievances into class consciousness. From best-selling primers that outsold Capital to study circles in factories and party schools, we unpack how organizers taught at scale—and why the word “vulgar” once critiqued bad teaching, not bad thinking.

We map the fault line between Kautsky’s “teach the conclusions” approach and Lukács’s insistence on method and totality, and we ask the hard question: how do you teach complexity without losing people who work ten-hour days? Lenin’s What Is To Be Done and State and Revolution reveal the same tension, combining textual trench warfare with tactical clarity for a revolutionary moment. Hendrik de Man’s psychological critique raises a chilling possibility: if capitalism deforms worker experience, will the versions of Marxism that spread most easily become the most mechanical?

Gramsci offers a different path. His organic intellectuals don’t deliver doctrine; they nurture a counter-hegemony by working inside communities’ common sense and everyday practice. Education becomes a two-way process that builds agency, not dependency. We follow this thread beyond Europe with Mariátegui, where translating Marxism for peasant contexts demanded creativity over orthodoxy—and exposed the classist edge to accusations of “vulgarity.”

If you care about political education, labor organizing, or the history of socialist strategy, this conversation brings fresh clarity to how ideas travel, who carries them, and what actually changes minds. Subscribe, share with a comrade, and leave a review telling us: what’s the one teaching practice you think movements should revive today?

Edward Baring is a Professor of History and Human Values at Princeton University. An expert in modern European intellectual history, he is the author of several award-winning books, including The Young Derrida and French Philosophy and Converts to the Real. Today, we focus on his book, Vulgar Marxism His latest research focuses on the intersection of revolutionary politics and pedagogy.

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

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Baring’s Thesis

C. Derick Varn 0:48

Hello, and welcome to Varblog. And today I'm talking with Edward Barring, Professor of History and Human Values at Princeton, author of such books as The Young Derodon, French Philosophy, The Trace of God, Derodon Religion, and Converts to the Real Catholicism, the Making of Continental Philosophy. But today's book is about Marxism. And we're talking about his book, Vulgar Marxism, which, in my estimation, is roughly a history of the attempt to treat Marxism as a pedagogical project, and how that led to a lot of tensions and misunderstandings in the history of Marxist intellectual development. How are you doing today? Very well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the vlog. Yeah. I've been looking forward for this one. I got your book, and I learning that the quintessence of Marxism was written by Karl Korsch was surprising, and that was in the first page. So and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about early 20th century Marxist development. So me being like, oh, there's a there's a text earder than the Erfurt program and the road to power from the from the late 19th, early 20th century that's more rail rail read than Marx that I've never heard about again. So it was really impressive as as that goes. I want to ask you though, why did you why the focus on Marxism? Your prior work is more on continental philosophy. So what led you to this?

Popular Texts Versus Canonical Marx

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Well, I mean, all my work has been involved. Has I'm interested, I'm an intellectual historian, I'm interested in ideas that matter, that shape the world, that they get picked up. And you know, so Marxism has played a very important role in all of my work so far. So Derrida, but my first book was on uh Jacques Derrida, especially his early work, and I follow him as he navigates his way through the French intellectual um world. And Marxism was a major force there. So he's he's in the École Normale Superieure, the kind of the pinnacle of French higher education in the 1960s, and that's when Louis Altousser, the great French Marxist, is you know, that at the same institution has his students like Alain Badiou, Pierre Machere, and Etienne Balibar and others around him. These are students that Derrida is teaching, and so he's engaging with these ideas way before he starts to actually explicitly engage Marx, which he only really does in the 1990s. And so it's such an important part of the intellectual history of the 20th century. And even my last book, which is on continental philosophy, the and especially about Catholics and their role, you know, the engagement with Marxist kind of social thought is central to kind of you know sort of developing views on Catholic views of the of society and politics in the 1930s and beyond. Either either you know, productive engagement sometimes clashes. And the other thing I think that one turned me to Marxism, I'm interested, you know, intellectual history is often regarded as something that is interested in the only the ideas of elites. And I think, you know, I am interested in ideas like, you know, exciting important theoretical texts by really interesting people. But I also want to focus on ideas which weren't just kind of like in you know, in in academia separated off from the rest of the world. I wanted to think about ideas that really mattered, that changed things. So Catholicism came up a lot because you know Catholicism is this huge you know, it's an institution to focus around ideas and ideas on a mass scale. And when you kind of think about another parallel to that, I mean you can't do better than Marxism. I mean, Marxism is, you know, it is this enormously rich intellectual tradition with huge debates, but it's also something that you know affects the lives of millions of people. You bring up the quintessence of Marxism, read by hundreds of thousands. It's uh, and so that's why I focus on this aspect of focus on Marxism and also why this aspect was so interesting to me.

C. Derick Varn 4:55

Hmm. To focus on that, I mean, we we today, because of probably the intellectual hue of people discussing Marxism, tend to focus on Marx, Engels, and texts that, if we are quite honest, often were not highly read at the time they were written. Whereas, you know, if you look at the texts that were popularly read in Marxism in the late 19th century, you have things like I've mentioned the the Erfurt program explanation by Kotsky, the um women in socialism by Babel, the Quintess of Marxism by Korsh, which is a test that really is completely forgotten. I had never heard of it. And these were way more read than the kind of primary theoretical texts of the socialist tradition in some ways. And I think we forget why. I mean, you know, sometimes you'll hear people talk about uh this idea that that they were going into factories and just doing read out loud groups with Das Capital, which did happen, but imagining not a lot. I mean, the original version of Das Capital has untranslated Greek in it, it's not necessarily the most approachable thing, even if just in length, for workers to go through even a verbal reading group if you could look at the literacy rates of workers who are also often learning to read concurrently to being exposed to these texts. But Marxism clearly has a pedagogical project going on. Yeah why do you think this pedagogical project is often forgotten about when it's actually crucial, as Lars Lee points out in his book on um rediscovering Lenin, that you know that was the main point of a lot of the even the ideas of the Vanguard Party was largely an educational function idea. The idea of the merger thesis was about education. Why has this educational mission of Marxism kind of been forgotten about in a lot of the receptive text?

Marxism As Mass Education

SPEAKER_00 7:00

I mean, I think there are lots of reasons for that. And I think Lars Lee has done a lot to bring back this aspect to our scholarly attention. I mean, I think part of it is to do, I mean, and if you look around, everywhere people are talking about it the whole time. I mean, you don't have to look very far, even in the kind of the text that we do read. But I think there are a number of reasons why. Firstly, I mean, it does require you to kind of look at what people were not just writing, but what they were doing, you know, what are they spending, what institutions they are set up, what are they spending their time doing? Those things are hard to study. You know, they don't you can't just go to the library and pick up a book. And so that I think is one part of it. You have to kind of think of this as kind of practices that people are involved in, institutions they're setting up, and you know, that's just much harder to do. I think it's also the nature of the text we read. So, I mean, you bring up the quintessence, which is, you know, I start with because you know it's unknown today, but probably was the most famous book written by Karl Korsch in his lifetime, the most widely read, the most rapidly translated uh into multiple languages within a couple of years. But it's you know, sort of it's a kind of a it's a short text, it seems to be pretty simplistic in its Marxism, it seems pretty expected. And so you know, we we tend to you know skip over those things. We we like to, you know, in some ways that you know I suggest in the book that there's like an inverse proportion to the the the uh we like to read books aimed at sort of a small set of kind of educated intellectuals published in you know sort of relatively boutique presses or in small numbers, and in fact, the not to those which are aimed at a very, very large audience. And I think thirdly, kind of the most important reason perhaps is also kind of the way we read texts. So, you know, we know that in Marxism theory and praxis are meant to be intimately linked, but we tend to read Marxist texts as if they're kind of propositional accounts about the world, about describing the world as it is. And then even if we read texts which have this pedagogical goal, we tend to see them as an account of how you teach the working class. You know, it's sort of sort of a detached theory rather than a practice themselves. They are, many of these texts are in fact involved in the process of education, and we could forget that. So we so we read Marxism as a theory about the working class rather than being one for them or to them. And I suppose that's you know that just I think just distorts everything. You bring up the vanguard theory, and I, you know, I I I was enormously influenced by Larsley's book, and I think you know he wants to emphasize the pedagogical aspects. You know, the idea about the vanguards, you have a vanguard who has the most advanced theory and they teach that to the workers, they and then the workers will conduct the revolution for themselves, they understand what needs to be done, they will act. But we very it's very easy to move into kind of like the the argument that Larsley is arguing against, which is that, oh well, maybe they're doing the thinking for the workers, they are leading them because the workers don't understand. Now that's I think there are reasons why we pick up that view, but in large part it's because we seem to we cut out the education from our from our understanding of what Marxism was.

C. Derick Varn 10:25

Which I guess you know brings the title of the book into bear. Like this book about pedagogy, is also kind of reception history is not quite the right word, but maybe like a etymology slash slash reception history of the idea of vulgar Marxism as related to this pedagogical project, because it is actually you know, your book makes it clear that that term didn't mean what what it means now when it was originally used. And in fact, when we offer encounter it in uh Lukash or Lenin or whoever, we're encountering it through a lens of a shift of definition that they're also shifting as they're writing, but that wouldn't have hit readers in the say the 1910s or the 1920s in the same way. So, what did vulgar Marxism originally even mean?

What “Vulgar Marxism” Originally Meant

SPEAKER_00 11:33

So, I mean, I think it had so I think it had a role first, and understanding the role helps you understand what it means because it it does mean a number of different things. But basically, vulgar Marxism appears in teaching circles, people are involved in education, and it becomes a way of criticizing either those people who ignore education or a way or people who are educating in the wrong way, and so it becomes a kind of not, it's not a rejection of popular Marxism. It's not an attempt to say, oh, the Marxism of the people is kind of you know reductive and simplistic and bad. It's saying it's criticizing teachers for doing it in the wrong way, for you know, maybe sort of overly simplifying Marxism. So that's kind of you know the reductive thing. Maybe they they tend to think that you should just, you know, the workers won't get it, so you have to do the most basic, get it down to a few slogans, you know, cut out all the complexities. So that's that's what many people criticize as vulgar Marxism. Some people say, you know, vulgar Marxism is people who just focus on the economy, but it's that arises at the time because there's this concern that uh if you do that, you you won't worry about education. You'll be one of the people who think our education is important because if if the economy does everything, then why bother doing this other thing? You know, it's we're leading inevitably to revolution. Or, you know, sometimes people, Valgermark, the people who, you know, pander to them, you know, the sentiments of the masses in ways that don't actually educate them. So, you know, who appeal to kind of emotional triggers that will make them a success. And you know, they're kind of well, well, you're not educating there, you're not, you're not, you know, you're not passing on what people need to learn, you're you're just pandering to them. So it it's this, it's a term that's used in this space, set of institutions by teachers who are criticizing what other people are doing and saying you've got this wrong. And you can see from my description there why the kind of the terms that we have, that it's like reductive, that it's schematic, that it perhaps is overly economistic, why those might come out of that meaning, why you it might also be read as something as a rejection of popular Marxism in general. But but that's not what it started with.

C. Derick Varn 13:51

It does seem like that you have like a family of resemblances in the meaning that's pretty clear, even between the early usage and today's usage. But like when I think about Virgo Marxism, I think about early 1950s Soviet schemas. And then when I know that when Lukash is referring to it, he means what Kosky was telling the second international and those two books that I just mentioned in the beginning, like and so it's it's very interesting to think about, but I also think about like Marx's Marx himself's popular text, yeah, which are very different. I mean, Das Capital is arguably a popular text, but not really. But if you think about the manifesto, are his journalism, are his speeches and writings on France, or what Ingalls was doing, which was actually usually more well-read than what Marx was doing at the time. It is clear that even early on, there's an element of this, and this brings me to something that I always noticed, and is often pointed out by Catholics as like this way in which Marxism is competing with Christianity, but trying to usurp its role. But you you point out that there's a strong influence from Christian like ketchupen tactics, you know, uh because catechisms play a role even in early socialist writing. I mean, if you know the draft that Engels wrote before Marx helped him revise it of the of the manifesto, it's like it has catechism in the title. So, uh, how much influence did Christian teaching techniques and and and whatnot have on these early socialists?

Lenin, Vanguard, And Pedagogy

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, I mean, I think so. At one level, it's just this sort of analogy. You know, so if you what they are, so the Marxists, the central idea is that how do you get a revolution? Well, you get a revolution by having a class conscious proletariat. How do you have a class conscious proletariat where you either wait and just see what happens, maybe a little bit of organizing, or you kind of you know sort of trying to get them over the hill with you know sort of by passing on truths which they know deep in their bones, but they haven't quite fully articulated yet to themselves. And so education, and that means you know, teaching not you know 10, 20 people, you're teaching millions. Um and so if you're that if you're like look for models in history for that, like where do you look? Where have people done that successfully? And so Christianity becomes the obvious, you know, sort of uh maybe not model, but certainly a kind of the most successful one so far. And that's why, you know, and they not only do they seem to do it, not so they seem to be, they seem to know how to do it. They have these massive intellectuals everywhere, these priests who are working in local communities, who are passing on, who are kind of you know translating church doctrine to their parishes, they have you know school set up, they have you know books, they have kind of like primers. So they they seem to know exactly how to do this. And so they become this example. And I think that's why in you know early social democracies, it's the language like you talk about catechism in an early draft of the Communist Manifesto, but you know it's everywhere. Karl Kautsky is the Pope of social democracy, the capital is its Bible, the Marx Marxist message is you know is the good news. I mean, even the there's this kind of version where he says, you know, like they talk about what Marx has a beard and makes him look like an old testament prophet, and that's why he's so sort of like you know suited for that role. And even the term vulgar Marxism, which has complex sort of roots, but one of the roots is the kind of the Vulgate Bible. So like, how do you take this sort of sacred text and kind of put it in a language that everyone understands, translate it into, in this case, Latin. So now so it's there, so obviously it's both an example, but it's not really a model because you know the whole point is that you know Christianity has kept people in their place. It's a kind of you know, it's the opium of masses type argument. So you don't want to sort of fully follow them, but you can but you can learn from them. And I think it's a one example is this if you read, say, Gramsci in the Fizz Notebooks, he's just there's real attentiveness to Catholicism, to Protestantism, to their differences, to how they build up a kind of hegemony. And you know, he he wants to learn from me. He says, you know, so the Catholics have really got this right. They are, they have maintained a close unity between the kind of the worldview of the intellectuals and the worldview of the masses. They've prevented a split from coming, which is enormously dangerous. Now, of course, they've split, he thinks, in the wrong way. They've split in a way that kind of leads to passivity, but he wants to find a way to develop his own version of Marxism that uh prevents that split happening as well. So he's really there, kind of looking to um religious paths, you know, as again, not as a model. I mean, they would reject it, they reject what most of them are rejecting Christianity, but they but they see they are they see lessons that can be learned from them.

C. Derick Varn 18:52

Yeah. I mean that that tension about the relationship to Christianity, because it's a successful mass pedagogical project, but also a major hindrance to what they want to do and in some key ways, does seem you know rather omnipresent and somewhat obvious when you you know once you notice it. I think about also the attempt that Kotsky tries to do of kind of rebranding Christianity's relationship to socialism and some of his historical writing about Christianity. I definitely see this you know concern with Catholicism and Gramsci and what's going on there. It is interesting to me though that that you know the this interest in translating Marxism into something comprehensible and understandable to the worker comes from people who you know we don't think of uh I mean we really don't tend to think of Karl Korsh in particular as a person pushing what would be called a a strip-down vulgar Marxism. I mean, most if people are familiar with Korsh's work, it tends to be as reflected through the Frankfurt School or in his later work on Marxism and philosophy, or even his stuff around the KAP Day, you know, the the Communist Workers Party, which was kind of a council-esque, not really totally councilist, you know, alternative to the Communist Party and the socialist, and the I guess at the time too, socialist parties in Germany. It's it seems interesting that he's very interested in this project. And you point out something I'd again I found surprising coming from him, in particular, Karl Korsch, saying that capital uh was over 50 years old and was totally unable to like reach the average worker in the 1920s. And this is something that he's saying, you know, in the 20s. So this is not even like like the super young course who's just come to Marxism. This is during his period where he's associated with the more left-wing parts and the more theoretically you know adroit parts of the communist movement. Why do you think like you seem to think that this had a substantive shift in him? One of which was that he started focusing on method more than content or results, something that I've always associated with Lukash.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 21:32

What do you think is going on there? And why is this like ignored in the kind of like historical framing of course?

Kautsky’s Conclusions Versus Method

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah. I mean, I think you know, so I think you're right. We tend to think of this argument of method over results or conclusions as to do with Lukatch. We tend to think, of course, not as a teacher. But I think actually, when you look at this argument, this you know, this argument that he says that we have to focus on method, results, it's and we look at it in its broader context, we realize first that it's like everywhere. Lots of people making this argument. This is happening over a whole range of different sort of different thinkers. And the reason they're doing that is because, not because they're necessarily influenced by each other, not because they've read Luke Cat and think, oh, that's a good idea, but it's because they're all arguing against the kind of the classic pedagogical approaches. So I want to suggest that this method over results is just a kind of an internal pedagogical debate about like what do you teach the workers? And that's because kind of the classic model from the 1980 the 1890s and the early 1900s is that, you know, being a worker is really tough. You know, you're working, you know, eight, ten hours a day, you have very little time in the evening, you're tired. You can't, you don't have the time to learn all of Marx. You can't read capital, as you say, there's all of these foreign quotes in it, untranslated. It's also a bit of a slog. So, well, so what do you what would does education involve? And you know, this is Karl Kalski. Kalsky says, well, you know, actually, once we have the revolution, once you know social conditions have changed, then of course people can be reading, have the time to read capital, they understand it. You know, there's nothing inherently, no inherent obstacle against it. It's just it's really difficult in these situations. So what you really need to do, what does worker education involve? Well, work education is well, let's put the method aside, let's put the kind of the systematic unity of Marx's work to side. That's not we can't do that. But let's just get a couple of you know, sort of a central principle, central conclusions that Marx came up. You know, basically that you know, sort of capitalism, you know, you might try and reform it, but it's always going to sort of that's that's a Sisythian task, it's always going to sort of roll back down. You're always it's always gonna seek an opportunity to pull back any reforms, any concessions. And you also need to teach the other con one other conclusion that the the drive capitalism is driving itself to collapse. And this is going to be the first revolution. And then this is that's what the basis of worker education really was in the sort of the 1890s and 1900s. And that makes a lot of sense, it's quite easy. You could have slogans, you could have, you know, simple texts, you know, sort of there's you know that you talked about Kaltsy's the Air Forter program, but you know, he also produces this very shorter text, which is wildly successful, sells in the you know over a million copies. So the demands of social democracy. And it's a short text which gives you kind of you know all you really need to know. And and this kind of makes a lot of sense. You know, it works with what the resources the party has. And basically, this is the major project, but by about 1900, 1905, it's starting to look as if it's misguided. You know, you have the revisionism controversy, and that makes people think, well, maybe the education is not working, maybe we're not producing revolutionary Marxists, but we're producing reformist ones. Then you have the whole question about the war, and then the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, where you know, if the revolution happened in Russia, where you have this tiny working class who, by all measures, are not as mature as the Germans, why isn't it happening in Germany? Why isn't it not happening in France? Why is it not happening in Britain? And so it's not the fault of the workers. The workers have done they're they're large enough. They've who is who's the problem? Well, the problem is the teachers. And so maybe this whole idea that you only teach the conclusions, that's the problem. Maybe Kautsky's approach is what's wrong. And so lots of people are starting to say, okay, well, maybe you have to have the method, maybe you have to have something a little bit more complicated. Maybe that teaching the conclusions was the problem. And you know, so I think that's kind of what they are trying to do. Now, when you do it, they're doing different things. Korsh is saying, well, you know, you don't can't teach the method. His quintessence doesn't teach Marx's method. But intellectuals need to know that method because what we need to know is we need to know work out what Marx was thinking, how Marx was thinking about the economy, about society in the 1860s. And then we need to work out what he would be thinking now in 1920. And if you do that, then you'll be able to craft these sort of these messages, which are kind of like tailor-made to the working class then, that they will pick up and understand, they'll pick up and they will use to drive them to revolution. So that's the kind of you know, Lucas, he actually thinks that it's the workers who need to understand the method. He thinks you can sort of which we can sort of talk further about. He thinks that uh if you just learn the conclusions, well, of course you're not going to become revolutionary. It's by the very nature of that pedagogical technique, is going to lead you to sort of quietism and sitting it out.

C. Derick Varn 26:48

Well, yeah, I mean, you point out that Lukash thought that Katsy's in particular brand of Marxism and Marxist pathology would present capitalism class as an imitability, and he's worried about that. I mean, I was I was actually rereading uh Lars Lee for a completely different reason last night, and I see all the I went I got to that section, and even I was like, man, that argument sounds really naive from from you know even a 1920s, 1930s, 1940s position, much less from you know, I don't know, 2025. But it was it it was incredibly common. And I do to defend Lukash. I mean, we can have our criticisms of Lukash and I have many, but one of the things I do think that that that Lukash is right about is like the inevitable the inevitability stuff in Marx is also complicated by this idea of the ruin of the contending classes as an actual possibility. It's you know, socialism inevitable, or you know, this other very bad thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

Yeah, socialism.

C. Derick Varn 28:00

Yeah, yeah. And Kotsky makes an argument that makes you know, you know, largely goes by it step by step, it but makes an argument that makes it sound like there's literally no way that socialism doesn't eventually happen somehow. Like that, even if you don't have social democracy, even social democracy fails, the the workers' movement will necessarily produce a kind of radicalism which would necessarily turn on capital in a specific way, and basically social democracy and Marxism would be reinvented from the ground up. And Lukash very clearly thinks that's dangerous, particularly you know, after the revolution in Russia, as you just said. So, what does Lukash find particularly dangerous about it? And why why does he actually think that Kotsky may be responsible for stuff like the revisionism crisis, even though Kotsky is the opponent to Bernstein?

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Yeah.

Lukács And The Problem Of Method

SPEAKER_00 28:58

So I mean, I think there's a there's sort of a lot going on. It's also, I think, we have to be careful when we read Kotsky, because you know, the Kowski Air Force program, where he, you know, and that which is the central to Larsley's thesis, is about you know, is deliberately focused on teaching. So it's like this is it's written for the workers, you know, sort of it's written for kind of like the kind of the the relatively well-educated worker who not not for everyone, but who will then carry pass it on, especially those who want to be agitators. So it's about, and it says at the beginning, you know, we're going to sort of it makes this claim about the you know, we can teach the conclusions, you just people just don't have the time for the method yet. So we're gonna get there. And I think that changes how we look at it because you know, he does he thinks that, you know, not as necessary as a kind of a theory of history, but at least at a certain level, at what you're teaching the workers, you want them to you want people to know that the forces of history are working on their side, that there is this sort of like engine of history moving in this direction, because he thinks that that is an essential part of building up the consciousness and the will to be involved in revolution. So the kind of there's a kind of a sense of kind of the psychology there. And even when he has this inevitability, the inevitability runs through human consciousness. It's like, you know, it's uh he says at one point, you know, just because I'm saying that history is happening, that the capitalism is inevitable, doesn't mean that you can just put your hands in your pockets and you know, sort of wait it out. It's inevitable because it's going to inevitably build up this consciousness amongst the workers who will then act. And how do you build up that consciousness? Well, you get a sense that you know this is this is where history is going. Get on board, get on the you know, bandwagon, because and this is not a doomed quest. This is not some kind of uh you know, sort of quixotic task. This is this is gonna happen. Now, you know, already people are saying this is if you think like that, if you if you talk about this necessity, well, some people are gonna say, well, you know, revolutions is difficult and bloody, and you could die, you could definitely get hurt, almost suddenly lose your job. Um, and you know, if it's inevitable, why why put yourself in that danger? Why sort of sit out? Why can't you just sit it out and allow it to come? Um, and so there's this worry already from the uh from the you know in the 1900s that this is what you know, this is what actually um Koutsky's teaching is producing not actually a unified working class, but uh but a divided one. And then you know, Lukac comes along and says, well, you know, this is because if you just focus on the results, then of course it will make you, if you just say, you know, the result is that you know capitalism is doomed by its own internal contradictions, well, of course you'll forget the kind of the method that he got there, which involves thinking about social relations and how they change. And if you recognize the method, then you realize that history is not something happening behind the backs of the workers, it's something that's happening, that is dependent upon very particular situations on their action. So now, of course, you know, the I I'm sort of sympathetic to Kaulski because you know it's very easy to see how what is this pedagogy? Well, Kautsky knows exactly what this pedagogy involves. He knows you know what books you write, he knows you you've got to worry about you know various levels of education, you've got to get people literate, and you've got to help to improve their literacy, you have to write the right text that will engage them, and you need to sort of, you know, he translates capital because he doesn't like the truth, he doesn't like all these foreign language quotes, and he thinks you you can make it read more fluidly than Marx's original. So you can do all these things and they they make sense. You know, when Kel when Lukács comes along and says, you know, you've got to teach the method, well, you know, the question is like, how? How do you teach this method? It's very hard. And Lukács comes up with lots of different answers which constantly change over the course of the 1920s. But it's a it's it is a pretty it's a pretty pretty big problem because the party just doesn't have the resources. The party's just not big enough, does can't can't organize a graduate seminar with the entire working class of Hungary or Germany or whatever. So, you know, that is, and so I think Lukat runs into problems too.

C. Derick Varn 33:11

Well, I guess you know, to get to get to both Lukash and course, we have kind of skipped over you know a couple crucial events, and and one thing that I noticed from your book that I've never actually never thought about before is what is to be done and state and revolution, in particular, even more in state and revolution. You see the shift in the way you know, Marxists who are not academics, these are people engaged in popular education, Pravda is basically an education project, uh this too. The you know, both as a revolutionary social democratic party of Russia and later on as the Bolshevik split of it, you very much have this consideration about education, but Lenin argues almost like a modern scholar in that he cites quotations and cites debates and goes through systematically the logical dates, particularly in State and Revolution. You know, why do you think he's doing that? It's clear that both those texts are educational, particularly what is to be done, but but why is he going through in this way that seems like to us, like you know, those of us who've who are trained in modern scholarship, that just seems natural to do. Like we cite our arguments, we go through, but so we don't think about it. But when I compare it to, you know, these earlier Marxist texts where they aren't really doing that, they're they're they're capsizing conclusions, or they're walking through implications, or they're doing the thought experiments, clearly, like you're like I would be doing in the like front loading a cinema or you know, in a classroom. What accounts for that shift?

State And Revolution As Teaching

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Yeah. I mean, I think he's just in a very difficult situation. And I think it, you know, I mean, it's interesting. I think it's important to recognize that you know he's writing what States and Revolution just outside of St. Petersburg, and then he basically gives it up. He gives it up mid and he stops. And you can sort of say this of, you know, he's he says, you know, far better to you know have the experience of revolution than to write about it. And I think there's this tension when he's writing it. He's he you all through the text, he's making these claims about, oh, I'm I'm I'm giving all these quotes, I'm discovering these sort of slightly uh obscure Marx texts to try and prove to you my theory of the state. Oh, this is going to be tough reading, not many people are gonna do this. And I think the way to kind of think about it is that he's so he it is a pedagogical text. He's trying to uh change it, but he's got he's got a tough task because two things he wants to do. So he's so he's come back to Russia in 1917, and he basically says, well, who is the most important pedagogue in Russia at the time? And he thinks it's Kautsky. He thinks that Kautsky has read far more than anyone else, he's translated more than Marx, he's he's has his ideas have been enormously influential in kind of you know educational circles in Russia, even for Lenin himself before the war. And but then, you know, of course, now Kautsky and Lenin have split. They split over the outbreak of the World War I, you know, sort of because Kautsky isn't sufficiently opposed to the war. And then also they split especially over the kind of the uh February revolution of 1917, where Kautsky explicitly says, you know, this has kind of got to work. The Russian working class is too small, not mature enough, it's just not ready for revolution. So we need to work with the provisional government, use the rights that they've given us to kind of further promote it, and then slowly build up the working class, make it bigger, help help kind of this economic transformation that will make it more powerful, but also enter into this educational process that will make it more mature. And Lenin is saying, no, that's entirely wrong. And this is it's getting in the way of revolution because actually now is a revolutionary time. And especially if you tell the workers if this is the message that they're hearing, you work with the provisional government, they've got, they're going to have the entirely wrong idea about what they need to do now. And so what so in one stage he's trying to argue against Kautsky, he's saying that Kautsky's got, he's teaching the wrong stuff, and this has been, and he has to sort of show why Kautsky's wrong. It's kind of a complex argument because you know, Marx doesn't talk too much about the state after revolution or what you know, sort of gather bits from various different texts, and so it gets quite philological quite quickly. But you so and he wants to suggest that sort of Kautsky has, you know, basically missed the question of the state, and this has led into all his problems. And so this is this intellectual project, but it's an intellectual project which is also about pedagogy, it's about getting it out to the masses. And he wants, you know, he says we need to teach the workers now what they need to do now for the revolution. They need to get this work out. And I think that's so, and that's where he sort of starts to have his doubts. Like, why is this the right way now during the revolution, during this very, very revolutionary moment to encourage revolution, to write this book? Well, maybe actually the best thing to do is what he says, is maybe what's the best teacher now? Well, maybe the best teacher is just the experience of revolution, the experience of revolution which taught the proletariat in France in 1871 and can now teach the Russian proletariat in 1917. And so if he gets back, and maybe that's the best teacher in these situations at this time. So I so he's you know, that's I think his he's he's trying to do too many things at once. And I think that's why he basically gives up on that book.

C. Derick Varn 39:06

Well, you know, it does seem like without that, though, you don't get history in class consciousness by Lukash. But you know, Lukash A is accused of making errors from you know the the Bolsheviks later himself over that book, the accusations of Tailism being one of the primary ones. But the other thing that that we get with the Lukash is like when I read history and class consciousness, I I I do get that he's trying to popularize this this form of methodology that's very Hegelian, and this Hegelian methodology is is what he's aiming for. But I will admit that it almost, you know, if I gave a worker history in class consciousness, I don't imagine the concept of totality is gonna be obvious to them. Yeah, uh how did that book go over at the time? I mean it's a classic now, but you know, not only was it condemned, I I imagine it probably also didn't really quote work.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

I mean, it's important to recognize it happens after the failure of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. So he's in exile in Vienna, he's writing it, he's writing there massive splits within the uh Hungarian Communist Party that that he's on the kind of basically the losing side of. And he's so it's his attempt to try and sort of understand what went wrong. I mean, it's also I think it's a book that is an account of sort of education, but one that comes to the conclusion that that at this time you know education narrowly defined isn't really going to cut it. So if you know, sort of he he the first ideas where he develops his idea of Bones about method and conclusions happens when he's the revolution has happened. And he thinks this is the great moment. The clock Hungarians have come to class consciousness, they've taken power, and he's trying to describe it. And he says that they and he says, well, you know, that they they have understood the method. Um, they have understood Marx's method, but then of course he's writing it afterwards where it's failed, and he thinks that it's failed in large part because the lack of resolve of the Hungarian working class, especially in the facing kind of you know uh foreign armies in in 19 in you know in the period. And so he's so he's trying to think about so he's he set himself this target, and now he's trying to work out how is it the possible to get it. Well, at one point he says, well, maybe you can't teach people to understand the totality, but maybe you can give them the idea of the totality, and that the idea of the totality will be enough to kind of set get a sense of their action. But later on he says, Well, you know, maybe the real reason is if you can't teach this stuff, what you can do is you can draw out the kind of the inherent knowledge. So he thinks that actually he says at various moments every worker is deep down an orthodox Marxist, i.e., one who understands the uh understands the totality because they live capitalism. They live this, you know, and if you just put them in the right situation, then suddenly it all makes sense to them. You don't have to sort of write a really complex. In fact, maybe even a few slogans. This is kind of interesting that he gets back to, in some ways, the the Kalski position. Maybe even a few slogans at the right time, in a revolutionary moment, will suddenly click and bring them up. So he embraces this idea that maybe the true teacher is the school of revolution, and that will, as you do that, you sort of marching on the streets, protesting, striking will suddenly make you realize that as a class unified in solidarity, the proletariat has the ability to transform the course of history. Right. But you can't teach it, but maybe you can live it.

C. Derick Varn 42:56

Right. Which is why when you read read those sections of history and class consciousness, totality feels almost circular because it's like one of those things that you know that it you're embedded in when you are embedded in it and it happens, and then you know you're in a revolutionary spirit because the totality is obvious to you, but it can't really be obvious to you until yeah. From a from a purely logical form, that seems circular. But if you're looking at it from a description of maybe trying to get people to look at like this experience, it makes a lot more sense as like almost a pedagogical phenomenology. It's like, okay, we can't really replicate this until you live it, but maybe we can hint towards it in our educational app, you know, efforts.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Yeah, I think it's also just worth. I mean, I in my view, it's because you know he sets himself this standard at a time when he thinks the revolution is one, and then he's faced with the problem when he thinks when he realizes he hasn't, you know, he he writes first comes to this argument when he thinks he's the revolution has happened, and then suddenly he realized the revolution hasn't actually happened, or has it happened effectively, and so he has to then work out how it's possible to make this happen. So I think it's a little bit of a kind of Hail Mary pass in my opinion. That you know, so well, you know, maybe in the right situation they'll get it, basically.

History And Class Consciousness Tested

C. Derick Varn 44:11

Yeah, and this is beyond the scope of your book, so we don't have to dwell on it. But I think about like later Lukash, which is often considered semi-Stalinized and for decent reasons, but like in his text that we now call the destruction of reason, you you seem to be getting more of a theory about why this didn't work and what bourgeois intellectual currents caught were like blocks more than a positive pedagogy. And that seems to be a lot of his late work is like more explaining, like, you know, why did this not actually so it makes sense that this that this comes from this. Like dual recognition, things feel really optimistic, but also yet not as simultaneously. One of the things that I got from your book is the importance of not reading these people through their later lens, like to try to approach the time the periodicity of each text. I mean, this is a good practice anyway, but we tend not to do it in the context that it was written in, not in the context of the author when we know the author's whole life. And with someone like Lukash or Korsh, that seems very important. Like, because reading, you know, late Lu, very late Lukash is very pessimistic, and you know, right before he he passes. And reading history and class consciousness through the end of through the lens of dat probably does completely decontextualize it for people.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

Yeah.

C. Derick Varn 45:40

I mean, I think this is the general thing.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

We tend to see this as kind of this Marxism a failure after the war. And it is important to realize that they were thought that it could happen any moment. I mean, this is a moment of great revolutionary potential for many of them. Now, there are obstacles, of course, there are always obstacles. You know, it's it's hard because, you know, of course, capitalism is not going to go easily, but uh these are, you know, the we we project the pessimism back. Um, even though we can perhaps see where it's the seeds of it are starting to grow, but you know, at this stage, it's not that they've retreated into theory, they've not retreated into sort of you know, sort of hook grand hotel abyss. They have they think that these are these are ways, they're thinking in very concrete ways about what it what it would mean now to have a revolution or in the near future.

C. Derick Varn 46:33

Yeah, and it's interesting how much this parallels Korsh, but Korsh goes in slightly different directions with it. Um you know, we talk about Western Marxism, all the vogue today, although one cannot blame the CAA for either of these two figures. It seems you know, no, course Korsh is interesting, keeping everything rigorous while also making it, you know, approachable. Yeah. Uh do you think he feels like he ever achieved that?

SPEAKER_00 47:07

So I mean I think when you look back on his later work, he starts to you know re to reassess his you know his he writes this autocritique of Marxism and philosophy at the end of the 1920s, and he is uh he thinks that you know he has perhaps I mean so there is this sort of central kind of problem, which is you know, sort of which he retrospectively thinks that he might have fallen into, is that well, so you have a lot of faith in the workers. The workers are, you know, that the the ground is fertile, they are ready for revolution. You just need to sort of do your part and do your part well. But of course, they're not revolutionary yet. And so what they know and think is not quite what they need to know and think in order to be able to, in order to act. And so you have this now. Are you what you're teaching them just really what they already know in their bones? It's like you know, I mean Lukac says this, you know, every worker is a, as I said, is in their bones an orthodox Marxist. Luka uh course thinks this, that there's the revolutionary workers' movement is just primed ready for this revolutionary theory. So are you just giving back their own ideas? Or is it because it's different from what they think, it doesn't actually an imposition from a foreign class? So, like, is you know, when Lenin criticizes tail ending, you know, that's like leading from behind, going to the lowest common denominator, he wants to promote this, a theory which is ahead of the workers, that it's of you know, it leads to their kind of aspirations. But and you know, but is this just an imposition? And Lukakor starts to think, well, maybe this is actually a kind of form of dictatorship, maybe this is ideological dictatorship. It's the the party imposing its own ways, possibly bourgeois ways, onto the worker. And and then he starts to worry that his own version, which you know involves the workers, you know, intellectuals crafting a Marxism that is suited for the workers at their time, is that just actually intellectual imposition as well? And he starts to think that maybe that was the case. He certainly didn't think that in 1923 or 1922, but by the end of the decade, he did.

C. Derick Varn 49:22

Yeah. I mean, in and I'm gonna bring up an obscure figure, but in some ways he sounds like like a lesser version of someone who took it to the most extreme, like Hermann Goethe, who basically even rejected unions, like all unions, not just you know, bourgeois, you know, unions, like even communist-led ones by council communists. Those are also probably bad because they're too much of an imposition. So, you know, this this leads me to you know, your your fifth chapter uh discusses a figure that I was not super aware of. This is Henrik Demon, who begins, you know, what could be called the psychological term, but he does it in terms of work education as opposed to like the Frankfurt School, which is highly theoretical. But what interests me in this is it does seem to converge on some other things that are going on. Um, like it seems to be at the same time we start seeing you know the cults of personality stuff develop in the Soviet Union, it also seems to be later than, but echoing things that you heard from George Sorrell and the kind of parallel syndicalist movement about the need for workers' myths, the you know what do you think is this influence that the man has, and and what do you think is kind of a forgotten figure?

The “School Of Revolution”

SPEAKER_00 50:48

Yeah, so he's definitely somebody who we read later or his later work back. Um, that the later part that's really important is that he's in Belgian and he's part of the socialist government before World War II, and he basically um encourages the king to capitulate uh Hitler, and he sees himself as and he collaborates. And you know, he's not a firm believer in fascism, but he certainly thinks that you know, so that he people fascists are people and the Nazis are people you can work with, and they've got some things right. So, and that is projected back onto his earlier work. But he was, you know, he he was a you know, he was a radical in before World War II, he was you know friends of Luxembourg and Leibknicht, and uh he was after the war, he was uh in um involved in education, he sort of ran various schools in Belgium, also in in Frankfurt, and and he writes this book in 1926, which is a massive bestseller called The Psychology of Socialism, and it's basically sort of picks up from the world he knew or world of worker education, and he's trying to sort of he gets to this sort of dilemma, and he says basically that you know the work of what of education is about getting millions of people to understand Marx, but insofar as you kind of critique the kind of the pure Marxist, what he calls a kind of the genteel Marxist of scholars who get Marx right, it just it just was water off a duck's back. The workers don't get it, it's uh and he so he thinks it's it's a defunct truth, it's a dead truth. But if you kind of you know adapt Marxism to the things that will really really gain traction, the things that work best are the ones, the the kind of the distortions of worker psychology caused by capitalism. So, you know, they live in a materialist world where everything's doing for kind of inquisitive, you know, it's all about money. And so they want they they want stuff, but they see the power of the machine around them that controls their lives, and so they tend to think that history works like a machine. And and so if you it's not surprising then that if they are so deformed by capitalism, if you know capitalism is such this this such you know a debilitating condition for the workers, it's not surprising that the what the Marxism that gets picked up is this reductive version. And so he says vulgar Marxism is a living error. So you have this problem. You can you get caught between the two. You either sort of keep the truth of Marxism, but it doesn't work, or you work out and kind of doesn't get any, nobody nobody picks it up, nobody reads it, apart from a small number, or when it becomes a proper political movement, you it's only because you have other marks. And that's what he thinks that the Soviet Union have done. They've kind of done, they've appealed to the lowest common denominator, and they think that, and so therefore, no wonder that this is not the kind of the emancipatory project that that that you know the man and others have signed up for beforehand. And so that's this so that's this really big challenge. He's just taking on this the central question of education: how do you actually educate millions of people? And he thinks that it basically fails. And one of the reasons I think he becomes enamored by the Nazis, because he thinks now the Nazis they can really move the masses, they can really get sort of broader support and they can get things done. And maybe if you took a few lessons from them, that you could sort of institute socialism in a way that would kind of take away all these distortions of capitalism, and then maybe you have a proper socialist consciousness advise. So he gets he gets enamored by their kind of you know popular success because he thinks that the kind of the pedagogical project has failed.

C. Derick Varn 54:34

Yeah. To put it somewhat vulgarly, he seems to be the the kind of nightmare combination of Frankfurt school conclusions and Sorellian and maybe even Italian elite school conclusions all at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

I think that's a good way of putting it, yes.

C. Derick Varn 54:51

Um, so he's just like because I was reading him like, oh, this reminds me of Robert Mikkels, and it reminds me of of, you know, also a social democrat at one point. It reminds me a little bit of Werner Sumbart, also a Marxist who became a Nazi. And it definitely, I mean, he just screams Sorel. Yeah. Um quotes Sorel. I mean, he he's he's influenced by Sorel. Right. But it also seems to me like maybe this is an emergent tendency in the in this pedagogical line of thinking that like because he's not, you know, this isn't the only place where this happens. And I mean it's an interesting detour. I I think the whole the the conclusion that, like, you know, socialist theory can't be taught to the workers because they're too distorted by capitalism now. So, you know, if you can't beat them, I don't know, do that. Yeah, is an interesting problem.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

I mean, I think it is the problem that revolution's not happening, class consciousness doesn't seem to be emerging in the way that people thought it was to. So, how do you and you know, one one option is to give up, basically.

Deman’s Psychological Turn

C. Derick Varn 56:02

Yeah, I mean I I and that brings us to Gramsci. Although I guess you know it's worth mentioning that during this time period that we're talking, that this is when vulgar Marxism really shifts from an accusation against teachers to an accusation of bad theory. And that starts with Lenin, but it you know, it's really moving through this time period, right? But between Lukash and the man. We get him picking up something that's mentioned, you know, in Lenin, but not a whole lot else in Marxism, and that's hegemony as a you know, a kind of cultural force. And a lot of people make a lot out of this. Yeah, you know, many a right-wing conspiracy theory begins here. But you know, you you talk about the organic electoral as like a solution to this pedagogical crisis, and really also a solution to a political crisis simultaneously, because it's the idea that you have someone who is from the working class rising up, you know, as an advanced sector uh or an advanced an embodiment of the advanced sector of the class itself, it's not bourgeois or petit bourgeois as a lot of socialist intellectuals admittedly self-admittedly were. It is also a solution to a political problem, which is like, well, how do we have leadership in this point? You know, why do you think he comes to this as appearing with hegemony at the time that he does? I mean, if you compare him to the other, you know, you know, like I think about him in comparison with his like great frenemy Bordiga, who goes in a completely different, like almost platonic direction of like, no, we just double down on the program and we make it like absolute and we don't, yeah, and we just insist on it until all the factions go away and we don't, you know, like sessions, yeah. Yeah, Gramsci clearly thinks this isn't gonna work, and you know, I mean, history, there's not a mass board gets party anywhere on the planet. So so so what what how do you think the organic intellectual is a solution to this pedagogical and political problem? And then how does that relate to hegemony?

SPEAKER_00 58:24

So, I mean, I think you know, it's I mean, I want to say in some ways, you know, you know, she talks about pedagogy all the time, is you know, all through the prison notebooks. But I want to suggest you know that, and so but that it does time that's the quite practical questions of teaching. And I I I draw a lot of attention to this, you know, he runs this correspondence correspondence course in 925, and he's uh it's you know, so it's it's an odd thing to do because he's you know he's the leader of the Italian Communist Party, and he's decided to send out this you know so to 400 students around Italy to teach them the basics of Marxism, and he's you know reading their papers, and um, you know, this is a man who with a lot with you know a lot of things to do, and this is what he decides to do. And and I think you know, so he so he thinks that the that this correspondence course is a is a failure. He stops it after two installments, and he's trying to sort of work basically to rework it by the time he's arrested. And then you sort of so but I think he's sort of thinking about these problems, and he's thinking about the problem we just talked about about that demand put forward. And I kind of make this point that you sort of that your demand is you depend on how you count as hard in the prison notebooks, but you know, he's he's the third most cited Marxist thinker in the whole of the prison notebooks. And he seems to have really sort of annoyed Gramsci. I mean, Gramsci hates him, he thinks he's got it completely wrong. And this is way before um demand turns to uh collaborationism. But he thinks that sort of this dilemma that you can't teach the workers is if you teach them, if if it if you're successful and you pass something on, it's gonna be necessarily denatured by the fact that's picked up by these people corrupted by capitalism. And if you hold the truth, it's just never gonna never gonna stick. And he and I think that you know that's this problem that he's trying to address, and he thinks basically that the uh the organic intellectual is a way of doing it. You know, what the organic intellectual is doing, it's both somebody who is deeply in you know ingrained in, involved in their communities, who comes from the working class, but also importantly, the organic intellectual is not transmitting knowledge, is not sort of taking knowledge from the outside, as it were, to use Kautsky's language, even if this has been developed elsewhere. What the organic intellectual does is trained in a proper way to help the working class think through their own ideology, to work through what Lukak uh what Gramsci calls common sense, which he thinks has, and to basically sort of pick out the bits that lead to the sense of the workers' agency that allow them to engage as active people in the world to develop their own hegemony rather than be subject to somebody else's hegemony. And he and so and he thinks that this solves demand's problem because if you do that, you're not you the problem demand identifies is when you try and you know sort of send in from the outside this Marxist theory and hope it sticks. And he thinks it sticks with the bits that most get that are most distorted by capitalism. And Luke says, well, there are those bits there, sure. Yeah, we know this. We we see, I mean, that's how bourgeois hegemony works. Of course, there are um aspects which sort of like gum up the system that are kind of add doubt in the working class. But there are all these other bits that are that emerge from their own practice, from their own action. And if you're organic intellectual, you're able to sort of like tease those bits out, show that they're in contradiction with the aspects of bourgeois hegemony, and slowly help the working class discard this old bourgeois hegemony and develop their own worldview, a kind of a philosophy of praxis. And so if that you do that, then you don't, you're able to sort of get past demand's dilemma. You're able to sort of you know work through the kind of the positive aspects of uh what he calls common sense. And you know, and that's kind of like a you know, a big, I mean, it is a shift in the way in which we think of education because you know the way I suggested it worked beforehand for basically everyone, for Korsh, for Lukac, for Lenin, is that you know the the intellectuals, you you you you go to the workers, you understand, you try and put yourself in their situation from their standpoint, you try and understand the world from their perspective. It's not objective, disinterested science. And you develop this theory in close engagement with them, really important, but then you give it to them and you know, and they will understand it, and you teach it to them. And those are two separate processes. And what Gramsci is saying is now actually the development of what he calls, you know, of Marxism, but it's like what he calls the philosophy of praxis, emerges out of the very it's the kind of you know socratic engagement with the workers, helping them think through what they believe, work out their contradictions. That's where Marxism emerged. You know, so Marxism emerges in the educational act, not separate from it.

C. Derick Varn 1:03:29

Yeah. I mean, uh one of the things that that your book actually made clear to me is like I could read Polo Fieri, even though he comes out of a completely different liberation theology context, as actually also trying to do a similar thing that what Gramsci is getting on to with this organic electual.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

Yeah, I think exactly so it's you know, so it's uh it's not um the banking system of education.

Hegemony And Organic Intellectuals

C. Derick Varn 1:03:54

Right. Yeah, it is interesting, you know, when when you read the prison notebooks, which are admittedly not easy to read because part of them are in code because he's in prison, but how much this idea of education comes forward, how much he's pulling from older traditions, how much Catholicism and early republicanism, you know, since the focus I mean, people tend to read Gramsci's writing about Machiavelli as just about power, and it's no, he's also writing about like how do you form mass movements with people who are relatively uneducated and get them educated? Like, yeah, that's a major concern that he has. Yeah, I think the major concern, I would say. Right. And and I I I think, you know, do you think there's a lot of misunderstandings of Gramsci because people not really think about this in his educational context?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:51

Or you know, I mean, I think you know, the grant, I mean, there's a whole Gramsci industry turning out books, and many of them are kind of excellent, but there's also a kind of like a common understanding of Gramsci, which I think often runs into these problems that you know sees him as a kind of a theorist of bourgeois hegemony, which I just I think you know it's part of it, but only it's only a small part of his work. He is also it's about proletarian hegemony. So again, there's this attempt to try and make him into this sort of pessimist, you know. So yes, so I mean I think there is no we have certainly picked up a kind of you know sort of distorted one because we you know focusing on bourgeois hegemony is focusing is a kind of an analysis of the workers, focusing on proletarian hegemony is about an engagement with the workers. And if we forget that, and then I think we miss what Gramsci is doing. Right.

C. Derick Varn 1:05:43

Yeah, he's not uh you know the organic intellectual is not just that socialists come up with a great idea and enforce it through state apparatuses and then everything is okay. I mean, like, which is I think the most vulgar reading of Gramsci by both friends and enemies. Yeah. I guess this brings me to the to the last chapter of your book, and you talk about the context of Latin America, particularly Peru, in the guise of Jose Carlos Maria Tigue, I should be able to pronounce that. I speak Spanish, but fucking it up. Nonetheless, it also reminded me of Marxism in China because I've read a lot of Chinese Marxist early Marxist texts, which I have said often read like Taoist folk philosophy at first glance, but I'm remembering we're talking to illiterate illiterate farmers and trying to work up very quickly. So, and also it's it's I I often don't know if just the Mandarin's translated poorly, but you talk about this in the Latin American context where this you know. vulgar Marxist thing really has a very like a very kind of nasty let's say classist angle to it where you're you're coming at people who are trying to educate you know peasants who are not even fully industrialized into a a theory to developed in an you know an industrializing Europe and and it seems to like both get to the forgetting the importance of the pedagogical project these people have an audience and their audience has its limitations i mean in a very basic sense and then also you know forget that many of these Marxists are working with european ideas in the context of areas where they're not you know that they're trying to to do massive amounts of education very quickly with people who are not exposed to this you know the European notions of you know scientific specificity etc how do you think like in a way like you know you talk about this as a limit to vulgar Marxism but it's also a limit to the accusation that like there's there are some unfortunate things by this time developing in that accusation. What do you see in this attempt to do like peasant education with Marxist terms and how that changes the way people respond to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

So I actually I see it as quite liberating. I mean so because you know I I I focus on Aradki because I think he he uses the term but he also uses in a way that helps suggest why it's not really useful for him. And that's with you know one of the things that you know I've been suggesting so far is the sort of the difficulty about this sort of form of education is that there is this you know an optimism about the workers that they could they can get it that they you know there's something about their lives because it's so shaped by industrial capitalism that they will just know the truth of Marxism when they get it. And so that kind of faith that they have some sort of essential connection to Marxism means that you can kind of like hold on to it as a kind of you know defender of that orthodoxy as long as possible because just wait for the right moment and they will get it. And that's where you know this kind of optimism about the workers can lead to forms of you know I can you know forms of authoritarianism because you start to think that you know well I know the answer and they are in the right moment they're going to get it too and just have to hold on to that as long as possible until the right moment comes. Now of course when you're talking about rural peasants in rural agricultural laborers in Peru, you know they're not part of the capitalist system. They've not been shaped. They're not ready there's no theory which makes you think that they're ready to understand this. And so suddenly there's sort of the the the kind of this the very thing that allows you to hold on tight to sort of you know sort of to make no concessions to not rethink you know perhaps not to sort of uh to you know dare say learn from what they think and what they do you know that prohibition has sort of been lifted because what you're now doing is you're now trying to work out well what is a kind of a socialist consciousness that would work for Peru? How would it fit with what they already know? How would it make sense to them? How might it guide them in their actions? And there's a much greater kind of flexibility there. There's a much less you know people don't cleave to orthodoxy in quite the same way. And so and so I think that you know if you lose this kind of this notion of vulgar Marxism to criticize all the people who disagree with you you open up to a space for a much more sort of fluid a much more heteroxic Marxism now of course there are problems with that you can lead to a a kind of you know it's quite difficult to know what to do, what actually counts as of consciousness what counts as a vulgar Marxism is very useful because it allows you to say okay well this is the wrong form this is what we have to do better.

Gramsci’s Correspondence Course

C. Derick Varn 1:10:57

You just lose that orientation but you also lose I think some of the strictures that problem in in in Europe I guess it leads me to think about where we are right now and you know the the the yeah I mean we've talked I mean we could talk about at least two of the individuals that we've spoken about maybe three now because Lenin's also a lot more discussed in academia than he used to be as having academic cottage industries around them like there's definitely a Lukash industrial complex there's definitely a Gramsci industrial complex etc but this gets to like a whole problem of Western Marxism you know as a tradition and Western Marxism is itself a fraught term that we can't agree on what it means in any given day um but that it it by the by the mid 50s and in the United States kind of probably as early as 1930s to be honest you start seeing more and more Marxist in the academy and that seems to be where it's focused and yet that also seems to be to weirdly signal that it's no longer part of an educational project. So while all the Marxists are actually now in educational institutions Marxism is not a mass educational project anymore. What do you think that that means and do you think there's you know a shift in directions here I say this as a person who literally does a podcast that is not only but about 50% at least about Marxist history and theory that is not that is not aimed at academia even if I think you know probably about 40% of my audience is probably academics.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:51

Is that shifting back are we now seeing you know an end to the the the the long march through the academy yeah I mean I think you know so I think you know these are some you know difficult and complex questions. I'm the so I so I first want to say that you know actually maybe what we call Western Marxism is seen as as the kind of beginning of this retreat kind of this esoteric theory that's kind of you know the Perry Anderson uh line insertion Western Marxism that's you know detached from the working class. Well I think there's there's more in there than we give it credit for and I want I often to think that you know actually maybe we've got it the wrong way around. Maybe it isn't that theory has become detached from the workers maybe that there is there are institutional conditions that existed in the 1920s that just don't exist in the 1930s and 40s. And basically that's you know sort of who is you at the beginning who is do we think of as we think of it as kind of you know Stalinist education sort of reductive kind of and basically you know what happens I think is in the 1920s where I really focused much of my book it really made it there there were teachers there were programs there were class books there were classes there were schools you could really think about you know being engaged in a in a mass project of education through the institutions of the party and then as the party Stalinize in the late 1920s and suddenly you know basically what are they reading in well they're reading you know Stalin's short course on the history of the Soviet Communist Party which sort of crowds out all other things it's very difficult to work out how it is that you're going to involve yourself in this mathematical process. So it's not so much that they move away from education it's that education shuts down the kind of mass party education just shuts down for them. And so I think that means that maybe we don't see the problem as in the theory but we kind of maybe there are still resources in the theory for helping us think through these questions. And you know so so I want to recuperate them a little bit more. But that said at the end I mean so you know I mean the trouble is that they it's not a very happy story. They're not enormously successful these thinkers I mean so Gramsci is perhaps the most but of course he dies you know basically basically dies in prison and they are never able to achieve their goals and I I think in some ways they are still hobbled by this problem that I just you know laid out beforehand about around this question of vulgar Marxism when vulgar Marxism becomes a way of kind of protecting orthodoxy that they shut down the possibilities of thinking differently about Marxism from thinking differently about Marxism as a mass project. And so you know it's and in that way so I think that they can they can raise questions for us. I think it's really important to think about you know sort of when we you know to think about you know a politics that is is not just about a number of academics you know sort of talking to themselves that's always going to be a bit sort of a it's always going to lead to failure but they raise the question of kind of what does it mean to to build up a kind of a mass democratic movement of people acting in solidarity with each other to achieve political goals that's I think a really important question. How do you achieve kind of you know sort of a a uh that solidarity you know I don't know whether they they gave us good answers and we have to come up with those answers ourselves.

Beyond Europe: Mariátegui And Peasants

C. Derick Varn 1:16:13

Yeah I I definitely uh feel that as a as a union rep and a person who even deals with the educated I often feel that there's just a massive gap between people who are immersed in this history and theory and people who are not and sectarian Marxism unfortunately hasn't been a great answer to this either since it tends to speak in such a specific lingo even more than the academics that like most people just don't know what they're talking about much less you know whether or not we agree with you know the the party program that they're pushing from whatever year they pick um usually sometime between the the 30s and the 60s and I also admit you know working working with this myself that you just explaining how these ideas developed and split and what people mean by them is like bewildering now because you have an accumulation of of sex and meanings and interpretations and it this was another sense that it reminded me of Christianity actually you know you know even as a person who is an avowed socialist I was like yeah I have to explain distinctions that you didn't have to explain in you know 1890 or even 1920 because those extinctions didn't exist yet and that's a big barrier to entry but I I found I just found your book really refreshing as a person who's like you know it always seems like we're talking about economism or political determinism all the time and and I'm just like well we can't really the whole purpose of uh of political parties is not just to organize to take power that is the purpose of it but it's also to intersect with with the with the class to educate them and that is not part of the political party tradition explicitly and other traditions in the same way that it is in socialism. Yeah like like you know liberals I guess they kind of had that conservative parties have never really totally had that even though they had propaganda outreach the education stuff wasn't part of their mission historically really because I mean why would they even care who you know the hoi poly aren't really supposed to be a part of politics anyway depending on how conservative you are so I I find this refreshing to think about and I I find that you know your discussion about how vulgar Marxism shifted through this this tack as an accusation as a way of enforcing orthodoxy as you know first in in pedagogy and then later on in ideology you know as a whole then as a way of complaining about the Soviet Union it was it it was very helpful for me just to understand what the aims of early socialists were. And I do feel like we don't always read this educational mission when we're reading these works. Yeah you know it it is interesting me for yeah like Lukash was an academic and a lot of these people were academics but they weren't writing in journals and I think that is something we often forget when we talk about them today.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:43

Yeah. And I think you're and it changes how we read them and it changes how what we what we can get from them.

C. Derick Varn 1:19:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:51

So do you do you see yourself ever working on a project where you tie this into what happened with the French thinkers in the 60s or I there was a time when I was thinking about whether this you know it can carry in that direction and I think you know you can see various different you know I I I end with Al Jusser who I suggest you know he writes his own accessible edition of Capital with kind of like a glossary at the back in order to sort of try and appeal to the workers and I kind of think that's a kind of basically a kind of a failure.

C. Derick Varn 1:20:23

But I think you see it also in a kind of your range of you know some of the kind of the post-Marxist traditions who are engaged in the kind of question about what does it mean to build a kind of political unity you know so you know people like sort of bitch and wolf and others who but yeah that's there's it's it would be a much longer book so yeah and kind of probably a more fraught one because you're talking about people closer to living in Marie that is also well your work is readily available like I mentioned your your your your your three other books that are that are about European intellectual development most of which overlapping with the left is there any other work you'd like my audience to know about I think you've you've covered all of it thank you yeah yeah thank you I've really enjoyed this and I I think people should check out your book it is very clarifying for a kind of specific problem that I think is important if if any of this stuff is going to matter at all. Yeah well thank you so much for having me yeah thank you for coming on have a great day