BONUS: We're Doing the Resistance Again (Antifada Election Desk Part 2 w/ Varn, Zhana, Reid Kane)
Added 2024-11-08 05:50:02 +0000 UTCIf there's a second coming of the 2017 Trump Resistance movement, what will it look like? Can we escape the trap of the Democratic Party now that there's no hope of Bernie 2020? Will the left finally assert itself as an alternative, or will it, for better or worse, cease to exist?
Song: Quinteto Negro La Boca - Chau Falcon
Comments
I am lining up guests in Jan for coming year, so i will add her to the list of people to inquire about.
Derick Varn
2024-11-18 18:30:44 +0000 UTCideas outlive people and some ideas are not only bad but have pernicious effects. That someone is dead is irrelevant to that. Graeber is still releasing books despite being dead and Fisher has had a ton of negative effects despite being dead. I held off on criticizing both for two years after their deaths, and the same with my friend Michael Brooks. A year is plenty of time to mourn, and two years is plenty of time to be able to speak frankly about their effects. These are all people I have interacted with, and in two cases had positive relationships with. In short, I don't have any problem "taking shots at a dead man" since I am attacking their ideas and works, not their character.
Derick Varn
2024-11-18 18:28:39 +0000 UTCHave her on Varn Vlog!
The Antifada
2024-11-12 21:29:50 +0000 UTCWe could use some bay area rodbusters in ILC if you're interested! https://ilclabor.com/
The Antifada
2024-11-12 21:29:26 +0000 UTCNo, I've been interested to understand about this too, as I took it as an assessment of conditions that we're in a 'pre-political' moment, which necessitates a form that is not the party (and may aspire or not aspire to be one). Would deffo like to hear on this!
Jim
2024-11-11 21:17:29 +0000 UTCgreat episode
Ross Wolfe
2024-11-11 20:06:54 +0000 UTCYeah I suppose that's kind of what I mean by a pre party form, again another term that's hard to pin down because everyone means different things when they use it. I'm unsure of what the ILC means when they say 'pre-political' because to me any organisation that discusses politics is political but that's probably a minor and pedantic point!
Tom Greenwood
2024-11-10 11:19:27 +0000 UTCAgreed on all of that: it represents maturation of the movement and it feels like, to me, that there's been a growth of non-sectarian, "independent" Marxist thought. On ILC, I was actually going to say that I think discussions around the party are premature and we'd be better served by a growth of orgs like this!
Jim
2024-11-10 10:17:13 +0000 UTCYeah I think I misunderstood who you meant by the left. I share your pessimism, especially about option 1 and 2 but I am cautiously optimistic that some parts of the left are at least attempting to have good faith discussions about the path forward.
Tom Greenwood
2024-11-10 10:07:04 +0000 UTCYes these are all good points, I agree it's London centric and that option 1 and 2 would be the Marxist left liquidating itself. Again it's the classic problem of who are we talking about when we say the 'left'. Looking at Varn's comment above I think I misunderstood who he meant by the left. On the plus side Prometheus Journal has put a call out for people and groups to submit articles to a series called 'What is the Party?' and I'm glad that at least people are having the discussion now. I definitely don't have the answers and I think we should all be wary of anyone claiming to have a fully formed plan but I'm pretty sure that discussing things collectively in good faith is a good start. That's why I think the ILC is a good idea!
Tom Greenwood
2024-11-10 10:02:35 +0000 UTCPaul O'Connell (@pmpoc) and Tom Gann (@Tom_Gann) would be a worth a conversation on this, I think.
Jim
2024-11-10 09:57:54 +0000 UTCAnd I would say that its more the English Left, and *some* layers of the largely Labour-adjacent, Welsh Left, actually. Scotland and NI tend to be doing their own thing, for obvious reasons.
Jim
2024-11-10 09:41:43 +0000 UTCI agree that the British Left is beginning to cohere itself again and there's reasons to be optimistic here, but most of the proposals for a Left party under option 3 still involve great numbers of Left corbynistas combining with embarrassingly inaffectual Left Labour Parliamentarians, the Sects, some of which still rigidly adhere to a policy of taking over the LP and re-running forms of social movements and activity we've seen in the last 30 years, and with the Left unions, many of which actively advocated for a Starmer government. How this wouldn't be Labourism or a deformed version of TUSC again, I don't know. In all of these discussions they're almost solely taking place in London, there's near no consideration of who the political subject would be (the w/c?) (Metropolitan progressives?) and there appears to be a presumption that it would be electoralist. As for the Left liquidating itself: there's a good number of Left people and Left activists, but the quite sizeable anti-austerity apparatus and many of the popular anti-imperialist campaigns orgs and accompanying sects, *as institutions*, liquidated themselves into Corbynism. Any that re-emerged now have tiny numbers, are jaded, cranky and often just espouse the politics of Corbynism.
Jim
2024-11-10 09:35:11 +0000 UTCGreat second half, though I would again emphasize that the might of the administrative state (and of monopoly capital, I might add) does not just emerge for parasitic reasons, or even to absorb excess production. It also plays a vital role in social reproduction, and in administering the social contract. Fordist companies orbited it in the new deal period, and public-private partnerships were its neoliberal appendage. To get rid of the 'institutional excess' of the bureaucracy paradoxically takes a great deal of state capacity. For example, one could imagine a medicare for all scheme eliminating the rent-seeking of the healthcare industry, streamlining that industry in the process, but this requires the kind of political capital which a party like the Dems either don't have or don't want to deploy. Overall, in fact, I'd argue that global state capacity is waning to such an extent that its total redevelopment into a post-neoliberal state apparatus is dubious altogether, at least not without the kind of mass mobilizations which these preemptive reforms are meant to forestall.
The Inner Moon
2024-11-10 05:14:45 +0000 UTCVarn I like ya man but not sure taking shots at a dead man is necessary
Eugene Debs
2024-11-10 03:46:08 +0000 UTCI want to hear more from Zhana now.
Derick Varn
2024-11-10 02:50:23 +0000 UTCWell, I think it did liquidate itself with Corbynism but that isn't eternal and the ways you are describing are attempts to push forward--that said, I think options 1 and 2 are bad ideas. I think this is a good analysis, and would love to talk to some more UK people about what the options are there in the future (I have talked to Prolekult films people on this but they share my pessimism)
Derick Varn
2024-11-10 02:48:35 +0000 UTCGood conversation but I do think Varn is wrong about the UK left liquidating itself. Perhaps I didn't understand his argument correctly as it was a short comment before moving on so I'm sorry if this is too long a comment for Patreon and goes off on a tangent but for anyone who's interested this is how I see things on the UK left being at present: At the last election 5 independent MP's and 4 greens won seats in a first past the post system. The Greens came second in 27 constituencys running on a corbynist style platform. Where that leaves the 'Marxist' or 'revolutionary' left is still yet to be determined. As far as I can tell there are a few dominant arguments being put forward: 1. Enter the Greens as a socialist bloc and do the kind of entryism that failed under Labour. 2. Cohere the independents into forming a new broad left party and try to tempt away the 'left' trade unions from Labour. 3. Form a Marxist Party or pre-party form by uniting sections of the left in the kind of argument laid out by Mike Macnair in Revolutionary Strategy. The problem with option 1 and option 2 is that it will be another re-run of corbynism on a platform that most of us would agree isn't enough to deal with the underlying problems (i.e doing a green new deal in a country without the productive capacity to do so). The other huge problem is that both of those projects are beauocratically run by the same people who put organisations like Momentum together and shut down internal democracy in order to retain their power. Option 3 would be my preferred route but is obviously the hardest to achieve, it's the least popular of all of the proposals and the UK left is sectarian in the extreme. So I don't think the left has 'liquidated itself' as Varn puts it as there is a clear appetite for a new path forward. It would be more correct imo to say the left has abandoned the organisational structure built up to support Corbyn (Momentum) and is now in a process of discussions and behind closed door discussions about the best path forward.
Tom Greenwood
2024-11-09 10:54:07 +0000 UTCDitto the other comments. This is a great panel
Stephen CM
2024-11-08 22:40:28 +0000 UTCLathers local 9068 Oakland ca
Robert Booth
2024-11-08 22:33:38 +0000 UTCThat was a great discussion I like the guests.
Robert Booth
2024-11-08 22:33:11 +0000 UTCGreat 2 parter! Zhana+ Varn + Reid is a good combo.
Silverstar
2024-11-08 14:30:32 +0000 UTCReally appreciated Reid and Zhana's perspectives in this. Would like to see more of these roundtables with this bunch.
Jim
2024-11-08 11:38:38 +0000 UTC
