This is a collection of video recordings of select events at the Critical Theory Workshop/Atelier de Théorie Critique, an international school for trans-disciplinary, cross-cultural and committed research. As a non-profit educational counter-institution, the CTW/ATC seeks to bring affordable education with real use-value to a broad public by offering seminars and symposiums in Philadelphia, online courses, a summer workshop in Paris, as well as this video archive as a free educational resource. For more information: criticaltheoryworkshop.com
I’ve strongly disliked Foucault since I was introduced to his work by so-called radical BDSM enthusiasts. I could never quite place my finger on why I disliked his work so much, and the Faux Radical article as well as this video has finally helped me unravel it in my own head. Great stuff!
Didn't anarchists later on during the second world war have to oppose the same imperial and war participation by soviet "socialists"? We cannnot deny the right wing deviation of soviet socialism either
However, Prof. Rockhill, even left - marxist figures favored by anarchist and libertarian socialist thinkers in the 20th century, for eg Karl Kosch who is quite popular with the left libertarians , also called themselves, in fact weren't they the first to call themselves 'western communists'... The decline of this 'anarchistic ' kind of western marxism caused I speculate by the imperial - capitalist 'theory' industry and making it bedfellows with post modernism is the real tragedy, and is quite another story vis a vis the the origins of its birth and early years
About the court jester thing... to be really funny you need a working brain. Other than Mr. Rockhill's academic rigurosity, I dont find anything worthy of a smile or even a smirk of him.
I admit that I came here expecting to know most of what was said, but not only did Dr. Mueller contextualize it in ways I didn't, I actually learned some things I did not know and in ways that do change my opinion on Marcuse.
Just watched Zizek's video, he blamed Mao for his irresponsible attitude toward the great famine, what Zezek said is true. Stalin's purge and manmade famine did not contribute to the anti fascism cause, but opposite. China and USSR shared the persecution of different thinking. If history were not learned it would repeat.
The author seems to suggest that China is advancing towards socialist via a multi-generation long detour via a sort of NEP. To suggest that were it not for Western imperialism the CCP would now reverse its course, that CCP big shots would voluntarily give up their vast wealth and privilege, is utterly utopian. Some cheek to call others idealists when one engages in such delusions.
How is China communist (or socialist) in anything but the name of its ruling party? Earlier it was arguably an actual existing deformed worker's state. However, China has seen capitalist restoration given rise to a more state interventionist brand of bourgeois rule. Defending the limited democracy in HK and wanting to expand is a fully legitimate position from a Marxist standpoint. However, the weakness of the left and the organized working class resulted in a form of protest which had little chance of success and was conducive to capture by right-wing nativist elements with illusions in Western imperialism and in some cases directly instrumentalized by the latter.
I wrote a book in 1977 about accumulation and crisis on Marx in Lima Peru enhancing Paul Mattick. I 'd like to join your sessions. It includes a David Yaffe text. I’ve been in labor unions consultancy and journaalism.
I think Heidegger figured out that dialectic materialism, and historical materialism, essentially shows that his ideas come more from the environment he grew up in and in that sense can’t be justified. “Human existence can’t be defined in the present” he said. But I think most of his philosophy is just mental gymnastics to dismantle Historical Materialism. Which makes perfect sense to explain humans material conditions; and how their class essentially makes them who they are - intellect included. Something that would destroy the whole Nazi philosophy that he requires. Ultimately, I find that he has a bit of a begging the question fallacy problem when he starts talking about being and time. I don’t feel he fulfils the required proofs for his statements and they’re mostly referencial to other philosophers who didn’t have the privilege of hard science. After hard science, I feel like a lot of human thinking ends up being projecting. It was great to hear this. I used to read Heidegger and it always seemed useless to me. Because I’m a hardcore communist who materially tries to organise with other human beings to make life better. He’s literally an idealist, and reactionary. I think however that what the first speaker said was very valuable: you have to read him and criticise him, because there’s many people who take his works, and try to understand him without using dialectical materialism. And so they think he’s simply another philosopher who is disconnected from the fascist ideology that spawned his philosophy. Heidegger was, like all reactionaries, excellent at the useless process of mental gymnastics.
I learnt more in this session than my whole primary and secondary school. Which was, essentially "The Allied defeated the evil Nazis." I thought Parenti Blackshirts and Reds was the peak, but Gabriel Rockhill is incredible.
To be fair, though, It was Zizek's humiliation of Peterson that introduced me to "marxism" for the 1st time. I feel very fortunate to have been at the point where I was becoming serious in my appraisal of political/philosophical scholarship - while also disconnecting myself from the deradicalizing media algorithms. I was in the perfect spot to break from the customary, reactionary ideologies I was raised under, while avoiding falling into fanaticism throughout my exploration of competing narratives and analyses. Zizek never impressed me. But I owe him my thanks for slapping me out of my blind adoration of charlatans. Lol i mean if ZIZEK can denigrate your understanding of marxism.......
Are you identifying the CPI (Maoist) and the PFLP and all critics of 'brics' governments inside and outside brics as Western, and USAian and French Prof Rockhill as not of the West? Rockhill is magically diaplacing his imperialist identity onto Adivasis, Palestinians, Filipinos? It seems plain YOU are western bourgeois intellectuals supporting the compradors, counterrevolutionaries, transnational ruling class (including the great allies of AEsocialism that are the House of Saud, Modi and the Israel regime) in its escalating exterminist war against the worldwide working class for the usual western bourgeois reasons.
So according to Dr. Rockhill Lenin had proved to be a "brilliant tactician" by introducing NEP after he drowned in blood the last gasp of the Soviet power (the Kronshtadt Soviet) and banning factions in his own party? Perhaps. But then the common problem with brilliant tacticians is that they brilliantly fail in strategy. Lenin was a sore loser in this respect. He lost to Kautsky in the central strategic question of ultra-imperialism ("the West") and he became the grave-digger of the Soviet principle of the workers' state. His theoretical revision of Marxism (What Is to Be Done) open the way for "party communism" that politically castrated Labor in its organic development no less so than Bernstein's revisionism (with Engels behind him) did for the working classes of Germany and Europe. In one of his podcasts, Dr. Rockhill confessed that he got in touch with the real world of class struggle and imperialism for the first time only in 2001. Understandably, it takes a long time and courage as well for a US academician to bail out of the panopticon of the French "critical theory" and its epigons in the US English departments. He's done a great job in describing the (ultra)imperialist roots of the post-war Left Boot of NATO, even though not those of Marx and Engels themselves (let alone their German issue of the Second International like Wilhelm Liebknecht et al). Let's hope that with the same courage and intelligence he will approach the problematics of the Third Thesis on Feuerbach, the history of party communism and the Soviet Catastrophe that today keeps mushrooming in the fields of Eastern Ukraine.
_"Moreover, there exist probability/possibility vortices which spiral towards your bellicose actions. Many of these vortices are not of the nuclear war but of the less annihilatory but more lengthy so-called “conventional” war. This situation, if formed in your illusion, would offer many opportunities for seeking and for service._ Questioner: How would conventional warfare offer the opportunities for seeking and service? _Ra: I am Ra. The possibility/probabilities exist for situations in which great portions of your continent and the globe in general might be involved in the type of warfare which you might liken to guerrilla warfare._ _The ideal of freedom from the so-called invading force of either the controlled fascism or the equally controlled social common ownership of all things would stimulate great quantities of contemplation upon the great polarization implicit in the contrast between freedom and control._ _In this scenario which is being considered at this time/space nexus the idea of obliterating valuable sites and personnel would not be considered an useful one. Other weapons would be used which do not destroy as your nuclear arms would._ _In this ongoing struggle the light of freedom would burn within the mind/body/spirit complexes capable of such polarization._ _Lacking the opportunity for overt expression of the love of freedom, the seeking for inner knowledge would take root aided by those of the Brothers and Sisters of Sorrow which remember their calling upon this sphere._ Questioner: Are you saying then that this possible condition of war would be much more greatly spread across the surface of the globe than anything we have experienced in the past and therefore touch a larger percentage of the population in this form of catalyst? _Ra: I am Ra. This is correct. There are those now experimenting with one of the major weapons of this scenario, that is the so-called psychotronic group of devices which are being experimentally used to cause such alterations in wind and weather as will result in eventual famine. If this program is not countered and proves experimentally satisfactory, the methods in this scenario would be made public._ _There would then be what those whom you call Russians hope to be a bloodless invasion of their personnel in this [USA] and every land deemed valuable. However, the peoples of your culture have little propensity for bloodless surrender."_ Ra Material (1981)
To suggest Stalin led the fight against global fascism, is to assert that Stalian was aware of the threat that fascim represented and he consciously fought a battle to defeat it. This statement stands in direct contradiction to he historical record of Stalin's stategies/policies with Nazi Germany. In the 1933 uprising in Germany, Stalin directed the Commnist Party to fight along side the fascists against the Social Democrats. Trostky of course said the communist should fight with the social democrats against the fascists, and that a victory against fascism would be useful in persauding social democrats to join the Communist Party. No socialist enters into imperialist agreements as Stalin did. Knowing of Germans intentions to attack, a socialist would warn Polish workers, arm and support them and attempt to win them over to the revolution. I saw a film recently that said the Russians were more brutal towards the Poles than the Germans. I do not know if that is he case. The film itself was about WW2 and not anti-soviet propaganda film Stalin's purging of the military leadership does not sound like someone planning to lead a global struggle against fascism. Sounds more like a paraniod psychopath, killing anyone who thought could threaten his power. Even as German forces were building up along the Russian border, he took no notice, including a defector from the German lines who was a communist.There were death squads who would shoot desrters. Soldiers were sent into battle unarmed and told to pick up the weapons of dead comrades. It cost 22 million Russian lives to defeat 3 million invading Germans because he was not prepared.
