Gabriel Rockhill, “The Global Theory Industry & Left Anti-Communism" 

I wonder if those educators have something to hide by deliberately not logical or clear😋

There should be no shades of left. Any thing to the right of the communist view of the world is part of the right

As long as we don't use that as a way of making ourselves more enemies. There are plenty of well-intentioned people, activists even, who oppose real existing socialist countries because they consider them totalitarian. I think we need to approach it like religion. There's anti-communism of the oppressors, and there's anti-communism of the oppressed. We need to work with the latter, go to their protests (against imperialist war,etc.), and welcome them into our protests, arguing politics with them. But the careeerist infotainment celebrities, the full-time confusionists, need to be denounced.

In France Marxists start to dissociated themselves from "the left", relying on critical texts by Marx and Lenin against the left and leftism. Their analysis is that left and right are bourgeois concepts. The left has always been "the bourgeois left", that of the "icy waters of selfish calculation". And the right is the "reactionary bourgeois right."

@trorisk Interesting. Do you think L & R are ingrained shorthand that mostly academics will want us to stop using? (I just find it hard to see how to "adopt" this POV.) It's important to be precise but at this point, we have accepted the terms for so long, this sounds like another thing to argue about, instead of forming coalitions with as many people as we can. Left has generally meant being against capitalism, poverty, war, the many hierarchical oppressions; for international workers solidarity. The right has generally meant being for capitalism, for "traditional values" (that I can only see as regressive brakes on personal freedom and safety), for religion, for nationalistic views and solutions. In the U.S., with the "socially conservative socialists," we have a problem. I think their line of thinking has a tendency to lead to fascist solutions, so I would say they're right wing, not interested in raising the material conditions of all to destroy thr foundation that most socially conservative prejudices are built on.

@@DonDeering In France historically nationalism was born with the French Revolution and against the monarchy. French nationalism was born on the left. Just like capitalism, the right (the nobility and reactionaries) was against "the bank". There is a whole French tradition of reactionary anti-capitalist writers (who Marx loved). Châteaubriant, Balzac and so on. They spend their time describing "left" upstarts who marry "the bank". The junction between the left and the socialist movements in France was made during the Dreyfus affair. And it was only after WWII that the right became pro-capitalist, reactionary bourgeois, as opposed to the USSR. If in the USA the term "liberals" refers to the liberal left in Europe it's the center, center-right. This is capitalism.

“What is on offer in the academic apparatus, from the entire system of intellectual production, circulation, and reception, is not historical materialism, but a trendy form of discursive idealism where people learn sophisticated language games and constantly “problematise” existing knowledge instead of trying to understand the world.”

​@@jeroenboom8 which, incidentally, are the same sorts of skills you need to work in the consulting industry (based on what I've learned about consulting and comments from people who claim to have worked in the field). (also I'm hella late!! >_

In the West, center + right, are both Western capitalists who, when not greedily fighting each other, readily unite + join together, from fascisms 1920s origin to present. minus 8? years of rival slaughter in WWII. Spanish Civil War led back to Cold War (s).

I don’t think that is the case at all. First consider the fact that Lenin had multiple theoretical deviation from other Marxists in his own era including Such people like Rosa Luxemburg. Claiming Rosa Luxemburg is suddenly “not left” because she criticized Lenin is absurd. Also Lenin did not call himself a left communist, he called himself a right communist. Hense his notorious essay “Left communism, an infantile disorder.” Lenin was considered and considered himself a right deviation from the left communist party. There are several political differences which would define left vs right within the party but one of the Luxemburg vs Lenin arguments was direct democracy vs party vanguardism. Party vanguardism is authoritarian by its very design, it shrinks the political “Overton” window to a dot. Marx himself said the revolution would happen in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. Lenin even said that the most advanced socialism was in Germany and hoped for a successful German revolution, which as we know was a failure. But it is natural for people in countries that already have things like freedom of press, freedom of movement, intellectual and artistic freedom etc. to not want to give it up. Even Bertolt Brecht who was dedicated to the DDR criticized the government as did Mart Stam who eventually left the DDR. I think it’s important to recognize the many achievements of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc but to also be very critical of it as well.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Isaak Iljitsch Rubin or Jewgeni Bronislawowitsch Paschukanis. Comrades killed by ML-Fascists. Idiots.

Interesting how buddy buddy Sartre and Camus was how radically different political forces they represented later on

So, Gabriel et al do the filtering for us, and we don't read the works of the authors they have classified/labeled as "counter-revolutionary", reactionary, petty-bourgeois, etc., right? But then proceed to talk about them as if we know their work. Let's then pretend we're doing "historical materialist" analyses.

I wonder what the RU-vid algorithm thinks of Prof. Gabriel Rockhill.

The transcript is available in RU-vid. U see the picture window find the word ‘more…’ scroll down to show transcript

I'm pretty sure it was Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

30:55

a living model, in the united states, today~

"there's nothing left" dark shit bro

Mondegron (sp) Co- op . , Spain.

I'll check it out comrade

You prove that with every feckless comment.

@@fun_ghoul your comments are false statements.

@@charlesbrown1365 I'm not the individualist here, Chucky.

@@fun_ghoul you’re in denial.

@@charlesbrown1365 Sure I am, Chucky.

He thinks he's a left anti-communist

i mean he is. he flat out rejects the accomplishments of actual socialist movements in favor of philosophical hand wringing and cultural studies. he also has a lot of bad takes regarding LGBTQ+ issues and recently wrote a classic pro-Ukraine op-ed.

@@waitingformyman9317 1. what socialist movements? 2. zizek would probably be antagonistic to "cultural studies" 3. example? 4. the difference between Russia and Ukraine/west is that the imperialism in the west follows the rule of law.

​@@Cyberphunkisms Zizek has intelligence contacts, the ML idiot is right with this one, but that doesn't make ML fascists any better. However, he was also regularly aired on Russia Today. What's the point? Only council communists are real communists. Period. Zizek has a strange conception of intervening in politics. After all, he was once active in parliamentary democracy.

​@@willyhuhn7254 Aired on RT: so? for example, in his debate against peterson, zizek took him back to the desert, not really for the good of peterson but for the good of his audience which made sense. because of the universalistic and 'globalistic' nature of what we are dealing with, council communism would not be enough to deal, would probably be the closest zizekian defense I could make here of what you are saying. we need to use what we have too, what is wrong with him participating in sloven politics? do you know how small that country is, it is pretty much a "council communism" lol

Foucault was very materialist in the philosophical sense of the term. He was constantly analyzing structural “material” phenomena and how it shaped human beings such as the Panopticon. Foucault is very complicated but he definitely does not fit into the idealist perspective most notably the tradition of Kant. Chomsky’s famous debate with Foucault was really a Kantian vs anti-Kantian debate. Is there an a priori human nature (universalism) or is our assumption of an a priori human nature what passes as “truth” (structuralism). Chomsky’s linguistic argument is that there is an a priori like mechanism in human being which is human nature from which are spontaneous ability to learn and play with language springs forth as well as morality etc. this is very Kantian ideas. Foucault says we don’t know what are natures are and we should focus on the structuring phenomenon.

@@matthewkopp2391 I’m saying he’s not a materialist in the sense that Engels and Lenin use the term, the Marxist sense. I critique Foucault as a neo-Kantian . This is in analogy to Lenin’s critique of the Empirio-Critiques in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Kant holds the things-in-themselves are unknowable. Hegel critiques Kant by claiming things-in-themselves are knowable by practice, according to Engels. The Empirio-Critics claim that atoms are unknowable, just sense data are knowable .Lenin critiques this as Neo-Kantian , and a form of subjective _idealism_, in the Engels-Lenin sense. Foucault denies science has discovered truths. Biological truth, biological things-in-themselves are unknowable . That’s neo-Kantian, subjective idealism in the Engels-Lenin sense . You say Foucault says we don’t know what our natures are ! Au contraire ! See biological anthropology! We know a huge amount about human nature , many biological truths; all of Darwinism and the modern evolutionary synthesis, sexually reproducing animal species, primates , mammals, Genus Homo Hominins, the only Language and Culture Bearing Species.

@@matthewkopp2391 but in the Marxist sense of historical materialist Foucault is a philosophical idealist, like Kant , a subjective idealist ( as opposed to Hegel or Plato who were objective idealists) . See Engels in _Ludwig Feuerbach and The End of Classical German Philosophy _ for the basic Marxist definition of materialist: also _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific _. Foucault deserted class struggle analysis when he left the Communist Party.

Read Kohei Saito

@@bigusj same eco-fascist ideolouge- degrowth agenda is Malthusian

Maupin is a patsoc “maga communist” though. Ultimately anti-Leninist. Misleading recommendation. Edit: it looks like Infrawiki deleted most of their posts in this thread? Weird.

@@bigusj provide evidence that Maupin is anti-Leninist. Use direct sources. Make an argument. Link me to a substack if you wish. Don’t play this game if you’re not armed with evidence

@@infrawiki eat me, whoever you are running cover for anticommunists

@@bigusj make an argument. Waiting on your substack which explains how Caleb and Haz are anticommunist. Provide evidence.

@@infrawiki “debate mee, debate meeeee!!” -an amerikkkan

The best way for it to be electoral would be local politics. There is a strange assumption in the USA that we should mainly be focused on national politics. And although important and one effects the other local politics is more democratic and is a better socialist model with immediate outcomes. What people should look for in federal politics are candidates that will send money public spending to local and state which the people have a better chance of democratically controlling. And what I am proposing actually already happened in the USA historically with the “sewer socialists”. Today many towns with decades of publicly own utilities are selling them off to private share holding companies. Nothing could be a more disastrous idea. This is just one example of real issues.

@@matthewkopp2391 Yes must participate in local and state politics; and federal ; all three. Major power is in the federal government so cannot abstain from federal electoral politics. Federal laws impact all local areas .

@@charlesbrown1365 Stop drinking Lysol, Cletus. Amerikkka must die. Period.

Zero

@@renatamendonca1832 Foucault and Butler are subjective idealists , neo-Kantians .

Is there such a thing as queer oppression, Poindexter? Jesus Christ.

@@fun_ghoul homosexual men are not a specially oppressed group in Western society starting with Ancient Greece and Rome through the present they are a privileged status in major institutions: Catholic Church, other denominations, Arts and Entertainment Industries, Academe, Big Business.