Vijay Prashad - What is the Meaning of the Left? 

Man this speech has everything. He rips on the lengthy intro, he's fired up the whole time, and he talks about theory AND action. He's like everything Chomsky leaves me wanting. I love this man! Time for a second listen.

Vijay is just one of the greatest intellectuals of our time, period. Not only of the marxists.

My father cried when hearing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. I grew up reading volumes of classic Russian and Soviet literature as well as French, German, English, American, Indian, Chinese, etc. I could say the Soviet legacy is contradictorily beautiful and eternal, despite the West tries to erase it.

Vijay is amazing. I am trying to track down and watch all his lectures.

I’ve returned to this presentation a few times over the past couple of years.

Alright I love love love this person. He is a great critical thinker. And most of all just 29 minutes in he has taught me more about critical ways of thinking. Than all of my nearly 50 years combined. It was to my shame. To think I was well on my way to crucial thinking and the spirituality I was coming to think I understood. But I was so wrong. I have light years to go. But I can admit to my flaws and need to invest more and grow. But Vijay is demonstrating 1 truth I have almost fully internalized. That truth MUST be brutal with yourself and others. We are toddlers playing at being grown ups. I refuse to be a child looking for comfort and security of the illusion that we call LIFE! We exist only and drive ourselves backward. We put ourselves into bondage by our unwillingless to be honest. We then pass this onto the new generations. Putting the invisible shackles of bondage on them. I have no children, but I strive to break that indentured generational invisible bondage. To the truely innocent, generations. We commit sins and crimes onto them. Forcing them to struggle and witness and act in that unwanted imposed bondage.

Vijay's speech begins at 5:42

Awesome! Thank you for posting! Vijay is like no one else I've listened to on RU-vid ever!

This man is a true hero of the people. An intellectual giant and a legend! ✊💜

VIJAY YOU MAKE US PROUD. 👍❤️🙏❤️👍

„The responsibility is to build a movement here.“ Great idea!

I'm in India now, and I got asked a question " are you socialist?" In a pejorative way. I say yes, but aske them if they can buy property for a reasonable amount, whatever job they may hold, if they can get to medicine, and if they will have a pention, or disability insurance. Nobody can say no to that.

It's nice to have an Indian person up there who unlike many British and American academic doesn't beat around the bush and get all prose like.

I've just become acquainted with Vijay. I am thrilled to have been. I can thank seeing his interview with Roger Waters. I am grateful and looking forward to watching Peoples Dispatch and all that it offers.

I find Vijay's commentaries on vital issues most enlightening & inspiring. The only other one who similarly inspires is Chris Hedges

I can't tell you how much I love this man! He is so brilliant and articulate I could listen to him all day!

Excellent speech!

Brilliant speech! Eye opener for anyone!

When tik tok brought me here.

2 points - 1.) What happened to the Left here, in the US, takes an understanding of history. It was more than just a bourgeois attack and McCarthyism, which officially ended by the mid-1950s, but it was also a co-opting of the Left, which was the official policy of the CIA by the mid-1950s. We have to understand the role of the CIA's "Congress For Cultural Freedom" program, and the promotion of an openly anti-Soviet faction of the Left that many of us are starting to refer to as the "Synthetic Left" or "State Department Socialists." 2.) Although many of them are far-gone, the fact that such a large portion of the US working class has voted for and now blindly follows Donald Trump not only illustrates the failings of the Left, in the US, but it also creates a genuine opportunity for us. Many of these people are genuinely upset with the bourgeois establishment in this country, although their critiques are often far off. But this is not totally their fault, they have been misled and have had decades of propaganda shoved down their throats. The saddest part of this is that there is no strong Communist Party there to listen to their grievances, hear them out, and ride alongside them, showing them the way with practice and theory. We have to listen to these people and ask them what they envision in a better tomorrow. We have to be patient, and able to bear any comments they make that might be perceived as racist, misogynistic etc. We have to show them that we want to better their lives and unite them with an overall strong and defiant working-class popular front. But as Vijay said, this is going to take some humility on our part and a far better understanding, and development, of theory.

I already know this is one i’ll come back to again and again

33:00 absolute 🔥🔥🔥🔥 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Brilliant lecture!

good talk of course but also beautiful and tremendously well written and delivered intro by his former colleague, Christina Heatherton.

Cultural politics advice: Just because somebody looks like you doesn't mean they are your friend. Just because somebody has had your marginal problems, doesn't mean they will stand up to the bourgeois. Look BENEATH the surface and judge the VALUES of a person.

I love this man

30 years after the event

Legendary efforts back up sir 🙏

Unbiased analysis.

Mr Vijay please do African university tours 🙏🏾 we would appreciate your knowledge impartation . 💫

great talk

One salute for his knowledge.🇮🇳

Man, you are so good. world needs guys like you more and more.

How did YT know I needed this fire right now?! Loving it!

Still relevant, still true: and there's his recent book, Washington Bullets.

Any comrades still listening to this amazing masterpiece, 2023! 🤚

Inspiring!

this guy's like the smartest person I've ever heard lol

as per normal........straight/no chaser!!!!

German Chancellor Mercal was educated in East Germany. She is one who brought the best Diplomacy from the East to the West and the world!!! She was a great leader!!! We need more like her!!!

Vijay is such a good speaker. thank you for this upload!

Revelation comes from the Latin “Revelatio,” which in turn translates the Greek “Apokalypsis”-which means, literally, “unveiling” of a New World - the giving way of the Old World of predicated upon violence and oppression and cruelty and so on, and the "unveiling" of a New World of true love ... contrary to common perception, this "giving way of the Old World of predicated upon violence and oppression and cruelty and so on, and the "unveiling" of a New World of true love," is the end/objective and meaning of the true Left.

"The left in the America died in 1991" Woah. That's a fuckin thing to chew on! Amazing speech.

I would like to ask Vijay: "What does a movement do about 'progressive' politicians who rally people with the 'right words', are voted in, but, when elected, immediately give their support to the corporations/establishment?' (It seems the 'wolf in sheep's clothing' or controlled opposition is the rule.)

I want a t-shirt like Vijay's except instead of Lenin it will say Prashad in many colors.

Vijay, if you are reading this, I have a question, in a nutshell: is it possible to be on the left, to be a "self-described" leftist as it were, and not be anti-imperialist? It seems to me that nowadays there are many s-d leftists who are not anti-imperialists, who never mention imperialism, who avoid the i-word like a plague, and even some who are in total denial of the importance, the relevance, and even the existence of imperialism today. My mentors were Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, Samir Amin, and now you, who I know are an anti-imperialist. And yet, in this video, during almost one hour, the i-word was not mentioned even once, if I'm not mistaken, and that in the context of a discussion of the left, and of Communism, throughout the world and throughout history. Does today's "victory" of the right, and of actually existing McCarthyism, include the removal of the concept and reality of imperialism (which is now more aggressive and polarizing than ever in its history) from left-wing discourse? And thank you for a fascinating talk. I really and truly enjoyed it. Un abrazo.

Holy shit this is great

5:42 lecture starts

Such an important perspective and a badly needed shake up for our various "realities".

Awesome. Awesomeawesomeawesome. Fuck the 90’s! I was there… it was awful! And these so called scholars - oy! The worst! Just like the speaker says: We were disarmed. We critiqued and one-upped and back-bit until we were twisted and toothless. Good riddance to bad rubbish and French anything! 🤣 Thank you for this.

Vijay Prashad = LEGEND 👏👏👏

I have essays, I write them vatos frequently

He is the other half of the sway to make it swing

11:00 Didn't Lenin endorse the new economic policy? He at least wrote on it as I recall and talked about certain workers working along side the capitalists and learning from them. I'm a new Marxist, so much to learn. Just asking in case there were some later NEPs that I don't know about.

27:00 Spontaneity vs building

A debate between Jordan Peterson and Vijay Prashad would be very interesting....Let's push for it....

Why is the volume so low? Don't they want people to be able to hear this?

Who is the person he mentions at 50:20 he mentioned his name before as well but i cannot find him on the net

Question. What's progressive left?

28' - 1968

Marxism Leninism Prashadism

Vijay is fantastic

audio is messed up

Everyone look at me! Im gonna talk for 10 minutes about nothing.

it's 2023, folks. think some new thoughts.

I love Vijay, and this might be nitpicking ... but here goes. He's 100% right that the left sectarianism is a problem and that we spend too much time maligning each other. But he is saying that 15 minutes after uncharitably maligning Mouffe and Laclau, who are, whether one likes them or not, to the left of 90% of self-identifying left Americans. It's fine to critique Mouffe & Laclau from a Marxist-Leninist-Luxemburgian perspective, but if nothing else they're trying to think though how to build insurgent, counter-hegemonic politics -- an ultimate aim that Prashad no doubt shares with them. I understand the critique of vulgar social movement theory and spontaneity fetishism, but the tone of his critique is exactly how not to build an inclusive movement politics.

Great man

When we could grow our own food and industries we won’t need to make arms

The Soviet Union and had to be destroyed, the idea was too revolutionary for the time and would not have survived. At least I can see it that way from inside the Ukraine/Russia. Not all the pieces of the puzzle were put together before. But now we have considerably more of these puzzle pieces. We are ready to try again. I think the next revolution could be either in India or in America.

why did she say "unenviable task"?

Interesting question. We don't have unChinese or uncommunist.

Volume too low

At he time of clinton it appeared as if there was one party

In that lecture Prashad says “what do the Trotskyites always say? ‘State capitalism degenerated’”. Trotsky and the ICFI have never called the USSR “state capitalist”. Only those who broke from the Fourth International did. Trotskyite is also the term of the Stalinists, used during the Great Terror. Prashad is silent on the position of Trotsky. He also talks of “intellectual defeat after 1991” but he speaks for himself. Only Trotsky and the Fourth International warned that Stalinism would seek to restore capitalism. The exposure of all those tendencies that had illusions Stalinism could be pressured to the left wasn’t a “defeat” but the collision of reality with their idealism. Prashad covers for the counter-revolutionary history of Stalinism by suggesting those states mentioned be described as “experiments”. He talks of the need for “a theory” is bizarre because he never offers a theory of his own. The implication of his citation of Tony Kushner’s is that any theory will do. It was Plekhanov who first said “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movements”. Prashad cites neither Plekhanov nor Lenin's more famous use of the phrase. But Plekhanov and Lenin backed up their abstract description of social development with a theory for the working class. Both were wrong initially. Lenin corrected his theory in April 1917 to accept Trotsky's permanent revolution. (Just as Trotsky adjusted his theory to accept the correctness of Lenin’s theory of the party.) Plekhanov's two stage theory remained wrong.

16:24

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹✌️✌️✌️✌️✌️👍👍👍👍👍

He never utter the brutal acts of Muslims on Indian People.

Persuasion

What is the meaning. Simple those who LEFT their brain before coming on to the earth.

25:24 Prashad's anti-Blackness on parade

Leftism is inevitable ❤

The viral guy

He is not intellectual but normal average Indian crawled through hindu sanatan culture yet to catch up fully through western lens But his placement out of India is a prism for India

It took 5 minutes to introduce him....NOT GOOD !

So Bernie Sanders just disappear into sleep joe arms? What a shame.

Sad , the normal course - The elephant in the room then was communism -

How can you defend dictatorship in GDR? And even call i9t socialist?

I truly, truly hate this introductions, we don’t need that.

What is this? Lol 😂😂😂

I bet these lectures lose 80% of listeners during the intro. 🤢

What's with the endless lame introductions

Haha I'm being shadow banned. Nice goin

In his Book of Wealth of Nations the great thinker Adam Smith contemplated on the possibility of applying natural law in economic matters, and therefore he considers everyone responsible for his behavior, that is, the best who governs his interests and that there is a hidden hand leads everyone and guides the market, and that everyone if left Free will seek to maximize his wealth. Despite my early contempt for preaching of imperialism and its brutally exploited regimes for poor nations, I considered from an early age that the system of state capitalism holds the seeds of its doom. Interest and profit are the effective motive for creative action and if man is prevented from achieving his interests, he is frustrated. Stalin realized that people did not want to work under the system of socialism, which prevents the development of individual wealth resorted to violent coercion and terrorism, the Soviet Union has achieved growth rates much more than twice every year during his presidency, the country has made great progress in industrialization and development, but the price is high and terrible. In the disbanded Soviet Union, students were sent to volunteer groups and workers to assist in harvesting on large collective farms. In one season the crop was cabbage, and the harvest was badly mishandled. Much of it was destroyed on farms. What was delivered was transported to railway freight vehicles waiting for the vehicles to fill up. And the locomotives came to drag it. Nearly two-thirds of the crop was damaged in the fields and rotted in the wagons because the locomotives did not arrive in time. When asked a young Russian worker about the secret of their inaction and indifference, he said simply: The state does not give us wages as it should, but pretends to do so, and we pretend to work. This was under Andropov reign..

In one word: Envy. Just as much as the right can be described by: fear.

Stalinist with a PhD. What a shame