#marxism and form

[criphd]

Raphael Magarik (contributing writer): I confess that I have only read the “Jewish” parts of Marxism and Form (1971), my favorite work by Fredric Jameson, the great literary theorist who died this week. That is to say, I have read the chapters on Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Bloch, Lukács—all but the chapter on Sartre, which is, at least for me, a hundred pages of impenetrable, gentile boredom. The names of these theorists are emblazoned on the book’s cover as if they were a musical supergroup, like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Jameson was trying to explain and defend Hegelian Marxism, which promised that historical materialism could approach literary texts not as propaganda or morality plays, but as complex forms, in whose development we could chart the course of an evolving, universal history. Somehow, the book he ended up writing consists of a series of mournful vignettes about Central European Jewish intellectuals.

It’s hard to know what Jameson would have thought of this observation, not just because his origins were WASPy and patrician, but because he largely avoided personal reflection, even as he built a superstar career defending, often single handedly, Marxism’s claim to primacy among High Theories. But the Jewishness of Marxism and Form is no coincidence. It reflects the “elective affinity” Michael Löwy would later trace between early 20th-century Central European Jewish writers, barred by antisemitic prejudice from academic postings, and thus institutionally marginalized and driven toward a utopian, romantic mode of left-wing politics. Löwy’s student Enzo Traverso later studied a cohort of doubly “heretical” adherents of what he called “Judeo-Marxism,” who rejected the vulgar, dogmatic scientism of Karl Kautsky and the Second International, as well as Orthodox religiosity and post-war Zionism. Often rebels against both Jewish and contemporary left pieties, these Judeo-Marxists produced eccentric, offbeat theories, probed the arcane troves of Kabbalah and Christian mysticism, and tended more toward modernist experimentation than by-the-book socialist realism. Thus, if one wanted, as Jameson did, to find sources for a Marxism that was intellectually rich, thick with ironies and paradoxes, and critically adequate not just to proletarian novels and folks songs, but to Balzac and Beethoven (and then, in Jameson’s eclectic, catholic, and massive corpus of writing, to pretty much any cultural artifact whatsoever), then of course one would end up writing about Jews.

And despite Jameson’s ideal of objective impersonality, there are hints he was aware of his Jewish focus. A section epigraph in his chapter on Ernst Bloch reads, “Next Year in Jerusalem! —Old Jewish Prayer,” the single pithiest distillation of the utopian longing that animates Jameson’s whole career. More telling, perhaps, is the uncharacteristically personal turn with which he concludes his discussion of Marcuse, writing that despite the bleak, unrevolutionary conditions of mid-century American capitalism, “it pleases me for another moment still to contemplate the stubborn rebirth of the idea of freedom” in several minds, the last of which is that of Marcuse, the “philosopher, in the exile of that immense housing development which is the state of California, remembering, reawakening, reinventing—from the rows of products in the supermarkets, from the roar of traffic of the freeways and the ominous shape of the helmets of traffic policemen, from the incessant overhead traffic of the fleets of military transport planes, as it were from beyond them, in the future—the almost extinct form of the Utopian idea.”

In Jameson’s hands, the paradigmatically Jewish condition of exile undergoes a double metamorphosis, first into Marcuse’s estrangement from the land of his birth by the Nazi catastrophe, which either killed or uprooted nearly all of Jameson’s book’s subjects, and then second, into the existential predicament of the social theorist lost in post-war consumer capitalism, adrift in a history that seemed to have lost its plot. That predicament, and his oft-repeated, defiant insistence that nonetheless, one must not, could not, forget Jerusalem and the dream of a redeemed future, was, of course, Jameson’s great theme. So it pleases me, in spite of his studied impersonality, to point out that in 1971, Jameson had only recently left Harvard for the University of California, San Diego, where he overlapped with Marcuse for several years—and that perhaps here is an autobiographical clue that Jameson was a quiet devotee of our exilic tradition, which he reimagined as the melancholy condition of the left intellectual in an unfriendly historical moment, struggling to transform his nostalgia into hope for a future, into a yearning for a world transformed.

-- from the jewish currents shabbat reading list & parshat nitzavim-vayelech [idk if it's accessible now but i've linked a sign up to the newsletter]

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

What if I say possesion storylines are secretly about domination and colonialism and the way in which the whims of the capital dictates every single aspect of social relations, and SA, which in turn is also about colonialism

[lettucedloophole]

wise words from dworkin

[selamat-linting]

i got a new coworker who used to work at the same place i used to work at (but after i resigned so she never knew me personally until now) she told me her seniors said that i used to be super shy and quiet all the time and bad at presentations. but now im obviously the opposite. makes me feel good abt myself honestly! It was rough being 19 but slowly and surely i was becoming the person i wanted to be.

[ebondays]

all the 'marxists' and 'tankies' defending 4chan and going after black and jewish people calling out how weird it was to defend 4chan, look funny as fuck now that it was discovered 4chan was run by feds

[queen-mabs-revenge]

lmao me during summer school like 'you know what this reminds me of? GOTHIC MARXISM' every other second

[ryukisgod]

Every leftist (person who wants the means of production to be owned by the workers) wants him to be found not guilty because we believe healthcare should not be for profit.

You may be confusing ‘leftists’ (anti-capitalists who can be either socially progressive or socially conservative) with (small l) ‘liberals’ (Americans who are pro capitalism and socially progressive)

They're trying so hard to make this a culture war thing instead of a class consciousness moment.

[theehandwrittenblog]

Does the material a piece is made from determine the value of the work? - arts vs crafts, an essay on the hierarchy of materials in the art world

Over the course of social history, with the developing distinctions between social classes, it is inevitable that an ‘institution’ as powerful as art with its intertwined existence with taste and culture, would be undermined by socially constructed hierarchies that bleed into it in order to reflect and reaffirm divisions in wider society. It is a popular view, influenced by the theories of Marx, that culture has been used as another marker of power in order to create a further gulf between the ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ classes. For example, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that taste and ‘cultural capital’ has been used by the ruling class in order to perpetuate the idea of exclusivity and untouchable status to those who have not been socialised into this culture of power.

Cultural capital is earned through an individual's initial learning and can be used as one measurement of how much power or how important one is seen in society. In particular it refers to the symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences that can be strategically used as resources in social action and reproduction. Cultural capital is intrinsically linked to class as the habitus that is found in institutions of success is one of middle class values and cultures, therefore if one already has the knowledge and tastes of middle class culture then one will have more chance of success in these areas. A reaffirming cycle of disadvantage is created with social mobility limited for those that aren’t born into this cultural capital. Due to a range of barriers, it is hard for such capital to be learnt without the resources to do so. “To the socially recognized hierarchy of the arts, and within each of them, of genres, schools or periods, corresponds a social hierarchy of the consumers. This predisposes tastes to function as markers of 'class'” (Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Distinction’). This can be applied to all areas of knowledge and fields, as well as the art world. If an individual has grown up in an environment (middle or upper class households) where they have been exposed to the ‘codes’ and ideas of ‘high culture’ and they have knowledge of ‘classic’ literature or understand the importance placed on certain individuals in the cultural capital then they will be able to read the codes placed in art and have a preset idea of a hierarchy in the art world. At the most surface level this can be immediately communicated through the materials used in a piece, it is the first thing objectively viewed in a piece and surprisingly can reveal so much about the hierarchies in society, past and present. A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded. Therefore, the 'naive' spectator cannot attain a specific grasp of works of art which only have meaning - or value - in relation to the specific history of an artistic tradition (Bourdieu, ‘Distinction’). This value and code can then not only be communicated through the style or subject matter but also the material used in a piece, and the ‘tradition’, can then apply to the hierarchy of materials that time and social strata have only strengthened.

The hierarchy of materials itself, at least in western and European art, comes with all this social closure and inaccessibility to not only those viewing art but also creating it. The tradition of oil painting is one of the biggest examples of the exclusivity in the art world and what is valued as art down to its base level of material. A renaissance oil painting is probably the first thing a lot of people who may feel this barrier to the ‘institution’ of art think of as the most important or as this untouchable superior image of a more prestigious, or even haughty, lifestyle - that of the ruling classes. This image being a popular one in the collective consciousness only proves the hierarchy.

The main distinction in the superiority of materials is between the ‘applied arts’ and the ‘fine arts’. The names themselves already carve out connotations of one having more significance over the other and it's not coincidental. As previously mentioned, the decisions for the superiority of cultures and traditions in institutions are rooted in replicating and reaffirming already existing hierarchies in society. So it's no surprise that artistic disciplines that originally would have been made solely by women, lower classes and more non-western cultures such as textile work, pottery and crafts, have been seen as less significant as works of art and have only recently even been seen as art at all. During eras such as 16th century England, most of these disciplines were for everyday uses such as ceramics and garments, and were only thought of as a necessity and not ones of high skill and craftsmanship that we might see today. Particularly because craftsmen (and women) would have been viewed as lower class even if these objects were being used by kings and nobles, and as the word ‘craftsmen’ even suggests, women wouldn’t have been considered. For example, the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the most famous tapestries in Europe, probably would have been embroidered by a number of women artists but it was never considered that their credit was important. Nuns would have also been encouraged to learn embroidery and garment making to create elaborate dress for the priest (‘The Women of the Bayeux Tapestry’, A Little Insight). This is because it was assumed that women should carry out tasks of making like this to no avail, as a standard of it simply being their job. In the Early Medieval period, embroidery was a female-only profession, and while later years would see men join their ranks it would not be until the 12th century and the Bayeux Tapestry would have been a vast managerial undertaking. The speed with which it was made makes it almost certain that the work was overseen by one supervisor, and it is very likely this would have been a woman with significant experience, and the knowledge to manage novice and expert workers (‘The Women of the Bayeux Tapestry’, A Little Insight). In the following centuries, embroidery would become a major commercial export. In 1238, Adam de Basing became the wealthiest man in London from selling embroidery to noble courts while the women who made it would be getting paid up to 6 pence less than their male counterparts and reaping none of the rewards from commercial exports or noble courts. While men sold the work, it was women who made it (‘The Women of the Bayeux Tapestry’, A Little Insight). Meanwhile, by today's standards textile arts, crafts and so on come under the subtly belittling category ‘applied arts’, these disciplines which still tend to be dominated by women artists, have traditionally been viewed as less serious or elevated than “fine arts”, things like painting or marble sculpture (Jenny Sorkin in ‘Hierarchies in the Arts’, The Current, Tom Jacobs). Even the definition of “fine art” places it ahead of ‘applied arts’ in terms of “intellectual appeal”: “Fine Art is a form of art that is primarily valued for its aesthetic and intellectual appeal, and is often considered to be the pinnacle of aesthetic expression. It is distinguished from other types of art, such as decorative art and applied art, which are created with a more practical purpose in mind”. 

According to Ann-Sophie Lehmann (‘How Materials Make Meaning’) the distinction between fine and applied artis a part of what's called ‘Hylomorphic thinking’ a philosophical theory that states that all things are made up of two things: matter and form. The idea that fine arts are valued more is due to its ‘artistic expression’ that puts mind over matter and ‘practical purpose’ has its roots in Aristotle's distinction between form (morph) and matter (hylo). Using this distinction as a basis, a hierarchic structure was quickly assumed in which form was regarded as superior to matter which was also enforced by religion and the Christian paradigm that assumes the existence of an immaterial spirit prior to the creation of material things. This then brought about the idea of the artist as a divine creator, but only for art that put mind before matter or the material used (‘How Materials Make Meaning’, Ann-Sophie Lehmann). Therefore, art where the materials speak for themselves first, is then put below art that is created with ‘intellectual appeal’ and ‘aesthetic expression’ in the subject matter and codes that only certain well-versed individuals can read into. Only then may the material may be considered after the fact, if at all, in terms of the skill of the painter. In a sense this still puts mind over ‘matter’ as we still think of the creative expression of the painter. This type of Hylomorphic thinking has its roots in other hierarchical dualisms (culture over nature, man over woman, art about craft, vision over touch) which only emphasizes the inevitable superiority of ‘fine arts’ overt ‘applied arts’ as crafts do not possess that idea of the artist as the divine creator. 

The gender divide between fine and applied art also connotes the idea of the traditionally male artist from the fine arts field being more powerful, divine and dominant than the other traditionally female field recreating the pattern of gender discrimination that exists in wider society. The attribution of female qualities to materials has generally served to establish hierarchical structures, in which ‘feminine’ materials are held responsible for lesser artistic effort (“How Materials Make Meaning”, Ann-Sophie Lehman). For example, It was only until very recently that women artists and artists that worked with ‘female dominated’ disciplines such as ceramics and textile, were being recognized on a prestigious scale. For example, the Turner prize, one of the most reputable art awards in the UK, was only first awarded to a woman in 1997, Gillian Wearing who won with her video ‘60 Minutes Silence’. From then it was still six years later until someone won the prize using materials from the ‘applied arts’ field in 2003 when Grayson Perry won it with his pottery in his solo exhibition 'Guerrilla Tactics’. But it's only in very recent years that women artists who work with ‘applied arts’ materials like textile and clay sculpture have been regularly recognized at this level. For example, it wasn't until 2022 that a female artist working with less traditionally ‘prestigious’ materials won the Turner prize, Veronica Ryan who won the prize with her sculptures in tribute to the Windrush Generation, consistently works with a wide range of materials, including plaster, textile, and found objects to create meticulously handcrafted work. Despite the materials her work is incredibly valued and has been uplifted by the art world in the form of this prize and recognition. However, it may be important to note that her most well known sculptures are made from marble and bronze, more traditionally revered materials, whereas her exhibition ‘Along a Spectrum’ which is less known than the Windrush Sculptures, uses significantly more applied arts materials such as clay and textiles. This could perhaps signify that although perhaps subconsciously due to the long history of belittling this field of creating, we as spectators may find ourselves taking work made with these sorts of materials less seriously as works of art. The hierarchy of materials built up over time based on pre-existing social discrimination may therefore affect the value of a piece of work.

However, I do believe this paradigm in the collective consciousness is definitely shifting as we are continually exposed to lots of different types of works made with unconventional, applied arts materials at a prestigious level, and therefore may begin to take it more seriously due to the context it then exists in. For example, popular galleries like the Tate Modern and The Hayward Gallery exhibit many works using a range of different materials and their reputation as galleries may also increase the value of works exhibited using these materials in the collective consciousness.

----------------------------- thank you for reading, hugs and kisses - smudge

every source i used:

Berger, J. (2020). Steps towards a small theory of the visible. Penguin.

Bernstein, B. (1967). Elaborated and Restricted Codes: Their Social Origins and Some Consequences. Ardent Media.

Bernstein, B.B. (2009). Class, codes and control. Vol. 4, The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London ; New York: Routledge, , Cop.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge.

createlondon.org. (n.d.). Hackney Windrush commission by VERONICA RYAN - Create London. [online] Available at: https://createlondon.org/event/hackney-windrush-art-commission-by-veronica-ryan/.

Dunlop, A. (2014). The Matter of Art: Introduction. [online] The Matter of Art: materials, practices, cultural logics, c. 1250-1750. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/12533574/The_Matter_of_Art_Introduction [Accessed 6 Dec. 2024].

Gallery, E. (2021). Fine Art: What is Fine Art Definition? [online] Eden Gallery. Available at: https://www.eden-gallery.com/news/fine-art-definition.

Google.co.uk. (2019). Google Books. [online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Conceptualism_and_Materiality/xsuiDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ann+sophie+lehmann&printsec=frontcover [Accessed 4 Dec. 2024].

Iles, N. (2021). Non-Western Art and Artists Heavily Under-Represented on Wikipedia - WMUK. [online] WMUK. Available at: https://wikimedia.org.uk/2021/05/non-western-art-and-artists-heavily-under-represented-on-wikipedia/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2024].

Jacobs, T. (2019). Hierarchies in the Arts. [online] The Current. Available at: https://news.ucsb.edu/2019/019712/hierarchies-arts.Lehmann,

A.-S. (2012). Ann-Sophie Lehmann, ‘How Materials Make Meaning’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (NKJ) / Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art Vol. 62, 2012, MEANING IN MATERIALS, 1400-1800: 6-27. [online] Academia.edu. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/69180069/Ann_Sophie_Lehmann_How_Materials_Make_Meaning_Nederland

[soulthom]

Soit je vois un coloriage, soit ça n’existe pas. Mais ce qui est important c’est que voir un coloriage a directement comme effet de supprimer l’espace objectif. Ca n’existe pas parce que ça apparaît comme un coloriage alors que ça ne l’est pas. Il y a un paradoxe : une chose se voit par son inverse.

Ah les niveaux de gris ? Mais voyons le gris n’est qu’un choix, tout comme le blanc et le noir. Du coup point de forme. SI tout apparaissait en niveaux de « gris » (rouge, bleu, caca d’oie…) l’idée que ce n’est qu’un choix parmi d’autres n’apparaîtrait pas et l’illusion serait plus forte. Les couleurs trahissent le coloriage.

Alors est-ce que cela signifie que Lénine a tort dans Matérialisme Et Empiriocriticisme ? Oui et non : il a objectivement tort, mais raison en tant qu’être parmi la multitude. Pour faire vite il y a une vision dans laquelle je n´écris à personne et une autre dans laquelle si. Lénine prend le parti pris intégral de la fiction que « nous » prenons tous en tant qu’individus au sein d’une multitude sans forcément nous en apercevoir (l’idéalisme ne peut mener qu’au solipsisme (*), donc à la négation du politique même, il n’y a pas d’intermédiaire. On ne peut adopter le point de vue de la multitude et le nier à la fois). Il y a là une profondeur de vue qui au fond affirme qu’on ne peut pas réellement faire mieux que jouer le jeu des apparences dans tout ce qui concerne l’humanité, l’étendue (même si elle n’existe pas et que de plus le réalisme de la réalité est une farce évidente, pour qui observe un peu au moins). Ce parti pris de jouer le jeu ne permet néanmoins pas d’affirmer que la conscience (au sens de tout ce qui se passe) dérive du cerveau, car c’est faux d’une part et que cela n’ajoute rien de toute façon : ai-je besoin de croire que je tiens vraiment un volant et non un joystick dans un jeu vidéo ? Non. Je n’ai pas non plus besoin de postuler que le cerveau existe vraiment (pour « engendrer » quoi que ce soit), juste d’observer des corrélations.

A part ça le symbolique fonctionne malgré l’imaginarité du monde, pourquoi s’en priver ?

A Dada !

Rob Dechambre

(*) En fait il faut bien dire que la notion même de solipsisme, signifiant solitude, perd elle-même son sens si je ne peux considérer autrui et la « séparation » comme réels. Mais c’est réellement « rien ».

[busparfairy]

this fr helped me really appreciate what commodities are

almost like knowing how something develops helps to get how it works

[hildanasr]

⛔Urgently...Am pregnant

What should I do for people to stand with me? I’m so tired of asking for help⁉️

•I have written many posts, but to no avail. — I’ve cried out again and again, yet the silence remains

I’m tired of asking for help and posting. My friends, we are suffering from hunger, thirst, and relentless killing. Death in all its forms is chasing us. Please, stand by our side. I’ve shared my tragedy more than once—I'm six months pregnant, suffering from low hemoglobin due to malnutrition, and I’ve lost my second cousin. My uncle is now left without any children.

Please, your support—no matter how small—can bring us back to life. We don’t want to feel alone in this war and tragedy. Your donation could save the life of my baby and my family. We are 10 people displaced, moving from one place to another, trying to escape death.

Link gfm

Vetted by

90-ghost here

gaza-evacuation-funds here

Bilal-salah0 here

@omegaversereloaded @punkitt-is-here @tamamita @skunkes @ot3 @valtsv @wolfertinger666 @paper-mario-wiki @nyancrimew @spongebobssquarepants @sabertoothwalrus @90-ghost @komsomolka @sawasawako @wolf-aid @hotvampireadjacent @certifiedsexed @isuggestforcefem @3000s @chokulit @ankle-beez @pitbolshevik @pissvortex @prisonhannibal @apas-95 @neechees @memingursa @afro-elf @vampiricvenus @turtletoria @marxism-transgenderism @beetledrink @bevsi @beserkerjewel @feluka @i-am-a-fish @spacebeyonce @b0nkcreat @11thsense @boobieteriat @gorillawithautism @buttercuparry

[y1tzh0k-r3uve1n-hal3vi1]

I seem to be getting a lot of hate from Marxist radicals for standing with Hindus and for being an Israel supporting Jew. With tags like these

Hilarious. Most of these people are racist in themselves, they victimise perpetrators and demonise victims.

Apparently for standing with Hindus and with Jews makes me a fascist, apparently for standing with indigenous people and for land back for Indian Hindus and Israeli Jews makes me a fascist. Apparently Islamic terrorists are victims too.

When fascism came to the west, it came in the form of Marxism, and we’re seeing masks slip off these peoples faces

[mesetacadre]

I think it's fair to say there is interest in an explanation of trotskyism from a marxist-leninist perspective. Information on what exactly Trotsky did and what trotskyism is nowadays is complicated to come by unless you know a trotskyist willing to be straightforward or someone involved in organizing with these types of communists. So instead of answering these asks without much prior research or preparation, I decided to wait until I was freer, without too many academic and political responsibilities. Full disclosure, the portion of this post on Trotsky himself is essentially (though not completely) a summary of Moissaye J. Olgin's Trotskysim: Counter-revolution in Disguise, which gets into the basics of trotskyism as well as Trotsky's actual position on his contemporary issues, such as the Chinese revolution, or the CPUSA which I don't get into here but I highly recommend reading. The second portion, about modern trotskyism and how it got to be present in the countries that it is, is shorter and more based on my own experiences organizing with trotskyists as well as reading what they have to say, and conversations with much more knowledgeable comrades of mine.

What is trotskyism?

Succinctly, it is the form of left opposition to marxism-leninism that has enjoyed the most spread, spearheaded by Leon Trotsky and his criticisms of the USSR.

Trotsky himself, despite what his self-aggrandizing History of the Russian Revolution leads one to believe, was never a bolshevik, much less a leninist. The second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party¹ (RSDLP) of 1903, which sought to establish the bases of what would become the bolshevik party and the CPSU, saw the start of the menshevik-bolshevik split, on the issue of what the party should become and how it should be organized.

The bolsheviks, already lead by Lenin, defended the principles of organization that were later systematized into democratic-centralism. These principles were the freedom of discussion until the party decided by a majority vote during a Congress, Conference or other organ for discussion, a position on any issue. After this, unity of action should follow, and the comrades who held the minority opinion, even if they still disagree, should submit to the collectively agreed-upon position, and act on that line an all party matters. This is to ensure that the party of the proletariat, representing the interests of one class, is not divided, and is able to express that single will. Otherwise, its action is crippled by unending debates kept alive by a minority. Consequently, these principles also lead to the intolerance towards fractions within the party.

Trotsky, who aligned himself with the mensheviks, opposed these principles, instead advocating for a complete liberty of individual action of comrades in the party. He called Lenin "the great disorganizer of the party" over this. This is the first great pillar of trotskyism, a rejection of democratic-centralism in favor of the creation of endless cliques and fractions within the party, which he did multiple times within the CPSU until his expulsion.

The second great pillar of the trotskyist opposition that arose before the October Revolution was of defeatism regarding the peasantry. Especially after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, Trotsky was convinced that a successful revolution in a country such as the Russian Empire, where the peasantry was a majority and usually held reactionary positions due to various economic determinations², was impossible because these reactionary elements would inevitably overthrow a worker's dictatorship. While already an excessively defeatist position among other communists, and certainly not a bolshevik position, this belief did not change whether it was 1905, 1915, or 1935. Up to the end, even once the USSR had beaten the armed intervention of 14 armies and had transformed the peasantry by eliminating the class of kulaks and collectivizing agriculture, Trotsky's opposition to socialism in one country relied on the perception of an insurmountable reactionary class constantly on the edge of an overthrow. This is what the "permanent revolution", a term that when used by trotsky has nothing to do with the same term used by Marx and Engels, actually means. A defeatism so deep, that only the practically simultaneous and global victory of the proletariat is possible, all without party unity!

This also negates other leninist positions such as the weakest chain theory, crucial to understanding imperialism, or the necessity of a communist party altogether. Since socialism in one country will inevitably fail, Trotsky told workers that an armed insurrection once the conditions was right was pointless, and that they should instead work for a "worldwide revolution", something that's in practice impossible because it would necessitate a synchronization of the conditions necessary for a revolution in every single imperialist country at once. Unequal development is an unbreakable rule of the imperialist stage of capitalism, and the notion of a worldwide revolution or even a revolution among a significant portion of imperialist countries was already refuted by Lenin in 1915.

So how did Trotsky reconcile his defeatist dogmatism with a living and thriving proof against it in the form of the USSR? As the third great pillar of trotskyism, he insisted by every possible avenue that the USSR wasn't actually socialist, the reasons for which changed constantly. Some issues were already recognized by the CPSU and worked against, and Trotsky exaggerated them. He expressed concern about the Central Committee replacing the party itself, he expressed concern about bureaucratization, the NEP and its lack of collectivization, the excessive speed of collectivization in the 30s, and other criticisms which, when taken together, show only contradiction and a single consistent position: that any attack against the USSR was legitimate.

And it's not like he was being ignored in the USSR, he simply always chose the most incendiary and anti-leninist methods for criticism. In the 13th Congress of the RCP(b) of 1924, among other things, the resolution that was approved recognized many flaws in the party coming out of the NEP, but that these issues weren't actively dangerous and could be solved: bureaucratization in some areas, excessive departmentalization, some influence of bourgeois elements. This resolution was passed unanimously, which included Trotsky. Immediately after the Congress, he published a pamphlet called The New Course, in which he lambasts this Congress and the entire party as having degenerated. In this pamphlet he also places students as the "barometer of the revolution", instead of workers themselves. His only proposal to that Congress was one to allow "freedom of groupings", meaning the freedom to form fractions. Once again he pulled the same stunt in the 15th Congress of 1926; he publicly subscribed to a resolution that explicitly banned such fractions, and directly afterwards published more pamphlets that directly opposed the resolution that he subscribed to! This is not a man who levied fair criticisms and was shut down, he was someone who held minority positions, anti-leninist ones, and refused to admit it, to the point of plotting against the USSR.

But how come Trotsky, during his better known times in exile, claimed he was the true Leninist and that he opposed the Stalinist degeneration? This is the greatest example of a tactic he used constantly. To always seem like the rational critic, and to pass his opposition as one coming from another bolshevik, he always shifted the perspective of his criticisms. In the times of Lenin, Lenin was the "great disorganizer", and the "leader of the reactionary wing of the party"³. But once Lenin died, he became the most loyal foot-soldier of Leninism, crusading against the Stalinist corruption. Then it was Stalin who became Trotsky's devil, effortlessly transposing his criticisms of Lenin to Stalin, and shifting his perspective from that of a menshevik, to that of a true "bolshevik-leninist".

This tactic was used constantly. For instance. when he was still within the ranks of the party, he completely opposed the principles of democratic-centralism, but once he was in exile and had to criticize the Communist International, his issue suddenly became only that the bolshevik form of organization was being hastily applied to different contexts. Then, he really had no issue with democratic-centralism. When he talked of the possibility of a revolution in the US, then all his worries of an insurmountable reaction dissolved, instead becoming an optimist who believed that, actually, there would be no real significant class who would oppose a revolution in the US, and that therefore the USamerican workers should carry out a revolution "without compulsion". The very same person who over the course of decades insisted on the dangers of a counter-revolution apparently believed the workers of the USA had no opposition to fear. This was, rather, simply an opposition to the Communist International's analysis of imperialism, as Trotsky placed the most revolutionary potential in the countries where capitalism was most developed, the imperial core, the very same mistake Marx and Engels committed, except only 70 years prior and with no good framework with which to analyze imperialism. If Trotsky was truly a leninist, then he utterly failed at even beginning to understand anything about the theory regarding imperialism.

I think this is a good enough place to leave Trotsky be, and talk now about trotskyism beyond Trotsky.

Trotskyism, especially in its analysis of imperialism, is very attractive to the imperial core communist. It appeals to multiple sensibilities like individualism, an aversion to revolutionary discipline and work, and impatience. By putting the emphasis away from the party of our class and onto the group of individual ideologues, each with their own cliques and mini-parties, by completely disregarding the possibility of a revolution outside the top of the imperialist pyramid, and by also disregarding the possibility of a revolution until the instance of a total global victory, it is no wonder most trotskyists nowadays are found in the imperial core. This is, with the exception of a portion of Latin-American countries, which I think deserves its own explanation.

Latin America in the 20s and 30s was a continent⁴ of very differing levels of development of capitalism and the proletariat. When many European trotskyists left to Latin America for various reasons, it's no coincidence that they ended up mostly in the urban centers of the most developed countries, such as Argentina and México, where Trotsky himself ended his emigrations after exile. It was exported to places that had a significantly developed proletariat, places which up to that point lacked a culture of multiple communist parties, like Europe had, and places with a strong unionist movement. Other countries like Colombia, Ecuador or Perú, whose worker movements were more significantly indigenist and/or decolonial, along with not meeting the other conditions like Argentina and México, were less ripe for trotskyism.

The condition for a lack of a multi-party environment was important because the trotskyist opposition to the USSR collected all the "orphaned" communists who opposed the sections of the Communist International in each of their countries, especially after the Moscow trials of the late 30s which expanded the opposition to marxism-leninism internationally, as well as with other events like the Hungarian intervention after WW2. But besides this very specific phenomenon, product of a set of very specific conditions which, outside of the imperial core, were only met in these specific countries, the basis of trotskyism as an imperial core opposition to marxism-leninism remains.

So nowadays, trotskyists are mostly located in the imperial core, with those exceptions I've explained. And this leads me to the last part of this post, which is about organizing with trotskyists as a marxist-leninist. In short, it's not impossible but also not an extraordinary situation. Organizing in the imperial core varies from country to country, that much is clear, but the fragmentation into countless groups and sects, as well as the competition with social-democrats, is broadly consistent. These conditions, again generally, mean marxist-leninist parties in the imperial core have to collaborate with a myriad of communist offshoots, anarchists, and ill-defined "leftists" to achieve a broader reach. This includes trotskyists. What makes them in particular uniquely annoying to organize with is that they continue to pretend to be leninists despite all the discrepancies, so they tend to constitute competitors in agitation and rhetoric, while their internal organization usually resembles that of an anarchist group more than anything else. From this, other symptoms like a reliance on assemblyism (especially in the students' movement) and extreme levels of voluntarism naturally follow.

The IMT (International Marxist Tendency), or whichever acronym it is that they're using now, has a relevant presence in just the US and UK with a nominal one in most other imperial core countries. In all cases they're not much more than newspaper vendors who sometimes gives talks at best, and mere reading clubs or financially-extorting sects at worst. There is another international grouping of trotskyist parties that I've come across led by the PTA (Partido del Trabajo Argentino, Argentinian Labor Party), mostly linked via their news broadcast Izquierda Diario, although from what I've heard, the PTA finances their international "children" parties too. Of course, these groups all have different names in each country which in turn tend to change every few years.

Before the split of the Second International during WWI, communists called themselves social-democrats

The mode of production of the peasantry was very individualized, since each peasant or group of peasants lived partly from the fruits of their own labor, they didn't sell it in its entirety. This stands in contrast with the proletariat's completely socialized mode of production; every worker sells the entirety of their labor-power and sustains themself by purchasing commodities with their salary. The pre-existing socialization of production in capitalism was identified by Marx and Engels already in the Manifesto as one of the reasons for the proletariat being the revolutionary class by excellence. The reactionary tendencies of the peasantry wasn't wholly determined by this, it also depended on various historical and contextual reasons, but this should be better expanded on a dedicated post to social alliances.

These are all real insults thrown at Lenin by Trotsky when he disagreed about party discipline. The "true leninist", ladies and gentlemen

Using "continent" in a very loose way here. It's not like the common definitions of continent are very determined either. But you get what I mean

[deancasforcutie]

#spn is an objectively good show#i've literally never subscribed to the fandom idea that it sucks or whatever lol#i think its lame to not just fully embrace your interests#if you like the show you like the show and that's all good#but if you're embarrassed about it even on tumblr dot com then just log off lol#stop spreading your misery or projecting it onto other fans#the show is GOOD#it wouldn't have 15 seasons otherwise#it wouldn't have had the audience it had and still has if it wasn't good#now get up and have some fruits (@jhnwinchester)

#prev holding hand in Frankfurt School traumatized hand dskhdgkhd #also same with the Celluloid Closet bc even though I had a gender studies minor there's still so much out there to analyze and learn about #and also even without all the depth that's found in Supernatural. if it moves you on a personal level no matter if it's enjoyment or silly #or sad and tragic or makes you question things - it's good. #like yeah I know where Adorno and etc come from but I have the feeling we now move towards being so overly critical that it becomes purist #and defining what art is and what not and what quality art has turns it full circle into policing people what they enjoy and what narrative #they are allowed to consume. and then you come back toward exactly that what the Frankfurter Schule feared #also just I hate the classism in it all? Like why are you better because you go to the opera. Why is the opera automatically the 'better' #form of art. Oh right. It's because going there is connected to status etiquette and money. #like don't get me wrong we need to fund small artists and art should not have to be this capitalist/neoliberal hellscape #but the framework we consume in and present art as is so impactful. why are we connecting Supernatural to shame. Is it because it's enjoyed #by the average consumer as opposed to some snobby policymakers. By the one not in power? #mhm. is it maybe that calling mass media low art is actually reistablishing systems of power like of course mass media is a tool #but a tool is also to tell who is allowed to enjoy what form of art and aquire what kind of knowledge you know #also yes agreeing with you the SPN writers knew their shit. except maybe Buckleming aksdhkjsdhfkgfd (via @deancrowleycas)

Supernatural is queer and I am queer and it impacted me greatly man I love art man I love to relate and to laugh and to cry and to learn and I love that Supernatural is good

[apas-95]

I get that people tend to instinctively side with the USSR because it's the socialist state they learn more about etc, but, like, the sinosoviet split is unambiguously on the USSR's lap - the CPC was fine to politely advocate marxism-leninism and oppose revisionism in hope the CPSU would reverse course, until the (consistently paternal) USSR got scared by the prospect of a nuclear-armed China it couldn't control and punitively withdrew all technical aid. Even earlier, the USSR had supported the KMT over the CPC in the civil war, in an effort to keep Russian Imperial territorial claims recognised; and had backed the DPRK in war against the ROK with the hope it would draw China into the cold war and grant it Russia's old naval bases in China. The idea that national interests only emerged between socialist powers due to the split, or worse, due to China, is exactly the mistaken attitude that underlied Soviet paternalism. Even the most egregious episodes of the split, such as support for the Khmer Rouge, can be understood through the lens of national policy (rather than as instances of sudden insanity in the communist party) - the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, having sided with the USSR against China and forming another border the PRC had to defend, made very clear its territorial ambitions to annex Cambodia as part of a 'socialist indochina'. The support for nationalist (not communist!) groups in Cambodia was spurred on precisely by the USSR's ally, and by the USSR's 'internationalist' view that revolution could be forced on another nation by military occupation. The USSR was revisionist, yes, but moreso it was of the position that its interests were the interests of all proletarians, when that was simply not the case. Soviet national interests, and the Soviet denial of the existence of its national interests, were the immediate cause for the split, which, to a certain degree was the inevitable flailing of a state which found itself existentially doomed after the invention of the cold war.

[bimboficationblues]

so the thing about "read theory" as a mantra: in the social media sphere there is a consistent downplaying of what that kind of commitment actually entails, plus a consistent obfuscation of what exactly the commitment is necessary for.

let's say that you're interested in learning more about specifically "Marxist theory." This, I think, also raises a bunch of questions about what we mean by theory - works of political philosophy, texts on revolutionary and military strategy, political speeches, journalistic or sociological analysis, historiography - these varying things with very different discursive norms and standards of evidence or logic often get rolled into one singular object called "theory." but let's set that aside for now.

you want to learn this for maybe an assortment of reasons, here's a few (non-exhaustive) good ones:

Marxism has been a substantial historical force that has probably had a notable impact on the world around you in some way.

Learning about Marx/ism might offer some level of insight into your current social world that other things are unable to offer.

Many texts - Capital, The Wretched of the Earth, The Second Sex, The State and Revolution - are also world-historical forms of political literature, which is interesting.

Follow-up to 2 - maybe having some level of familiarity with these things will give you the ability to better articulate yourself and participate in social and political movements around you.

generally speaking the Social Media Marxist approach is to tell you to go read off a list of texts of whatever writers the author personally agrees with or whatever works she happens to have read. so you decide to start with the big guy Marx, who is at the top of the list. totally reasonable decision.

however, there are a few contextual questions that might reasonably come up when doing so.

first, it will be clear that Marx did not pop out of an intellectual vacuum; Lenin has a rather popular identification of the "three sources of Marxism" - post-Hegelian German philosophy, French socialism, and English political economy. from my perspective, these are more like three of his main objects of ire (and so in some sense are both influences and also breakages - but not strictly speaking a synthesis), but I digress. so, frequently, in order to grasp what Marx is talking about or responding to, you are going to need some level of familiarity with a lot of additional people: Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Hegel, Bauer, Feuerbach, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Mill, Sismondi. suddenly you are not just learning about the works of one guy, but his attitude towards all the people he relies on for support or aims his criticisms at. and each of those different intellectual relationships is going to be different. sometimes at different times!

second, and relatedly, Marx is not always the most charitable to the people he's criticizing, who were often rival socialists (so there were pretty notable political and personal stakes at work in proving them wrong or diminishing their influence over the movement). the introductory materials to the new translation of Capital also observe that Marx's approach to scholarship is, shall we say, haphazard; often he makes quotes or citations that are not actually representative of what he's citing. finally, many of the people he's criticizing have sort of been rendered obsolete historically *in no small part* due to the success of Marxism as a political orientation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. so to determine whether Marx is being fair to the people he is basing his critique on, we will have to do some level of intellectual work to check. so now we're not just evaluating Marx's relationship to different thinkers but also the substantial content of each of those thinkers themselves.

third, Marx did not pop out of a social vacuum. all of these different writers didn't just crop up from nowhere but wrote within particular sociohistorical contexts, some of which were rather divorced from the European revolutionary wave, first worldwide financial crisis, and the shifting character of the United States in the wake of the Civil War and the formal abolition of slavery - some of the historical events that Marx was more explicitly engaging with. and the radical liberals, republicans, and socialists Marx criticized all also had their own intellectual and social histories. so now we're getting a little far afield from the initial notion, which was just to read some guy, and getting into the realm of social history, and trying to understand the relationship between world history and the ideas produced within it.

fourth, you are a subject in the world, which is to say YOU did not pop out of a social or intellectual vacuum. you likely bring predispositions, assumptions, biases, and cognitive distortions to what you read; we all do. working through those and trying to note where they're happening - where they might be fine and where they might be problematic - will require a certain willingness to reflect, to write, to take notes, to analyze and self-scrutinize, and to be critical of both yourself as a reader and of the text you are reading. (a nested problem is that we have a truly staggering amount of material from Marx and Engels, and you might have to make certain determinations as to which material is important or worthwhile or more useful, and identify the standards by which you think that - all of which requires a certain reflection on your status as a political thinker).

okay, so consider all that. we started with "I wanna read this one guy," we end with "to really grasp the work of this one guy it's also important to know both preceding and contemporaneous world history, his intellectual influences, and the gaps or silences or errors in his work.” now consider that, if you really want to be able to speak on them with some level of confidence and intellectual honesty, you have to apply approximately the same level of rigor to every other writer on the Social Media Marxist approved list - Lenin, Fanon, Che, Kollontai, Cabral, Mao, Luxemburg, whoever. not to mention their critics, both direct and indirect!

Marx developed his work through an incredibly sustained engagement with enormous volumes of different material; we have entire notebooks of him poring over Max Stirner, or Spinoza, or the political economists, or the empirical observations of English factory inspectors. I'm not saying that you have to do that, or even that one strictly *has* to go down any or all of the first three rabbitholes I identified. Marx was in the somewhat unique position of sustaining himself through the support of Engels and his journalistic work, as a product of being in perpetual exile. that's not the kind of position that most of us are typically in.

the point is not "commit yourself to being a perfect monastic scholar in order to reach perfect truth" - such a thing is probably a fantasy, even if we wish otherwise. the point is that if you think "theory" is worth taking seriously, well, you have to actually take it seriously. if you don’t think it has stakes or utility, that’s fine; different people find different things useful. I think “theory” is not a set of dead letters by canonical authors but produced through social life. but if “reading theory” is a way to clarify and assert yourself as a political subject and agent, to claim some intellectual autonomy and acquire some understanding that you can put into practice in your life, then that’s demanding. it’s not impossible, but it does take real effort and a commitment to study and a certain level of resistance to being dogmatic. otherwise you are just letting yourself be rhetorically persuaded by whatever is in front of you or whatever affirms your biases.

as Marx says in the preface to Capital, Volume I, "I am of course assuming that my readers will want to learn something new, and so are ready to think for themselves."