Understanding the Russian Revolution

In this Cutronezone, Chris Cutrone to explores the Russian Revolution and the broader concept of revolution in Marxist thought. Cutrone breaks down the historical significance of the Russian Revolution, its lessons for today, and delves into the three types of revolution: mass, democratic, and socialist.

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[theswoletariat]

Based shoutouts to @theoryunderground and I

[ramboz]

The "contradiction" without the proletariat is what Sismondi already described, at best (and no, that Sismondi is an "underconsumptionist, " that a complete myth). He already said that value is overproduced because of a self-contradiction in the modern system and has caught society in a centripetal but decentralizing, self-destructive loop.

This is *not* what Marx thought. He would consider Sismondi "utopian" because Sismondi could not give an account of why he could see what he could see. The only reason Marx could was because of workers organized into a proletariat.

It would behoove one to read Sismondi or Cherbuliez or Richard Jones or Roscher or any of these 1810-1830s dissident political economists to recognize just how much they ascribe to Marx, especially when trying to say what is """"contradictory"""" about capitalism. Marx doesn't "correct" their theories like some dilettantes like to portray it but give a critique i.e., an account of why they can recognize what they can (and how that also determines their very standpoint).

Contradictions do not simply exist, whether or not one recognizes it. The very term ("capital-ism") presupposes the self-contradiction of the subject struggling to overcome it.

Without the proletariat, the contradiction does not even become. One can't rest their hat on Das Kapital - let alone what sounds like selections of parts of Kapital that the MHI sit on and are no more precise than what Adam Smith already said a 100 years prior. Das Kapital has itself *necessary political moments in the account i.e., the 10-hour day, the whole section on the Bank Act of 1844, the end of Volume 3, etc. Value is "historical and social"; it is only constituted socially. You don't get to have Das Kapital without the proletariat.


The content of all the categories that are regularly reached for - "value", money, "surplus-value, " "abstract labor, " "dead labor" etc - do not mean anything outside of the totality, which *is the class struggle for Marx.* This obviously was a lesson passed down from Hegel (and Kant) to Marx.


One is trying to sidestep the collapse of a party. The constant reiteration of is unfortunately, when these conversations become most dogmatic.


Without the class struggle, capitalism does not "attain to its concept" - the contradiction (which is not in value but that the totality is contradictory - hence)

Meaning, it is equally determined (if not more) by non-value, not-abstract labor, etc.

[levine]

As usual you didn't talk about the actual topic but instead meandered around valuetheory. You two guys have always the same back and forth about what capitalism really is and what the problem with it really is which is fine but then please change the title from "Understanding the Russian Revolution" to "Chris and Doug discuss what the Value-Form really is Episode #76"

[ChristosBeest]

Magick is real. Worship Lenin like a god and he will bless you

[CharlieBabbitt]

Chris I hope you speak more about how Marx thought the workers brought about the Industrial Revolution in your upcoming course with Theory Underground.
I feel like dogmatic Marxism obscures this dialectical contradiction in favor of simpler explanations that don’t really hit the mark

[absinthe_apostle]

Marx is definitely literature in some way that the rest aren't. And not just stylistically, but in the sense his writing refracts thought and is ever-green.

[tommynes]

Lenin was probably a genius and responsible for the only proletarian revolution ever but according to zizek it was Trotsky who convinced Lenin that he needed to take control of the trains and infrastructure etc and not just leave it up to the mob to take power and moved it beyond a protest to a real revolution.