'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Death of the Left' (9/25/21 teach-in)

On September 25th at Northwestern University, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a teach-in by Chris Cutrone on "the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Death of the Left" for its last event of the 2021 Midwest Regional Conference.
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The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s-30s), "New" (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.

[socdemigod]

Chris Cutrone eating during the presentation was pretty funny.

[christopherleary]

Chris is very clear and concise on his analysis, one of the true heirs to the practice of scientific socialism.

[harbingerization]

Guy questioning me for starting a union: “What about the USSR? What went wrong there?”
Me after listening to Chris Cutrone: “it wasn’t big enough.”

[peternyc]

This reading, especially its culmination at end of the Death of the Left, is as good a call to return to Marxist ideology as I have ever heard in my life. It satisfies so many objections that the non-Marxist socialists have, especially the anarchists, who I am partial to.

[Syychro]

Great presentation, and great questions/contributions from the attendees.

Just want to point out to Cutrone that he's making a flawed point about the US-UK-Australian submarine deal. It's not happening (as he says) because it gives the US a back up way to nuke China. The US already has second strike / "fail deadly" capability through its vast submarine fleet. A more likely reason is to further bind Australian security to the US, and to provide Australia the submarine capability needed to choke off critical sealanes for China at the Straight of Malacca. Or maybe to threaten to harass a Chinese amphibious landing on Taiwan. But either way, the US does not need Australia or any other country for its second strike capability.

[txikitofandango]

The idea that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has to occur globally reminds me of Zizek's inversion: think locally, act globally

[peternyc]

At around the 56:15 mark, he talks of the naturalizing of the state's role in capitalism as a projection by mid-20th century left thinkers onto the past. Would this be his opinion of Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation? Does Polanyi normalize the role of the state?

[nothingmatters]

One question about the Wertkritik folks: when you say their analysis of the Soviet Union and China were not the dictatorship of the proletariat because humanity was constrained to produce heavy goods in Fordism. Are you saying their analysis suggests that the dictatorship of the proletariat was impossible because of the historical phase capital existed in?

[peternyc]

Chris' question at 58:00, asking whether the Obama 2008 bailouts of the capitalist class were done simply because the politicians were bought and paid for by the capitalist class or were they done to preserve the conditions of production in society, is brilliant. I am an anti-capitalist socialist that spends a good deal of time reading about finance and economics from a pro-capitalist perspective. I believe that as awful as capitalism is, it behaves in such a way as to always be in eminent danger due to over-leveraging (too much borrowing). It so often does what it does because it has to. Blaming people, even disgusting people, for the evils of the system is a trap. Picking the low lying fruit of single people and groups while letting the tree (capitalism) continue bearing poisonous fruit is not smart.

[peternyc]

The circular economy of Adam Smith's world is the goal of the Georgists, the followers of Henry George, who sought the abolition of all forms of rent seeking, starting with the private capture of publicly created value in land.

[pt]

00:19:56 where can this argument about Stalinism being more democratic than liberal (capitalis) democracies be found in a more elaborated form?

[Achrononmaster]

@1:30:00 if you can find something useful to do then you ought not be unemployed. But you also need to wake the F up and realise all unemployment is caused by governments imposing tax liabilities, since that's the only base fundamental reason people demand the state currency. The governments also monopoly issues their own currency (which they accept back as tax return). So governments can also eliminate all the unemployment their tax liabilities create.
The question then is CLEAR: what things do we want people to be employed doing? Not war, not burning the world, and maybe instead building homes, growing food and generally looking after each other, that'd be a good start. Plus, the more people doing good things, the less time each one person needs to "work." There is *_no end_* of socially useful things people could be doing, not even with as many robots as you care to have, everyone can do something, so there's no fundamental *_reason_* for unemployment. You just have to know what causes it to eliminate it. It's not "capitalism". (Capitalism is merely highly unjust. So has to go.)
The _cause_ of unemployment and waste is issuing tax liabilities (creating unemployed people = people seeking to earn the state currency) that government spending does not then immediately eliminate.

[juanballista]

Remember: Marxism is a State ideological current. Marx said once: the only thing I know is that I'm not Marxist!!!