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Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024 final edition extract
The first portion of Chris Cutrone's 2024 book Marxism and Politics published by Sublation Press. Book description: Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism’s own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then, in ever more obscure ways. The essays by Chris Cutrone collected here span the time of the Millennial Left’s abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone’s participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large — but was abandoned. Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism’s accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist “message in a bottle” cast adrift by history yet be received? | Reviews: “The Millennial Left is fading, because it lost sight of the telos of historical Marxism. Chris Cutrone’s fascinating essay ‘The end of Millennial Marxism’ could serve as a good primer on dialectical materialism.” — Sohrab Ahmari, Editor of Compact Magazine | “Chris Cutrone’s The Death of the Millennial Left is explicit in pronouncing fatality: how this generation’s failure is a product of past defeats and the bad ideas it has internalized. If an authentic Marxian Left were to emerge today, it would be unrecognizable, unclassifiable: the Left itself has become so distorted by the experience of defeat that it hardly recognizes its own traditions. Cutrone offers a searching and deep historical critique of a Millennial Left whose failures are mere iterations on previous failures: what is taken to be ‘Left-wing’ or ‘socialism’ today is nothing more than the ‘naturalization of the degeneration of the Left into resignation and abdication. This is explored through reference to Left-wing political traditions.” — Alex Hochuli, author of The End of the End of History, review of The Death of the Millennial Left, American Affairs | “Cutrone is most comfortable with the larger stakes of Adorno and Horkheimer’s claims and how their position emerges from Marx’s and Lenin’s own example.” — Todd Cronan, Nonsite | “The worthwhile and provocative article by Chris Cutrone, ‘Lenin’s liberalism’ argues that Lenin helped legitimize political differences.” — Mike Macnair, author of Revolutionary Strategy, Communist Party of Great Britain | “A great wodge of material spanning Hegel, Kant, Marx, Lenin and the esoterica of 20th century Hegelian Marxism.” — Paul Demarty, Communist Party of Great Britain | “Inspirational.” — Philip Cunliffe, author of Lenin Lives!
Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024 extract
2024
The first portion of Chris Cutrone's 2024 book Marxism and Politics published by Sublation Press. Book description: Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism’s own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then, in ever more obscure ways. The essays by Chris Cutrone collected here span the time of the Millennial Left’s abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone’s participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large — but was abandoned. Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism’s accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist “message in a bottle” cast adrift by history yet be received? Reviews: “The Millennial Left is fading, because it lost sight of the telos of historical Marxism. Chris Cutrone’s fascinating essay ‘The end of Millennial Marxism’ could serve as a good primer on dialectical materialism.” — Sohrab Ahmari, Editor of Compact Magazine “Chris Cutrone’s The Death of the Millennial Left is explicit in pronouncing fatality: how this generation’s failure is a product of past defeats and the bad ideas it has internalized. “If an authentic Marxian Left were to emerge today, it would be unrecognizable, unclassifiable: the Left itself has become so distorted by the experience of defeat that it hardly recognizes its own traditions. “Cutrone offers a searching and deep historical critique of a Millennial Left whose failures are mere iterations on previous failures: what is taken to be ‘Left-wing’ or ‘socialism’ today is nothing more than the ‘naturalization of the degeneration of the Left into resignation and abdication.’ “This is explored through reference to Left-wing political traditions.” — Alex Hochuli, author of The End of the End of History, review of The Death of the Millennial Left, American Affairs “Cutrone is most comfortable with the larger stakes of Adorno and Horkheimer’s claims and how their position emerges from Marx’s and Lenin’s own example.” — Todd Cronan, Nonsite “The worthwhile and provocative article by Chris Cutrone, ‘Lenin’s liberalism’ argues that Lenin helped legitimize political differences.” — Mike Macnair, author of Revolutionary Strategy, Communist Party of Great Britain “A great wodge of material spanning Hegel, Kant, Marx, Lenin and the esoterica of 20th century Hegelian Marxism.” — Paul Demarty, Communist Party of Great Britain “Inspirational.” — Philip Cunliffe, author of Lenin Lives!
Marxism: Humanity Mesmerized by an Idea Resurgent
Marx and his social engineering ideas seductively calls to many of our youth today (and some that are not so young as well). They seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never heard of the words of Winston Churchill, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery” (in Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948). The question that begs to be asked is: “Why are so many youths attracted by the extreme left?” Socialism seems to be à la mode. It was not long ago, at least in American politics, that being called a leftist or a socialist was the highest pejorative as well as a political albatross. However, millennials largely fueled the presidential aspirations of Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, during the 2016 elections in the United States. “The Iowa caucus entrance poll found Sanders garnered an overwhelming 84 percent of the 30 and under vote. Exit polls from New Hampshire found 85 percent support for Sanders among voters ages 30 and younger” (Ekins & Pullmann, 2016). “Immunized” through the educational system against Nazi ideology, and familiar with the horrors perpetrated by that regime, the young simply have not received a like immunization against socialism. For them, the Cold War is a distant historical occurrence with little current relevance. The Soviet Union and its bloc is no more, and the Chinese communists are now über Kapitalisten. They are unaware of either the writings or the deeply moving life stories of Armando Valladares, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, SreyRam Kuy, Jan Petranek, Liao Yiwu, Jerzy Popiełuszko, Thích Huyền Quang, Lech Wałęsa, las Damas de Blanco, Cong Thanh Do, Vera Lengsfeld, or Luis Manuel Diaz. For the young and naïve, socialism is cool. “They’ve never witnessed the spirit-crushing methods of autocratic regimes or the grinding failure of centrally planned economies....Indeed, for many millennials, ‘socialism’ is simply shorthand for ‘vaguely Scandinavian in the best way’” (Emba, 2016).
The Lost Tradition of Marxism and Anarchism - the Third Stream of Socialist Thought
Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity vol 6 Associational Socialism With the demise of state socialism - the collapse of Communism and the internal degeneration of Social Democracy - one is witnessing the potential re-emergence of an independent socialist politics. The attempts to reassert socialism 'from below’ have been many. The orthodoxies of Social Democracy and Communism, if dominant, have never been uncontested. Working class militancy, from the time of the revolutionary syndicalists through the shop stewards movement and councilism to the industrial struggles of the 1960's and 1970's, has continually challenged existing forms. The reemergence of socialism 'from below' challenges the way that socialism has been institutionalised in the form of ‘the party’, Social Democratic or Communist. This enables aspects of Marx other than those appropriated by orthodox interpretations to be explored. Authors and traditions long suppressed by Second International orthodoxy, Nazism and Communism, and the Cold War could now be recovered as the hold of dominant perspectives began to weaken. Individuals like Luxemburg, Korsch, Pannekoek and Gorter, Mattick and Landauer, whose own socialisms had been suppressed by dominant political interests, could now be presented as offering an alternative. Gramsci's attempts to define a new socialist politics could now be appreciated without having to suppress critical insights for reasons of party. The difficulties and ambiguities that Lukacs' found himself in within the international Communist movement could now be resolved on the side of socialist revolution. Perhaps the most important development of all is the opportunity that this collapse of old certainties and orthodoxies affords to actually read Marx without political blinkers. Marx has been released from the straight jacket that Social Democracy and Communism have imposed upon him. And Marx's emancipatory and critical project has been long submerged under the claims that Social Democracy and Communism have made to monopolise socialism and the working class constituency. One need no longer produce a marxism for the parties, a process which begun with the Second International.
What’s Left of Marxism, 2020
In the 1984 introduction to his Theoryo fS ocial Systems,t he sociologist Niklas Luhmann painted an evocative picture of flying at ah ighl evel of abstraction over a "rather thick cloud cover" which offered occasional "glimpses of al and below",i ncluding "al argers tretch of landscape with the extinct volcanoes of Marxism".¹ It was, however,p rematuret od rawt he conclusion that the magma of these Marxist volcanoeshad petrified. Forsure there have been no major eruptions for some time. But anyone testingwith the probes of conceptual history or the history of knowledge can soon see that beneath the sedimentary layers the Marxist lava has never been settled. The question remains whether these volcanoes will soon erupt again. Marx is out-Marx is in. Lookingback, it is noticeable how often theoretical and political debate turned away from Karl Marx and pronounced him 'defunct', onlyt oturnb ack to him with surprising intensity and often in unexpected contexts.² Thisisanambivalent finding.Onone hand, in spite of its beingshaken to the coreb yt he end of the Cold Wara nd the implosion of the Eastern Bloc, the 'Marxist-Leninist' ideologyhas proven capable of remarkable continuity in some places,especiallyi nt he People'sR epublic of China. This kind of power-saturated state Marxism is theoreticallyfrozen and further intellectual eruptions are not to be expected. On the other hand,the task of 're-reading' Capital-Karl Marx'sm ain work from 1867-has become more attractive.³ Capitalism'svulnerability to crisis, persistent exploitation within global hierarchies and the worseninge nvironmental crisis are all factors that have bolstered theoretical approaches thatd rawo ni s
Questioning Marx, Critiquing Marxism Reflections on the Ideological Crisis on the Left
While celebrating the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the ideologues of capitalism cannot gloss over the parallel crisis that is tearing apart the major capitalist societies. They declare Marxism dead, but "the grave-diggers of capitalism" hound them everywhere. For as long as capitalism continues to devastate the lives of the working people Marxism will always be relevant as a method of analysis. Some Marxist parties, however, are making themselves irrelevant by holding fast to outdated doctrines and pursuing political lines that have lost the power to convince.
Whilst the need for social and political transformation in the modern world is clear, it isn’t clear just who or what the structural agency for this change will be. It still can be the working class, for the reasons Marx gave. But the mechanisms upon which marxist class politics rest seem to have failed. Some would question the relevance of Marx to the project of emancipation, consigning marxism to the past in the search for a revival of radical politics.Marxism is still geared to the political economy of an industrial capitalist past. For postmodernists, marxism fails to either recognize the new technologies of regulation and, tied to the past, proceeds to advance political programmes that only further processes of bureaucratisation and homogenisation. The 'evident truths' of Marxism as a political movement are considered to have been 'seriously challenged by an avalanche of historical mutations which have riven the ground on which those truths were constituted'. This study looks at the relation between marxism postmodernism with the specific intention of outlining the contours of a 'postmodern marxism', playing up the extent to which the end of Marx's emancipatory project is itself a POSTmodernity rather than an anti-modernity. Particularly important is the role of social identity and pluralisation within an overarching framework. Thus the attempt is made to address the crisis of marxism as opportunity as well as defeat. Whilst some thought that the collapse of the old soviet marxism would mean the end of marxism as such, the view taken here is that the result has been the flourishing of a new Marxism, the foundations of which have been laid by many hitherto ignored and marginalised thinkers in the past.
Chris Cutrone's articles in Communist Party of Great Britain Weekly Worker 2014–16: "Democratic revolution and the contradiction of capital" What is meant by a ‘democratic republic’? Chris Cutrone critiques Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary strategy "Proletarian dictatorship and state capitalism" Chris Cutrone of Platypus examines the meaning of political party for the left "Back to Herbert Spencer" Chris Cutrone argues that the libertarian liberalism of the late 19th century still has relevance today "What was social democracy?" Chris Cutrone of the Platypus Affiliated Society traces the origins of current socialist terminology "Sacrifice and redemption: Rosa Luxemburg and the party" Chris Cutrone of the Platypus Affiliated Society recounts the struggle of Rosa Luxemburg for the workers’ party to base itself on the goal of socialism