quarrk

A channel I subscribe to just posted an explainer on spin, for anyone interested

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYeRS5a3HbE

Okay? “Videos” in general, not this particular one in every aspect…

It's not how I would have scripted the video, but until/unless I make my own content, I'm not going to bash him too hard. Still consider him a great contributor. I'll leave it at that — thanks for the discussion

I agree that the theory should adapt. Just not in that way. Political climate and popular opinion, in a word ideology, are distinct from material conditions and relations of production.

The historical changes that require updating theory are things like Western financial imperialism that works concurrently to de-industrialize the West while increasing exploitation in the Global South; what Andy Higginbottom calls "super-exploitation". Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai have also discussed this in detail.

It has always been difficult and unpopular to advocate revolution, even in Marx's time. It is not uniquely difficult today even with the Red Scare. There was a time in the early 20th century that there was some modicum of support for revolution in some countries, but in every example it still required a bitter civil war.

There are plenty of Marxists on YouTube who do not concede revolution. Maybe some are too small to grab attention, but there are larger channels like Geopolitical Economy Report who routinely talk about current events from a Marxist perspective, and occasionally talk theory, without such compromise.

The need for revolution is more or less standard Marxism, so it feels backward that I should be explaining that perspective — why do you think we must educate from a social-democratic perspective? Blaming the Red Scare seems like an excuse to me. If someone clicks a video about socialism, they're either open to learning, or they're not. At that crucial point you have to be convincing, not wheel out the usual arguments about fairness that every single Westerner has heard for decades.

Propaganda is no excuse to concede the essential Marxist tenets.

For one thing, 100 years is not a long time.

Secondly, without proving why a theory is now practically obsolete, appealing to the age of theory is a lazy dismissal. For example, many people's knee-jerk reaction to Marx is that he's irrelevant because he lived gasp 150 years ago. So much has changed! Before they had mean wage labor, and now we have nice wage labor!

Reformism was an issue throughout the 20th century. Both PRC and USSR took active measures to prevent reformists from undermining their respective parties. In Finland, the social democrats allied with the bourgeoisie to win the civil war (1918) and then allied with the Nazis to genocide Leningrad during the Continuation War.

The proletariat as a class is materially unchanged, for the most part, since the time of that party. The particular political situation does not change the basic theory and the necessity for revolution over reform.

I commend the attempt but the content is not above criticism.

The audience of the Gotha Program was essentially the same as JT’s audience, and Marx found it important to produce a polemical critique against reformist tendencies.

We don’t necessarily want support from social democratic groups who have demonstrated fickleness in historical periods like the 1918 German revolution.

We shouldn’t water down the essential tenets of revolutionary theory when appealing to the proletarian masses. We shouldn’t focus so much on distribution, on vague “equality”, or on bourgeois electoral democracy.

These gateway videos should be honest and focus more on the necessity of a total revolution in production, the necessity of a change in our way of life, not merely reform in existing political institutions.

Choice excerpts from the Gotha critique:

Maybe I'm just a cranky Marxist — JT's videos are great as a gateway to socialism for the most propagandized Westerners. But does anyone else pick up on an apparent socdem tendency in the explanations provided in videos like this one?

His argument for socialism boils down to moralistic criticism of unequal distribution, and pointing to socialism as a society in which all people receive a guaranteed minimum income, in other words, a more egalitarian society in terms of value received.

Is this not almost identical to the utopian arguments of the Lassalleans whom Marx criticized in his Critique of the Gotha Program?

The earth is healing

Lots of western historians study history extensively and still don’t escape the ideology of their class. Even a well-meaning Marxist is prone to have bad takes on history depending on who they read because, let’s face it, not everyone has the time or the will to read and vet primary historical sources.

The essential thing is not necessarily to be a History Knower but to recognize that every social relation is historically contingent. That includes wage labor, the state, race relations, religion, etc. If it is social then it typically has a material basis which can change over time. Because they usually lack this perspective, non-Marxists are more inclined to have reactionary takes on both current and historical events, regardless of how much history they know.

One excellent book I’m trying to finish is Michael Parenti’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar. Just one example of how historians have distorted the past due to their class lens.

I think Pepe would agree with you. There is no single cause or reason, it is just one of many, in the broader geopolitical picture he paints in the video.