Spectre of Communism

Spectre of Communism – the theoretical podcast of the RCI – kicks off a new season by exploring one of the most fundamental and important topics of today: imperialism 💵First explained by Vladimir Lenin in his 1916 book of the same name, imperialism has come to define the past century. From countless wars to the economic dominance of giant monopolies, it has destroyed the lives of billions of people  🦅Much has changed since Lenin put pen to paper, but the core ideas and developments he described remain as relevant as ever. In fact, the parasitic features of imperialism have only become more pronounced, with monopolisation and the concentration of capital reaching truly obscene levels 📈Today, three asset management firms – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – control over $22 trillion in assets and hold major stakes in 88% of S&P 500 companies. The world's richest 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity, while developing countries pay $487 billion to foreign lenders every single year. Meanwhile, the number of wars and conflicts is at its highest since the Second World War, as rivalry between the major imperialist powers intensifies 🧨In this episode, Joe Attard is joined by Jorge Martín, leading member of the RCI, to discuss why understanding imperialism is a prerequisite for fighting it. That means grasping concretely how imperialist conflicts are bound to unfold in the period ahead – and how the class struggle that imperialism creates will provide immense opportunities to strike blows against the capitalist system the world over ✊Tune in, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss any future episodes of Spectre of Communism 📺

“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism!” These immortal words from the Communist Manifesto (and the title of this podcast!) herald the most important piece of political literature ever written. In our final episode of the season, we go through the Manifesto chapter-by-chapter, and explain the ongoing relevance of this amazing document.

In just a few dozen pages, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels describe the development and dynamics of capitalist society, explain the revolutionary role of communists, and issue a battlecry to the workers of the world. They draw the incredibly profound conclusion that the (written) history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, a discovery that Engels later said had the same impact on political economy as Darwin’s theory of natural selection did on biology.

While the Manifesto was written in 1847, in reality it more accurately describes the world of today!

As Josh Holroyd, leading member of the Revolutionary Communist International, explains in our detailed chapter breakdown, the Manifesto predicts a world in which the entire population is made part of the capitalist machine, and periodically plunged into chaos by crises of overproduction. Marx and Engels fend off bourgeois slanders that communism crushes ‘freedom’ and would ‘make people lazy’. They point to the treacherous role of reformism, and teach communists how they should relate to the wider workers’ movement. And much more besides.

These theoretical insights have only gained in relevance in the 150 years since the Manifesto was published. And in practice, the ideas contained in this text have transformed the course of world history, inspiring victorious revolutions and continuing to haunt the nightmares of the capitalists and their agents.

We are delighted to end this season of the podcast with a deep dive into the foundational document of our movement. Workers of the world, unite!

📖 WORKS CITED 📖

Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (with prefaces):
🔗https://marxist.com/communist-manifesto-chapter-1.htm

Purchase a physical copy here as part of Classics of Marxism Volume One:
🔗https://wellred-books.com/classics-volume-one/

Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:
🔗https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

[Podcast] How Marx became a Marxist:
🔗https://marxist.com/podcast-how-marx-became-a-marxist.htm

“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism!” These immortal words from the Communist Manifesto (and the title of this podcast!) herald the most important piece of political literature ever written. In our final episode of the season, we go through the Manifesto chapter-by-chapter, and explain the ongoing relevance of this amazing document.

In just a few dozen pages, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels describe the development and dynamics of capitalist society, explain the revolutionary role of communists, and issue a battlecry to the workers of the world. They draw the incredibly profound conclusion that the (written) history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, a discovery that Engels later said had the same impact on political economy as Darwin’s theory of natural selection did on biology.

While the Manifesto was written in 1847, in reality it more accurately describes the world of today!

As Josh Holroyd, leading member of the Revolutionary Communist International, explains in our detailed chapter breakdown, the Manifesto predicts a world in which the entire population is made part of the capitalist machine, and periodically plunged into chaos by crises of overproduction. Marx and Engels fend off bourgeois slanders that communism crushes ‘freedom’ and would ‘make people lazy’. They point to the treacherous role of reformism, and teach communists how they should relate to the wider workers’ movement. And much more besides.

These theoretical insights have only gained in relevance in the 150 years since the Manifesto was published. And in practice, the ideas contained in this text have transformed the course of world history, inspiring victorious revolutions and continuing to haunt the nightmares of the capitalists and their agents.

We are delighted to end this season of the podcast with a deep dive into the foundational document of our movement. Workers of the world, unite!

📖 WORKS CITED 📖

Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (with prefaces):
🔗https://marxist.com/communist-manifesto-chapter-1.htm

Purchase a physical copy here as part of Classics of Marxism Volume One:
🔗https://wellred-books.com/classics-volume-one/

Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:
🔗https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

[Podcast] How Marx became a Marxist:
🔗https://marxist.com/podcast-how-marx-became-a-marxist.htm

The term ‘postmodernism’ is thrown around a lot by right-wing shock-jocks like Jordan Peterson, often in tandem with Marxism: although these two sets of ideas are totally opposed. In this episode, leading comrade Hamid Alizadeh takes on some of the main luminaries of this obscure, impenetrable and ultimately reactionary school including Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard.

Lyotard describes postmodernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives.” In other words: an opposition to ‘big ideas’ about history, truth, science and progress. But with these ‘big ideas’ discarded, what are we left with? As Hamid demonstrates, the answer for all the postmodernists is basically the same: we cannot know the world, let alone change it, all we can do is ‘think differently’, play around with words, and retreat to subjectivity.

They even celebrate writing in incomprehensible gibberish and ‘believing in nothing’ as a ‘radical’ act!

This cynical philosophy is a total dead-end which winds up in stasis and despair. In total contrast to Marxism, which recognises the world as made up of complex processes, and driven by an inner lawfulness towards higher and higher complexity. By knowing the world, we can organise ourselves to intervene and change it for the better.

Postmodernism is not merely a reactionary worldview, Hamid explains, it has a directly negative impact on society, serving to divide the working class through the related phenomenon of identity politics, and preserve the status quo by hampering unity of the working class.

It is our duty as Marxists to oppose these counter-revolutionary ideas, and demonstrate the vast superiority of our dialectical materialist philosophy!

📖 WORKS CITED 📖

The case for theory: why communists should study philosophy | SPECTRE OF COMMUNISM:
🔗https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBQBXX7jZYg

Marxism vs. Postmodernism, Daniel Morley and Hamid Alizadeh:
🔗https://marxist.com/marxism-versus-postmodernism.htm

Theological-Political Treatise, Baruch Spinoza:
🔗https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/24118/excerpt/9780521824118_excerpt.htm

Hegel, G.F. W. (1975). Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art [For the quote about an ignorant man not being free]

📖 WORKS CRITIQUED 📖

Gender Trouble (Tenth Edition), Judith Butler:
🔗https://selforganizedseminar.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/butler-gender_trouble.pdf

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean-François Lyotard:
🔗https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Lyotard_Jean-Francois_The_Postmodern_Condition_A_Report_on_Knowledge.pdf

The Subject and Power, Michel Foucault:
🔗https://www2.kobe-u.ac.jp/~alexroni/IPD2018%20readings/IPD1%202018%20No.8/Foucault%20Subject%20and%20Power.pdf

Differance, Jacques Derrida:
🔗https://mforbes.sites.gettysburg.edu/cims226/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Week-5a-Jacques-Derrida.pdf

Article about how the CIA used Foucault and postmodern ideas to their benefit:
🔗https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/the-cia-reads-french-theory-on-the-intellectual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS ⏱️

00:55 - What is postmodernism?
11:40 - Is language oppressive?
25:46 - 'Differance' vs Dialectics
31:58 - Are there objective patterns in the world?
40:42 - Is there a barrier between mind and matter?
01:00:54 - Practical impact of these ideas

How did Stalin outmanoeuvre Trotsky and take power following Lenin’s death? What do Marxists mean by ‘value’? And what does it really mean to ‘master the dialectic’? We went back to social media and asked for some more burning questions from our audience, for leading communist Niklas Albin Svensson to answer in a quickfire round!

Watch our previous viewers’ questions episode with Ben Curry here:
🔗https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=korpvewBWo8&t=3561s

📖 WORKS & SOURCES CITED 📖

Wage, Labour and Capital, Karl Marx:
🔗https://marxist.com/classics-wage-labour-and-capital.htm

Value, Price and Profit, Karl Marx:
🔗https://marxist.com/classics-marxism-two-book/value-price-and-profit.htm

ABC of Materialist Dialectics, Leon Trotsky:
🔗https://marxist.com/abc-materialist-dialectics-trotsky.htm

Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky:
🔗https://marxist.com/classics-the-revolution-betrayed.htm

Results and Prospects, Leon Trotsky:
🔗https://marxist.com/results-and-prospects.htm

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Vladimir Lenin:
🔗https://marxist.com/classics-imperialism-the-highest-stage-of-capitalism/.htm

The Wealth of Nations, Book One, Chapter 5:
🔗https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch05.htm

Astronomy Is In Crisis...And It's Incredibly Exciting - 3 million views (discusses crisis in cosmology):
🔗https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zozEm4f_dlw
Reason in Revolt, Ted Grant and Alan Woods:
🔗https://marxist.com/reason-in-revolt-marxist-philosophy-and-modern-science.htm

Purchase In Defence of Marxism Issue 51 here:
🔗https://magazine.marxist.com/

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS ⏱️

00:57 - What is value?

22:18 - How to master the dialectic?

52:20 - How did Stalin come to power?

1:04:23 - How did capitalism affect post-Soviet countries?

🌐 LINKS 🌐

✊ Join the Revolutionary Communist International: https://marxist.com/join-us.htm

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💬 Twitter: https://x.com/revcomintern/