I think I've yet to reach that part of the rant but I've explicitly posted that the conditions are now possible for the Republicans to coalesce into an actual fascist movement.
But it's exactly that - the conditions merely exist. It's not necessarily set in stone. It very much requires some synthesizing, demagogic figure.
But it's entirely possible that the Republicans become increasingly incoherent as the divide between the white supremacist, hyper-capitalist party elite and the expanded multi-racial populist coalition becomes increasingly irreconcilable and polarized. This is kind of the inherent contradiction that HAS to be synthesized - the elites are outward-looking neoconservatives, the rank-and-file are inward-looking reactionary populists.
I think I’ve yet to reach that part of the rant but I’ve explicitly posted that the conditions are now possible for the Republicans to coalesce into an actual fascist movement.
I think Matt had a good point about that though- the possibility of a "fascist" movement as we traditionally understand it might not be possible in the current conditions, because political action isn't understood to have a bearing on our material conditions. It's more that democrats and republicans and the whole country exist in a post-fascist space where politics has moved totally into the realm of the aesthetic, but the idea of the nation as a shared project and the idea of political action changing material realities isn't there, and can't be there. What we're moving into is a cyberpunk techno-feudalism.
I can absolutely see this perspective. Fascism is a rather unique phenomenon of the conditions in its time and represents the syncretic convergence of appropriation of left-wing rhetoric, national-scale psychological trauma from a recent catastrophe, colonial methods imported to the metropole, and making reaction a true mass movement in the streets. Can it be replicated in different conditions? Probably not, not exactly at least.
There's a lot that can be contested. Probably most prominently, Trump's populist mass spectacle and groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys actually represent a reborn fascist street politics. But the question is, is a mass street politics even possible in the conditions of modern American neoliberalism, where we are all rendered atomized, fragmented individuals by the nature of our very infrastructure and by constant bombardment of cultural stimuli in every outlet?
I keep watching these and I still can’t decide if he’s spitting fire or if I’m watching the ravings of a lunatic.
I remember watching his vlogs the week after Super Tuesday and I genuinely thought he had lost it
His "Mind Force: Fibonacci Sniper" vlog right after he did acid is a great listen
I don't agree 100% with his USSR and China takes, but I would serve in this man's army
His characterization of the USSR as a "kleptocratic gangster state" is wrong, and I say this fairly emphatically. I think this is visibly proven by the nature of modern post-Soviet Russia, which actually is a kleptocratic gangster state.
Yes, the USSR had a problem with corruption, patronage, and clique-based party politics.
But if the USSR was truly a "kleptocratic gangster state", post-Soviet capitalist Russia would resemble it almost identically. And I don't think anyone claims that. Yes, it is true that the people who carried out the privatization and formation of the kleptocracy indeed were the former nomenklatura who saw the writing on the wall and used their remaining influence to form private fiefdoms out of state property they controlled. But if the USSR was itself a "kleptocratic gangster state" then this would not have been necessary. There is a distinct difference between private ownership and stewardship in public trust when it comes to this. The former enables a true kleptocracy, the latter mere corruption. It's far easier for a communist party dictatorship to remove a corrupt steward than a bourgeois dictatorship with "rule of law" to convict and imprison a capitalist kleptocrat.
Additionally, my current view of Chinese Dengism is the successor to Bukharinism, or rather Bukharinism as a proto-Dengism. I view the CCP as engaging in the original orthodox Marxist "capitalist stage of evolution" (a la the Mensheviks or the Social Democrats) except under the dictatorship of the proletariat AKA the communist party. It's effectively sythesizing the Menshevik and Bolshevik approach.
His characterization of the USSR as a “kleptocratic gangster state” is wrong, and I say this fairly emphatically. I think this is visibly proven by the nature of modern post-Soviet Russia, which actually is a kleptocratic gangster state.
No, that's what he said about modern Russia.
Okay fair point I misheard his phrasing
The point still stands if anyone accuses the USSR of such
This man wouldn’t form an army, his position seems to boil down to “intervening in the contradictions is impossible (or at least is impossible to PLAN) so we just have to let history run its course”.
I don’t ever watch these, I kinda assumed it was just him spewing nonsense while inebriated because I watched an early one way back and it was pretty much that. Listened to all of this one, he makes some interesting points but I find his assertion that “the contradictions exist but we have no ability to intervene in them” to be quite an anti-Marxist stance tbh.
Studying the contradictions to best know how to intervene, to me, is one of the cornerstones of Marxism. If intervention in the interplay of the contradictions (i.e. the course of history) is impossible, what is the point of party building? What is the point of praxis?
“Sit back and watch the contradictions resolve themselves” flies in the face of Marxism imo. If it’s impossible to impart an effect on how contradictions are resolved, how are they ever resolved? Someone, something, somewhere, is affecting change in the balance of aspects within any given contradiction, otherwise there wouldn’t BE a contradiction.
If this is the kind of stuff he’s putting out all the time I think it’s kind of concerning that so many people seem to eat it up.
Matt has said before - though I'm not sure I believe him - that he never reads books.
He reads (he's posted books on his Twitter), but he's not a voracious reader like he was/used to be.
His primary interest (and what he was getting a degree for) is history. He's big into Civil War history (IIRC, this was in one of the March-April posts). But he's not a political scientist. So what he's ranting about is coming from a sort of "layman" perspective and not an actual theorist/scientist (not sure of what you'd call it) perspective.
Yet people want to “serve in his army” & “I’m not sure there’s anyone I look up to more than Matt.” Just absolute goofball shit in this thread.
This sort of scientific historical determinism was actually really in vogue amongst marxists of the late 19th/early 20th century and you still hear it a lot of it in the way marxists today speak. There is an inevitably of conditions and it’s not for us to force because the conditions aren’t there. Gramsci, for one, was very much critical of this trend in Marxist thinking.
*To clarify my initial response, I was commenting on the marxism in the parent comment. NOT Christman himself or what he’s actually presenting. Christman does not speak of a discernible future, but the opposite, what he’s identifying are the dynamics of our particular social relations in this moment. He’s ready to admit that these are his feelings about the general shape of the future and that he’s uncertain about our ability to adjust that trajectory. This is the exact kind of analysis that you need as a base awareness. From there change what you can’t accept.
I’d also add that I’m sympathetic with the idea of causal determinism and that it’s not incompatible with Marxism or what Matt is saying. Also, Matt hedges that “fine wedges” can be used to dislodge structures at points of friction, and is actually pretty damn Gramscian in recognizing the influence of cultural tendencies in political social realities.
I love Matt and cannot ever not. His willingness to broadcast his thoughts uncut and his lucidity and words are 💋 👌. Deep affection ngl
He’s talked about this before in an earlier vlog but his takes certainly aren’t anti-Marxist. He’s stated that the impetus has to be on building institutions that are powerful enough to supplant bourgeois institutions in times of capitalist crisis rather than trying to predict the oncoming wave and rally everyone for it in the hopes that something happens. A lot of what he says boils down to disengaging from the aesthetics of politics and returning to the material so we can actually do the work necessary to create an revolutionary moment
i think i'd dispute matt's initial conclusion: that the increased turnout in this election, and the dems poor showing, means that everyone is (now?) only operating on this psychic non-material political level. that could be true in this case, but it seems to me that that's only true precisely because biden and co didn't really, substantially offer anything material. what was for sale from the dems was not material relief, nor an inspiring vision, but simply variation on Trump bad/civility good. or, as matt says, don't be an asshole.
that this result (that increased turnout by itself didn't bring about a governable victory for the "left") occurred is notable, but it doesn't deflate our (at least mine and formerly Matt's) presumption that increased turnout with material rhetoric is a winning electoral strategy. certainly having that situation obtain has eluded us -- but, to the degree we're looking for wins by election, "getting bigger" seems to be the correct way forward.
edit: scribbled this mid listen. his point is more subtle: that we could imagine that a natural distribution of potential voters, ordered by their propensity to vote; that the availability of mail in balloting increased the number of voters at the margin; these new voters are, necessarily, at the lower end of propensity to vote; people who have a lower propensity to vote are, likely, less interested in notions/concepts like the civic good or society (otherwise they would've been engaged in voting); thus, we shouldn't be surprised that these new marginal voters didn't break for Biden -- they're more disposed to this psychic, don't be a pussy shit. pretty thoughtful.
but again, that doesn't mean that in the counterfactual case, where the dem candidate offered something substantial, that "new" voters wouldn't be compelled to vote inline with their material, rather than their psychic interests. this only suggests that where voters don't have skin in the game, increasing voting at the margin doesn't necessarily suggest gains for the "left."'
edit2: this is just a running journal now. matt makes good point RE capitalist realism deflating potential voters beliefs RE promises of material change. still not deflating my conviction that our role is to open up that rhetorical/intellectual space (against CR). but obviously we can only work with candidates which would make good on the peoples trust for substantial, substantive change (or they will, understandably, be more snakebit).
I think the idea is it’s hard to imagine any candidate/campaign doing a better job at opening up that space on a national level than Bernie, and his campaign was a complete failure. There might be occasional opportunities at the local level, but the structural characteristics of the system will repress them either before or after they are able to reach national prominence.
Ehh, its an entertaining rant but its just boils down to: Grillpill 2 - Grill Harder
Matt has internalised elections as the only interface of politics that he completely broke his own brain.
Edit: in the same year that police stations were burned Matt comes to the conclusion during an election that there are no American political subjects? Get the fuck atta hear.
Edit 2:like the inciting incident for him is that more than ever people came out to vote and the result was the same. Why would you expect anything different? Why is he having this epiphany now and not in 2018?
In his rant he never mentions anything outside of whoever is congress or local elections or tucker carlson or whatever goes on in a presidential race. And his big idea is to hope that China wins out?
The only thing he says that's outside the mainstream conception of politics is "it's coming from below" and never expands on it. Never imagines how that can be steered or influenced. To Matt it's a fait accompli.
The Bolsheviks were only 10'000 people. You don't need the majority of people to affect change. The pre conditions are there for an American working class movement. You just have to clearly from the beginning say that all that ballot shit is not what you'll do. You'll do workplace shit, strike shit, community shit. Not AOC not this primary this not candidate that. The Imperial core left has to completely break from all the contemporary "democratic" interfaces of the state.
To be fair it feels like he was saying due to the nature of politics having evolved to a state of almost complete ubiquity in voters not associating political actions with being able to influence material conditions or a shared idea of a national project, that regardless of the whether the conditions are there, the machinations needed to “activate” change is not something we have the ability to control anymore? At least that’s what I think he was saying. I think the “it’s coming from below” thing feels a little anarchist, that conditions will just have to drive the change naturally from the bottom up as people en masse actually become more desperate and that our conception of party building is now, or like since the 70s, irrelevant. Idk if I agree with that, or if I even have his thoughts totally straight here. But anyway
Him having this epiphany now is so weird. He's mocked dual power and the like before, I don't get exactly why this was the thing that finally made him realize electoralism's limits(although he hasn't completely recognized the value of non-electoral organizing work or anything yet).
Maybe you see youself as more politically educated than him. Maybe he's your guru. There's nobody else out there breaking the fourth wall the way he does. That rant was pure honesty.
If you've got to a place where you're even considering his points you're in a tiny minority globally. Most people will never have the time, space or energy to reach that point in their political education. It's an education that comes with a responsibility to act.
Take that awareness you've achieved and do something IRL with it. What's the point of all the reading if you're not going to ever implement anything? something.
That's the grill.
HIs praxis is comitting to an hour a day educating dopes like me, what's yours?
Matt. Why is the only data you accept election results? You are already Nate Silver, you exclude the qualitative and only accept the quantitative. Why in your rant do you it mention the approved interfaces of the state as the means or indicators of change? You have Liberal Realism. Is your horizon so small?
I mean that's pretty much what it is. But is that so wrong? Because I feel Matt (and Trey/Matt[other one])'s point is pretty valid on the parties being that way. And unless the Dem's actually fight hard during times where they need to (aka: not during a fucking pandemic where people are being evicted. #StimulusPlz), they're gonna continue to get rolled when the Republicans flank.
I mean, take Joe denying that he's gonna do Medicare 4 All. The nation supports that shit, why the hell would you deny it even IF you don't support it personally?
