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Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Exploring the Nexus of Anarchism and Marxism with Dr. Wayne Price
Embark on an intellectual exploration of the radical left with our scholar, Dr. Wayne Price, as we untangle the intricate tapestry of modern leftist ideology. From the resurgence of Marxist-Leninism to the adaptive strategies of the Democratic Socialists of America, this episode promises a comprehensive dissection of the ideologies that are shaping the future of socialism. We scrutinize the historical echoes in today's political tumult, ponder the delicate balance between revolutionary change and electoral engagement, and question how the rise of Marxism influences the anarchist discourse.
As we navigate the ideological currents within leftist movements, Dr. Price offers his expert analysis on the evolution of socialist and Trotskyist factions. We confront the controversies that have shaken the foundations of these groups and track their shifting allegiances, especially in the wake of Bernie Sanders' campaigns. Uncover the reasons behind the unexpected allure of Marxist frameworks for anarchists and witness the robust participation in anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism, as we grapple with the shifts that are redefining leftist politics.
The conversation culminates in a vibrant discussion on how class theory and anarchist perspectives intersect and diverge, revealing the potential for a radical reimagining of post-capitalist society. We juxtapose the revolutionary aspirations against the stark realities of rising fascism and the environmental crisis, stoking the embers of optimism for a united front against societal and ecological threats. Join us for a thought-provoking episode that promises not just insights, but also a clarion call for all who envision a transformative path beyond the status quo.
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Host: C. Derick Varn
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Hello, welcome to our blog. And today I am with Dr Wayne Price, author of a bunch of books the Abolition of State, marxist and Anarchist Perspectives. Let's see, I believe you wrote a book on Marxist economics for anarchists and you've been kind of one of the key people in trying to maintain a dialogue between Marxist and anarchist that doesn't also like short sell or hide or obscure anyone's actual historical position. So I wanted to talk to you today about where you thought Marxist and anarchist relations are, particularly with this seemingly ubiquitous repopulization of Marxist Leninism which seems to be on the horizon these days.
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, the biggest upsurge in socialism through the DSA and similar groupings, and they have been starting out from a social, democratic, reform, socialist, reform, state socialist perspective Although, as you say, there's also a mixture in there of turning towards Marxism and Leninism as people look for a more solid ideology background on something that give them backbone to understand what's going on in the world. And we've seen people from these tendencies, for example, calling themselves democratic, socialist, but still rejecting, supporting the Cuban government when there was a rebellion in Cuba, demonstrations and so forth, or refusing to support the Ukrainians and supporting well, they wouldn't say supporting the Russians, warning for peace but in fact supporting the Russians. And we see even now, with the Israeli, palestinian war going on, a support for the Palestinian, the result of the good, but a refusal to criticize Hamas or to criticize the original massacre. So that's all there. But their main tendency of the socialist has been electoral, towards the Democratic Party, which doesn't necessarily conflict with Marxism, leninism, since, after all, the Communist Party spent years, and still does, working its way inside the Democratic Party and supporting mostly Democrats and for elections. And the minority inside the Party is always raising the possibility of breaking from the Democrats, but that possibility is always put in form of forming a new party, just continuing the policies of electoralism A labor party, a workers party, a left liberal party, the Green Party and so on and so forth.
Dr. Wayne Price:So it's striking, in fact, how little discussion there is of revolution. You're reading Kim Moody's recent book on labor and it's very critical of the Democratic Party and of those who are supporting the Democratic Party, but he's still coming out for a new party and there's no place in the index is there a reference to revolution. It's just not a thing you talk about among decent people, I suppose Even those who are for a new party do not say well, we will tell the people that in fact we know that running an election we can't actually change fundamentally and that we're going to need to smash the state, overturn and create new alternative institutions. But if we think back towards the last great radicalization back in the 60s, the biggest turn on the left, I mean, there were mass movements, of course, where the struggle for black liberation started at a very moderate level civil rights, not violence, and so forth, and the anti-war effort, which was hard to do in a moderate fashion because it was the Democrats, in fact, who were running the war. But the interesting thing is that the biggest part of the left, of the young left, the new left, began through the students of the Democratic Society, the SDS. I was a member way back then and that began as the youth group of the League for Industrial Democracy, which was run by a bunch of funny-dirty social Democrats, including their youth part was Michael Harrington, of course, of the DSA, and so they were also committed to supporting Democrats and keeping things very mild and moderate and so forth, and at the most there was sort of a tension going both ways and it took some years before this movement radicalized.
Dr. Wayne Price:As I say, the fact that the Democrats were running the government at that point is part of the thing, and that they grew about a large number of people who regarded themselves as revolutionaries. They won't pull a. One point said that there were about a million people in the United States who regarded themselves as revolutionaries. So it took a while, and I think that's going to be true here too.
Dr. Wayne Price:I believe that even though the movement starts around the Democrats that we have, are they moved from being the center right, a left wing, to bring together the draw in the Democratic Socialists, the squad, the squad, whatever squids to OAC and others and to make room for, you know, and even Bernie Sanders, who actually, in fact, has never actually joined the Democrats, even if he ran for president on, tried in their former primaries to open up for that.
Dr. Wayne Price:But in spite of that, of course, you know, at some point people realized that they're really getting nothing and in fact, a lot of people realize right now, with the growth of the anti movement, the ceasefire movement, the anti violence movement in this country, which is very thrilling and, you know, a real big opening to the left. And the biggest thing, the barrier to that, of course, is that, you know, the bourgeoisie has playing good cop, bad cop, biden being the good cop and the miserable wretch Trump being playing, being the bad cop, and people are, you know, bright. To them that's the strongest defense of pushing towards holding back the independent movement. I don't know if I said anything. No, you did.
C. Derick Varn:I wanted to ask you there's two kind of tendencies that I've seen in the past, say, let's say, 10 years that led us to here.
C. Derick Varn:One is anarchism, as it was kind of represented by its, you know, a trend that I've seen you criticize as highly reformist, the kind of gray, bright, like MMT, hybrid anarchism, which I've always found very strange because I've never been able to figure out why an anarchist would endure state theory of money as a positive thing. That seems to have faded into the social Democrats somehow. And it's interesting. I had read Ron Tabor's book it's not the tyranny of theory, which is not a book that I love, but he did make this observation that the way that Occupy was unfolding, that there'd be a move into the social Democrats and that he thought that would also lead to a move into a revival, vitalization, of Marxist Leninism, as people got frustrated with the social Democrats and he was quite concerned about this, and this was over a decade ago now. It is interesting that, for all the problems I have with that book, that that prediction seems to have been somewhere correct.
Dr. Wayne Price:Which book are you talking about now?
C. Derick Varn:The tyranny of theory by Ron Tabor. Yes yes, I think that book is suffused with anti-communism in a lot of ways, but there are things in it that I thought were insightful.
Dr. Wayne Price:I agree. I would agree with that on that overall assessment, both sides.
C. Derick Varn:I was going to ask. So it seems like that anarchism has, which has traditionally kind of had a big place in the American left, after the new left kind of stalled out right. It seems to have not died exactly, but it doesn't seem to be as active or as, frankly, that differentiated from standard progressivism, as it was when I was, say, in my teens and early 20s. Is that a fair observation and why do you think that is? If it is true, I don't know.
Dr. Wayne Price:I've seen two sides of anarchism today and I'm not sure quite how much they overlap, one side being those who are in effect the heirs to the insurrectionists, terrorists, people who you know.
Dr. Wayne Price:When there were the George Floyd demonstrations, they participated in the rallying around the most militant rock throwing violence, although some people organized themselves as medics and food suppliers and water bottle suppliers. So there was both sides there and without, but without a mass demonstrations, there's really not a lot of things they can do, being the left wing of the mass demonstrations. On the other hand, you know the DSA has an anarchist caucus, you know the libertarian social, or they call it the libertarian socialist caucus and what their program is? Precisely what you were saying before the evolutionary, gradualist kind of reference program of building alternate institutions inside society and these will gradually grow until they took over the state and the big business and the little businesses and everything else, which I call the Kudzu theory of revolution would be evolution, all evolution, with perhaps at the end, the little hiccup of some contract conflict of the state, which was, as you say, the perspective of David Graver.
Dr. Wayne Price:And many others it's not surprising that in the next to last book of Gravers the third to last, the one that came out right after his death of the name of it, exploring alternatives, he mentioned not not the big fat book but by himself he mentions how he has talks. He's there living in Britain now and then and he said he had talks with the left of the Labor Party and they would sort of agree that it was useful to have militant extra parliamentary demonstrators and so forth and he was sort of an agreement with the Labor Party lefts and that kind of respect was not really a consistent workout perspective, just as the people in that on the left of the in the libertarian socialist caucus see themselves building alternate institutions are working with the, supporting the cooperation Jackson, the project down in Mississippi with the Jackson where, which is included building co-ops and areas and poor black areas and linking them together but also included running in the local voluntary local elections. So that kind of reformism pushes you towards. And so what do you do if you have your, your farmer co-op, farmer, neighbor, urban co-op of food and so forth, when the local democratic politician comes, says he wants to come to your next meeting and and support you?
Dr. Wayne Price:You got to say you know, go to hell because we're not. But actually the rest of the members of join to get cheap food and so forth and, with a dash of idealism, see no reason to insult the politicians. They think that's all, that's good and fine. So there's this. You know overlap the reformist anarchists working together in the USA with all the reformist socialists, who include both very liberal socialists and very as well as Leninist socialists, who think of themselves as revolutionaries. But you know, if you act like a reformist and work like a reformist and talk like a reformist, then you may think of yourself as a revolutionary, but you are in fact a reformist.
C. Derick Varn:I wanted to ask you another question, and you're particularly far back history. I mean, we're going back to the 60s here. You had you came out of a Hal Draper's group, correct? Yes?
Dr. Wayne Price:Yes.
C. Derick Varn:One of the things that I've noticed is that, you know, trotskyism in my life, in my lifetime and I'm in my early 40s has gone through a couple of cycles of seeming decline. Another group comes in after the 80s. They all seem to come from Britain, come back seeming decline, but it seems right now the Trotskyists really are on the way out. Do you have a theory as to why that may be Like? Do they not have a purpose now that the Soviet Union has gone, even though we see Marxism and Leninist popping up, you know, burbling up from the ether?
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, I don't know, and of course, at this point in a way it's all speculation, because, on the assumption that there will be increasing left and middle of the sea in this country, what tendencies will grow, which won't, and it depends a lot, of course, on how they handle it, whether they're clever enough about it and so forth. And the Trotskyist way. There's really two wings, as you know, historically, when they followed Gotsman's theory that Russia was a degenerated worker state because of a national property, even under Stalin, even though they disliked Stalin, and those who rejected that, and those became the followers of Max Shackman and Hal Draper, those people, well, the soft Trotskyist let's call them, who once they rejected the worker state theory, became in this country the last, the ISO, but in solidarity. Those are the two main groupings in this country and at one point the ISO is the largest left group in the country but nowhere near as large as what the DSA is now. These folks certainly have the ISO.
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, they collapsed, partly out of their own weaknesses, so their own problems. They split up, perhaps just as the British coal thinkers and British workers party. Both have crashed for similar reasons, mishandling charges of sexism and sexual abuse by leading comrades, but they also were pulled into the DSA. I mean, this was socialism, this is where it was happening. So rather than keep themselves going, they pulled into that and just abandoned their magazine and just joined up the solidarity, kept their magazine and some of their things like labor notes and labor notes conferences, although their people also went into DSA. So the people around the magazine New Politics, which was also part of the broader tendency, also joined the DSA but maintained itself as a separate organization continually. The magazine the hard and trotskists I'm not sure what most of them did. I do know that the socialist alternative, led by Jeff Mackelir, is now leading. Not only have they had their organization, but they're also leading the coalition of the UNAC.
Dr. Wayne Price:What is it? The United National Anti-War Coalition? They were trying to take the major position of an erratical stance against supporting the war in Ukraine. Somehow, the very concepts of Trotsky and supporting a national self-determination of oppressed nations was something that blanked out there. But now again they're throwing themselves into the pro-Palestinian movement, again with this stance. That doesn't make any criticisms of Hamas, let's not say anything negative.
Dr. Wayne Price:What will happen to all these folks? The soft trotskists are attending. They're just sort of, I suspect will just sort of blend in Rauder social democratic, will you? On the left, there used to be a rule among all the trotskists who divided them from Stalinist so that they would never, ever support the Democrats. But that became a. That was one line that they wouldn't cross, but then when Bernie Sanders ran, there was an enormous pull on that. So even Kim Moody supported the labor group that supported Sanders. He just he couldn't justify it from his perspective to say what to say to people. That's why he wasn't doing that. There'll be. Plus, there's a lot of anti-democratic sentiment inside the DSA so they can meld into that part of the DSA, the hardened trotskists.
Dr. Wayne Price:We don't know, I don't know. We'll see what will happen there. They're trying to make a push. They couldn't go that far over the Ukraine issue because it was just. It was too unclear, at the very least, it was too hard to say that let the Ukrainian people be crushed by the Russians. We're all for peace, but now, with the course with the Middle East there's, it's much easier to make it something. That's the marvelous thing, that there's this big anti-war movement developing in this country, pro-palestinian movement, which we haven't had in many, many years. And the most exciting thing about it to me is the large number of Jews involved, jewish which kind of breaks down the anti-Semitism, weakens the anti-Semitism, at least, as well as legitimate eyes, legitimate ties with the mass movement. That's as close as I can get with Trotskyists.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, the hard trots are kind of hard to predict. I mean, the Marciite trots have mostly just become Marxist Leninists at this point they're not trots anymore at all.
Dr. Wayne Price:A lot of thing is.
Dr. Wayne Price:In the 60s it was hard to be a libertarian socialist, no matter how revolutionary, because there was enormous pull from the authoritarian Marxist-Leninist regimes China, in Vietnam, in Cuba which really seemed to be opposing US imperialism.
Dr. Wayne Price:And there was a great degree of truth in that they were fighting US imperialism, not actually for a free world of no empires and states, but certainly from their own limited perspective. And this is an enormous pull to the left, but to a Stalinist left which ranged from, which is one reason why the soft trotskis were much weaker than the biggest trotskis group was then the socialist workers party, the Orthodox trotskis, and similarly, even bigger than them were the Maoists, who were more radical and more working-class oriented and so forth than the trotskis and the communist party going around along. But that's gone. The cost of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the transformation of China and so forth around the world makes it much more difficult, makes it easier to be libertarian socialists, to be an anarchist or to be a soft trotskis, but in some way and there's much less of a pull on them it's there as you point out.
Dr. Wayne Price:That grows a bit, partly because you need some kind of radical theory, the anarchist kind of weak on theory really. So there's a pull towards Marxism and even Marxism, leninism, a theory that try to get to grapple with what's the state, what's our strategy, what's the nature, what's going on? But it's not the same thing. It's not the same thing as being pulled towards the evamoration for Uncle Ho and Castro and Che and Lone Mal.
C. Derick Varn:One of the ironies right now of this seeming reberph of Marxist Leninism is we haven't seen a massive expansion of Marxist Leninist parties Like we talked about this. They're kind of sprinkled in pockets throughout the DSA. You'll see them on Twitter. Yes, they're the old Marciite trot groups that are now Marxist Leninists and actually try to outstall them distalinist in most ways, but those groups don't seem like they're more than 2,000 people in any given country and that's being generous. So I think you're right that, without the actual powers and yes, china still exists and Vietnam still exists, but they clearly don't really care about that in the same way, like at all, it seems like there's just nothing to really for those groups to congeal around other than like alienation from social Democrats, of which they kind of still agree with in a lot of ways. You mentioned, though the anarchists don't have a lot of theory right now.
C. Derick Varn:Now, reading your work, actually, I became more aware that they did. I mean, my initial vision of anarchism was basically Chomsky, turned graver because that's what you were exposed to. So you're just like well, those guys are just Democrats, just like morally obnoxious or something, and I mean in some grades with like Chomsky today, you see that like him, mounting these weird defenses of almost conspiratorial of Jeremy Corbyn and whatnot. It's just kind of bizarre. But your work did indicate to me that there was a very live enriched theoretical tradition thinking about states and statehood. That was in the kind of first international tradition of dialogue around Marxian economics. That existed and had a lot of these positions worked out. But that kind of anarchism does not seem to be around as much, and it wasn't really when I was in high school either. Why do you think anarchist theory has kind of been thin for the last couple of generations?
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, hmm, it's a, let's say there is a theory or theories. And then on aspects of anarchism, For example, I was keen to anarchism through reading Paul Goodman. They rather developed a set of theories about why to believe in anarchy, why human beings can organize themselves, which applied to a whole wide range of things, and I still think he's very well worth reading, even though he was an anarchist, pacifist and a gradualist and in many ways essentially liberal, though he would have hated the term. But I kept some of that as an influence as it became a revolutionary Marxist influence, as you say, by the group around Hal Draper. I never met the group out in the West Coast but I did. I met people from the group out in the West Coast but I was in a smaller group out in New York City, sile Andy and some other people. But there's a background stuff.
Dr. Wayne Price:The anarchists didn't talk about how capitalism worked, but they had a theory about what the possibilities for older society might be like, which the Marxists did not have. They sort of let the workers take power and they will see this kind of their attitude, which had certain advantages. So you aren't dogmatic about the future, but a major disadvantage. That way, when some group of Marxists led revolutions and established totalitarian, mass murdering regimes. You didn't really have a theory about what the alternative should be. The Marxists. They, you know this was the product of the historical development and who are we to criticize the way what history has given us kind of attitude? What's it? Is it referenced by? Well, whatever the point is that there's certain lacunae and Marxism that led to great difficulties, one of them being the lack of the better society, but together with the centrism and with the very strategy of taking power through the state, whether that was interpreted either by this in the reference fashion, getting elected to run over the state, or whether it's seen as revolutionaries overthrowing the state, establishing a new state, thrown state, both of which Marx advocated various times and various places.
Dr. Wayne Price:He was at the root. They're both there for the central state interpretation, which is why you know, in a way, I think that the best theory is sort of an integration of Marxism and anarchism, particularly the economic theory, which I think is mostly correct, most valuable, although always the tools are as good as the craftsperson who uses them. The basics for the theory of the state, but not as a political strategy. The way the theory economic theory points towards the key role of the working class, not as the only revolutionary force but as a certain way, the central force, or at least one of the central forces. These things are all there and can be integrated.
Dr. Wayne Price:In fact there's always been a libertarian strand in Marxism, people whose politics were more or less not all that different from anarchists, starting with William Lamarus up to C L R James, up to the autonomous and so forth, various libertarian Marxists. So I'm not as bothered by the weakness of anarchist theory, because I think that there's a potentiality for getting theories from other places. One of the advantages of anarchism is its openness. Its openness to other forces, other views by anarchism is influenced not only by Marxism, although I write most about that, but also by radical psychoanalysis, by John Dewey's pragmatism, interpreted in a radical fashion by any number of other, by Malcolm X's perspective.
Dr. Wayne Price:Any number of feminism, any number of other concepts can be integrated because the basic idea is a belief in freedom and I believe that the liberation of the working class and all oppressed can be only achieved by themselves. That whole saw from the first international, written by Marx but not by him.
C. Derick Varn:I recently read one of your essays I don't know when exactly you wrote it, I think it's been in the last decade about class theory of the state and its history and I was struck reading it because you're very charitable to Marxist in it, because we historically do have a class theory of the state. But I was interested in a development that happened in Marxism, starting with the USSR, where linen hints at state neutrality because of the conflict of classes and this gets picked up and run with as if the state could be an unclassed institution. Which has always baffled me, even from the Marxist perspective, because no matter how one feels about linen, he at least admitted that a state requires class divisions to exist. Period end of discussion. His flirtations with a neutral state seemed to have come kind of opportunistically after he wrote state revolution.
C. Derick Varn:But I found it interesting because it seemed to me that both the Marxist and the anarchists, for entirely different reasons, had kind of given up class theory of the state. The Marxists because they see the state as something that they can control and if you're a reformist Marxist, it's not even a worker state you need to control, it's just a state period. But with the anarchists it seems like they have also kind of abandoned class theory of the state, but I'm not as sure why. So where do you think class theory of the state like? Because in historically speaking, like going back to the First International, that is something where Marxist and anarchists disagree on what to do with the state, but they don't disagree on its ultimate nature, at least not in the 19th century. So why do you think class theory of the state has become less invogue amongst anarchists? I mean, I think to me it's clearly that with Marxism it's opportunistic, but it's harder for me to figure that out with anarchists.
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, first of all, I'm puzzled by your reference to Lenin's adopting a classless notion of the state. I don't know what you're referring to. Certainly it's not in state and revolution.
C. Derick Varn:It's absolutely not. It's something that he said offhanded in the 1920s that the not that the state could be classless, but that the contestation between classes made the class character of the state a little bit more open. And that was interpreted later by people saying well, there's so much class competition that the state is not a classed organ anymore.
Dr. Wayne Price:And I was like, OK, Well, yes, first of all, we got to be careful about all fan comments by Lenin, or was anybody else? Certainly that? I don't know how to interpret that particular reference. Certainly true that the sense that the classes are fighting with each other will have an effect on the state and sections of the state, but my impression was that that Lenin Well Lenin was running in elections. His perspective was the run election, sort of as a point for propaganda, for organizing the working class.
Dr. Wayne Price:You could take over the state and change it to use the correct great socialism as he conceived it, although he used, they say, the German state, the German state economy. The German states were, during World War One and the German depression, post office as examples of the kind of socialism we wanted to create, the only difference being that instead of board of directors being elected by the bourgeoisie or appointed, or appointed by the bureaucratic state, they would somehow be Soviets on top. How this would affect the ordinary working person going to work with the bosses over them. When the bosses were eventually in Iraq, he was very top, tip top, was going to find Soviets. That's something he really went into. In any case, you're absolutely right about the. The communists who had an opportunity means it developed. I mentioned before the US support of the Democrats and FDR during the 30s 40s and continue to this day and true throughout the rest of the world, even when they had large scale parties, as in France and Italy, for a very long time they were prepared to make compromises and coalitions with bourgeois parties. Of course, you know the events, history of Chile, how well that worked out. Now, the thing about that how this is, by the way, theorized, it's an old question they have.
Dr. Wayne Price:I was just reading Ellen Meeksens Wood a book on the retreat from class. She's a Marxist but it's an excellent book, which I why they recommend to people who are interested in class issues. And he's arguing against, though, that wing of the Marxist, post-marxist, post-leftists who are denying the need for a class orientation, to look everything, turn everything towards a popular front coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie as that main program and have all kinds of complicated theoretical reasons for doing that. And I think she's very good at arguing that. The thing with the anarchists is somewhat similar in that it's not so much that they deny the class theory of the state, it's that they deny the class theory period, unlike the Marxists who had to deal with that theory, with the theory of class which, after all, was central to Marx.
Dr. Wayne Price:The anarchists didn't have a not having a canon, orthodox statements written by a towering genius like as Marx was. They didn't go all sorts of directions. Now, following World War II, in the post-war prosperity which started in the United States and then spread through at least Europe, the other industrialized imperialist countries, it looked like all that stuff about the economy having crises and the working class being driven to revolution and so forth was who we, why the people would experience and what they saw out their window, and not only the anarchists but of course, of course, the liberals and all variety of capitalist thinkers, but most Marxist theorists.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, Paul Sweezy kind of gives up on a lot of these things.
Dr. Wayne Price:But they reviewed the economists and so forth. Today they emphasize more their descendants on in the monthly review magazine, emphasize more some of the more radical aspects of that theory that well, things going to tend towards stagnation, and so forth. They've added analysis of the ecological crisis which they hadn't looked into back then. What was I saying? Why are the anarchists also looked out the window and didn't see much happening. Where possible, they did get involved in mass struggles. In the United States, for example, both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, anti-vietnam War movement.
Dr. Wayne Price:How are certainly influenced by radical anarchists, quite a few of whom were self-conceived anarchists, radical pacifists, I'm saying Some of whom saw themselves also as anarchists. And in Britain it was the radical pacifists who played key roles in organizing the CND, the campaign for nuclear disarmament. So they were capable of getting involved in mass movements when they broke out. But the labor movement had been sort of neutralized after the great upsurge right after the war, partly by the prosperity, the relative prosperity, partly by the horror of what Stalinism was. You want socialism, they're socialism. That's the only socialism there we're gonna be.
C. Derick Varn:And people say well, I don't want that socialism.
Dr. Wayne Price:Here, these are your votes and I can buy my own car and drive wherever I want. The example question was very poorest people without the basis of the civil rights movement, people breaking through that. So it was hard for anybody to see. Class struggle is central, an essential issue. Because of the quiescence of the labor movement. They had gotten themselves these big unions. They had gotten best raises, at least in certain key areas, and they were satisfied more or less. They were kept down. They were tapped hardly in the various other laws and the anti-communist tribes in society in general as well as inside the labor movement.
Dr. Wayne Price:One reason why the pacifists survived they were based in the labor movement, like the rest of the left, not based in the churches. You put a job, but of course the churches were not gonna be smashed. The churches were up to a lot of praise and so forth. So they had a certain same background. They could teach. They have nonviolent demonstrations and organizing to Martin Luther King and to others and they had organized mess, nonviolent demonstrations to the radicals who organized the anti-war movement. So the anarchists were like everybody else. There was no purpose.
Dr. Wayne Price:What do you mean? A labor movement? It's only very, very recently that even the United States has begun to be a degree of labor movement and up search that we've seen recently. It's gradually been building and of course, not all that radical, but it's potential. Imagine a general strike in one major city in the United States. Imagine the effect they would have on the whole country and on all the working class to see the potential power that they have. And all our politics are built and organized to keep that people from realizing the potential power that they have. One massive general strike in one big city and you'll go, wow, we've got this enormous power. But of course all is effort to keep people from realizing that and the anarchists go along with that. Mostly they don't see a labor movement. So why should they make labor potential part of the theory?
C. Derick Varn:Why do you think that the anarchists haven't picked back up class struggle in the same way now that 2007's happened and the relevance of Marxist economic seems at least kind of back on the four way? I mean, when I grew up in the 90s you would meet the occasional Trotskyist but there was no one really repping Marxist econ and that was definitely not true after 2007, 2008. It was everywhere. But I have not seen similar movements with anarchists to kind of work that out. We talked about the poverty of theory a little while ago. Where anarchists were strongest, they turned to anthropology. I mean this partly is Graber, but I mean in general, if I wanna talk about people who look at the deep structures of human history, anarchists are usually more likely to be there than Marxists are.
C. Derick Varn:But I did not see a similar attempt to. I remember when your book on Marxist economics came out and its name is slipping my memory at the moment, but I have it back there somewhere and you were one of the few anarchists that I knew that was working on economics. It wasn't just assuming chartleism or something which just that really did blow my mind, because I was like why would I really, to this day, cannot get my brain around why there are so many anarchists who are interested in theory of money as a positive thing. I just can't fathom it. So it seemed to me odd that we didn't see a re. It's not an interesting class, at least an interest in an economic theory to support anarchist analysis.
Dr. Wayne Price:Yeah, I don't know how many did or didn't, although when we're talking about theory in that period we shouldn't leave out that Murray Bookchin, who still thought of himself as an anarchist, made major contributions in integrating anarchism and, to a degree, marxism and ecological thinking, and that trend that he started in that was very influential, at least among some and anarchists in general.
Dr. Wayne Price:Both there's a specific social ecological movement that still survives, that's expanded and continues to make useful interventions, raising thoughts and so on, and there is also just a general consciousness of anarchists now about radical ecology. Of course, since then the Marxists have somewhat caught up with us, the very, as I mentioned before, the very People Rather, monthly Review Magazine, john Bellamy, foster and others who dived back into Marx's more obscure comments about ecology and ecological destruction and get up into useful and major theoretical forms that carry on the idea of a radical, revolutionary ecological perspective. Anyway, that should be left out what we're talking about as anarchists also play a major role in the anti nuclear power movement back then, as well as the other aspects of this thing in society. What was your point, your question?
C. Derick Varn:I was just asking why was there not a turn of the class? I guess your answer is fair that in some places there was. I mean Bookchin's municipalist anarchist was very class focused.
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, no, bookchin rejected the working class as a perspective, as a revolution. That was one of his major arguments against Marxism, that part of Marxism he took from Marxism. The drive to accumulate in capitalism is a major factor for the ecological unbalance and destruction of the natural world. He didn't put that together with. Well, the drive to accumulate is accumulating what it's surplus labor. There's no drive to accumulate without the building of the working class which gives them something to accumulate. You can't give a benefit of that to the Marxists, because the ecological thinkers, because, coming out of monthly review, they also downplay the working class as a specific force. They're not well, they don't get credit on that either. I've heard an essay on that on Bookchin.
Dr. Wayne Price:In fact, I recently tried to put some of my works together on the state and the relationship between Marxism and anarchism and I'm trying to get someone to publish it. Well, we'll see how that goes. It's so part of my success. Anyway, I think the major factor is simply, as I say, empiricism, crude empiricism, which the United States has more than any place else, our tradition of crude empiricism, a theoretical thinking and reacting to the environment, which makes it much harder to have a working class perspective, especially if you're not starting from Marxism, where Apple is there and you have to. If you've got to be a Marxist shadow, say something about the theory of labor class. But an anarchist could be anything. You're against the state, you're against capitalism, you're an anarchist. I'm not one to say, if somebody disagrees with me, you know a different type of anarchist, that there's not really an anarchist. I don't like that kind of argument. I would only say that for fascist anarchists, so-called radical fascists or well, anarcho-capitalists, capitalists just became president of Argentina, but it helped us, so-called anarcho-capitalists, which is not a thing.
C. Derick Varn:No, well, I did make a joke that we can finally say that there's an actually existing anarcho-capitalist state, but that was all of that is funny to me and tragic. It's funny because it's tragic. Yeah, anarcho-nationalism and anarcho-fascism actually existing are other things that if you'd have told me in my teens and twenties that that was a thing, I would have laughed at you and then Banna. The Bay Area National Anarchist existed and Troy Southgate was pretending to be an I mean, I shouldn't say well, I think we can safely say pretending pretending to be an anarchist for a while and that was strange. Luckily it didn't seem to catch on. It seems like racial nationalism has just sort of decided to recluck itself in just plain old Western chauvinism, if not outright racial nationalism, as opposed to something exotic like national anarchism or something like that. But yeah, the end of the time period right before and right after Occupy were actually very strange times for ideologies to like, bubble up and die really quickly. Which I guess does bring me to another question. You mentioned the anarchist-adjacent, libertarian, socialist. Strange, you know, marxist humanists with COR, James and, to lesser degree, riot in the Sky. You got the autonomous movement, although I've been wrapping my brain around how the autonomous movement ended up social democrats in Britain. I've been trying to like understand that for a couple years now. That's always confused me because I was like well, the people I learned about Owen Jones from were autonomous. That's weird.
C. Derick Varn:But there was, interestingly, I think right before the Bernie phenomenon, a kind of critique emerging of the Occupy left that tended towards classical left communism, either Bordeca Bordecism or or Council communism or some communization weird hybrid that seemed to rise up and die. Yes, there's people who still believe it's still around, I mean actually like Bordeca. Probably more people know who he is today than 15 years ago by a lot, but it does seem. I was going to ask you, the last time those kinds of ideas have popped up and kind of bubbled up and died away was also right after a movement and it was kind of at the end of the new left where you saw this critique of the new left emerging that didn't quite go anarchist but went real close and you saw this resurgence of, you know, kind of forgotten Marxist tendencies.
C. Derick Varn:Paul Maddock gets repopulated and printed again Bordeca movement out of France. I mean, I know they're out of Italy initially but the French version kind of becomes popular and weirdly somehow leads to dialogues or primitivism that I don't quite understand. You know Camus rewilding and all that stuff. It seemed like we might get another wave of that in the 20 teens and yet it also seems to die pretty quickly. Like I said, we're not die but like stagnate very quickly. Do you have a theory as to why it may have not been able to compete with? You know? Is it just the Sanders movement?
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, in a way, what I was talking about before the lack of a revolutionary movement, that first it looked like you could fight for socialism, for a better, which most people, most young people, didn't mean, didn't know what the hell it meant. But it meant a better society than what capitalism gives us. And here was how to do it. Because here, look, it was being done inside the Democratic Party, inside the electoral system. Sanders was getting close to the nominee, Gee, you might even become president, Although the controllers of the Democratic Party made damn sure that wasn't going to happen. And look, AOC gets elected and a whole bunch of other people liberals and social Democrats get elected. And, gee, that's how it's done. And yeah, it would be more radical than that. Dsa also has sent people to organize, union organizing, because they haven't given up on labor, the working class, although they're not, they're not organizing against the union bureaucracy.
C. Derick Varn:Oh, no, they make a lot of it these days flat out they would help from the union bureaucracy.
Dr. Wayne Price:They they're not pitch themselves as anti-bureaucracy, but then, after all, there's so much openness. The unions are so weak and little that there's a lot of places you can work to help organize unions without getting in conflict with the bureaucracy, and we can justify holding your head down this cooperating with them, which makes sense in a place with no union whatsoever. Let me see we started about.
C. Derick Varn:Oh yeah, we were talking about like left communists, but I think maybe you you did hit on something there and that is historically left communists, at least council communists, not all boarders, but some boarders are hostile to labor unions because they're hostile to union bureaucracy, but they tend to just also hold the entirety of the union as a problem. And I suppose like that's a hard position to maintain in the United States where, like, we don't even have trade union consciousness, like much less you know something to push beyond it.
Dr. Wayne Price:That's quite true. The, the I was saying it looked easier. It looked like this was a road forward and it was a build, a movement. In fact, the socialists and social DSA is what 20,000 people and 60,000,.
C. Derick Varn:I think actually they claim more than that, but I think we can safely say 60,000.
Dr. Wayne Price:I'm trying 60,000.
Dr. Wayne Price:A lot of people as much as the communists had during the depression when they were seen as a major force. Of course, quite different. The communists were a discipline, centralized organization with the orders, theory coming down from above. So everybody did it and everybody cooperated and everybody did the work. Dsa is sort of a you know, slob box of a organization, which I'm not arguing against, especially since I don't agree with the general program. I don't want them to be more efficient about it, you know. Plus, I'm the monarchist. I believe in the Federation, radical federation, rather than I don't believe in democratic centralism. Yeah, natural, that's some people looking to theory after we know something was attracted to, after the open city kind of things. They occupy, the occupy movement. Some people would turn to. What else is there that leads towards cooperation and decentralization and so on? But it's also revolutionary. They were right to look in that direction. Certainly the council communists. You don't have to agree with everything they said, but the idea of a council organization as an alternative and as an alternative to Leninist party communism. There's a lot to learn, the democratic perspective and so forth.
Dr. Wayne Price:Yes, they were wrong about unions. That part Lenin was right, if I can use that sense. Who revolutionary should work in, build unions and should work in some of the existing unions and the massive people are. They were right about opposition to electoralism. There's parliamentary stuff. Lenin was wrong on that. That's my perspective there, my modification to this. Of course it was dangerous. I thought that there was an increased interest in Bordega. Bordega was a super Leninist, super sexualist, didn't believe in democracy at all.
C. Derick Varn:No, he believed in democracy less than Lenin did, by a lot.
Dr. Wayne Price:He was even worse than Lenin. Finding the ultra leftism. Sectarianism was combined with a perspective of authoritarianism, an organization run from the top down and no democracy, but somehow you'd all know how things should be done. I know some people who admire him or say good things to say about this, that and the other things may be true. Lauren Goldman, for example, writes. An ultra left Marxist writes interesting stuff. You can look up his website. Also tends to make the ultra left errors, but there's a revolutionary that has made important contributions and others of them make. He finds something interesting in Bordega. I think there are some people in fact who, as you say, are on integrate Bordega's, some aspects of Bordega's stuff, probably mostly the sectarianism, together with the democratic aspects of the council communists. I'll give you an example about the sectarianism.
Dr. Wayne Price:When I was a Trotskyist, we all learned about the Trotskyist proposals to fight the Nazis and the fascists in Germany at the front, fighting the United Front with the communists and the social democrats.
Dr. Wayne Price:What I didn't know is that earlier, when the fascists started organizing in Italy, anarcho-syndicalists tried to form a very similar strategy of working together, trying to get together the communists and the social democrats, also the radical Republicans, extreme kind of revolutionary and liberal in that sense.
Dr. Wayne Price:They wanted to get rid of the king and a number of places did manage to get them together to drive the fascists from the streets. But they couldn't do it on a national level, on a consistent level, partly because the social democrats believed that they could sign an agreement with the fascists. They did sign an agreement, not aggression, which of course the fascists to me would be ignored, but also the communists, who were led by Vordegh at the time, with his lieutenant being Gramsci at that point, opposed any United Front with other forces, even other groups, socialist working class unions and so on, any United Front unless they, the communists, could control it. So they, from their side, they sabotaged and attempted the United Front to fight against the fascists in Italy, proceeding the later, not so long later, ultra-leftism of the solidized Communist Party in Germany, which did similar kinds of stuff.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I honestly have never quite understood. There are things that Vordegh said that I admired, like he was one of the few people who stood up to stall in the face and just walked out of the room. But like I have never quite understood the the ignoring that. You know his main complaint about Bolshevism is that it was too democratic, which is a strange thing to think about. And then when you look at what he proposed, you know he opposed democratic centralism but what he wanted to replace it with was organic centralism and from what I can tell and I've read a lot of this stuff that was mostly just technocracy. I guess it wasn't even like. You know, the idea was like oh, the best technocrats in the party will rise up and they're like the best brains of the working class. But I'm like, but I don't see how this won't end up being a kind of managerial elite. Even from a Marxist perspective this seems a little bit sus. So you know, I had my personal theory was the only reason he gets considered a left communist is because Lenin put him in the in the polemic. That's really pretty much it. And I mean the irony of that is like he.
C. Derick Varn:You know, bordeaux main argument was. You know I'm more Leninist than Lenin is. I like I actually understand what Lenin means and Lenin doesn't. And sometimes when I, you know, I have a very, I have an, a skeptical ambivalence about, about Lenin. You know, I think historically we can say how that all went.
C. Derick Varn:But every now and then I actually think about what Bordeaux says I'm like, well, maybe Bordeaux was under something that he actually understands implications and Lenin that Lenin's not admitting and like the reason why Lenin doesn't like him is he's saying the quiet part out loud. But you know that's pure speculation on my part. I guess you know we can start to wrap up. But I wanted to ask you you sent me an article, that about recent attempts by some, by two Trotsky scholars, to reengage with anarchism, and I found it interesting the attempt to de-stalinize Che Guevara in that and make him somehow more adjacent to anarchism. And I found it interesting now because weirdly Guevara is right now is probably the least relevant it's been in my lifetime, like it doesn't seem to have the same purchase that it did when I was a teen. Why do you think they did that and what do you think it says about the future of anarchist Marxist like dialogue.
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, the problem is, of course, what, as you're coming out with what you're saying, is the authoritarianism on left, including the far left, even on the far far left, or Degas, is not just regarded as a crackpot to us, or somebody who has some interesting things to say here and there, but after all, here's somebody who's disagreement with democratic centralism is he doesn't like the part about democratic. That's pretty weird. You know, he was far left because he was sectarian and that's why I walked out on Stalin. I hate to say Stalin was right, so I won't. But the idea that working people should try to work together, that revolutionaries should try to make alliances with Reference socialists, only to expose the socialist reference leadership, these were good ideas and, as I said, in fact the anarchists had already tried some of this. No, and Bordega destroyed it was one of those who destroyed it, along the social democrats.
Dr. Wayne Price:Reformism, stupidity, and the same thing. You know, bobara, well, he didn't die in power, he died trying to overthrow states. So that looks more romantic and more attractive than anybody else, of course, especially, you know, if I got that much, but certainly Latin America the image of somebody for his revolutionary and died and then murdered by the military, and so forth and so on, the fact that he was a stone Authoritarian. I wrote an article on that, by the way, based on Sam Farber's last book on the shape of our politics. Who didn't believe that the ordinary people, workers, should really run things? He believed they should take orders for the smart people on top. He would have agreed with With the Bordega on that, even admired the book facing Pacing forward. The one guy goes, falls asleep and wakes up in the Our future when it turns out everything is socialized.
Dr. Wayne Price:Yes yeah, but it's, it's all. It's all socialized and cooperative, but it's all authoritarian and undemocratic and Run by a bureaucracy and so forth and we've ours.
Dr. Wayne Price:Said that he liked it. That's what he wanted to achieve. That's a one degree, but it's a attraction to people, partly because they don't think it through, partly because what's the most immediate thing, partly because people raised in America, after all, are very democratic. No, even left on the right. See, look at this current debate about free speech. Left and right is crazy about free speech, for the other guy there's. Rosa Luxemburg said free speech. Freedom is always for the other person, for the person is agree with she wrote.
C. Derick Varn:That's why she's one of there's a great revolutionary Marxist, because we should say about that I remember when I read how drivers theory of Marxist Revolution, the five book massive home.
C. Derick Varn:But it really did convince me that we should take free speech a little bit more seriously, because Marx did I mean like it was a you know and, and to some degree even Lenin gave it lip service selectively, although would also find reasons to repress it by pretending that you know Marxist opposed Booze Revolution as opposed to like, just criticize it for not being good enough.
C. Derick Varn:I find I have found going through your work and rereading anarchist work I don't know that I would consider myself an anarchist these days, but it is refreshing to To read people who are at least thinking through the obvious things about the state and exploitation, like if we have to, if we have to donate our surplus to maintain a standing group of armed men who don't do any other labor, there's a class there, there's no way, there's not like, and if you ignore that, I don't like to me, you're ignoring the mission of socialism, whether you're an anarchist or a Marxist. But you know, I feel like we definitely live in an age, part of its being from America, but we definitely do live in an age where the left is both revitalized but also like coming from a place of being so stunted you know, for that gap between the new left and what happened post 2007, 2008,. That it does feel like we're just replaying a lot of the same problems that we played in the middle of the 20th century again.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah you know, I'm not saying that's a bad thing either, Just you know, definitely seems to be a thing.
Dr. Wayne Price:Because the problems weren't solved. Oh, it keeps on repeating itself. No, there's a constant cycle of return of the repressed. The problem is that things are more dangerous now. I am optimistic on one side, but on the other hand, I am scared as hell about the rise of fascism in the United States Coming through that one of the two major parties this country is is certainly authoritarian, committed to an authoritarian and racist, repressive outlook. And I am also worried as hell about the predictions about the global warming and the climate change. Which is they just? They're just not doing anything.
Dr. Wayne Price:I'm hoping, I was hope of. I mean, it's clear that we're not going to have a revolution in time, but I hope at least. I wanted a mass movement. I want a mass movement that will at least put such pressure on them that they'll maybe slow it down for a time. Give us a chance to grow. I don't know if that they'll do that. Now you can.
Dr. Wayne Price:The job of the state, after all, is to take the wisdom of the partly of the overall capitalist class, which is a very stupid class and based in an enormously conflictful and competitive and vicious among themselves that say well, this is what we have to do in order to keep the whole system going, as Roosevelt did in the New Deal, for example.
Dr. Wayne Price:And they're not doing that. With the environment, they're finally doing a little something, but it's so inadequate that it's almost, almost it would be laughable. You know, and as has been said, the problem is, mother Nature doesn't care about the bourgeoisies, incompetence. Mother Nature doesn't care that Biden means well, it's just those nasty Republicans. They just will let him pass him stronger laws, the laws Mother Nature, which is, that is to say, the laws of physics, don't give a damn about political problems with the United States Congress, they're just going on to do their business. And so this, all this is kind of frightening. I'm hoping for qualitative, another qualitative upsurge at some point, not necessarily as they not necessarily revolution, but at least a major upsurge as close as the sixties, maybe a combination of the sixties and thirties, but with both labor and youth and the environment and cultural matters together, to shake the system up and at least make them full of themselves back, not give us fascism and not destroy the world.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, it does seem like we're in very much radicalization of barbarism moments.
Dr. Wayne Price:That's well put, very good statement. Yes, we're in socialism or barbarism moment.
C. Derick Varn:What are the ironies of doing a kind of socialist communist podcast? Is it's a podcast, and best still in the realm of petty bourgeois, rentie ism. So in light of that, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Dr. Wayne Price:Well, just a moment.
C. Derick Varn:OK.
Dr. Wayne Price:This is the book that there it is called value of radical theory. The subtitle, which is more informative, says an anarchist introduction to Marxist critique of political economy by Wayne Price and published by a K press, and it's a little book, you don't know that long to read, and it tries to present Since I'm neither Marxist or an economist, it was a sense of a clear and understandable way the basis of a Marxist economy and anarchist comments on commentary on those views.
C. Derick Varn:I will endorse that book it was pretty meaningful for me to read and I will also endorse the books that you have. That think is also available for free at the anarchist library, which is that Marxist and anarchist Theories of the state, which is a bunch of stuff in historical comparison. So so there's two things. Thank you so much for coming on.
Dr. Wayne Price:Thank you for inviting me. I hope you send me an announcement of when you get ready to produce.
