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/258/ Conformist Rebellion ft. Elena Lange & Joshua Pickett-Depaolis (Patreon)

Published:
2022-04-26 14:51:16
Edited:
2022-04-26 16:16:45
Imported:
2026-06
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On Marxism & the Left.

We talk to Elena & Joshua about their new edited collection, The Conformist Rebellion: Marxist Critiques of the Contemporary Left. Who or what is "the Left" today – merely the left wing of Capital? And what distinguishes a specifically Marxist critique of the Left? How has Marxism and the question of exploitation been sidelined in favour of a libera concern with discrimination?

Readings:

Counterattack journal

Counter Attack telegram

Elena's substack

Value without Fetish: Uno Kōzō’s Theory of ‘Pure Capitalism’ in Light of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, Elena Lange

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Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

So around 22:00-22:30... I've heard this Marcusean line of reasoning before, both from within the Left and as critique of the Left, and what I always wonder is: why has this line of reasoning been so dehistoricized? Marcuse and the post-WW2 Frankfurt School were writing within the trentes glorieuses and the high point of social democracy, when social democrats could even fantasize to themselves that they had solved the contradictions of capitalism. We, in contrast, do not live in such times -- so why should we buy, even if Marcuse's argument applied in his own place and time, that it applies in ours, at all? Outside of its being anti-working-class root-and-branch, our times just seem like entirely the wrong context for claiming that workers receive the value of their labor and benefit from capitalist growth.

Carson H

Elena has some valuable insights and I am fully on board with the line of critique that's explored in this book, but she's always making herself out to be, like, "the last Real Marxist"—eagerly brushing aside the many other non-rightists who share her skepticism towards left-lib idpol (here she okays Adolf Reed but implies that he is still not a Real Marxist). This leads her to take some pretty inane positions, such as when she claims that "the left is the ruling class." To me this smacks of "post-left" ressentiment, i.e., Twitter brain disease (though it sounds like she got it on Facebook). Her condition is not quite as advanced as Kyeyune's, who she cites approvingly—but still. Joshua's account of the left's rise and fall and the post-historical co-optation of its legacy by segments of the global ruling class is far more convincing. I wish we had heard more from him and less from Elena.

Szilárd

There were a lot of interesting ideas in this interview, and I do sympathize with the emotional undercurrents of their statements, but overall the interview left me with a feeling of incompleteness. Reading the book might solve this problem, but still... The criticism against 'social reproduction feminism' left me pretty puzzled, I would have liked to listen some more detailed arguments on this topic. For, I totally get why bringing class, race, ethnicity and gender on the same level of analysis is utter reactionary bullshit, and so it is the vulgar intersectionality theories (gosh, they are stupid), but as far as I understand it social reproduction feminism does not place class and gender on the same level, it merely talks about how social reproduction, reproductive work is embedded into relations of production; how in periods of crisis capital and the state pushes more and more reproductive costs into the 'informality' of the family/household, etc. And I see nothing wrong with that theoretically speaking, especially living in the capitalist semi-periphery that - alongside the periphery - provides the capitalist core countries with many resources of social reproduction (see: Philipino babysitters and Romanian housekeepers and Hungarian women doing elder care in Germany, Britain). So in this sense social reproduction is embedded into the relations of production not just within varieties of local capitalism, but also into the capitalist world system as a whole. Maybe Elena means something else by social reproduction feminism, which is fine, I don't know all the crazy pseudo-theories of Western progressives, but this brings to another of my points: I find a lot of name-calling in these types of argumentation, which seems to be just another form of culture & position wars among 'lefty' activists and academics. These 'I am the truest Marxist/socialist/leftist' kinds of verbal arguments are in themselves the symptoms of anti-politics in the broad Left: these conflicts are not supposed to be resolved through name-calling, categorizing, and other intellectual debates, but through political fight: whoever manages to build popular power behind themselves, whoever manages to push out the other from the mental map of the people through political action, wins, and is therefore right. I know that contemporary left-liberals, identitarians and culture warriors are not capable to undertake such a thing, but their critics are just as bad in this respect.

Noah Z

George asked the correct question about whether they learned anything from editing the collection and the fact that Pickett-Depaolis's answer was, more or less, "I learned yet one more way in which my analysis is entirely correct" revealed so much.

Red Shmoo

Someone should develop a Kickstarter RPG for these academic Marxists if they want to organize the working class of 1918 Germany because *this* current working class is in reality kaleidoscopic across vastly different industries and geographies and experience of racism, sexism, and homophobia are an actual felt reality. Have these goofy academic bastards been holed up discussing the finer points of value theory so long that they now think racial tensions are like strictly some phenomenon disseminated through the work of their annoying woke cultural studies professor colleagues? Because the Gambians simmering with racial hatred from the constant perceived sleights of their Tamil managers and the dread of homophobic taunts the trans porter suffers from the guys in the service bay couldn’t care less about social reproduction theories and have never even heard of Adorno. And so, although I realize rejecting the annoying virtue signaling emphasis on “care” so prevalent among woke academics, administrators, and bureaucrats might feel punk rock and transgressively nonconformist, I assert that “care” might get you a lot further with the workers experiencing the very real racial tensions and very actual homophobia and other degradations at their workplaces than like, you know, strict Marxist orthodoxy. Lol 😂

Julian Santana

Who would of thought being an expert in Japanese Marxism would get you such a perspective. The one country were class struggle is basically non existent.