Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

/271/ Russia vs the West (2) ft. Richard Sakwa (Patreon)

Published:
2022-06-28 06:02:59
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Downloads

Content

[Patreon Exclusive]

On the post-Soviet landscape.

In the part two of this episode, we ask whether Gorbachev had any chance of reforming and preserving the USSR, and what the defining features are of the post-Cold War Russian state. Is the entropy of the late Soviet state a portent of the entropy of Western late capitalist states?

Then the boys discuss Richard’s responses in the After Party. 

Files

Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

Pushback on the "clinging onto landing gear to get to China" question. Couldn't that happen if Marxism-Leninism Mao Tzedong Thought finally develops real socialism with Chinese characteristics to achieve full communism? Then the Chinese state would wither away and LMFAO Ok but more seriously, I think the bet the Chinese government and CCP are making is precisely that they can, through economic development, offer people enough freedom in their personal lifestyles to make supporting a one-party state genuinely worth it. There are 78 years left in the 21st century, so let's not underestimate how much could happen!

Andrea

This was a very interesting interview. The only thing that made me cringe a little was the quite passé idea of a positive eurocommunism based on gramscian theory. He very much reminded me of our (I mean Italian) communist boomers, still fixed on a reading of the institutionalised (false) Gramsci that has been used to justify the gradualist mild social democratic policies of the PCI in Italy, and also of Berlinguer's vision of the post "historic compromise" PCI that, by the way, was one of the cuplrits of the utter destruction of the Italian Communist Party shortly after the fall of the USSR. Something worth saying is precisely that that kind of vision (that preceded Berlinguer, to be fair) of interclass expansion of the PCI towards the bourgeoisie and small entrepreneurs, is epitomised in his memory of an idillic red Bologna. I lived in Bologna for years and what you see now is exactly the effects of that interclass compromise with the PD heirs of the PCI that have promoted for 2 decades the most successful pro-business and pro-real estate policies (after Milan and maybe Florence) in my country. The result is one of the cities with the higher rents in Italy and with an ongoing housing crisis. These are also the guys that promoted in Italy (and somehow still do promote) the "Spinelli" vision of a social Europe that looks so similar to the Europe from Portugal to Vladivostok that the interviewee talks about. I mean, how can someone believe that Gorbachev's plan wouldn't at least be conducive to something similar to the unimaginable disaster that was the fall of the Soviet Union (in times of peace, as he underlined, strangely enough framing this transition as a positive thing)? Well ok, in hindsight we are all geniuses, but saying, today, that Gorbachev had vision and that it could have gone in a different direction, albeit maybe formally true, sounds a little out of reality. He surely had a vision of a change that could have been good, if only he didn't destroy the systems that underpinned the functioning of the entire Union in the process. But well, I'm no sovietologist. Anyway, I really enjoyed the episode(s), and I very much liked your guest. I don't know him and I will read the articles of him you posted, I just fixated on a point that made me think of "my" ex PCI nostalgics here in Italy who say very similar things (even though they are rabidly anti-russians now), and it is mostly about my own flock that I wrote about.

Andrea

Hey Bunga guys, it happened again: I posted a long comment and a few minute after someone responded (Carlson H I believe), it has been deleted by the algorithm. Maybe its a similar problem with YouTube, with longer comments having more probability of triggering the algorithm. I can post it again since this time I copy pasted it on a note, but I am afraid it will be deleted again. At least you will see it? I don't know, tell me what you think 🙂

Aufhebunga Bunga

Shit! I don't know why that is happening. We get the post as an email notification though so I'll repost here below.

Andrea

Thanks Bungacast, the patreon staff answered to our request of assistance and unflagged my comments as spam!

Van Penner

I think China would be pretty happy not to supplant the "clinging to a fighter jet in the hopes of escaping to the West" idea of freedom and rather promote a more flexible and progressive internationalism and developmentalism through a structure similar to the UN (as discussed). Seems like a pretty unimaginative and ahistorical vision of freedom that Phil clings onto in that discussion.

dshamz_

Alright guys, the real question… what the fuck does ‘unpick’ mean?! Isn’t it unpack?

Paul Brewer

I'm not sold on Phil's presentation of Stalinism, with the implication that it represents a discontinuity with whatever direction Lenin might have headed in. Isn't it fair to say that Lenin saw the European imperial possessions as the most fruitful zone for waging class struggle? Thus, Lenin's early 1920s strategy of pursuing stability and recognition in The West while seeking to exploit opportunities that might arise in China and The South, doesn't seem that far out of line with what happened in the 1930s.