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/391/ Aufhebonus Bonus - Feb 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-13 07:00:04
Edited:
2024-02-16 12:19:28
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

On our '1914 vibes'. And your questions & comments.

We discuss the parallels between our age (the end of globalisation, the threat of war) with the end of the Belle Epoque in the early 20th century. What might Lenin have to teach us?

We then turn to your questions and comments on:

Palestinians as surplus population

Peripheral countries as 'imitators'

Whether Brexit has led to greater political accountability

Why Ridley Scott sucks

Why contemporary art sucks

Bonapartism and techno-populism

Romanticising dead workers - and old social-democrats

Esoteric knowledge about how the world *really* works

Readings:

Lenin's Lesson for Western Liberals, Philip Cunliffe, UnHerd

Why the Tories Are Blowing Brexit, George Hoare, The Northern Star

Files

Comments

Davka Smolah Collective

George comes out as a Malcolm Kyeyune-style post-leftist? Welcome to the Party, brother! Indeed, the Left can't have the "correct positions" as a consequence of its class base. However, I hadn't thought Cutrone was saying it should. I always understood him to be saying we should identify ideological positions as superstructural, disregard them, and just get back to having a working-class base.

jkjkjkj

A few point of defense of Phil on Brexit: 1. You never want viable sounding excuses from politicians in a democracy and ultimately even if you write the EU off as an excuse of many, they shouldn't exist at all. 2. I dont buy the equivalence made between the EU and other institutions such as NATO or the Supreme Court as the source of excuse. The EUs reach into politics was far broader than any equivalent institution that was provided. In terms of freeing the country of externally imposed limitations and constraints this had no equivalent in day to day terms. The expansion of what the UK could do post Brexit is not at all marginal. More importantly, Quinn Slobodan has pointed out that neoliberalism is as much an ideology of legal standardization and constraint and the EU was one of its premier brainchilds. The shattering of that has really no equivalent and was absolutely a big deal as a precedent

Jonas Kyratzes

When you describe all the moments that made you think Corbyn or Sanders might be different, you're describing moments of *marketing* designed to appeal to leftists. It's no different than what AOC does - or what Obama did when he pretended to be an anti-war, economic reform candidate. (Remember when people thought Obama was so radical that if elected, he would be assassinated?) Tsipras appealed to Lenin even as he was imposing EU austerity. We have to stop falling for these empty gestures. My point regarding Social Democrats isn't that this was a one-to-one repetition of previous betrayals, but that it was a case of falling for the same entities, with the same class composition as the Social Democratic leadership, often even for literally the same parties (or parties born from that milieu). We may be tempted to see hope when they feed us the appearance of hope, but the most brutal "class reductionist" analysis has been proven correct again and again.

Andrea

The "scary" thing is that talks of compulsory conscription is actually going on in multiple countries in Europe now, like in Italy and France. And even though I still think it would not be possible to do it now, not just in terms of compliance of the population, but also in terms of the dismantling of vast assets of the army that was used for the training of conscription until the end of the nineties when compulsory training in the army was scrapped, in Italy it would be quite easy to reinstate conscription. That's because conscription was never abolished, it's the training conscription time that has been eliminated, but the lists of conscripts are still active. This is just a random feeling, but I am worried there could be something more than simple talks to distract from other issues, like the opening of a conversation for future Times.

Lee Jones

As one of the coauthors of Taking Control, I'm happy to admit that things in Britain are incredibly shit. The point of the book is precisely to explain why that is so. Brexit was a necessary but by no means sufficient step for democratic renewal - that is the core argument of the book. Phil is perhaps too defensive of Brexit's "positive achievements", but the he is right that the establishment now stands totally exposed, with nowhere to hide. It has clarified that the only way forwards is to sweep away the whole lot. What remains crucially lacking is a collective subject willing to take on this task; citizens remain atomised, sullen and cynical, waiting for a bankrupt elite to reform itself. As we say in the book, until that changes, the democratic potential of Brexit cannot be realised.