The old forms of the left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a dialectical pessimism and develop a Marxist salvage project capable of putting up a good fight as the world burns around us. A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
https://www.patreon.com/theregrettablecentury
episode 23: Neither Socialism From Above, Nor Below...but definitely Socialism
From Babeuf and Blanqui to Bakunin; from Karl Marx and Kautsky to Kropotkin, an ideological battle rages over the true nature of socialism!
But why though?
This week we discuss whether or not there really are only "Two Souls of Socialism" and if idea of "socialism from below" is a useful analytical framework around which to organize our politics.
Hal Draper’s “Two Souls of Socialism”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/
Marxism, Anarchism, & the Genealogy of “Socialism From Below”
https://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/02-marxism-anarchism-the-genealogy-of-socialism-from-below
Building Socialism From Below- Ben Tarnoff
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/12/nicos-poulantzas-socialism-from-below-democratic-power
Socialism From Below: A Delusion?
-Mike McNair
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1071/socialism-from-below-a-delusion/
Music: Back in the USSR by Crisis