Pill Pod 166 - Eco-Marxism-Leninism-Variety-Hour (Patreon Exclusive)
Added 2024-05-06 17:26:43 +0000 UTCWe bounced a bunch of stuff around, starting with Erik's new interest in Eco-Marxism and Gabriel Rockhill's article claiming that critical theory is mostly a CIA psyop.
Sorry for my AFK—I'm back online and new stuff is coming imminently!
Comments
Yes, more on eco-marxism, please.
Michiel Saey
2024-06-26 10:25:24 +0000 UTCI liked both but would prefer to hear about the post modern stuff moving away from traditional Marxism and how that can hurt the lefts goals.
Moon Hop
2024-05-13 18:00:26 +0000 UTCIt’s definitely a weird place to be especially as I (a prison abolitionist). But yeah the major contributor to pollution comes from corporations LEGALLY.
Waya Dalimber
2024-05-12 22:58:04 +0000 UTCThat must be a extremely hard to do. We've been trained by schools and our culture not to look at subtle poisons and damage over a long periods of time. Too many boomers on juries ruling in favor of corporations, police depts, etc. They fundamentally cannot see long term damage or atleast link it to their way of life since WW2.
Khemith
2024-05-12 22:55:15 +0000 UTCNice episode…a bit of a loosener after the break. Glad you guys are back
Andy Madeley
2024-05-12 09:00:00 +0000 UTC'Adorno’s overall position, like Herbert Marcuse’s, was summarized by Marie-Josée Levallée in the following terms: “the Bolshevik party, which Lenin made the vanguard of the October Revolution, was a centralizing and repressive institution which would shape the Soviet State in its image and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into its own dictatorship.”' LOL this actually vindicates the Frankfurt school and further confirms their prophetic powers. Talk about undermining your own argument. And like, he's criticising A&H for not denouncing Nazis publicly in 1930s Germany? Really? Like you don't understand why Jewish intellectuals might have wanted to remain under the radar like that? Of course this person is a career academic and somehow unashamedly calls himself a critical theorist lmao
anacidcommie
2024-05-11 22:14:49 +0000 UTCYeah as soon as I saw him use "cultural Marxism" unironically in the second paragraph, I knew I couldn't take him seriously. After complaining about critiques of "actually existing socialism" and recommending the likes of Parenti, I knew this was just another tankie academic. I'm surprised he didn't include Grover Furr in that list tbh. Anyway, imagine thinking that the USSR or any other red state were actually socialist just because the state owned things instead of the workers. Thinking that these states were in any way communistic belies a complete ignorance of the term and of basic Marxian theory generally. Who cares if A&H were poor or not: Marx literally needed Engels' capitalist cash to help him survive long enough and not have to work to actually carry out his research and write the books that Rockhill and his ilk absolutely fetishise in the way he describes. Plus, imagine existing in 2022 and still lionising the proletariat like this, it's embarrassing.
anacidcommie
2024-05-11 22:09:06 +0000 UTCI absolutely second this.
anacidcommie
2024-05-11 21:57:23 +0000 UTC1) yes, I want to hear more about eco-Marxism. 2) this is the first episode in a while that I’ve enjoyed and I think that’s due to Victor’s absence. I genuinely find his liberal derailments don’t even add an element of useful debate that can help clarify thinking by looking at it from different sides but just end up being long detours into word games. I really kinda wish you’d just dump him and bring on someone new as a regular contributor or just have the two of you do your thing.
Umbros
2024-05-11 12:47:36 +0000 UTCAlso speaking of midwestern marx defense was their vehemently defending soviet russia. There's a difference between dispelling propaganda regarding the USSR, but to defend every action is crazy
Giovanni
2024-05-10 05:46:03 +0000 UTCGabriel Rockhill made an article talking about zizek being capitalism's court jester. It seems like he's try use "dialectical materialism" to make his analysis have more merit than it does. It seems just actively doesn't like theory, which their are critiques of its praxis, but to call it a psyop is a little much. It just seems a more of a marxist than them. If you want look more look at mid western marx, he was on their channel, and they have the vulgar marxism. They have a weird obsession with defending "communist countries" at length completely dismissing problems like Russias invasion.
Giovanni
2024-05-10 05:42:53 +0000 UTCClimate change dwarfs all other atrocities, it is the end of capitalism one way or another and the greatest negation event redefining all concepts before it. It will only get more interesting, but it is terrifying & depressing AF
Alex B
2024-05-09 09:21:37 +0000 UTCI've heard it suggested a couple times on the podcast that a strategy to fight against the images or at the very least not actively work against them, is to use spectacular politics to the lefts advantage. Maybe to some degree that is already happening? With the UCLA sit-ins, the BLM protests. I'm probably missing a lot, but I just wanted to get your take on if that was a nonsensical position to take with a Bauldrillardian view.
Jonathan Knowles
2024-05-08 19:24:50 +0000 UTCHey
Plastic Pills
2024-05-08 13:42:21 +0000 UTCMaterial analysis by analyzing adorno's trash and dinner receipts 😂
Matt S
2024-05-08 13:29:03 +0000 UTCI kept ruminating about this. Although theory might inform practice, I believe that both post-structuralists and orthodox MLs could mostly agree about the general lines of what must be done in the ground. The point is, and that's where I feel metaphysics comes in, when you get stuck into a single narrative it is easy to fall into a dogmatic theory as a method, place the narrative as what structures reality.
Sabataí
2024-05-08 10:22:51 +0000 UTCI'd love to hear more on Eco-Marxism! I'd recommend checking out John Bellamy Foster's The Return of Nature. For a different spin on Eco-Marxism than Foster's metabolic rift theory, I'd suggest Jason W. Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life. And then there's Kohei Saito's Marx in the Anthropocene for a degrowth approach.
Zadine Lenin
2024-05-08 07:32:16 +0000 UTCI feel there is some silliness in trying to wholly condemn the entirety of the "cultural left," as if it's not possible to do that kind of criticism and also be politically active in organizing and protesting. Guattari, Badiou, and, as mentioned, Sartre, all did it. It's like doing more and more theorizing in a orthodox Marxist straightjacket would be more revolutionary than the sort of post structuralist critique.
Sabataí
2024-05-07 20:29:38 +0000 UTCDefinitely more of this please. My research is in environmental crime
Waya Dalimber
2024-05-07 20:00:58 +0000 UTCHi Pills
Ashley H
2024-05-07 16:58:54 +0000 UTCYess more of this please, eco-marxism is interesting also eco-feminism as critical theory (eg. Vandana Shiva)
SJ
2024-05-07 13:51:56 +0000 UTCErik being incredibly based here
Bruno León Chávez
2024-05-07 09:02:43 +0000 UTCObject-oriented ontology as a cultural rather than philosophical moment has been revolutionary in the artworld, & something artists have latched onto, to some degree, as a therapeutic attachment that disavows the significance of the audience. Through the lens of OOO the art object does not need the human subject to make it come to be, it possesses its own ontology, its own presence, its own ghost in the shell. It’s bizarre how OOO, like Rancière’s Politics of Aesthetics, took hold of art discourse in such a totalistic way, as if the artworld was lacking something in a fundamental way, politically & ontologically. And some good critical theory has been borne upon the artworld’s lack. Not a fan of Graham Harmen’s tone but his dialogue with Latour is good. Harmen’s French protégé Tristan Garcia is brilliant as both a philosopher & novelist, which makes me think that David Foster Wallace, in his maximalist descriptions, was an OOO not a posthumous recruit of Metamodernism.
James Merrigan
2024-05-07 08:38:45 +0000 UTCWhy does Erikk laugh like a rich person around 20:23 ?
hoppi
2024-05-06 23:33:36 +0000 UTC
