Pill Pod 187 - Losurdo vs. Liberalism
Added 2024-10-21 00:16:58 +0000 UTCThe rules are that if you say something nice about liberalism, you then have give ten reasons it sucks. We read the first chapter of a scathing critique of liberalism by Domenico Losurdo: Liberalism: A Counter-History, to some mixed reviews.
Comments
Omg victor 🤢 listening to him talk is a masochistic test of patience. I failed 🤮
Das Boy
2024-10-26 04:41:54 +0000 UTCThis is your local victor-loving tankie. Four remarks, 3/4 are history issues unrelated to analysis of book as idealist vs ideological critique. 1. I agree w Erics view here, predictably. The book sounds useful to show that liberalism is not just the thing we are familiar w today, but is entwined w dark parts of our history. Very often, you'll hear people say "that was colonialism, not capitalism", and it sounds like Losurdo is trying to address that argument. But I imagine the book could be stronger - I often find leftist polemics a bit weak. Idk. I would add tho that if you want to make a battering ram against liberalism, its not stupid to do so at level of ideas, as that is where many people's understanding of politics and history tends to lay (under conditions of liberal hegemony). 2. Generally speaking, when we survey deaths under Stalin, most weren't a result of genocide, but issues in political economy plus weather. This is a completely different kind of thing than Nazi genocidal war for the sake of making living space. What *is* more comparable to it is death under colonialism, in the sense that colonial regimes maintained the high death rates that prevailed before, sometimes even worsening them, despite modern tech and medicine. In other words, we shift focus from atrocity to political economy. One can contrast these with places like the USSR (also revolutionary Mexico), which saw broad declines in baseline death rates from those pre-modern highs, with occasional acute mortality crises - all before antibiotics. Whats significant about them is they show that w knowledge of early 20th century medicine, 19th century medical experience, and (mostly) 19th century tech, even a dirt poor backwards country could rapidly improve conditions, if given the chance. On the other hand tho, colonial administrations were supposed to run as low a budget as possible - hence mass wellbeing wasn't a priority (it was even institutionally ignored via Patrick Mansons "tropical medicine"); profit was. This isn't to say Stalin is off Scott free, or that he was a saint. Perhaps the most egregious examples are WWII deportations of peoples like kalmyks and chechens, which were more or less ethnic cleansings. Scholarship today pins about 6-10 million deaths to Stalin, or pol-econ decisions under Stalin. But crucially, this is against the baseline of reduced death rate. Had someone made the same choices, but hadn't reduced the baseline death rate as dramatically as early USSR, the apparent "death toll" would be much less. But obviously, that is a far worse situation, as the annual death toll will be much higher in the more frequent "normal years". 3. It's a very similar story in China. There were huge acute crises - and tens of millions died as a result. It was politically turbulent. This is what we are brought to draw our attention to, so that we see it as "a failure". But also baseline death rates were brought down rapidly; had India, who started off similarly in 1950, had the same death rate trend, nearly 300m lives would have been saved since then. It did so while rapidly industrializing - under Mao, one of the fastest in the world, and a key reason why the Reforms could turn China into an economic powerhouse, whereas similar efforts have entirely stalled out in India. (The Tigers went through comparable development before 1980s - main difference is we gave the Tigers special trade privileges and other support, to keep them strong as cold war containment fortresses). 4. Some stuff on slavery and Congress of Vienna Congress of Vienna was not lib. It was quite the opposite, as Napoleon's Europe was the "revolutionary liberal" one being reacted to. The basic idea of Vienna was to stabilize Europe with monarchies, in which the holy alliance would step in to stop liberal revolutionaries (ie Russia putting down Hungarian libs in 1848). So I think pills may have material to work w to find our revolutionary libs: but you will probably find them in these revolutions, not in the holy alliance. As Eric hobsbawm (famous 20th century historian) observes tho, early 19th century, radicals and liberals hadn't fully diverged yet. Understanding 19th century slave trade (and after slavery) abolition needs context: Haitian revolution and it's de facto/jure continual in Cuba and Brazil (and slavery, but not imports, in USA). You mention fear of Spartacus: but unlike Spartacists, the Haitians won. The armies of multiple European empires were sent to a Haitian graveyard from 1790s-1805. Thus where slavery existed, it became even more draconian in 19th century, or ended. And where ended, it was usually compensated by Asian coolie imports. Further, similar to liberal humanitarianism today, Europeans used anti-slavery rhetoric to justify invasions in Africa, up to Mussolini invading Ethiopia (much of this was a residue of Atlantic slave trade, although some parts had earlier roots in Muslim slave trade. So it's quite similar to the West f\*cking over third world, and then blaming them for problems, and intervening). There's also a strong argument John brown did help trigger the civil war in USA. I'm not familiar w all the details, but have run across. Another note here is that religious frameworks were common for rebellions of the era - from the Taping to John Brown to the Mahdists and early Islamic resistance in Sudan to North Africa. Consider William Jennings Bryan, populist leader in turn of century USA, who was very religious. But it's also wrong to simply look at the theological framework - Bryan wasn't simply a religious zealot, but addressing socio economic issues. Same for the Taiping. But their rhetoric will sound different, bc they believe in a very different cosmology than we do (and also, not all, prob not most, followers of Taiping were probably true blue believers in all the theology; there were many concerns cycloned together). I don't think that's crazy then though - although it would be crazy now, for most people. (Similarish to how it's crazy to say earth is center of universe today, but not crazy to say in 1450). Sorry to be classic wall of text tankie. W love
Revoloisier
2024-10-23 03:47:51 +0000 UTCGreat podcast. Thank you
Matt S
2024-10-22 20:49:28 +0000 UTClove you pills pls consider an ep on flusser!
Sacha Jane Bruyn
2024-10-22 10:45:22 +0000 UTCI think this episode misinterpreted the Marxist materialist dialectic somewhat. It's not that ideas can't influence or explain events and behaviors at all, it's that those Ideas emerge out of material conditions, can have an impact on material conditions, and also in turn change as a reflection or result of changing material conditions. It's a continuous cycle of change / development / evolution between material conditions as the base (or starting point) and ideas as the super structure, in this case. For example, humans need to be living near horses to domesticate them. Knowledge of domestication can be shared and horse-use can become widespread. Knowledge of the ability to domesticate horses leads to discovery of new uses for horses that change how a society behaves or organizes itself. Effectively conditions in the material world and human interacting in those conditions led to an advancement in knowledge that can be applied to the material world resulting in changes to a society's material conditionals. For example, use of horses in warfare, hunting large mammals for food, tilling soil for farming, or trading commodities across further distances are realizable.
Andy Louie
2024-10-22 02:43:38 +0000 UTCwhy stop there, HELL ON EARTH is even betterer. I mean, sure, there's no LAKE OF SHIT, but we must adapt and improvise
m1k3y
2024-10-22 01:56:45 +0000 UTCTo fill in your historical knowledge you should listen to the 12 episode US history podcast series Hell of Presidents by Chapo Trap House host Matt Christman. It's basically a condensed history of the US and it's president from a dialectical materialist political economy perspective. I go back and listen to it pretty often. It's great.
Andy Louie
2024-10-22 01:01:39 +0000 UTCI haven't read this book, but I read War and Revolution and half of the Stalin book. Losurdo is more of a gadfly than a full blown historian or philosopher. Pills got it right by calling him a polemicist. He does the some sort of criticism that mainstream historians and philosophers apply to real existing socialist states, but turns the mirror to liberals and western Marxists. Oh, so you're telling me that people that held these ideals also did terrible stuff like slavery and genocide? Oh, there were internal criticisms and developments of these ideas by other figures in the tradition? We need to understand the socioeconomic and historical conditions that each one of the thinkers and political leaders that held these ideals were situated in before we can judge how well their writings and actions align with the overall ideology of liberalism? None of these points are usually conceded when analyzing the histories of the USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. but people either don't even mention the same sorts of problems when discussing Europe and the US or are way more lenient in conceding all of these caveats. The aftermath of reading Losurdo is a level playing field in which all admit that in practice, theory has to be bent, and historically all models have blood and shit in their hands. So now we can really discuss whether socialism is a better goal to strive for, or if it's just as bad as capitalism and there is no escape from these contradictions.
Sabataí
2024-10-21 17:31:32 +0000 UTCWhat about reading Free to Obey by Chapoutot about the ties between Nazism, management and neoliberalism, he is an actual historian, could be an interesting thread to follow
Kelen
2024-10-21 15:47:31 +0000 UTCThere was a famous calypsonian called Black Stalin, fwiw
abby
2024-10-21 03:15:28 +0000 UTCAbout halfway through and it seems like reading losurdo will not help me understand what exactly liberalism is. But my only real point of reference for liberalism rn is Rousseau.
Jack
2024-10-21 01:39:24 +0000 UTC
