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Guest Spot: Breht goes on Upstream to talk Marxism!
🕑 Added 2022-08-30 21:00:38 +0000 UTCI had the chance to go on Upstream Podcast to talk about Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, the importance of theory and organization, and why communists should hold themselves to high standards of behavior in every sphere of life!
Description from Upstream:
There are many traditions or tendencies among the left. In fact, sometimes just trying to wrap our heads around all of the rich theoretical frameworks and various anti-capitalist thinkers can be dizzying. But it's also exciting — the richness of leftist history and theory is vital to learn and to build our work from.
In this episode we’ve brought on someone who knows a thing or two about leftist theory — in fact, he's got multiple podcasts that go into depth on historical figures, theory, and philosophy from a post-capitalist perspective.
Breht O’Shea is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, Red Menace, and Guerrilla History. He’s also an activist and organizer based out of Omaha, Nebraska.
Although his breadth of knowledge spans an incredibly wide range, we brought Breht on today to focus on the Leninist tradition. We’ll explore the fundamentals of Marxism–Leninism, as well as the related theoretical framework of Maoism. We talk about the importance of theory in informing our organizing, why it's important to learn about both the good and bad parts of historical figures and revolutionary movements – even when it comes to figures as controversial as Mao or Stalin. We also have a conversation about fascism in the United States, where we can go from here, and why it's important to center love and humanity in all we do.
Comments
Josh
Love your work, Breht. One thing I’d like to hear you speak to is whether Marxism-Leninism inevitably leads to one-person rule, eg the Soviet Union under Stalin, current-day China under Jinping. Are there examples where a dictatorship of the proletariat has been established and one-person rule has been avoided? If there are examples of this, I’d love to hear about them. Perhaps some discussion around whether one-person rule is inherently bad, too. Or can an argument be made that it’s not necessarily a terrible thing? Personally, the likelihood of ML leading to one-person rule is the one thing preventing me from fully embracing it. I’ve heard some lame responses to this concern, like ‘it’ll be fine because we’ll have a rule where elected leaders are immediately recallable’, and the thinking stops there..
Revolutionary Left Radio
The one with Chomsky was basically a dual interview: the first half was us and chomsky, then the second half, Vijay came on and chomsky had to leave. Episode here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/the-fragility-of-us-power-w-noam-chomsky-vijay-prashad
Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft
Is that conversation with Vijay you mentioned coming out somewhere sometime soon? (Or is it the guerilla history episode?)Found your overview of fascism very clarifying and would love to hear more!
