What is Stalinism? It is the liquidation of Marxism. More precisely, it is the liquidation of the Marxist self-consciousness and theory of the proletarian socialist party — it is also the practical liquidation of that party. What is most troubling about the history of “Marxism-Leninism” AKA Stalinism is, like with the Jacobins, not their ruthlessness towards avowed counterrevolutionaries, but rather the Revolution eating its own — the unjust and murderous turn against the loyal revolutionaries themselves. The problem with Stalinism is the lies it entails — the lies against the revolutionaries, and against the Revolution itself. And the lies never end.
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Tom Canel’s essay on my debate with Benjamin Studebaker, between pursuit of freedom and the Good, tries to address my writing as a logical problem. But it begins with a misapprehension: not I but Studebaker introduced the category of the “body” into our dispute about Platonism and Marxism. Not my argument but his hinges on the natural body as a phenomenon. For me it is a historical form of appearance in society; for him it is an emanation of the Good — falling away from it.
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On March 30, 2023, at its 15th annual International Convention in Chicago, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion on Second International Marxism in America. The panel was made up of Platypus members who addressed the origins and crisis of the Socialist Party of America (SPA): Spencer A. Leonard (prehistory and origin of the First International), Pamela C. Nogales C. (First International and prehistory of the Second International in America), Ed Remus (crisis of the Debsian-era SPA), and Chris Cutrone (legacy of the SPA). Platypus member D. M. Faes moderated the panel. An edited transcript follows.
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BENJAMIN STUDEBAKER ATTRIBUTES modern social and political thought to Stoicism, which he understands to be at heart Neo-Platonist — by contrast with Plato’s own Platonism. In his view, it comes down to us from late Hellenism — Alexandrianism? But is capitalism Epicurean, as Studebaker avers, and socialism Stoic? Studebaker rejects the vision of socialism as society going beyond politics, which he interprets as the impossible or undesirable state without “disturbance”: an inhuman dystopia.
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UNFORTUNATELY, it seems that the Millennial moment, on both Left and Right, has been motivated by anti-postmodernism and anti-neoliberalism. This has meant adopting absolutism as opposed to relativism and collectivism as opposed to individualism, statism as opposed to the market, and hence nationalism as opposed to “globalism.” This has meant remaining blind and irrelevant to developments of post-neoliberalism, which will be both continuity and change — and never one without the other. For capitalism to continue it must change; for it to change it must continue.
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