MARXIST COMMUNISM AND ETHICS | LECTURE BY DR. CARLOS L. GARRIDO

All right, perfect. Recording is underway. Um, so today's our last class, guys. So, I'm going to miss you. Uh, I'll probably work on the next uh seminar in the next month or so. So, look out for that. I hope to see you in whatever we do next. I'm leaning towards doing one on political philosophy where we'd be covering Plato, Aristotle. Um then we'd jump to like Mavelli, um Hobbs, Lock, Rouso, maybe Voltater and Montescu, or uh maybe we just jump to like Hegel or something or Marks. So it should be interesting. Um, or maybe I just do a more, you know, the the classes that are the most popular are the ones that are like very explicitly Marxist classics. Um, Marxist classic classes. So, I might just do basics of Marxism. Um, I don't know. I'm undecided. So, I might send out a poll at some point and, uh, get a feeling for what you guys are are interested in in taking next. In any case, uh today we wrap up a uh very extensive 7w week or 8week at this point uh journey throughout the history of the different ethical systems, ways of thinking about what constitutes a good life. What is it that makes some actions morally correct and others not? um that has spanned 2500 years of intellectual production all the way from um this the office and Plato all the way up to Marx which is what we're covering today and realistically it's it's more like just Marxism in general. I don't have a specific PowerPoint uh for this class because whenever I teach this specific class, I just give them that like my PowerPoint for the manifesto and my PowerPoint for the manuscript of uh the economic and philosoph philosophical manuscripts of 1844. And I just kind of riff off and and try to get um I try to be more attentive to how students faces look when I teach this class. um just to see like who's actually rocking with the Marxism or who who was like rocking with Marxist analysis they didn't know was Marxist earlier in the semester and and now is like kind of iffy because they know it's Marxist. You know, I try to pay attention to that and if I have a PowerPoint, I feel like I'll get too distracted. So, in the spirit of continuing the approach that I take at a university level, uh I'm not going to use uh the PowerPoint for this class, which is another way of saying I just didn't do a PowerPoint. [laughter] So, I'm sorry, but I think the lecture conversation is still going to be uh good. I'm missing Chris, and Chris is usually here, so I want to see what might have happened there. I feel like Chris hasn't missed any. So, if Chris is not here, maybe he might be the the one that missed it or something. Did anyone Everyone, I'm guessing here got the email just fine. Are there people that are in the group that are not yet inside the No, everyone's in the group. Okay, that's weird. Um, well, hopefully he sees the email and joins. Maybe he just thinks that there was a delay with the other class that I teach. Okay. In any case, um I've mentioned this a few times throughout this uh semester, but I think that we can replace Marxism and and Marxist ethics, if we can even refer to something like that, right? Cuz that's kind of still up in the air. I remember reading a very important book uh from Adam uh Sha um a Polish uh Marxist Leninist philosopher. I remember reading a book of his where he makes a point at the beginning that there's this new craze at the time, this was the the 70s, early '7s. There was this new craze with people focusing only on the young horse and on the topic of alienation. And it was very con convenient because it's easy to read a book that's this big than to have to go through the three volumes of capital and and all the other things that are tied to the main texts that were considered essential to understand Marxist thought up until that point up until the the popular popularization of the manuscripts of uh of 1844 which in the US um was published uh with a very long introduction from Eric from who's one of the psychologists uh from the Frankfurt school who ended up you know at some point kind of drifting away from that uh from the Frankfurt school or really just getting kicked out. I think his salary ended up going to like a door or something towards Marcusa. In any case uh Eric from was very popular at the time in the US amongst leftwing writers. He publishes a book called Marxist Concept of Man if I'm not mistaken. And in that book, he has a very long introduction. He has a good chunk of what today we read as the Paris manuscripts or the economic and philosophical manuscripts are 44. And then he has a series of letters from Paul Leafar and Marx's daughters that are at the end that talk about uh Marx as a person. That book got very popular in the US and there was um this whole movement that stems partially from it called Marxist humanism and the idea is that Markx had to be read as a sort of ethical philosopher within the tradition of humanism aligned with figures like Jesus and the Buddha and Socrates and one of these great sages of humanity. He wasn't this like dry u economic polit political economist and scientist that the Soviet Union uh made him out to be according to these people. Right. And um you have in and other people like Erns Block who wasn't necessarily a western Marxist. He's usually classified as a western Marxist but I don't really agree with that classification. In earns block you have uh the conception I think someone new came out if I'm not mistaken. In earns block you have the conception that there's two streams to Marxism. There's a warm stream which is a sort of humanism and the discussion on alienation and all these different things. the more ethically ethically coded aspects of Marxist writing and then you have this cold stream of Marxism which is the rigorous scientific analysis of the ways that capitalism functions to expo exploit people and all these different things right um when the manuscripts of 44 are published through this from work there is this whole new current Marxist humanism that develops and they really try to emphasize the ethic ical dimensions of Marxist uh of Marxist thought and um Adam Shraff who is somewhat he has a foot in and a foot outside of this tradition he's also a Marxist Leninist that supported actually existing socialism a very interesting figure by the way that we don't really hear enough about today in Adam Chaff you find a critique of these people's willingness to kind of dismiss okay I got an email something changing what No, I'm not. >> Okay. There was someone from the class was asking about it. And Adam Sha, you have a critique of how one-sided these people were. And it's convenient that Wow. Now, now for that Marxism is reducible to these very short texts from the early marks that also produces a counterurren and figures like um Lucio Kleti. Lucia Kleti for those that don't know was basically the pre-aluser Italian altus, right? He was the first one that developed the the notion that Jesus Christ Did everyone not get the email? Let me resend it to this person. I'm sorry, guys. Um, okay. So this uh current of so-called Marxist humanism produces a counterurren which is that of um eventually the the most popular person is aluser who makes essentially the argument that the early Marx was not even a Marxist that we shouldn't really care much for it. It was a young Hegelian Marx and that the real Marx is just in capital and in his later scientific works. Um, and that um, let me see if I can mute the notifications cuz this is kind of annoying. If I click quit Telegram, I wonder disable notifications. Okay, perfect. There we go. Now we're quick, I guess. Um, that the the young Marx was not a Marxist. He was still under the the influence of young Hegadianism and Hegel and the old Marx wasn't as Hegadian as we have been taught to think. So that argument uh was very much u repeated in many ways by the French philosopher Louis altoshair who had much greater notoriety at that point. He was director of the main philosophical um institution in France normal I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly but um he was the director of their philosophy department and also a member of the communist party. So a figure who had a lot of cache and so is a little bit more remembered than Lucio Kleti. But part of what he's remembered for um in terms of his theory of the two Marxist, the young and the old one and Marx's break with Hegel uh is is in many ways um repeating a basic thesis of what's made by Kleti. And again, this is all emerging as a reaction to these Marxist humanists that are really trying to focus on ethical dimensions in Marx's work to the detriment of some of the scientific rigor that was within it. And the reason why I like someone like Adam Schaef uh and there's a few other Soviet thinkers was actually really good at this. there's a speech he gives I want to say in 1970 at this massive conference at where where they invited western Marxist and Soviet Marxist and in that conference in the speech he basically develops a position that that I think is correct which is that uh no there's no two Marxist uh what you have is a continuous development of Marx and Engles's thought and of course you can see kernels in the young Marx that end up getting much more refined later on and It's interesting to see how uh those insights are developed in light of the fact that we can read books like capital, right? So for him there's um in many ways capital and and the manuscripts of 1844 are the same project except at a more advanced and refined uh stage in Markx in Marx's writing. Uh so that current whether it's Cha or Leenov of that reading of not stale continuity but concretization and refinement of Marxist thought is the one that I personally identify with. But I had to introduce this because even this dimension of thinking about a Marxist ethics the aluserians for instance would not be in favor of it uh because of this whole context that I mentioned about the development of Marxist humanism. Um so in any case uh our third class if I'm not mistaken was on Aristotle and one of the central points that Aristotle makes as regards to ethics is that ethics is not mathematics. There's no exactitude. Everything is based on context. So there's this traditional distinction that's usually made in the history of philosophy and in how classes such as these are taught where on one side you have an ethics of duty. So with Kant of course there's an ethics of duty. The categorical imperative is um a sort of transcendental framework through which we develop uh duties um for ourselves through which we provide laws that we ourselves should be following and that's the essence of autonomy that's the essence of freedom for K uh but also in command theory which is uh religious ethics where you're just accepting the duties that god hands out to hands down to you uh because of uh the through through divine revelation That's also a duty based ethics. On the other side, you have a virtue based ethic which instead of asking a stale question, what are the absolute um what what what actions are absolutely correct or absolutely incorrect, it asks a sort of question that's much more contextual, which is, you know, what does the good life consist of? And of course even in the question itself you have implied um the need for context because the good life can consist of many different things for different people and the common factor that the Greeks whether it's Plato or Aristotle who refineses the analysis much more the common factor for the Greeks is going to be that the good life consists of a life that's lived according to reason. In Plato of course you have this tripartite conception of the soul. So the soul contains three parts. A nutrative one, one that's uh rooted in in passions and appetite and and one that's rooted in reason. Aristotle basically just copies that part from Plato. For Plato, a healthy balance is one where the soul, the rational soul is dominating the other two. And he provides this example of the charioteer. And if you don't have reason as a charioteer, the horses are just going to go astray, right? Um to put it um you know in good Stalinist terms that's like having practice without theory right what is u what is practice without theory well it gropes in the dark that's how the metaphor that Stalin uses for it theory without practice is empty practice without theory gropes in the dark well um the passions and the appetites without uh the regimenting of them by reason just kind of grope in the dark they go in any direction in any uh which way. Okay. Um Aristotle repeats this uh almost word by word. He says the working of man uh is a working of the soul in accordance with reason or at least not independent of it. So the the purpose of man is tied to this conception of happiness in his terms called udeania which was this feeling of fulfillment. And that feeling of fulfillment meant living a life in accordance with reason which required living a life of virtue and living a life uh not only Oh, there's Chris. There we go. Um I was surprised that Chris wasn't here. I was like Chris is always here. Um so it's living a life of virtue, a life according to reason. And to do that you need to develop healthy habits, right? That was the essence of Aristotle. had to develop healthy habits in order to live the good life uh a happy life. Okay. So um that presents basically the beginning of the tradition through which Marxism is going to think about ethics. Um in Aristotle we have of course an ethics that is always contextual which means it's a dialectical ethics right uh the idea of these abstract universal laws that apply in all places at all times like you would have with consenttology or you would have with command ethics is something that's rejected by both Marxism and and aerosol. Okay. So, I agree with the argument that's made by Michael Lazarus in uh one of the books I had you guys read today, which was um absolute ethical life. Uh Hegel, Marks, and Aristotle. Um I can't remember if that's the direct order, but in any case, he makes the argument that the ethical tradition that Marxism is coming from is one that has this lineage that starts in Aristotle, gets further developed by Hegel, and then concludes in Marxism. And uh I I completely agree with that. Okay. So for Aristotle reason is central developing healthy habits is central and the question of ethics is the question of how to lead a good life. So it's always rooted in a conception of ethics requires actions right uh actions and healthy habits. in Hegel who is reacting to Kant who had an ethics of duty so in a different tradition but who emphasized this concept of freedom that the Greeks didn't have u of course you know one of the central if you want to call it the prejudice one of the central presuppositions of the enlightenment is the importance and value of freedom k develops that um to the utmost extent which you can in an individual uh subject For Hegel, as we had discussed some weeks ago, there's a very thorough critique of how empty con ethics are and how limited in scope and individualist this conception of freedom is. He comes to develop the notion as we mentioned of freedom as ethical life. So he resocializes the notion of uh you know now the good life understood as the life that where we're free. Um the good life for Kant was one where we are free. Um for Hegel that's true as well but for him this is always necessarily social which is a point that Aristotle would of course agree with. For Hegel ethical life is rooted like it was for Aristotle and you can find this in his politics um in a society that creates the conditions for human flourishing. So as we mentioned uh Aristotle is thinking about happiness through this notion of having a life that brings about contentment for you because you have flourished. You have taken what you have and developed it to the utmost capacity in different ways right in a very comprehensive manner. For Hegel, that same spirit of flourishing, of creating the conditions for human flourishing is central to his ethics. And the best way that we do this, the way we realize uh reason in the world is through ethical life, right? By setting up rational institutions that promote rational uh mutual recognition between individuals. So if you have something like a hierarchical master slave relation going on, you're not going to obtain mutual recognition. We already went through this, but a slave cannot provide recognition from the master. Um, and a slave treated and dehumanized in the ways that they are is obviously not going to get recognition from the master. It requires this development of the dialectic to the point where the slave begins to obtain recognition through his own labor embodied in the fact that he comes to recognize that he has basically built the world all around it. for Hegel um recognition is central which means it's a social ethic and uh ethical life is that type of society where u the trajectory of society itself aligns with uh the projects that individuals take up in their life. So this is something he develops upon the arisatinian framework of living the good life and the purpose of the state uh that he refineses right and um for Hegel therefore you know the ethical life consists in people being able to carry out projects in their life that are not incompatible to the direction of the state. Which means that when the state says things are like this because of X Y and Z, those reasons that are provided for why things are the way they are are considered authoritative. There's legitimacy to the state. Now with Hegel, of course, in time um through the very weight of these contradictions, there's the possibility of people at some point considering it no longer legitimate. And that's what constitutes the crisis of legitimacy that we spoke about back then. For Hegel also the concept of freedom becomes central to how he understands history uh understood from the framework of the concept not of the realization of freedom which is something that we spoke a little bit about. By the way, if this sounds like um a summary, I it's because I I think it's important to kind of summarize some of the thinkers that we've gone through before we set the table because a lot of what we have with Marxism is really basing itself on I think these two crucial figures which are Aerosol and Hegel. So for Higgel uh the essence of of his ethical thought and of the development of ethical life and the ethical state is the unfolding of the concept of freedom. He had made the argument of course that we are at the end of history. Why? Because at some point we develop the concept of universal freedom that all men and women all all human beings are universally free. Marxism of course is not going to agree with the fact that the concept alone is sufficient for understanding the development of human history. He's it's going to accept the freedom part, but it's going to uh posit that the area that we should be looking at is not just the level of the concept and ideas, but the real world itself. And the claim that the history of all hit through ho existing societies, it's the history of class struggle, class struggles implies kind of the same claim as Hegel. You know, history is the development of the unfolding of freedoms. uh but for marks it's rooted in like actual struggles for freedom in the world not just in the concept the development of the concept of freedom which is a reflection of actual real class struggles uh where one class is emancipated and then in time becomes the oppressor and all that stuff and that cycle would come to end with the working class the class that by emancipating itself would emancipate the rest of humanity uh in Hegel's time specifically towards the end of you begin to develop this tradition that has since been called the leftalians or the young Hegelians who make in many different ways the question of alienation central to them. So they're in the aftermath of the peak of bourgeoa enlightenment and they still realize that there's something profoundly wrong with society. uh there's something profoundly alienating that's fracturing society and preventing the realization of the human essence uh what forbach would classify as the gatum the species being or species essence of humanity and when faced with trying to answer well what is it that's preventing human beings from being fully human and from realizing completely this ideal of indictment They all went to religion. All of them went to religion. Um all the way from you know figures like Max Sterno who was working closely with um Eddie Bower, Bruno Bower's brother uh to Bruno Bower um and to Furbach which is the culminating point of the of the young Hegelians and Forbach writes this very important book um on Christianity called the essence of Christianity. I want to say 19 42 if I'm not mistaken for a box since uh 1935 um had carried out some very interesting critiques of Hegel but in 1942 if I'm not mistaken he publishes the essence of Christianity um and in that book he makes the argument that the human essence is is rooted in our ability to make our own species an object of thought. Which means the essence of the human being is rooted in our ability to ask questions like what is the essence of the human being. No other animal irrespective of how smart octopus are or whales or dolphins or or chimpanzees none of those animals are ever waking up and asking the question what does it mean to be a whale? Right? There's no chimpanzee that is uh losing sleep over am I living the best life ever? What does it mean to be a chimpanzeee? Right? That's just not happening. It's only the human being that asks themselves those sorts of questions which forbach is uh what he means with this expression that's very precise which is what makes a human being a human being is consciousness in a specific sense. in a specific sense. And what he means by a specific sense is this capacity to make our essence an object of what do we find when we do that? He says, well, what is universal to humanity, what exists plentifully and and infinitely within the human species because out of it emerge uh they emerge is reason, love and will. Reason, love and will. At the level of the species, it's infinite and perfect because it comes from the human species itself. However, at the level of the individual, it isn't. Uh we all throughout our lives feel these tragic moments that make us feel like [ __ ] where we love imperfectly, where we will imperfectly, and where we reason imperfectly. You know, you study real hard for an exam and you get a bad grade. You feel shame. You know, you reasoned imperfectly. Um, you know, your your family tells you go visit your grandma every Sunday and and you don't and uh you think about it the next Tuesday and you're like [ __ ] and you feel shameful. You feel shame over that. Or uh when it comes to will, you know, you're going to start a new diet program and you eat below 2,000 calories and then one day you just pick out. You need 3,000 calories. You're like the next day you feel pretty bad uh for yourself. And there's many different coping mechanisms that we develop to deal with this shamefulness that comes from reasoning loving or willing and perfectly. But ultimately the ultimate cope that all people at is the following. I'm only human. You have songs name after this uh theme. I'm only human after all. Don't put the blame on me. But what does that mean, right? To be only human. uh what you're doing there is saying well these imperfections uh this finitude and reason love and will is not rooted in me as an individual it's actually rooted in the species the human being is an imperfect animal and so what you do is that you say well these things which in reality according to are perfect and infinite because they emanate from uh the species itself um their imperfection is not rooted in me but in the fact that Human beings aren't perfect, but you still retain the conception of perfect reason, love, and will because in recognizing how you're limited and how you're participating in imperfections, there's always um you know uh the horizon of that which goes beyond that imperfection. You get mad when you get I don't know a seven in an exam because you know that you could have gotten a 10. you have some sort of horizon that you can see of of perfection. You can conceptualize the perfection and it's through that capacity that you can recognize how you fell short. So for fibbach what ends up happening is that well we retain this idea of perfect reason, love and will but then we export we export our imperfections onto the species. So what actually has perfect reason, love and well? God, right? That's how God emerges. So what what forok does is a sort of philosophical anthropology uh that tries to trace the origins of God. And what is God? Well, just look at the Christian God. All knowing, that's perfect reason, all loving, perfect love, and all powerful, perfect will. Whatever he sets his mind to, he can realize. And so what ends up happening and uh according to forbach is that the predicament that we're in of alienation and again he's writing in Prussia where to speak about politics is to speak about theology and vice versa right it's not like modern America although modern America if she goes the should go south might end up there right um in any case his central argument is that this u this crisis that we have in our societies where we haven't been able to realize the project of enlightenment, the project of modernity is rooted in this gap in this alienation. Even the word crisis itself implies a separation of things that ought to have been together. Uh which um finds its locus in the projection of the human essence of perfect reason, love, and will onto God. because in order to cope with the pain of failure, we export uh perfect reason, love and will to God and its imperfections to the species. So that's basically his argument really. It's religion uh that's at the root of the crisis that we experience in our day. Then comes Markx even the early marks and he says I don't know about that. Sure, there's a projection going on here with there's something deeply human that's alienated onto God and we do cope with the way the world is through religion, right? That he doesn't reject that. He doesn't reject the basic premises of um of the claims that forbach makes about religion. He rejects seeing it as the foundation of the problem. He says what what essentially Marx's critique is uh is that there has to be something in the real world that is so [ __ ] up that uh is so alienating that we cope with by developing this higher more abstract level of alienation that's implied with religion. That's what religion is the opium of the masses means. Opium at that time was a medicine. It was one that Markx took for a period of time for his pain. And what does that do? It helps you cope with the pain. And religion being the opium of the masses refers to the fact that it helps people cope with a very difficult reality. And if we want to find out what is wrong with this world, how are we going to go to the coping mechanism and not to the real conditions that make it necessary for people to develop the coping mechanism in the first place? So Markx turns his attention. He agrees with Forbach's basic premise that there's a human essence that is being alienated onto something else and and this crisis that we experience is a crisis of alienation. This concept of foyer box ging human essence the early marks takes it up completely. The latter marks doesn't use it because you know he wants to move away from these terms but he talks a lot about life activity and these different more uh materialist uh uh ways of of restating essentially what was before just the concept of the human essence or species essence. Uh so Markx comes to agree yes there is a a separation at play between the human being and his essence. It's not just at the level of religion. There's something much deeper going on which then ends up being coped with through religion and uh that deeper level has to be examined. And so he turns his attention to political economy and what he finds is that it's the capitalist system uh which is at the foundation of this fundamental alienation that we're experiencing. He finds that the worker is disconnected from the product of his labor. It belongs to another man who gets to decide uh what's done with it, where it's sold, who it's sold to, for how much, etc. It's disconnected from the process of uh labor, the process of working that produces the product. Um none of us get to decide how it is that we do our work, how it is that we produce. you know, it's always already there and we're just told, all right, do this. We're disconnected. Uh there's a fundamental disconnection in humanity because if the product doesn't belong to you and if you don't get to say how the work is done, it means that someone else is and that someone else uh is under control of your product. So the human species is split between the people that are like alienated in this form and and people who Markx would say in certain texts are alienated in another form who now control your labor. So there's a an alienation of the the human u species itself of humanity and then there's an alienation of human beings from their species being uh there's an alienation from what it means to be a human being. what fully makes you a human being and for Markx unlike forbach who said it's his ability to reflect and find reason and will for Markx uh the answer that's provided is much more materialist yes we have reason and we have all these things but all these things come after what makes us this what distinguishes us as human beings is our capacity to work uh he in many ways here agrees with Benjamin Franklin who called the human being an homo favor a toolmaking animal, right? An animal whose essence is intimately tied to the work that they do. And Markx ends up saying uh in the manuscripts of 44 that really the human essence is found in our ability to carry out uh work in a way that's planned. Uh so we set ourselves up to do one thing or another and we do it in a planned manner. We can do it collectively. Um, and we can even do it and and these are I think some of the most underexplored but interesting parts of Marx's discussion about species essence. We can do it uh in in conjunction with a a basic notion that we have of aesthetic beauty. So we're able to what makes us fully human is our ability to take up these projects where we objectify ourselves where we imbue the world and transform nature and imbue our subjectivity onto it creatively sometimes collectively with other people in a planned manner so it's not just chaotic and with an appreciation of aesthetic beauty. That's the essence for marks of what it means to be a human being. Right? The spider can do very pretty spiderw webs. The beavers can do very pretty dams or whatever, right? Um, bees built these amazing beehives. It's only the human being who can build literally everything. Could build anything they set their mind to. They could do it with tremendous um attentiveness to beauty. They could do it collectively and they could do it in a planned manner. Um, that's what makes us human being. And it's on the basis of that that later on we can begin to have reason and think and all that stuff. And if you're interested there's a really good paper that Engles writes I want to say in 73. Uh it's it it's it's in the dialectics of nature. Um but it was published postumously but before the full dialectics of nature gets published in 1925 uh called uh the role of labor in the transition from ape to man. And there he makes the argument that it was literally the hand of work that was um the beginning of the development of the human being of us becoming a homo erectus a uh an upright individual. It's work that ultimately in the last instance leads to things like communication and ultimately reason. So this uh this fundamental ontology of the human being is is not broken with it's it's in many ways refined later on by Engles who was someone that was as upto-date as he could possibly be on scientific uh studies in many different fields as Markx was but a little bit more than than Markx in certain fields. Okay. Um so for Markx the alienation that we experience it's not rooted in religion. It's not eternal. Uh it's rooted in the fact that how we objectify ourselves onto the world. Um which you can make the argument and this is what certain uh folks who are very much appreciated to Lan and and certain traditions of psychoanalysis that say that there's a certain alienation that's constitutive of the human experience. This is how they phrase it that um you know that what Markx was was talking about as objectification is what later on gets talked about as a more um foundational and essential alienation that all human beings have. And so uh for these people um who accept this what Markx calls objectification would be a form of alienation. I don't think that's necessarily uh correct. But in any case, for Markx, objectification is good. Objectification becomes bad when it's alienated. And it becomes alienated on the basis of the uh prevalent social relations that we exist on the basis of class society and specifically uh for his object of analysis, capitalism. This is what breaks us off from our product, our process, our essence and humanity at large and also nature. Uh because he considers nature to be uh part of the essence of the human being and we are separated from that as well. He makes his point in 1984 and then in the third volume of capital of course he says that um capitalism presents this fundamental rupture. He had been reading Frederick uh Alfred Langa if I'm not mistaken. Uh it's been a few years since I revisit some of the writings I've done in this area. Um he uh he was very much attentive to how capitalism basically destroys the soil um and uh how capitalism exploits its two sources of value, the worker and nature. And so at the end he talks about communism in the third volume of capital as making rational again the intercourse uh of humanity and nature. You know reestablishing a rational metabolism between the human beings and nature in China. The project of e ecological civilization and I'm guessing Danielle knows this quite well as someone who's in China now. um integrates this uh these comments into the constitution itself except they describe it as harmony uh and not just metabolism but essentially what it means is the same thing. This rupture that is introduced by class society and specifically in this case with nature capitalism and industrial capitalism or fossil capitalism whatever you want to call it um the the the conditions that produce what's called the anthroposine. So such a radical change that man is the humanity is is producing in nature. This represents a fundamental disconnection of the human being from nature which is central to its essence. Okay. Um so marks for marks this project of thinking about what is a good life um is fundamentally rooted in struggling against this alienation that's constitutive of the capitalist system. You can't have capitalism without alienation. You're going to have a million different forms of alienation. In the consumer society that develops in the 20th century, you get even deeper dimensions, more advanced forms of alienation that develop. But alienation is fundamental to the way we objectify ourselves uh within capitalism and any project of conceiving of a society that produces the conditions for the greatest amount of human flourishing, a society that's rational and promotes mutual self-recognition. So there we have Aristotle and Hegel is going to have to deal with the question of this real material alienation that is constitutive to both class society but specifically capitalism in its highest forms. Okay, which is the element that Hegel of course does not talk about because Hegel thinks that um that that these contradictions could be reconciled by the state which is why he treats the state fetishistically as an entity in its own right and as something that arises uh from the mode of production and that serves in the last instance the needs of the economic uh economically dominant class. So for Markx >> he thinks about the project of communism as a mode of production um not just as a the real movement of history. There's different temporalities and ways in which they use communism. One of them is a real movement of history which abolishes the present state of things where communism comes to be very similar to Hegel's notion of the Velgeist of world spirit. this universally emancipatory move forward that's progressing humanity. There's the lower phase of communism which traditionally has just been called socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat and there's communism as an advanced mode of production as the complete overcoming of class society which they do speak about at least abstractly. um they don't set out a plan like the utopians did of what the society would look like. But we do know that under those conditions uh there wouldn't be class society. There'd be such a level of abundance where all of these forms of alienation that we have to our labor and to the human community would be overcome and we'd be working um um in in ways that realize our essence, right? We'd be doing the sort of creative projects that combine mental and physical labor so that don't operate with this disjunction that's introduced by class society and intensified by capitalism. Uh we'd be working and it would feel like us realizing you know what our purpose in life is. It it would be a very fruitful work. It would be work as us manifesting our excellence as us uh doing the things which would lead us to have that content happy life that Aristotle talked about. That's why there's scholars like Terry Pinker who make the argument that for Markx communism is Aristotle's politics but without the slavery. Okay. There's a lot of truth to that. I think more than than than we'd be willing to acknowledge that society guided by the logic of from each according to their ability to each according to their need is uh is communism as a mode of production as a distant mode of production and that is a fundamentally unalienated society. That's a society where the human being is not reduced to the mechanical work they do uh as a cog in the machine of capitalism that is stupifying them and uh crippling them as a human being. These are critiques that were already levied by Adam Smith uh and Adam Ferguson who we don't talk a lot about but who is in many ways even brighter than Adam Smith. But if you look at the footnotes of Marx's capital which you can make a whole book out of Marx's footnotes. If you look at the footnotes, there's a whole lot of citations to Adam Ferguson, very important Scottish uh enlightenment uh economist and philosopher. In any case, to think about a the Marxist conception of ethics then means to think about it from the framework of this virtue ethic of trying to to to foresee what is it that's preventing the full realization of the human being the full actualizing of the human essence of the the human and uh in many ways then capitalism stands as a force that prevents the realization of uh of of us being fully human. This is why you you look at Jay's lectures on the socialist man. He says you become fully human under socialism. Well, what are we before? We're alienated humans thanks to capitalism. So the Marxist ethic is is fundamentally rooted in the project of not just interpreting the world, not just interpreting well in this moment how can I act correctly. No, it's about thinking about the ways in which the system we live under prevents the realization of a true ethical life uh which we can only find in a communist society that is unalienated that doesn't have this unnecessary medium of intercourse that we call money. So this transition that Boris Royce uh describes between a society based on the medium of money to a society based on the medium of language and a society where of course if you don't have class antagonisms, if you don't have money, do you need a state? No. The political character of the state is removed because politics itself is a way of using the state to manage antagonisms that society cannot contain on its own. So if you lose that antagonistic character of society, there'll still be contradictions. But if you lose its antagonistic character on the basis of class, you don't need the political function of the state. You'll just have administrative functions um that that would exist so that stuff gets done. Um but you know you'd have such a condition of abundance where necessary labor would be radically reduced and we'd leap you know according to the jargon from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of uh of of freedom which is how communism is uh depicted. And in doing this to tie it back to another sense in which Markx talks about communism, we will be solving the riddle of history. Because the fundamental riddle of history, the paradox of history, uh the thing which um we've all been trying to make sense of as history has been unfolding is this question of alienation. this uh this fundamental crisis that was produced in the aftermath of the disillusion of the original community of the original primitive communist society. Um which was dissolved by the introduction of surplus and then led to this long history of class many different types of class societies and supposedly um capitalism being the last. We have a return at this meta global scale to the primitive community to primitive communism but at a higher scale with abundance and with a highly technologically developed uh forces of production that allow us to just you know uh work as a way of realizing our essence and not as something that's compulsive. Um, so again, you know, you have things in our in in America like that uh subreddit um that anti-work subreddit, the abolish work one. That's as anti-Marxist as you can get. Um cuz you know the struggle is to abolish that compulsive work which is called like uh labor in capital society. we're forced to sell our our labor power in order to survive. But you don't want to abolish work because work is central to what it means to be human. Uh work is how you realize your human essence, how you feel fully human. Any project that you just completely throw yourself into, what you're doing there is work. And that's when you feel the most human. That's when you feel the most uh the most free. Okay. um to add a couple more points of nuances because we've been talking about the ethical dimension of Marshall's thought how it relates to for lack of a better word this more utopian conception of of communism as a mode of production as a distant mode of production temporally distant um when it comes to you know how we how communist thinkers from Chevara to to Lenin and others have thought about how we should be as communists within the context that we're in whether it's capitalist society or an early stage of socialist society. Um I'd like to reference a few things. One of them is uh Chase speech to the youth leagues. Um he says it very clearly. If you're a communist, try to be the best at anything you do. If you're in class and you're communist and others are not, you have to be at the front. You have to be the best. You have to be at the vanguard. If you're in sports, try to be at the vanguard at anything you do as a communist, whether it's within capitalist society or within this early socialist society where most people are not in the party. If you're going to be in the party, if you're going to be a communist, which is synonymous with being in the party for most of humanity, you have to strive to be the best at everything you do. Who also tells you to do that to live a good and satisfied life that's excellence for the Greeks that's basically what Jay Gavaro was saying be excellent excel that's what is required of the communist and Lennon tells us in the speech to the youth leagues he says what is a communist is a communist a guy that knows communist slogans no >> today we can say is a communist a person with a hammer and sickle in the bio uh do you just become a communist when you call yourself a communist. No, you become a communist when you do the things that earn you being called a communist. And the process historically was well, you apply to join a communist party and you prove yourself in that period of what we would call reserve in our uh ACP. And when you become a cadre, that's when you know you're a communist. And when you stop doing the things that a cadre should be doing, you go back, right? Um, but to be a communist means to earn the label of being at the front lines of humanity. And Lenin says, you know, what does a communist do? A communist doesn't just read communist literature. A communist drinks from the fountain of knowledge that has been developed by mankind. A communist is a cultured a cultured individual. an individual that can you know um speak about many different pre-communist uh thinkers, draw rational kernels from them, describe the ways in which their thought was limited, the ways in which their thought was rooted in a specific historical period, the way in which their thought is different from Marxism, right? Or Marxism Leninism. But the communist is also the person that goes down to the people, that serves the people, that has a way of being that is not antagonistic to the people. So that that goes down to the people, but not with an HR attitude of, "Oh my god, you're saying dirty words. Let me close my ears. Let me cancel you." No, that goes down to the people that that can attune his habitat, his being in the world to that of the people. Learn from it. Learn from the common sense of the people. Know where it is that the people are at. And on that basis, as Grahamshy would tell us, would draw out the good sense nucleus, the the rational kernels in the common sense and the common sentiments because Grachi was a thinker that was already infinitely better than second international that translated Marxism into bourgeois rationalists uh and idealist forms. Graham she was talking about the role of the passions the role of um to to put it in hiding terms the role of this deeper being in the world uh that's not just reducible to conscious explicit formulated rules of thought or thought itself. The communist goes down to the the people uh and feels comfortable inhabiting their world, doesn't feel icky, and feels comfortable learning from them and learning how best to develop on the basis of the world that they're in of the common sense understanding and sentiments that they have a communist consciousness and not just a communist consciousness, but a communist being in the world for the people. This is what's referred to by a cultural revolution, right? [clears throat] A cultural revolution is not just you change the way you think, you change your whole way of being. You change your whole way of being, your aesthetic appreciation for things, um how you relate to other people. Let me give you one very quirky example that I heard uh I was I was telling one of my friends uh I think Grayson who spent some time uh in in China. I think he spent six months when he was doing his law degree, his law doctor. I was telling him about how when I was in China, I was just hearing people burp out loud. And I'm like, well, or uh or like spit in, I don't know how you say it in English, spit fl. And I was like, is that is that just normal or or did they like dislike me because I was a foreigner or what? He's like, "No, what happened was that in that region of China, uh, since um it's not like Beijing or Shanghai or something that um the culture of the cultural revolution is still alive and there was these moments in the cultural revolution where Mao said that like we should reject um bourgeoa etiquette and when we have to fart, just fart. When we have to burp, we just burp. So I'm not saying that's what's required of the revolutionary, but to point out the uh the degree to which the cultural revolution wasn't just about changing your mind but changing your whole way of being in the world, right? Uh even at that level, right? The meaningfulness of a fort or something. those basic rules of etiquette, how we relate to space, how we relate to other people, that is also transformed by by the communists uh in their effort to to advance the people's uh to advance the people's way of life. It doesn't mean, you know, that you just describe uh not farting in public as uh bourgeoa etiquette and and try to undo it, right? Lenin used to tell the procult people, "Do we have to remove all of the railroads and redo them because those were bourgeoa railroads?" No, of course, it's parts of the previous culture of humanity that's inhabited um or that's that's inherited and developed upon, right? We don't have to tear with everything. Um that would be a very undi way of thinking about socialist uh transformation. [clears throat] But the point being you know there there's a qualitative development at the level of you know this fundamental being in the world that's also carried out by the communists that's not just reducible again to having different ideas having a development of um a more explicit communist consciousness. So one of the things that communists should act like according to leaders from Lenin to Chay uh you know to many communist leaders in China is uh like Leong right Daniel probably knows this example but Leong was one of the central figures in in Chinese cultural revolution propaganda someone who was always there to lend a hand. um and you know did as much work as he could uh to help the people lived a Spartan life where he didn't need much to be satisfied he studied diligently um and he literally lived through the model of serving the people another individual like that chevara that's why in Cuba uh the kids when they go to school they say pioneers for communism strive to be like ch or leang all of these individuals are archetypes or lenin in the Soviet Union it was called the the Lenin youth right um all of these individuals are archetypes of the new type of personality that the communist has to be like because the communist you know as I've as I've said in previous streams has to be the man from the future they have to be uh the individual that embodies through their very being that communist society that we're fighting for. And that doesn't mean that, you know, we're not going to be subjected to the alienation that everyone is subjected to. But at the level of our character, we need to have uh such principle and um such uh excellence exuberated from all of our actions and every anything we throw ourselves into that it becomes evident, okay, you know, if these guys are fighting for communism, I trust these guys. These guys are whatever they're doing is probably going to be good. And that's the the the logic of of of what it means to be a communist and how we think about ethics, not just as this larger scheme project of fighting for a communist society that is unalienated, but also how we think about the day-to-day of being a communist. I'd like to I'd like to end maybe with I don't know if I can screen share this, but there was a story that uh Chris Alali uh gave some time ago about a general that he fought with that I I'd like for us to to watch. But um and after we watch this after we watch this uh we should uh discuss >> when I was in Syria. Uh >> all right. Let me see if I can figure out how to project the screen. Share screen. Um, what's going on here? Jesus Christ. All right. Do you guys see the screen? Oh my god. This is like inception. What the [ __ ] is this? You guys actually saw the screen on my side. It showed like the same screen three million times. >> That's what I thought you meant. Sure. Okay. Uh This is so weird. Why isn't it? Um, >> no. Right. >> You see it? Crystal. Crystal. >> You do see Chris Ali >> YouTube. >> Okay, perfect. Let me know if you could hear this. Um, I had the >> Can you hear that? >> All good. >> All good. Okay, perfect. >> When I was in Syria, um, I had the experience I'll never forget. Um, my commander Orhan Bakarian Nubaran was a very famous um, uh, gerilla. Um, he was a Armenian from Turkey. Is there any uh echo coming from >> outside? He >> No. >> No. Okay. >> He uh fought um in the mauist gerilla in Turkey. He went to Lebanon. He joined with the PFL team and with the Abu Nidal network. He fought against Israel. He was wounded. He served with Assala, the Armenian secret army for the liberation of Armenia. Afterwards he fought against Azarbaian during the first uh war in Nagoro Karabak in Artsac. He basically became, you know, a colonel at the time and um he went back to the gerilla and fought against Turkish forces for another uh uh decade uh and then went to the mountains um where he was then sent into Syria to help with the defense of the northern cities against uh DJ. And when I met him, this was a man that would have been a general in any other army. And he had the respect of every commander even Syrian Arab army. They knew of him of course because he had been with the PFLP and uh they even the Iranians respected him. Uh the Russians knew about him because he was with Monty Melconian who was the commander of the Armenian forces during the war in Arzak. And when I was with him he would sit with me and he was like a grandfather. When I finished eating he would grab my plate and watch my plate. I would beg him not to do it. And he said, "Don't worry. It's my pleasure to do it." This was a man who had fought for four decades at that time in guerrilla war on on multiple countries. And he would wake up every morning. I'll never forget. He would wake up 5:00 a.m. He would let us sleep in a little bit until like 5:30. He would start preparing breakfast. He would get us up. We would do our morning physical training. He would make breakfast for everybody, serve us. afterwards washed the dishes and while we were doing training exercises he had an old tattered copy uh of uh on contradiction theory and practice and um another text I'm trying to remember those two were the ones I remember most vividly and he would read them every day every day he would go back he'd read them a thousand times he would read them and he would always I'll never forget when when a Syrian family came to our case. Uh, of course, we didn't know who they were. So, I got he stopped us and he said, "This is the people. This is who we serve." He was he he went out there. He didn't m it didn't matter if somebody was going to blow him up. He said, "We serve the people regardless." And um he they would come and they said, "Look, we don't have sugar." He would give them stockpiles of our supplies, whatever we had. You want sugar, take sugar. You need uh we got some eggs, take the eggs. And he was so beloved by everyone in that region, they all would have gone to war with him. Uh you know for him with him on the front lines and they did many of their children um who became teenagers and old enough they ended up serving in either in back capacities because they were too young or on the front lines. And sadly while I was there he was martyed and um that man was a hero. PFLP actually released a a massive tribute to him and made made it into a poster. Um, and he was a he was he was emblematic. He he sort of who I aspired to be because even after all of that, the man could have looked like a Soviet general with however however many medals he would have got. Proud proud communist. How many wars did he fight in? How many operations was he in? Wounded multiple times. Spoke like five six languages. But the most humble man would never yell, would never scream, always very softspoken. And he really taught me what it meant to be a communist and what it meant to be a revolutionary. And I'll never forget him. You know, I I think about him all the time. I I uh I have his picture uh in my office. And you know, I I hope that I can one day be uh you know, 1% the man that he was. Uh and that's how that's how I think that we all should be. We all should look for those people that have that continue to inspire us that lead a light that we think is worthy of emulation uh is is worthy uh of us you know stepping into their shoes and we should also do the same and as best as we can and I think that that's where you earn the trust of the people uh ultimately that's where you earn the trust of the masses and that's where people begin to put their faith in you and when they put their faith in you. Uh they are willing to ride or die as we say. You know, they're willing to sacrifice um a lot. And so, you know, not to not to be overly emotional or things like that. I feel myself uh you know, getting a little bit emotional. They're talking about him and this experience. But I think that for all of us, what we can do is in any capacity to continue to uphold the best of what it means to be a communist and to continue to work tirelessly, ceaselessly for the people and for the struggle. Um, there's no alternative, comrades. There's no alternative for the world. We only have two paths. uh a path that is a world of dignity, of friendship, of peace, of cooperation, of solidarity, of sort of a humanity unified in its quest for for for the pursuit of of all that is good in life. And we have a a society um that is uh constantly at war with itself, where people tear one another down for the scraps, and where an elite continue to govern and take all of the riches of the masses and emiserate the vast majority of the world's population. And I believe that we must struggle uh without end for [snorts] uh the former. And we must uh continue to struggle uh to build that world. If we get there, I don't know. But that's not that's not really that's not really our purpose. Our purpose is not to know uh whether we get there or not. Our purpose is to struggle. And if we get there, we'll know when we're there. You know, um we don't need to be teological and all of a sudden start to get into all sorts of questions about end times, esquetology. Leave that to religion. Leave that to awaiting the Messiah. But we're not awaiting the Messiah. Look in the mirror. You are the one we have been waiting for. That's what I tell everybody, you know, uh if you want to enact change, you only have to look into the mirror to see how that change comes about. So, okay, it's not high theory. It's not uh nice um Marxist uh uh language from uh the documents, but I believe it's the essence and the core of what Marxism is ultimately looking for in in in human beings. All right. Um super powerful. I've I've seen that video maybe uh four or five times at this point. I just recently uh rewatched it with my wife a couple days ago and uh I figured it it was a perfect opportunity with this class coming up uh to show it to you guys. Okay. Um comments, uh questions about anything about the uh the discussion or um the last thing you heard from Chris. I thought it was very moving. Comments or questions. Uh so yeah, that that wasn't that I um >> Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you go ahead. I'll I'll talk after you. Whoever just started. Uh I don't think >> Oh, okay. >> Mine. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, um Gotcha. Uh one one thing I was thinking. So, it almost feels uh it almost feels after that video talking about anything else feels sort of uh offkey, but you know, zooming out a bit. So, one thing I was thinking about and learning and and in the approach you guys take and in the approach the class takes is it almost seems like there there's this trajectory where where when Markx and Engles were doing their work, it was the it was the progressive thing to do. It was the radical progressive thing to do to see them as a decisive break with the past as a new thing as uh such that such that you know we have Hegel telling us that uh that uh that you know or sorry not Hegel we have angles telling us that Hegel is you know was was you know rational kernel mystical shell and and and that we were transcending it and so on to the point that it almost did a disservice but it was it was pmically and and and strategically useful at the time to do be cut to emphasize this break with the past. But now it's kind of that that that tactic that that that concept of the break with the past has also almost gone too far to where it's no longer progressive and it's almost alienating for a lot of people. And so now the time and and that I'm getting from you guys and from this and and that's really an amazing insight. The time is to emphasize the continuity with all that is good in the past with the with with with old philosophy with old with old thought with all the good things of the world as you know as Lenin said. Um so I'm getting that from it. It's just a thought comment and a thought that that's pretty amazing to me that I don't know if I'm getting the right conclusion here but that's that's what I'm getting. You're muted. You're muted, Carlos. >> That's a very good insight. Um because we know that structurally every uh transformation takes the form of sublation, right? Something is preserved and elevated into the new. Another part is canceled out. Um and when that happens at a social level, we tend to emphasize the parts that are canceled out. And it's only retroactively where we can look back and see wow there's so much of of what we have which you [clears throat] know was embionically in in the world that we broke from and I think one of the most interesting places to trace this out is uh China. Uh you know correct me if I'm wrong uh Daniel since since you're there but uh there was a very explicit attempt to break with the old order, with Confucianism, with the old world that um was felt like was intimately tied to what was holding uh China back uh to what allowed something like the century of humiliation. And there were contradictions that developed between the communist and um the the people that very much identified with the Confucian order in part because those people were politically reactionary. So it wasn't always ideological. It was like politics flowing into um ideology and it's very hard to to talk about you know what's drawn from Confucious when it's the you know the temples and stuff that are collaborating with the opposition. But in any case, um I think at a very basic level, you see this interesting um this this interesting move with the Chinese Communist Party where at the beginning they emphasize the break component and then with time they're like, well, how does Marxism fit into this long civilizational trajectory of 5,000 years, which is China? How does it fit into the wisdom of the Tes and the wisdom of Confucious and and today party officials? You know to to be party officials they have to read the classics of Chinese literature and also the classics of Marxism. Their Marx angles their Lenin uh their Mao their Stalin their Dong Xiaoping you know their uh theory of three represents and their Xiinping thought. Um, so yeah, that point that you're making, I see that very much in China. You know, first is the emphasis of the break and then a a retroactive going back and seeing how is it that what we're doing is preserving this long civilizational trajectory and and these many many many centuries and millenniums in their case of wisdom. Good. Um, yeah, I want to add to that since you um mentioned my name, but um I've been um so these past few weeks I've actually been traveling through China um and like I I tried to visit spots that were historically like like red red spots like red history spots in China like um like Mal's birthplace and and um and along the long march and places like that and in like these museums and and just in other reading I've been doing like you you always see that common uh like thread of I mean Mao himself he he was very well read in in like the the classics and when he was growing up his dad would always like um like make him make him read these classics and then uh he would try to justify by like maybe something that Mau felt was unjustified using um like appealing to some kind of uh some kind of literature something that's like you know like Confucianism some kind of teaching and then it was Mal himself that would he would study these these uh these texts like uh like religiously almost but not just to like kind of uh he he studied them so that he could use them to like almost to defend himself against uh or like force some position that he thought that he thought was wrong. Like I'm trying to think of an example, but um yeah. And like another thing that seems like very symbolic about like not just Confucianism like like I noticed that the Red Army it like made um a lot of inroads with all kinds of religions, right? Uh I mean I guess Confucianism isn't just religion but like they had bases in like mosque and and and Catholic churches and all these other types of like um places of of faith and they um like even though like yes they did criticize like some of the practices like they still had to uh like make inroads with whoever um has practiced these like Muslims and and and Christians and Catholics and all these different like kinds of people because like they they encountered them right throughout their um their long march or throughout like just any of their um throughout the entirety of like the revolution and like the anti-Japanese war and all this other all these other events. So I I don't know like I have a lot to think about. It's hard to like formulate my thoughts into something right whenever you we speak on in these discussions but um yeah but that's good. Yeah. um Mao Mao's intellectual foundations is it's it's the intellectual uh foundation of China itself right um he doesn't grow up reading did a role and and Rouso he grows up reading Confucious and the classics of Chinese literature and I just had a conversation yesterday with um Diego De Rousarin who spent a month and a half in China and one of the things that he told me was the most meaningful for him was seeing how complimentary uh the sort of basic civilizational common sense of the Chinese people. So uh that's kind of elusive but the the the ways of understanding the world that are rooted in these traditions like Dowoism and Confucianism etc. how complimentary that was to Marxism in ways in which our equivalent of it, liberal individualism and kind of bourgeois modernity is not you know so for the Chinese it was so much easier uh to incorporate Marxism within their civilizational trajectory whereas for us it's going to be a whole lot uh harder. Um, I don't know. But, um, yeah, that kind of, uh, what you were mentioning kind of reminded me of some of the stuff he said in our conversation yesterday. But, >> okay, good. Uh, any other comments or questions? I was actually thinking just now of the same thing you just mentioned about how versus the um Chinese tradition, the modern American, not not even American, Western isolated individual is sort of more of a break from tradition because even in ancient times the focus was on how can I be an excellent human even if you were um a prince. or philosopher king or even a slave. It was like how can I be an excellent person? And even in the middle ages it was still well how can I be an excellent king? How can I be an excellent priest? How can I be an excellent peasant or things like that but very much with modern world development of capitalism any isolated individual we kind of see a big break from that. So Marxism is in essence a more of a return to tradition than it is um coming up with like this whole new thing. And like you said, we've been so saturated in that uh liberal individualism for so many centuries now that it will be a pretty drastic um cultural revolution we're going to have to have in order to move past it. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And there's actually this Russian thinker, um, Jesus Christ. What's his name? Uh, I think it's Basulin. Basulin. I forget the first name. Might be Nikolai. Uh but Vasulin he was um he was a contemporary of Ilenov and he was a part of the Lmonosov uh trend in the late60s to write about the homologies between Hegel's logic and March's capital yada yada yada but in the '9s he does a lot of writing after the Soviet Union fell which is attuned to this meta historical dimension. So we talk a lot about modes of production and capitalism and production but like communism is a sublation not just of the capitalist mode of production but of the whole of class society and in that sense as you mentioned it's a return to um a sort of primordial community at a higher level and that dimension of thinking about really what's at stake here and how radical is uh is this simulation and how you're not going to be able to achieve it in a hundred years or or even more because it took millenniums of class society in order for the primary community to be broken from and for the communist bonds of association that dominated humanity to be ruptured and alienated from itself. Um that dimension of his thought is very important. I know that the the world anti-imperialist platform in their journal, one of the guys that works with I think it's the Greeks um I might be wrong, but one of the based Greek communists, it's not one of the KKK people that works with them. I might be so long, but he studied under Vasuven and he's been translating some of those texts and interviews he did to English and I've read a couple of them that are fairly long. I would highly recommend it. If you look up World Anti-imperialist Platform and Vasulin, it it should pop up. Uh but this metaistorical dimension, we're not just sublating capitalism. We're starting the whole history of class society and all the habits and ways of thinking and ways of being in the world that that have developed um from it and that's a that's a far larger task a far greater task than what we know um we are embarking on. Okay, good. Um any other questions or comments? All right. Um, this has been a very fun class. A lot more fun than than I expected to, honestly, because people usually don't really like the ethics uh stuff. But, um, in any case, um, thank you all for for being here. uh I've learned a lot and there's been many discussions that we've had that have been central for reflections I've I've made uh after the class um and you know um spiritually it's it's been uh enriching to to do this class for me and I thank you all I thank you all for that I've appreciated the comments and questions every week and uh just the opportunity to be able to to speak about these texts with people that are interested and not just [ __ ] students that don't do the reading and show up to class and fall asleep in the back of the class and have a [ __ ] face and all that stuff like but you often find in universities having people that are attentive and interested in the material makes uh teaching fun. So dang students. Yeah. But uh anyways, thank you all and um let me see if I figure out how to stop the recording. Did I stop it? Stop the reporting.

This was the final lecture from the 8-week Seminar on Marxism and the History of Ethics and Moral Philosophy, which covered everything from the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, and Marxism. You can purchase the recordings of Dr. Garrido's previous 16-week Seminar on Marxism-Leninism here: https://midwesternmarxpublishingpress.sellfy.store/p/marxism-leninism-seminar-part-1-and-2-recordings/ Check out our Publishing Press books and journals here: https://www.midwesternmarx.com/books.html If you enjoyed our video please consider checking our website out : https://www.midwesternmarx.com/ Also, if you are interested in helping us fund our project become a Patron : https://www.patreon.com/MidwesternMarx Check out our online library for FREE books on Socialism, Philosophy, History, and more: https://www.midwesternmarx.com/online-library.html Listen to our Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Dv6DvcOuSXQ5LhmA1YCPa Follow us on Instagram: @midwesternmarx Follow us on Twitter: @MarxMidwest Like us on Facebook: @Midwestern Marx