Book review: Ted Grant: the permanent revolutionary

The first portion of Chris Cutrone's 2024 book Marxism and Politics published by Sublation Press. Book description: Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism’s own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then, in ever more obscure ways. The essays by Chris Cutrone collected here span the time of the Millennial Left’s abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone’s participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large — but was abandoned. Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism’s accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist “message in a bottle” cast adrift by history yet be received? | Reviews: “The Millennial Left is fading, because it lost sight of the telos of historical Marxism. Chris Cutrone’s fascinating essay ‘The end of Millennial Marxism’ could serve as a good primer on dialectical materialism.” — Sohrab Ahmari, Editor of Compact Magazine | “Chris Cutrone’s The Death of the Millennial Left is explicit in pronouncing fatality: how this generation’s failure is a product of past defeats and the bad ideas it has internalized. If an authentic Marxian Left were to emerge today, it would be unrecognizable, unclassifiable: the Left itself has become so distorted by the experience of defeat that it hardly recognizes its own traditions. Cutrone offers a searching and deep historical critique of a Millennial Left whose failures are mere iterations on previous failures: what is taken to be ‘Left-wing’ or ‘socialism’ today is nothing more than the ‘naturalization of the degeneration of the Left into resignation and abdication. This is explored through reference to Left-wing political traditions.” — Alex Hochuli, author of The End of the End of History, review of The Death of the Millennial Left, American Affairs | “Cutrone is most comfortable with the larger stakes of Adorno and Horkheimer’s claims and how their position emerges from Marx’s and Lenin’s own example.” — Todd Cronan, Nonsite | “The worthwhile and provocative article by Chris Cutrone, ‘Lenin’s liberalism’ argues that Lenin helped legitimize political differences.” — Mike Macnair, author of Revolutionary Strategy, Communist Party of Great Britain | “A great wodge of material spanning Hegel, Kant, Marx, Lenin and the esoterica of 20th century Hegelian Marxism.” — Paul Demarty, Communist Party of Great Britain | “Inspirational.” — Philip Cunliffe, author of Lenin Lives!

Marxists have sought to critically analyze and contribute to (left revolutionary) popular movements. Yet they have not explicitly theorized the term " movement " nor its relationships to other key Marxist concepts, such as class struggle and hegemony. This book seeks to fill that gap in a historical moment when there are worldwide " anti-systemic " movements against austerity, against inequality, against the " democracy deficit, " and to protect hard-won rights for subaltern classes, all within the context of the world's most important economic crisis since the 1930s. Analysis helpfully moves back and forth between theory and empirical cases, with a view to informing more effective revolutionary political praxis. The empirical scope is deliberately and usefully broad. Cases are drawn from a range of national contexts in the global North and South and concern movements from the 19 th century up to the present. The book's major shortcoming, however, is its failure to draw upon the whole range of historical materialist theorizing, including work by Black socialists, feminist socialists and Indigenous communists, among others. Nonetheless Marxism and social movements makes a useful, if radically incomplete contribution to both social movement theory and historical materialism.

2015

My intervention this afternoon will attempt to summarize some of the main ideas put forward in We Make Our Own History – a book that it took my good friend and comrade Laurence Cox and myself well over a decade to write. We Make Our own History is intended, above all, to explore the relationship between Marxist theory and social movements, and in particular how this relationship works in the specific historical period that we are calling the twilight of neoliberalism. Or – put slightly differently – I’ll be talking about how we can reclaim Marxism as a theory that can serve activist purposes and knowledge interests in a context where neoliberalism appears to be undergoing a moment of organic crisis.

Chris Cutrone's articles in Communist Party of Great Britain Weekly Worker 2014–16: "Democratic revolution and the contradiction of capital" What is meant by a ‘democratic republic’? Chris Cutrone critiques Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary strategy "Proletarian dictatorship and state capitalism" Chris Cutrone of Platypus examines the meaning of political party for the left "Back to Herbert Spencer" Chris Cutrone argues that the libertarian liberalism of the late 19th century still has relevance today "What was social democracy?" Chris Cutrone of the Platypus Affiliated Society traces the origins of current socialist terminology "Sacrifice and redemption: Rosa Luxemburg and the party" Chris Cutrone of the Platypus Affiliated Society recounts the struggle of Rosa Luxemburg for the workers’ party to base itself on the goal of socialism

Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity vol 6 Associational Socialism With the demise of state socialism - the collapse of Communism and the internal degeneration of Social Democracy - one is witnessing the potential re-emergence of an independent socialist politics. The attempts to reassert socialism 'from below’ have been many. The orthodoxies of Social Democracy and Communism, if dominant, have never been uncontested. Working class militancy, from the time of the revolutionary syndicalists through the shop stewards movement and councilism to the industrial struggles of the 1960's and 1970's, has continually challenged existing forms. The reemergence of socialism 'from below' challenges the way that socialism has been institutionalised in the form of ‘the party’, Social Democratic or Communist. This enables aspects of Marx other than those appropriated by orthodox interpretations to be explored. Authors and traditions long suppressed by Second International orthodoxy, Nazism and Communism, and the Cold War could now be recovered as the hold of dominant perspectives began to weaken. Individuals like Luxemburg, Korsch, Pannekoek and Gorter, Mattick and Landauer, whose own socialisms had been suppressed by dominant political interests, could now be presented as offering an alternative. Gramsci's attempts to define a new socialist politics could now be appreciated without having to suppress critical insights for reasons of party. The difficulties and ambiguities that Lukacs' found himself in within the international Communist movement could now be resolved on the side of socialist revolution. Perhaps the most important development of all is the opportunity that this collapse of old certainties and orthodoxies affords to actually read Marx without political blinkers. Marx has been released from the straight jacket that Social Democracy and Communism have imposed upon him. And Marx's emancipatory and critical project has been long submerged under the claims that Social Democracy and Communism have made to monopolise socialism and the working class constituency. One need no longer produce a marxism for the parties, a process which begun with the Second International.

Comment on Laibman

2024

The first portion of Chris Cutrone's 2024 book Marxism and Politics published by Sublation Press. Book description: Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism’s own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then, in ever more obscure ways. The essays by Chris Cutrone collected here span the time of the Millennial Left’s abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone’s participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large — but was abandoned. Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism’s accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist “message in a bottle” cast adrift by history yet be received? Reviews: “The Millennial Left is fading, because it lost sight of the telos of historical Marxism. Chris Cutrone’s fascinating essay ‘The end of Millennial Marxism’ could serve as a good primer on dialectical materialism.” — Sohrab Ahmari, Editor of Compact Magazine “Chris Cutrone’s The Death of the Millennial Left is explicit in pronouncing fatality: how this generation’s failure is a product of past defeats and the bad ideas it has internalized. “If an authentic Marxian Left were to emerge today, it would be unrecognizable, unclassifiable: the Left itself has become so distorted by the experience of defeat that it hardly recognizes its own traditions. “Cutrone offers a searching and deep historical critique of a Millennial Left whose failures are mere iterations on previous failures: what is taken to be ‘Left-wing’ or ‘socialism’ today is nothing more than the ‘naturalization of the degeneration of the Left into resignation and abdication.’ “This is explored through reference to Left-wing political traditions.” — Alex Hochuli, author of The End of the End of History, review of The Death of the Millennial Left, American Affairs “Cutrone is most comfortable with the larger stakes of Adorno and Horkheimer’s claims and how their position emerges from Marx’s and Lenin’s own example.” — Todd Cronan, Nonsite “The worthwhile and provocative article by Chris Cutrone, ‘Lenin’s liberalism’ argues that Lenin helped legitimize political differences.” — Mike Macnair, author of Revolutionary Strategy, Communist Party of Great Britain “A great wodge of material spanning Hegel, Kant, Marx, Lenin and the esoterica of 20th century Hegelian Marxism.” — Paul Demarty, Communist Party of Great Britain “Inspirational.” — Philip Cunliffe, author of Lenin Lives!

co-edited with Sergio Tischler, Ashgate, 2002

Text of a talk given at the Marxist Education Project (Brooklyn Commons) on 18 October 2016 (http://marxedproject.org/event/we-make-our-own-history-on-marxism-and-social-movements/)

Studies in Political Economy 25, Spring: 193-200, 1988

symploke, 2006

Red Internacional de Estudios sobre Sociedad, Naturaleza y Desarrollo, 2017

Radical democracy defines a perspective of democracy that seeks to maximize the political space, and the rights of antagonized groups, through a continuous hegemonic struggle. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argue that this project is one that captures the unrest of the New Social Movements by hegemonic discourses that do not prioritize a priori a specific agent, as it was the case of the working class in classical Marxism. To do this, they argue for populist parties that could establish counter-hegemony. In this thesis, I will criticize their approach towards the role of horizontal movements, using the post-anarchist perspective of Saul Newman. First of all, I survey the main currents of ‘classical’ anarchism highlighting their main theoretical principles, in order to see the point of departure for their vision of equal liberty for social actors. Second of all, I present the post-anarchist critique to the more or less hidden essentialism found in ‘classical’ anarchism, and review the main arguments for why this characteristic hinders the fight for true equal liberty by allowing the Revolution and the destruction of the state to hide differents strands of power that pose problems for the the praxis of the movement and for the hypothetical post-revolutionary society. Third of all, I introduce the post-anarchist perspective on the organization and purpose of the anarchist movements in late stage capitalism. Newman argues that movements should become free from identity and concentrate on fighting specific situations of oppression, as a ‘nomadic group’. Fourth of all, while this may seem unrelated to the praxis of ‘classical’ anarchism, by using the Discourse Theory developed by the Essex School, I study three cases in the history of anarchist movements - The Haymarket Affair in Chicago during the 1880s, Anarchist Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and the ‘Occupy’ Movement after the 2000s. This goes to show that the ‘Revolution’ stems further and further from the idea of overthrowing the state, while the ‘anarchist’, as a revolutionary identity, comes to include more and more social identities, concentrating on the fight for political rights. Fifth of all, after this analysis, I draw three main conclusions: a) after presenting the main criticism levelled against Newman’s politics, I argue that it is not only a viable vision of a movement, but that some NSMs are approaching his vision; b) I argue that this perspective on horizontal movements is necessary for the future of radical democracy, irrespective of other political formations, such as political parties; and finally c) from a post-anarchist perspective, I criticize the populist parties of Laclau and Mouffe for not being able to escape the downsides of parliamentary democracy, unless they are structured and kept in balance by some horizontal movement that is constantly adjusting and freeing itself from identity, because it is not constrained by the confined space of liberal democratic politics.

2005