They basically espouse Andrew Yang level let’s not move right or left let’s move forward, but for “communism” . It’s almost comical to go out and claim revisionism is bad, but anti revisionism is also bad, and for that matter anarchism is bad, trotskyism is bad, ML is bad, maoism is bad, left comm is bad, when you say every tendency is bad, there is clearly no room for thought other than your enlightened centrism within Marxism that is pure and untainted by identifying with a coherent set of beliefs. I think most of it just boils down to people don’t like the USSR they remember gulags first so we shouldn’t talk about it and then goes and lists how every ML head of state was bad and totalitarian and it’s dumb to bother with any of them bc ppl don’t like them.

I know this 1dime guy is a friend of 2nd thought, I think this guy would be the first guest that would cause a backlash appearing on the deprogram, his critiques of MLs are really shallow and a bit :LIB: even, they are also doing the thing where they are basically saying every left wing ideology is flawed besides their brand of just the Marx hold the rest “pure, unadulterated” Marxism which they never elaborate on and constantly punching left. Really weird vibes, listened to another episode of theirs, I don’t get the appeal at all, really reminds me Jacobin, I’ve honed my craft to be able to be the most annoying person you ever met in a Brooklyn book store :brainworms: .

you don’t see too many people who claim to be just Marxist communists, I guess :pika-pickaxe: or :bordiga-despair: , I think the tradition is highly concentrated in grad school / read too much theory / holier than though / new left / Jacobin types … some of the points are interesting, but a lot of it is just very navel gazey

the last time I listened to something Cosmonaut adjacent it made be go :jesse-wtf: too I think I need 13 more years of grad school to understand them

edit : I though they were defining Stalinism as Anti Revionism which is a definition that is in usage, but they defined it as a dictatorship of the secret police :agony-minion:

oh my god the podcast brings up Cockshott as a reasonable ML :agony-minion: :agony-minion:

the guest identifies as a “republican marxist” :agony-minion: :agony-minion: :agony-minion:

Grover Furr is just Stalinist :zenz: complete crank