Revolutionary Leftism with Breht O’Shea

A : [[podcast]]

URL : https://www.upstreampodcast.org/conversations

Series : [[Upstream]]

[[Breht O’Shea]] on the left in general, but [[Leninism]] and a bit of [[Maoism]] in particular.

• ~00:17:17 Leninism is very much focused on the ‘how’ of revolution.
• Breht says something like - once you’ve realised capitalism is harmful; once you’ve realised that socialism is a better alternative; you might start thinking, how do we actually get socialism in place? You’ll pretty quickly then get to Leninism.
• Discusses [[Maoism]]. [[Great Leap Forward]], [[Cultural Revolution]]. O’Shea suggests that portrayals of Mao as a genocidal leader are fallacious. Definitely (huge) mistakes were made, but not as a deliberate program of terror.
• And Stalinism. Says sort of similar as above. That Stalin was not simply a cartoon monster, and that a lot of what is said about him is propaganda. But that he also oversaw many terrible things. My gut finds O’Shea too sympathetic but hey I don’t know the history well, so maybe I have just been propagandised.
• ~01:06:51 The importance of theory, the important of organising, the need for both.
• ~01:09:11 Is economics a science? Crudely, [[historical materialism]] is the ‘science’ of Marxism. [[Dialectical materialism]] is the philosophy.
• ~01:21:09 Capitalism and fascism.
• ~01:42:33 Your projects need to be situated in a bigger movement. [[Class consciousness]] etc.
• ~01:45:54 Recommends [[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]], [[The State and Revolution]] and [[The Wretched of the Earth]].