Radical Engagements: "Contra State and Revolution" by Chris Wright

[@philipm3173]

Really glad you covered this.

[@PRSmith-vl6hi]

Further point, Wright was also in the Open Marxism group, with Gunn, Holloway, et al, and it shows a bit. They start with reasonable, if undeveloped and not quite argued thoroughly points, and end up with conclusions that are an odd combination of obvious and overstated. I like them more than most, but many of our non-vanguard vanguards do this.

[@PRSmith-vl6hi]

Having said that, I think Holloway is the most political Adorno type and it captures what I think of Adorno politically.

[@boskor777]

"They start with reasonable, if undeveloped and not quite argued thoroughly points, and end up with conclusions that are an odd combination of obvious and overstated." This is a great way to describe the stuff from libcom and Cutrone that Varn has been doing Radical Engagements about lately. I agree with Varn's contention that most communists don't have a proper theory of the state that doesn't come from anarchists or S&R, more and more of which is becoming irrelevant or incorrect as capitalism continues to grow and change in ways Marx and Lenin could have never imagined, but this kind of stuff isn't the way to convince anyone else of that. This article reads more like a religious critique based in semantics and translations denouncing a different sect than a serious analysis. Does it really matter if we call the various political and economic structures experimented with by the USSR a kind of socialism or a stage of communism? Maybe the author's words would be better spent on describing the way the system functioned and affected the people living in it rather than focusing on how the author thinks that Lenin misused a German phrase in his Russian text while all of us are reading both in English.

[@PRSmith-vl6hi]

Not sure how relevant it is, but if I'm recalling correctly, Gunn's approach in Marxism and Philosophy was apologetically Althusserisn. It's been a decade at least since I read it.