Vejas Liulevicius: evaluation

Transcript context

…So this topic is one of several topics that you eloquently describe as contradictions within the ideas of Marx. So religious, there is a kind of religious adherence versus also the rejection of religious dogma that he stood for. We’ve talked about some of the others, the tension between nationalism that emerged when it was implemented versus what communism is supposed to be, which is global, so globalism. Then there’s the thing that we started talking with, is the individualism. So history is supposed to be defined by the large collection of humans, but there does seem to be the singular figures, including Marx himself, that are really important. Geography of global versus restricted to certain countries, and tradition. You’re supposed to break with the past under communism, but then Marxism became one of the strongest traditions in history. That’s right, that’s right. I think that that last one is especially significant because it’s deeply paradoxical. Trying to outline these contradictions by the way is like subjecting Marx to the sort of analysis that Marx subjected other people to, which is to point out internal contradictions, things that are likely to become pressure points or cracks that might open up in what’s supposed to be a completely set and durable and effective framework. The one about tradition, Marx points out that the need for revolution is in order to break with the traditions that have hemmed people in – these earlier ways of thinking, earlier social structures – and to constantly renovate. And what happens instead is a tradition of radical rupture emerges, and that’s really tough, because imagine in the last stages of the Soviet Union where keen observers can tell that there are problems that are building in society. There are discontents and demands that are going to clash, especially when someone like Gorbachev is proposing reforms and things are suddenly thrown open for discussion. The very notion that you have the celebration of revolutionaries and the Bolshevik legacy at a time when the state wants to enforce stability and an order that’s been received from the prior generation, think of Brezhnev’s time, for instance. All of that is an especially volatile mix and unlikely to work out very durably in the long run. I would love to talk about the works of Marx, the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. What can we say that’s interesting about the manifestation of his ideas on paper?…

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