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Spectre of Communism New IMT podcast out 7 November

Spectre Of Communism · 2023-10-30

Core Argument

This episode is not an analytical argument but an announcement and orientation. Its central thesis is that the current crisis of capitalism — defined by war, poverty, and precarity — is driving a new generation of young people and radicalised workers toward revolutionary communism, and that the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is launching the Spectre of Communism podcast to meet that demand with theoretical and political answers. The claim is that the conjuncture is objectively revolutionary, that the subjective element (conscious revolutionary organisation) must be built to match it, and that the podcast is a tool for that project.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the classical Marxist understanding of the relationship between objective conditions and subjective consciousness. The premise — that capitalist crisis creates the conditions for mass radicalisation — is grounded in the Marxist theory of history as a succession of modes of production, where capitalism's internal contradictions periodically erupt, forcing workers to seek revolutionary alternatives. The episode does not deploy technical categories like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, but it implicitly relies on the Marxist tradition's insistence that capitalism cannot reform itself out of crisis. The reference to the Russian Revolution of 1917 as "the greatest event in human history" situates the podcast within the Bolshevik tradition, specifically the understanding that revolution is not an accident but a product of objective conditions met by conscious organisation.

The episode sits squarely within the orthodox Marxist tradition associated with the IMT — itself the continuation of the Trotskyist movement that emerged from the struggle against Stalinism. The emphasis on answering "right-wing talking points" reflects a defensive and propagandistic role for theory, typical of periods where the left is weak and the bourgeoisie's ideological offensive is strong.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode is explicitly timed to the current moment. It names "war, poverty, and precarity" as the defining features of the conjuncture. The launch date of 7 November — the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution — is itself a conjunctural statement: it asserts that the Russian Revolution remains the model and that its lessons are directly relevant today. The episode does not specify which wars or which forms of precarity, but the context of late 2023 — the ongoing war in Ukraine, the escalation in Gaza, the cost-of-living crisis across the global North, and the return of inflation — provides the material basis for the claim. The episode is aimed at an audience that is already radicalising but lacks theoretical clarity, and it positions the IMT as the organisation capable of providing it.

Where the Argument Continues

This episode is a trailer. It deliberately leaves open every substantive question: what communists actually stand for, what kind of world they are trying to win, and how to answer the specific ideological attacks from the right. The first proper episode, featuring Alan Woods on the Russian Revolution, is the obvious continuation. The broader corpus — the IMT's In Defence of Marxism website, its theoretical journal Marxist Left Review, and Woods's own Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution — develops the historical and theoretical arguments that this episode only gestures toward. The podcast's weekly format promises to fill in the gaps episode by episode.

Connections

  • Alan Woods, Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution — the key text that the first episode will draw on, providing the historical grounding for the claim that 1917 remains the model.
  • Other Against the Stream episodes — the RCI's own podcast, which covers similar ground from a slightly different organisational tradition, should be read alongside this as a parallel attempt to build revolutionary consciousness in the current conjuncture.
  • Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program — the classic text on how revolutionaries should orient to a period of capitalist crisis, offering the strategic framework that the IMT's approach implicitly follows.
  • V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? — the foundational text on the relationship between theory, organisation, and the spontaneous movement of the working class, which underpins the IMT's insistence on the need for a revolutionary party.

Key Quotes

  1. "It's no surprise to us as revolutionaries that an unprecedented number of young people in particular and radicalized workers are being drawn to the banners of Revolution and communism because capitalism is in a complete mess."

  2. "The purpose of this show... is to provide answers to the questions you have about communism, what communists stand for, what kind of world we're trying to win, and also answers to the typical right-wing talking points about communism."

  3. "Our first episode will come out on the 7th of November... speaking about the greatest event in human history, the Russian Revolution of 1917."

  4. "If you like what you hear and you agree with our program, get in touch. If you're a communist, you need to get organized."