The EVILution of Communism Workshop, Session 2
Communism is a religious view that has evolved and adapted over the last two centuries, including right up to the present day. Understanding the developments and threats in our present world requires understanding what Communism really is, especially in its Marxist variants, and how it has developed and changed over the years. In response to this need, James Lindsay of New Discourses held a four-lecture workshop series on the EVILution of Communism in Dallas, Texas, at the start of August 2024.
The second and third lectures in this series focus on what might be considered two tracks of twentieth-century Communism, both arising in different contexts, East and West, after the failure of Karl Marx’s nineteenth century agitational evangelism. In this second lecture, the Eastern track is the focus, tracing the development of the Soviet Union through Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party as a vanguard. Here, James Lindsay characterizes Eastern Marxism as a broadly state-industrial project, referring to Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism variously as “Industrial Communism” and “State Communisms” for reasons he lays bare. The general theme is turning the state into an industrial apparatus for the socialist transformation of man himself, in addition to society and nature. In the end, the Eastern model of Marxism (Leninism, Stalinism, general Sovietism, and Maoism) failed everywhere it was attempted, leading to one of the greatest tragedies of human history.
The other three lectures in this series can be found here:
Session 1: Communism 1.0: Theoretical Communism
Session 3: Communism 2.5: Social Communism
Session 4: Communism 3.0: Corporate Communism
The audio version of this presentation is available on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, or by RSS.
