Episode 396 of RevolutionZ presents Classical Marxism as Marxist Leninists typically utilize it. It is part of a sequence of episodes aimed at helping to assess classical ideologies to determine whether activists should opt for one or reject them all and move on to something better.

Marxism can feel like a master key: one theory that explains why society is stuck, who holds power, and how history finally breaks open. We put that promise on the table as we read classical Marxist theory including long eloquent and revealing quotations from Marx and Engels all at an intentionally modestly academic pace, because the details matter if we want an ideology that can guide effective day to day, month to month, and year to year strategy rather than only inspire slogans.

We walk through the classic building blocks: scarcity and the 19th-century context that shaped Marx’s project, dialectics as change driven by internal contradictions, and historical materialism’s insistence that social life rests on production and reproduction. From there we trace how classical Marxism connects human nature to social relations, treats consciousness as rooted in practice, and argues that knowledge proves itself in action. We also name a tension between the narrower “classical” picture and the richer humanist strain in Marx that centers alienation and human potential.

Then we apply the classical Marxist conceptual framework to capitalism: exploitation and surplus, the corporation and the state working in tandem, imperial expansion, and recurring crises of overproduction. Classical Marxism claims these pressures forge the working class into a revolutionary force, culminating in a transition through proletarian rule toward a classless communist society where freedom expands and alienation ends. That Marxist storyline is attractive, but we end this presentation where the real work starts: are Classical Marxism's concepts and claims accurate and complete enough to guide us through changing the world around us. What strategy and practice does this theory actually produce? How do we assess it all?

What comes after Trump-era politics? After we erase the stain of his imprint, what follows? Do we continue on to not only stop fascism but also fundamentally change current societies and history? If we should, and I hope we agree on that, do we have concepts, methods, and aims sufficient to guide that journey without imposing new failures and without allowing our baggage from having been twisted and fed for all our lives by living under capitalist, misogynist, racist. and authoritarian, conditions? Do we have at hand an ideology sufficient to that admittedly immense task?

Next up will be to present Leninist strategy as propounded by, well, Lenin and Trotsky, and used by Leninist parties over and over and over, as yet another episode precursor to evaluating and resolving where to look for viable and worthy theory, strategy, tactics, and aims for current movements that seek to win a fundamentally better future.

The label WITBU in this episode's title, refers to the book the content was excerpted from, What Is To Be Undone? This episode and those to follow in this "WITBU sequence" seek to discover whether what we need to undo is past deviations from Marxism Leninism, as some claim, or redoubled advocacy for for Marxism Leninism as some urge.

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Episode 395 of RevolutionZ continues our What Is To Be Undone sequence of excerpts to this time discuss ideology in general, not yet specific ones. Ideology decides what we pay attention to and what we miss. It tells us what we should call realistic and what we should instead consider impossible. It guides us concerning what and how to win. And that means that whether consciously or not ideology steers every plan we make. I (Michael Albert) step back from our frequent immediate concrete context to ask an abstract but nonetheless important question: what is ideology, what is it for, and when does it start producing the very failures it claims to prevent?

To get started, I borrow Thomas Kuhn’s famous idea of paradigms in science and their long stretches of “normal” puzzle-solving inside a shared framework, followed by times of crisis when anomalies pile up and the framework can’t handle them. Then I apply that model to revolutionary politics, where paradigm becomes revolutionary ideology which is theory, strategy, and practice working together to understand society to change it. The shift from natural science to social change matters because the end goal of the latter is not just knowledge but transformation, so the loop between understanding and action has to be always self-correcting instead of sometimes self-protecting.

The episode discusses how theory is built through abstraction, why narrow theories can look complete due to hiding what they leave out, and how that type blindness can distort left organizing just as easily as it distorts capitalist “common sense.” We also walk through how strategy should be judged, how strategy, tactics, and practice should inform each other, and why movements need built-in ways to learn from reality rather than defend a fixed line. We then close with a sharp set of questions for our current moment and a pointed song lyric that skewers vanguard certainty and sectarian habits.

If you care about revolutionary strategy, political ideology, and building effective movements, I hope you will listen through to the end and let me know your reaction. Next week we will present Classical Marxism in what I hope is a fair and even an inspiring manner.

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Episode 394 of RevolutionZ continues the evaluation of the New Left from within begun last episode. This time the focus is the Anti war movement, Weatherman, the Yippees, the Black movement, and the womens movement. The fastest way to break a movement is to let “being technically right” replace getting stronger. Starting with the Vietnam War antiwar movement we ask a painful question: how did a cause with massive public support still end up with thin commitment, divisive splits, and a core that felt unreachable?

We talk about the double-bind that shows up in so many protest movements that make opposition easy enough to attract crowds, but make real participation depend on an expanding list of correct positions. That “credentials” culture can turn organizing into a status system that leaves most people peripheral between demonstrations and sets everyone up for demoralization when the standard becomes “did we win now?” We also dig into why the "raise domestic-costs" strategy made sense, and how drama, manipulation, and weak political education kept it from building durable power.

From there, we move through Weatherman and the lure of extremist identity, to the Yippies’ early creativity and later hardening, the Black Panthers’ extraordinary early contributions and how authoritarianism and macho militarism hurt their further development, and the women’s movement’s historic breakthroughs alongside the reappearance of hierarchy under pressure. The through-line is practical: if we want lasting effective organizations, we need empathy, realistic metrics of progress, a culture of participation, and especially a shared ideology that helps people deal with their baggage and current conditions and that propels learning instead of burning out.

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Episode 393 of RevolutionZ is Part One of a two part critical discussion of the Sixties New Left. It doesn't remember in order to praise what was done. It remembers to find flaws to correct. The content arrives like a time capsule a young me sent from 1974.

The sixties didn’t just “happen” and then fade into nostalgia. The story of the New Left gets fought over because the stakes are still here: who gets credit, who gets blamed, and what lessons today’s movements are allowed to learn. So this episode takes a hard look at a piece of history that’s often flattened into either a liberal fairytale or a cynical cautionary tale, and argues that both those versions mislead. A useful look, instead, ought to present past history to better create future history.

To do that, this episode presents and responds to an excerpt from the 1974 book What Is To Be Undone, which was proposed from inside the aftermath of the 1960s New Left. What did the New Left actually accomplish? The excerpt says it helped shatter U.S. political complacency, it spread concepts for understanding imperialism, racism, sexism, hierarchy, alienation, and exploitation, and it demonstrated that even an inexperienced movement can disrupt the establishment. But then the episode addresses a harder question: if so much was achieved, why did so much also fall apart?

From consciousness raising and participatory decision-making to the student movement’s arc from Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement into escalation and fragmentation, this episode discusses how urgency slid into macho posturing, how sectarian infighting turned politics into spectacle, and how weak strategic thinking produced action without durable organization. Along with so much good came debilitating bad. The core takeaway is simple but demanding: honest self-critique is how a movement builds better theory, better vision, better strategy, and real staying power.

Okay, but what then? Did and do people now just need to do things that we did then better and longer? Or did we then and do we now need different goals, strategy, methods, and even feelings? And if we do need different practice, does that mean we need to re-elevate classical ideologies as some now claim, or that we need to leave them further behind to find really new ideology?

That last question guides not only this episode but a new sequence of episodes rooted in reactions to old ways and thoughts, but also driven by the need to do better today and tomorrow.

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Episode 392 of RevolutionZ uncovers and visits a half-century-old file on my computer to address a surprisingly urgent question: are we building new revolutionary ideas, or just renting space in inherited ones. I recently rediscovered the text of my 1974 book What Is To Be Undone? written when the arguments between Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, anarchism, and other currents were not academic history but living fuel for organizing. Reading my own early investigations as the Sixties slipped into the Seventies feels like opening a time capsule and realizing the contents still impact what people believe is possible.

On the same day, a friend pointed me toward Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid The Piper Of Western Marxism? and the storms around his claim that contemporary revolutionary theory drifted into a “respectable” left alignment with capitalism and imperialism. I share a long excerpt from Rockhill laying out his case: a purge of dialectical and historical materialism, class analysis pushed aside by culturalism, and a call to rebuild a disciplined, organized left that can actually win. We agree on the need to rejuvenate anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist struggle, but we very seriously diverge on whether the path forward is a return to classical Marxism-Leninism and democratic centralism or a break from their limits.

From there, I grapple with a personal and political test: was my younger and then on-going self part of the problem Rockhill describes, or was I trying to learn from past failures to strengthen future movements. Along the way I revisit blurbs from Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Herb Gintis, reflect on the dangers of sectarian dismissal, and end with Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” as a reminder that clarity sometimes comes from letting go of certainty.

This episode begins another sequence of episodes whose number of entries depends on what seems the case. Me then and now: a deluded, deceived, sell out CIA symp rejector of Marxism Leninism, or me then and now a sincere whipper snapper trying to overcome past ideological problems on the way to a better society?

Is our ideological problem anti anti imperialism, as Rockhill asserts, or is it that in going forward from the Sixties we actually retained too much from dead men's minds? This episode is a scene setting opening shot on the way to aggressively and hopefully definitively determining which way we need to orient our thinking Back to classical Marxism Leninism, or forward to a participatory self managing future.

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Ep 391 of RevolutionZ has as its guest Vincent Emanuele to talk about the movement against data centers, the logic and methods of organizing, and movement culture. Your town’s next big fight might not be a highway or a stadium. It might be a windowless warehouse full of servers that power AI, cloud computing, and the apps you use every day, while quietly consuming electricity and water on a staggering scale. Combat veteran, writer, and organizer Vincent Emanuele unpacks what data centers actually do, why communities are packing local meetings to stop them, and what this outpouring reveals about power in the tech economy and modes of resistance.

We challenge the comforting idea that the fix is simply “using AI responsibly.” Vincent argues that without democratic decision-making, the people calling the shots are still tech oligarchs, investors, and politicians chasing profit and geopolitical advantage. That reality shapes how new technology gets deployed toward militarism, surveillance, and attention-harvesting platforms, not toward the public good. We also dig into the deeper human questions: how does AI and digital life thin out our skills, our relationships, and even our sense of what it means to be human.

From there, episode 391 move from critique to strategy. Data center fights often start organically and bring together people who don’t share politics, which makes them a rare chance to practice real organizing instead of only mobilizing the choir. We talk about democratizing knowledge so jargon can’t bully communities, identifying trusted “organic leaders,” learning from sports and military debrief culture, and building non-consumerist spaces where people can meet face-to-face and actually grow power.

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Episode 390 of RevolutionZ asks would you rather speak to 2,000 people who already agree with you or 2,000 people who might vote for Trump? That choice sounds like a simple preference, but I argue it exposes something deeper: an entire theory of change. If we think a better world is unattainable, it’s rational to aim for narrow wins, entertain friendly audiences, and avoid the hard work of persuasion and unity. If we think systemic change is possible, then we have to communicate to grow our numbers, de-atomize our efforts, and build real solidarity across differences.

From there, I consider an engine of political paralysis: cynicism. I’m not interested in writing it off as laziness or moral weakness. More often than not, it is neither. Often it’s a rational judgment based on different premises than mine and I hope also yours. It believes either (a) better institutions can’t even exist, or (b) better institutions might exist but can’t be won. Extrapolate from those beliefs and you get resignation. Each kind of doubt requires a different response from someone like me, and both demand more than slogans. We collectively need credible compelling shared vision and credible compelling shared strategy that can link urgent immediate fights like stopping authoritarian drift and curbing ecological collapse to a longer trajectory of organizing. How do we most effectively convey that?

But what happens if we turn this observation on me, you, and Revolution Z? After almost 400 hundred episodes, what’s actually working and what’s just repetition or literally unheard? That question connects to the media environment we’re trapped in, where lies, scams, and algorithmic incentives push communicators toward clickbait and cheap degradation. If we reject that route to communication, what do we emphasize instead? If we don't want to abet a "failure to communicate," if we don't want to contribute to a "communication breakdown," then to organize, how do we communicate?

To close the episode I offer some song lyrics and their approach to communication from John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Carcie Blanton, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen, as one way to tell the truth without becoming part of the noise.

But when talking or writing, not songs but prose, what might work better than familiar well trod paths? Do you have ideas about that?

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Episode 389 of RevolutionZ has as guest Francine Mestrum, a longtime social justice researcher and organizer whose work spans globalization, poverty, inequality, social protection, public services, gender, and the “social commons” approach to economic and social rights. She has marched, organized, and built a campaigns and organizations and yet felt like the world barely moved. And she has thought about why. Her experience in networks tied to the World Social Forum has given her a wide and deep view of what movements do well and what keeps failing. What obstacles impede winning.

She highlights two painful patterns. We show up, we do great work for a moment, but soon everything stops. And, when we show up we are not all together. We are atomized. Some are for this, some are for that, and we do not help each other with this and with that. So next time, we start as if from scratch. We struggle to have, and often even struggle against having unity.

Francine argues that without continuity between actions and real convergence across movements, we will stay trapped in atomized issue and time-bound silos. So we talk about why groups protect their identity, why alliances with trade unions are so often contested, and why cross border organizing still feels out of reach even as crises go global.

Then we go a layer deeper. We ask why the left often acts like winning is impossible and how that defeatism fuels sectarian fights, vague slogans, and refusal to define key terms. Francine calls it a crisis of imagination: thousands of small solutions exist, but we have no shared narrative for a better world able to inspire and orient. Pursuing answers we dig into working class politics and dignity, and why the right can offer belonging and a sense of efficacy even while failing materially and yet advance. We ask, what would it take for the left to reconnect through material demands, inspiring solidarity, and organized power?

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