The Fantasy of Sanders Socialism and the Bitter Pill of Trump's Revolution
Or: towards "Cutrone’s 10 Commandments for Socialist Unity" in a dialectical unity with the necessity of "remembering, repeating, and working-through"
This year Philosophy Portal will be hosting a year-long course with “The Last Marxist” Chris Cutrone. To learn more or to get involved, see:
Previous articles in this series:
What If Sanders Beat Trump?
“The Last Marxist” Chris Cutrone is often critiqued for reifying justifications for the existing order of things, e.g. Trump and the right wing populist turn as an inevitable direction for post-neoliberal politics and society.
Why not Trump?1 Why not Trump again?2
Why not let Trump take Greenland?3 Or Canada?
This is the new post-neoliberal order of things, this is the new reality for geopolitics today. The critique is simple: instead of forming a true “Socialist Internationale” that sublates neoliberalism, Cutrone reifies a world doomed to fall into technofeudal fiefdoms, divided up by fascist dictators: Trump takes the Western Hemisphere (starting with Greenland and Canada), Putin and Jinping can divide up the rest. Maybe World War 3 will be a collision resulting from this new technofeudal pseudo-international sphere organised by a zero-sum logic?
Against such Cutronian reifications, can we not critique him on the level of philosophy for not being truly open to obvious counterfactuals?4 For example, does he not dismiss too quickly the alternative “quantum history” timeline: a history in which the Democratic Party throws their full weight of support behind Bernie Sanders and ends up beating Trump in the 2016 Presidential elections?
As a member of the (now dead) Millennial Left, I vividly remember the power and energy that circulated around the Sanders campaign for democratic socialism: ‘a socialist is openly running for president of America!’ I remember the emancipatory possibilities that seemed to be opening in regards to tackling the problem of inequality, and the practical redistribution of obscene concentrations of wealth. What new normative standards would have been established internationally in the past ten years if Sanders had four or eight years in office? Would not free health care and free education become universal standards to which all the world strives? Would not redistribution of the obscene wealth of big technology companies open up new socialist projects establishing a higher order social infrastructure for housing and transportation? Maybe even the first “world communist” project would eventually be capable of establishing a Star Trek-like colony on Mars?!
The point here: is there not an alternative history timeline in which ‘left wing populism’ triumphed over ‘right wing populism’ in the past 10 years? Does not this alternative history timeline open us to a reality in which radical democracy explodes towards the “socialist unity” that Cutrone now calls for in his writings?5
We can imagine:
in this timeline, big technology companies become castrated (limited) and regulated (for the people) by a growing international alliance in North America and Europe, which insures the advancement of the fourth industrial revolution leads to a genuine class revolution: workers as a totality have the capacity to buy back what they produce opening up an era of unprecedented collective economic prosperity and social well-being.
In this timeline, big technology companies using their AI-mediated international power to build new feudal aristocracies reducing the proletariat into an algorithmically controlled tech-serfdom, or “cloud-proles”, is itself an alternative history nightmare that we only narrowly missed.
In this timeline, the fear of cyberpunk dystopian futures — a feature of neoliberalism — dissipate, and a new era of science fiction re-opens the 20th century Star Trek-like dreams: “socialism to the stars!” or “space communism!”6
In this timeline, we do not even need to tarry with a figure like Cutrone, because his critiques of the Left turn out to be misguided; and his enormous books: The Death of the Millennial Left, as well as Marxism and Politics, are never even published as collective works.
In this timeline, Marxism itself fades into an even deeper academic obscurity as a weird curiosity, as democratic socialism and its successful regulation of global capitalism erodes the need for any deep thinking about a dictatorship of the proletariat; the triumph of Marxism — mirroring what would also be the triumph of Christianity — will not be when it is the signifier organising everyone’s speech, but precisely when it is no longer needed at all.
Before we too quickly reach the conclusion that this is indeed a possibility that Cutrone’s analysis of Trump misses, let us first consider, not only what he actually has to say, but also do so from the standpoint of a self-critical psychology of the (now dead) Millennial Left. The psychology of the (now dead) Millennial Left might produce such an alternative quantum history timeline qua fundamental fantasy, precisely in order to repress, foreclose or disavow — as opposed to remembering, repeating and working-through — the “trauma of Trump”.
On a personal level, the “trauma of Trump” is what totally deflated my once over-zealous excitement for Sanders, and the possibility of a true American socialist project setting a new universal standard for all others to follow. I still remember the day Trump was first elected, it literally sent me into a depression that resulted in a more or less total withdrawal of my political attention for almost a decade. In retrospect, the victory of Trump represented for me the revelation of a gaping hole self-organising — not the dictatorship of the proletariat qua Cutrone’s call for “socialist unity” — but rather the triumph of a whole new era of global capitalism. In this new era “barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods” would fight it out for supremacy, under a logic of “might is right”, with total disregard for the commons sphere, and thus reverse the Enlightenment ideals that Europe had exported throughout the world in the previous centuries.7
In this context, part of my attraction to Cutrone’s work is that, as he says himself (paraphrasing): his work tells the Left what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Of course members of the (now dead) Millennial Left want to hear that Sanders represented a real possibility for establishing an alternative concrete universality to the one we now occupy; of course the (now dead) Millennial Left wants to hear that democratic socialism is a real possibility to resolve the tensions and antagonisms of the fourth industrial revolution. But is that what we need to hear?
Moreover, when we think of the situation for not only Millennials, but now also Zoomers, is it not more or less obvious that the actuality of Trump’s victory has established a series of cascading victories throughout the rest of the world mirroring his own, and reflect a deeper truth about a new era of global capitalism that totalises us all?
To put it in another way: what are the real possibilities of our present moment? Can what remains in the graveyard of the Millennial Left see it clearly?
Sanders as Regressive? Trump as Revolutionary?
Cutrone’s writings during the build up towards Trump’s first presidential elections are insightful as they are deflating for any former supporter of the Sanders campaign. In the midst of the 2015-16 campaigns themselves, Cutrone totally dismisses the fundamental fantasy of ‘Sanders Socialism’ as pure fantasy disconnected from any understanding of real politics, and instead functioning to mask the hole in the status quo, a hole that he fills with a specific question: “Why not Trump?”8
In this context, Cutrone seems shockingly confident for anyone who had been captured by the idea that ‘Sanders Socialism’ was a real emancipatory opportunity; and he claims that the only reason someone would negate Trump is because they are (repressing, foreclosing, disavowing) the hole of the (neoliberal) status quo itself.9 For Cutrone, there was nothing truly revolutionary in Sanders: while he recognises that both Sanders and Trump represented a potential for a significant challenge to the ‘two major parties’,10 and that Sanders specifically had the potential to represent a deeper reform of the status quo in contrast to Trump,11 but that his alliance with the Democratic Party, as opposed to deep challenge of it, made such reform impossible.12 Cutrone frames the Sanders campaign as revealing a cultural-identitarian opposition internal to the Democrats, between Sanders-style “brocialists” (a certain liberal-type of ‘straight white man’),13 and (Hillary) Clinton-style ‘woke identitarians’ (liberal ‘blacks’, ‘women’ and ‘gays’).14 He furthermore frames this opposition as the ‘left’ and ‘right’ of the Democratic Party (Sanders brocialists as ‘left’ and Clinton woke as ‘right’); resulting in critiques of Sanders internal to the Democratic Party itself that he had a “problem with women and blacks”.15 But on a deeper level, for Cutrone, “brocialists” do not understand that Sanders whole campaign was but a “protest pressure-tactic on Hillary”,16 while true revolution would have required “a much greater and more substantial mobilisation for a different politics” impossible “to muster through the Democrats”.17
Why?
As we covered previously,18 Cutrone sees in Sanders a lack of revolutionary spirit on the level of his adherence to “nostalgia for the [FDR] New Deal, [LBJ] Great Society”.19 While many with left-leaning political sensibilities share this nostalgia, for Cutrone, this politics is not a revolutionary sublation of neoliberalism, but a maintenance of a turn to the right for the Democratic Party that stems from FDR’s 1930s ‘top-down’ response to the Great Depression;20 a turn which has continued as a reactionary form of “Third Way” ‘pseudo-radical centrism’ through its results in the 1980s: the neoliberalisation of (the inexistence of) society.21 Consequently, for Cutrone, as long as the Sanders campaign maintained an allegiance as opposed to a deep challenge to the Democratic Party itself, in a genuine return to political mobilisation on the level of labour unions and civil society institutions,22 it is nothing but a mirage (qua fundamental fantasy), and a return to “diminished expectations” from the perspective of Cutrone’s Marxism.23 It is in this context that Cutrone concludes that the real truth of U.S. politics in the mid-2010s was — not the surge of grassroots support for Sanders and his attempt to be a “better champion for the Democrats”24 — but rather the ‘truthful hysteria’ on display in both Democratic and Republican parties alike, and on display by both mainstream conservative and liberal media outlets alike, provoked in the realised potential of Trump’s first presidency.25
So, when it comes to the fantasy of ‘Sanders Socialism’ (qua haunting superposition, ‘did we miss our chance at real socialism?’) and the ‘Trumpian Real’ (qua collapse of the wavefunction into a determinate post-neoliberal form), what is the core of Cutrone’s message for the Left in a nutshell when he provokes hysteria by repeating the question: “Why not Trump?”26
The core of Cutrone’s message is this: while those under the fantasy of ‘Sanders Socialism’ think that it is a sublation of neoliberalism, it is in fact a regressive ‘sub-neoliberalism’ (stemming from Keynesian policies that failed into the neoliberal era);27 whereas the ‘Trumpian Real’ is potentially a genuine post-neoliberalism,28 where we should ask ourselves questions about what potential is opened, not by Trump himself, but about a politics post-Trump:29
“What is the Trump phenomenon, as an indication of possibilities beyond it? This is the question that must be asked — and answered.”
For example, consider this extended reflection by Cutrone in the context of our upcoming class for Marxist Politics for Undead Millennials which centres Trump’s core motivations for becoming president:
“Trump had toyed with the idea of being president for so long, for 30 years or more before he decided to run, well before the 2016 election. So why did he finally do it? And why did he want to be president? Like, what is the point?
You have to read his books, because he wrote books about it where he said explicitly, ‘this is what you can do as president’, ‘this is what the presidential powers would allow me to do’, ‘and this is what I’m going to do’. It is mostly about tariffs, it is about things that he thought he could do unilaterally as president, which is complicated because, of course, tariffs, it seems obvious that it has to be passed by congress or whatever. But he looked also at what Obama, and also Clinton, did in terms of things like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He looked at how they had been negotiated. He looked at how China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had been negotiated by Clinton. And it was not based on congressional legislation, it was based on a lot of executive action. So he took the lessons of that, and said, ‘I could do better’, ‘I’d get a better deal for the United States’.”
In this context, it is instructive to formulate a dialectical antinomy of neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism on the question of international trade agreements that favour a kind of ‘post-national corporate sphere’ (Clinton, Obama) vs. ‘nationalistic protectionism’ (Trump). Consequently, when we look for answers to the possibilities beyond the Trump phenomenon, should we not be directly engaging this antinomy? Should we not be thinking about how international alliances can be better forged as a sublation of nationalistic interests, as opposed to submitting to the shadowy logic of trade agreements forged in secret and without democratic regulation? In other words, what if trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP are themselves forms of ‘corporate fascism’, to which Trump’s reaction is but a lesser symptom? Consider Žižek on the topic of the crisis of ‘democratic capitalism’:30
Even in places where democracy is still formally alive, it's becoming more and more irrelevant as we see with this TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership -- a proposed trade agreement between the European Union and the United States) and other commercial agreements, which are incredibly important. They set the frame for what governments can do, but without any democratic consultation -- they're half-secret, and so on.”
My point here is that without actively taking up “concrete conditions of the historical process” and “the struggle of living social forces” with dialectical logic (e.g. neoliberalism as ‘post-national corporate sphere’ vs. post-neoliberalism as ‘nationalistic protectionism’), what calls itself ‘progressive’ could wind up reversed into its opposite: regressive.
To further engage and reflect Cutrone’s message: he is saying that, considering that the Millennial Left has not done this dialectical work, their fantasies do not, as of now, help us when looking for answers to the beyond of Trump and post-neoliberalism.31 For Cutrone, what called/calls itself the Millennial Left in U.S. politics was/is nothing but a way to avoid the crisis of neoliberalism and the necessity of post-neoliberalism; whereas its own self-narrative that the 2016 (and now 2024) election outcome as just an “accident”, ignores this “much broader and deeper phenomenon”.32
Thus, for Cutrone, in the absence of any real thinking about Marxism, and specifically the problem of the absence of the dictatorship of the proletariat — a problem and absence which precedes both the failures of the 1930s Old Left and the 1960s New Left33 — we do and will continue to find ourselves in an era of post-neoliberalism driven by an energised base which in name tends to be signified as ‘right wing populism’ (even if that specific term is one Cutrone calls into question on the basis that populist phenomenon realises itself through democracy, not its opposite).34 In such a situation we are lost in ‘cultural-identitarian’ struggles between ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’, ‘straights’ and ‘gays’, ‘men’ and ‘women’, ‘Europeans’ and ‘others’, etc.
To be clear: this is the hole which Trump not only reveals, but occupies, inclusive of all its comedic stupidity — as a ‘Master Signifier’ that (often) signifies nothing but itself, i.e. its own self-aggrandisement, egotism or narcissism. For example, from Trump at Davos 2026:35
I’ve come to this year’s World Economic Forum with truly phenomenal news from America. Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of my inauguration, and today, after 12 months back in the White House, our economy is booming.
Growth is exploding, productivity is surging, investment is soaring, incomes are rising, inflation has been defeated. Our previously open and dangerous border is closed and virtually impenetrable, and the United States is in the midst of the fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in our country’s history.
For Cutrone, any ‘Left’ lost in a ‘Sanders Socialism’ fantasy (reflected on the other side of the Atlantic in an equally impotent form of ‘Corbynite Socialism’),36 or defending the neoliberal ‘status quo’ against a real and angry disenfranchised base.37 What is key here is that the base no longer sees in the current political order a future for their children, or even a present in which children can be conceived at all, but instead fear (correct or not), that the future of children will come from importing them via mass immigration from developing countries with naturally higher birth rates. For Cutrone, this dialectical antinomy avoids the crisis of neoliberalism and its politics.38 In contrast, for Cutrone, we should learn to see the relationship between Trump-Sanders as a unified but asymmetrical symptom of both Republican and Democratic Parties (c. 2015-16 to the present),39 and one that leaves us in deep need to return to fundamental political theory.40
For Cutrone, the key asymmetry between the Trump-Sanders parallax (as a self-relating negativity or self-repelling one) is that while Sanders “called for” revolution, Trump “effected it”.41
Thus, the challenge which Cutrone’s stance as “The Last Marxist” is representing, on the level of both politics and economics, and in the context of Trump as signifier of post-neoliberalism, is nothing but the gaping hole where the ‘Master Signifier’ of the dictatorship of the proletariat should be thought-through in theory and embodied in praxis (as a feedback loop): a true ‘Third Way’ ‘radical centrism’ beyond the ‘two party system’ qua ‘status quo’. To really think-act the theory-praxis of dictatorship of the proletariat is to seek the “transformation of democracy” itself, something which the symptom of the term “populism” itself represents — on the one side, from the “frightening spectre” of an angry (white) base; on the other side, from the defenders of a bourgeois status quo.42 Either way, this need for the transformation of democracy must be worked through in the crisis of the politics of neoliberalism, since after Trump, it cannot be avoided.43
Here we should never forget, that for Cutrone, as for Marx, the entire ‘two party system’, or even democracy itself, is not something to be reified as an eternally beautiful ideal of truth and goodness, but rather something to be historically and socially overcome; something which is hopefully, given the establishment of a truly post-capitalist politics, simply unnecessary.44
“Those who demand guarantees in advance should in general renounce revolutionary politics. The causes for the downfall of the Social Democracy and of official Communism must be sought not in Marxist theory and not in the bad qualities of those people who applied it, but in the concrete conditions of the historical process. It is not a question of counterposing abstract principles, but rather of the struggle of living social forces, with its inevitable ups and downs, with the degeneration of organizations, with the passing of entire generations into discord, and with the necessity which therefore arises of mobilizing fresh forces on a new historical stage. No one has bothered to pave in advance the road of revolutionary upsurge for the proletariat. With inevitable halts and partial retreats it is necessary to move forward on a road crisscrossed by countless obstacles and covered with the debris of the past. Those who are frightened by this had better step aside.” - Trotsky45
My difference(s) with Cutrone, or: Is Cutrone Professor Pangloss?
One salient difference between Cutrone and myself is that, in 2015-16, I was totally naive about the political potentials of the Millennial Left. Sure, he has age and thus experience on me, as well as decades of extended study of the history of politics, especially as informed by early modernism, modernism and Marxism. Nevertheless, when I look back on my political sensibilities in 2015-16, I have long been embarrassed by aspects of my own naivety. It was indeed this naivety that forced me into philosophy as a project to rectify this disposition, which had become totally existentially unstable. Perhaps this difference is just a difference of age and experience? Perhaps 2015-16, as the mark of the “Death of the Millennial Left”, represented the death of a certain field of potentials, and who was to really know what was possible and what wasn’t? Maybe I needed to be caught be a transcendental fantasy in order to truly become ethically in the open movement of the negative?
To be honest, while I have tracked closely and honestly what I call the “right wing counter culture” that started to emerge in 2015-16 (in Trump, politically; but also in Jordan B. Peterson, as a popular intellectual); I sense that I have probably, perhaps, still yet to reconcile myself with this reality. I certainly would not say that I like how politics has actualised over the past ten years. These past ten years have also been marked by incredible and largely unprocessed vicissitudes and disturbances to our collective social life. Either way, strict or simple non-dialectical identification with the “right wing counter culture” as a true emancipatory pathway, still seems totally off to me. I have more come to see it as a potentially necessary moment in a larger movement that is ‘doomed’ to swing back around towards the direct challenge of global capitalism itself.
This general ambivalence, recognising the ‘Death of the Millennial Left’, while at the same time not being able to identify with the ‘right wing counter culture’, is perhaps why I am attracted to Cutrone’s work. Cutrone seems to express a similar sensitivity; consider his personal self-reflection:46
“As a Marxist academic professional and a gay man living in a Northern city, married to a nonwhite Muslim immigrant, it would have been beneficial to me for Hillary Clinton to have been elected President for the U.S. that would have served my personal interests. No doubt about it.
I am opposed to all of Trump’s policies.
I am especially opposed to Trump on his signature issue, immigration.”
The absurdity of most Leftist reaction to Cutrone is just unprocessed sensitivity from the lack of mourning (the Death of the Millennial Left). The reason why I can engage Cutrone’s work is because I have simply undergone the existential work of mourning that political phenomenon. For Cutrone, if one can see clearly, Trump’s election is a disappointment, and not a victory. Why? It is because Cutrone sees all the “anti-Trump” energy and protest as a “distraction from the necessary work”.47 What is the necessary work? As should be consistent in all these articles: it is the dictatorship of the proletariat (as question, as problem, as absence). From Cutrone directly:48
“One response to Trump’s “Make America Great Again!” was a Mexican nationalist slogan, “Make America Mexico again!” But, as a Marxist, I go one step further: I am for the union of Mexico and the U.S. under one government — the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
While I in a way share these sensitivities, and appreciate the way this framing is developed, considering its total absence from our mainstream political discourse; another difference I have with Cutrone, perhaps, is the difficulty in believing this reality is possible. While I was a delusional member of the Millennial Left, whose fantasies circulated around the possibilities of the reduction of wealth inequality and redistribution towards new universal systems of international cooperation and coordination, universal access to education and health care, and so forth; it is hard to buy into the zero-level fantasy of Marxism qua dictatorship of the proletariat.49 In fact, in engaging with Cutrone’s work, I have started to develop the idea that what we find in working through Marx as fundamental political-economic theory, is something specific and useful, albeit in a different way than conventionally interpreted by Marxists themselves:
Marx really saw the emergence of the first industrial revolution (1760-1840) as mediated by the emergence of a society dominated by capitalism — and in a way “completes” what Adam Smith first developed as classical political economic theory (The Wealth of Nations, 1776) in only seeing the seed-form of this movement;
but in Marx’s observation and consequent theorisation of its meaning throughout the 1840s and beyond — the need for socialism and ultimately the dictatorship of the proletariat — what we have in fact experienced historically as a world society, is in a sense the opposite of what Marx thought would develop politically: the deepening and intensification of the industrial revolution (second (1870-1914), third (1947-2000), fourth (2016-present)), as mediated but the deepening and intensification of a society dominated by capitalism (and thus under the perpetual crisis of capitalist politics);
thus, what Marxism teaches us positively is that, under the twin forces of industrial revolution and global capitalism, what has grown since the end of the first industrial revolution and the opening of three further waves, is the absence in the midst of bourgeois social relations of what is necessary for a true society: the dictatorship of the proletariat;
but also, what grows in this absence is the presence of a “non-society” (Thatcher’s ‘there is no such thing as society’), of the breakdown of social links and the growth of isolation (a key feature of ‘neoliberalism’);
and to make matters more complicated, what grows in industrialisation is the emergence of technology that makes our work, what is supposed to be self-organised by the proletariat, obsolete, ever-shifting and changing, rendering most of us precarious, forever on the edge of practical and utilitarian irrelevance;
in this context, it is hard to imagine, that if any political action traditionally called ‘socialist’ fails to emerge, we are either doomed to ‘feudal relations’ (which those too strongly identified within religion, and simultaneously misrecognising the modern theological revolution of Christianity, would call ‘sacred social order’), or we are doomed to some kind of techno-apocalyptic extinction (clearly on display in the fundamental fantasies of leading AI tech-experts).
How does Cutrone maintain a faith and hope for the dictatorship of the proletariat? Does he really think its a true political possibility? Or is Cutrone just a ‘Socratic gadfly’ buzzing around our digital heads and upsetting authorities in academically cloistered left-wing political theory communities? The Millennials failed, what about the Zoomers? Are the Zoomers really going to lead a political movement that quasi-resembles something like the emergence of the dictatorship of the proletariat? It seems unfathomable, unthinkable even.
A future where a technofeudal elite continues to dominate the production of a base deluding itself (pathetically soothing itself) with religious ideology as superstructure, is most probable, even inevitable.
And as critical as Cutrone is of the fantasies of the (now dead) Millennial Left, in his most self-reflective moments, perhaps he in the end does share aspects of my more doomer-directed sensibilities about the possibility of a dictatorship of the proletariat?:50
“The only argument I found for Hillary was that we lived in the “best of all possible worlds” — as Voltaire’s Professor Pangloss described it in Candide. I didn’t want to be Professor Pangloss. I wanted to spare my students that.
But perhaps we did live in the best of all possible worlds under Obama, and would have continued to do so under Hillary. Perhaps Trump really has ruined everything for everyone. Perhaps the world has come to an end.
I don’t know.
I wish Hillary had won — so I could have found out.”
Well Hillary Clinton certainly does not lead us to a dictatorship of the proletariat! Obama and Clinton as the best of all possible worlds?!
I don’t know, either.
Let’s get more personal. I let my Millennial Left ‘Sanders Socialism’ fantasies die, and in tracking the emergence of the ‘right wing counter culture’ (Trump/Peterson, etc.), I mourned the death (of ‘Sanders Socialism’).
But I did not only mourn, I also started to build. I started to build a philosophical ground that, as mentioned above, would be capable of defending myself from the same naive political sensibilities that led me down the rabbit hole of the fantasies that trapped and killed the Millennial Left. In this building, I did not start with Marx, but Hegel, as inspired and directed by Žižek’s insistence that the time (in the death of the Millennial Left) was for thinking, and not action.
And yet, building an online philosophy community is not only thinking, but also action. And in building I learned online business, and I started to explore para-academic possibilities beyond the structures of the university. And in exploring these para-academic possibilities, I have started to build a more direct relationship to capitalism, entrepreneurship, and collaboration with others either walking a similar path, or starting to.
Here Cutrone’s ideas about the dictatorship of the proletariat have been, at the very least, thought-provoking for me. Consider the following reflections:51
“the “producers’ democracy” of the “workers’ councils” in the revolutionary “dictatorship of the proletariat” was intrinsically related to, and indeed the political expression of, an intensification of the “reification” of the commodity form.”
and:52
“the only possibility of preserving the gains of bourgeois society was through the “dictatorship of the proletariat.””
and:53
“for Marxism more generally, the dictatorship of the proletariat (never mind socialism) required the preponderant power over global capitalism world-wide, that is, victory in the core capitalist countries.”
and:54
“The socialist revolution and the political regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat was not for Lenin the achievement of socialism but rather its mere precondition, opening the door to the self-transformation of society beyond capitalism led by the — “dictatorship,” or social preponderance, preponderance of social power — of the working class.”
and:55
“For Lenin, the necessary dictatorship of the proletariat was the highest form of capitalism — meaning capitalism brought to the highest level of politics and hence of potentially working through its social self-contradictions — and not yet socialism — meaning not yet even the overcoming of capitalism.”
and:56
“For Marx, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not merely the overcoming of abstract labor by living labor, but rather the highest expression of their contradiction in the subjectivity of the commodity form.”
and:57
“In this sense, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” marks the end of politics as we know it, and the beginning of politics in a new and more advanced sense, with the working class and its activity helping to point beyond the social dynamic of capital.”
and:58
“evading or otherwise abandoning Marx’s conception of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” means abandoning the struggle to overcome capital.”
and:59
Karl Marx regarded the “necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat” as a phenomenon of “Bonapartism” — […] This was Marx’s difference from the anarchists: the recognition of the necessity of the state in capitalism.
and:60
Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” was to be achieved by the mass-political socialist party. Marx broke with the anarchists over the latter’s refusal to take “political action” and to thus consign the working class to merely “social action.” i.e. to avoid the necessary struggle for state power.
There is more to be said and explored in regards to this series of quotes, but for our purposes, let me highlight the following threads of relevance to the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (as Cutrone understands it) under the banner “Cutrone’s 10 Commandments for Socialist Unity”:
Intensified reification of the commodity-form
As the only means of preserving bourgeois social relations
Expressed as victories within core capitalist countries (spreading world-wide)
As not socialism but its mere precondition
As the highest-form of capitalism brought to politics (social self-contradictions)
As the highest expression of contradiction in subjectivity of the commodity form
Towards a more advanced politics pointing beyond the social dynamic of capital
Without this form of politics the struggle to overcome capitalism is abandoned
Without this form of politics we fall into anarchism
And so socialist party politics must serve the aims of this more advanced politics
Is Philosophy Portal just my entrepreneurial hustle? Or in building Philosophy Portal am I starting to build out the knowledge in seed-form of what would be useful to a “dictatorship of the proletariat”? What I have learned and what I have overcome in myself in building Philosophy Portal is the following:
I have reconciled myself to the necessity of the commodity-form
I see this commodity form is essential and indispensable for maintaining and potentially enhancing my bourgeois social relations (as opposed to abandoning them for some form of religious communitarianism, which I dislike)
I believe that any socialist revolution would have to emerge within core capitalist countries (industrially developed countries)
That I am a capitalist politician at best, and not yet socialist
That my capitalist activities must be slowly mediated by politics of my immediate social self-contradictions (those closest to me, starting with my family, and building out from there, starting with those I work with directly)
That I will experience the highest form of my own social self-contradictions in this work (my motives for learning and teaching philosophy, etc.)
That a politics can emerge from this work that is not reducible to capitalism (i.e. socialist forms of life and ways of being)
That without this work I would be relegated to a daily life and life work that is simply within capitalism (whether admitted or not)
That anarchism is a dead-end (I’ve never been deeply attracted to it)
And the question: how does this work connect to an actual socialist party politics?
Or is it more likely that I am just a symptom of neoliberalism, and do I just need to face the fact that entrepreneurship is the only real option today when our institutions have all been hollowed out? Should I just rage quit?
I certainly don’t want to delude myself here, and try to defend myself against that. Of course, it would be attractive to believe ‘I am building the seed-form for something that would be useful knowledge informing a dictatorship of the proletariat’. What would be a much more bitter pill to swallow would be ‘I am just a symptom of neoliberalism and in post-neoliberalism I will be forced to accept the zeitgeist of a new religious ‘sacred social order’ that preserves the base of capitalist politics’.
In-between these two possibilities, I don’t want to lose some real sense that there could be an emancipatory possibility here or there, as long as I remain attentive, as long as I keep my mind sharp to the moment, self-reflective in relation to both the theory and practice of what I am doing. And, in truth, small victories, from time to time, do happen. In the context of the entire journey, there have even been some big victories. I try, and have to remind myself all the time, to focus on those victories when the defeats feel overwhelming or when the social circumstances appear daunting.
But what about those defeats? Following Cutrone, it seems to me: the biggest obstacle for a dictatorship of the proletariat, is not the reductive capitalists, but it is simply the workers themselves, human beings, people being people, people being what they are. Humans are humans, as Christians and Lacanians know well, full of sin or lack or whatever you want to call it. Humans are humans, doomed to lack the self-reflective and self-critical capacities (even after centuries Kant and Hegel!) to really be helpful in any genuine and meaningful sense, in any way that would point in the direction of the self-organisation of the proletariat. The self-organisation of global capitalism, in contrast, works very well exploiting and dominating the human condition in this very sin and lack.
At the moment, I see a bit of spread but nothing of scale, nothing of any relevance of the larger political processes shaping our world.
And so I wait patiently, thinking and acting, building slowly, trying to get a better sense and understanding of the real of the social field, trying to get a better sense and understanding of what is really possible, and what is not.
I wait patiently, trying not to rage quit.
Any honest investigation in this direction is dark.
In the first class I led with Cutrone, inspired by the Lenin chapter of Marxism and Politics, only reinforced this sensitivity and understanding. Cutrone noted that the biggest problem for the formation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in and following the Russian Revolution, was not Stalin or American capitalism, but the people or workers themselves. In other words, the revolution failed not because of this or that leader, but because of people, because of the workers. In Christian or Lacanian terms, because of their sin, because of their lack. And in that context, it is hard not to try and reconcile oneself to the truth of religion, as frustrating as it is for those fantasies of socialism, those socialist fantasies die hard.
But, if Christianity is the truth of religion, as I like to say, what if it is true, and Atheism is the truth of Christianity? (as I also like to say).61
For now, I go on, with the dialectical concepts, of not only “Christian Atheism”,62 but also “Conservative Communism”.63 I go on with the hopes that the direction of world society still points towards the re-contextualisation of the former terms (Christian, Conservative) within the realisation of the latter terms (Atheism, Communism).
In 10 years, how deluded will I find my own thoughts now? Am I still trapped in a (necessary) transcendental illusion? Or am I moving ethically in the open movement of negativity?
Is Cutrone Professor Pangloss?
Do you (idiots) not see that Trump is happening again?
Cutrone is trying to tell us that, against the ‘Trump hysteria’, we have to reconcile ourselves to a few facts:64
Trump is actually a Democrat — who even wants to but cannot give free health care! — and who invaded and destroyed the Republicans
The Democrats are not Socialists, i.e. they are not fighting for a dictatorship of the proletariat, and so running within the Democratic Party as currently constructed, will never lead to Socialism (that is the fantasy)
Thus we should remember:
The Democrats are already right-wing, they are already lost in fantasies that will never be brought to bare on the true fundamental problems of capitalist politics
Here we should ask:
What is post-neoliberalism and what are its possibilities beyond Trump?
In this context, there are no easy answers (e.g. Universal Basic Income). Consider Žižek on the topic:65
“While in principle I support basic income, but I don’t think its the solution. Basic income is, really maybe its a more intelligent, efficient version of capitalism, where the idea is this, that, if you take care of those who don’t work through basic income, you can have a much more pure and tougher competition, efficient capitalism, for the rest.”
Cutrone reminds us here that the Republicans, through Nixon, even floated the idea of UBI but it was opposed by the Democrats and the labour unions, who were afraid that it would be an excuse to reduce the pay of actual workers.66
The question that haunts Cutrone is one that haunts me as well: is anything like ‘progressivism’ (which is a word that has been now basically destroyed) possible in post-neoliberalism? Cutrone’s message is again simple: don’t look for anything like a real progressivism in the Democrats.67
Where should we look for it? For Cutrone, its not in anything like the Democratic Socialists of America, but rather in the Chinese Communist Party.68 As for the Democrats themselves, Cutrone’s view is simple, the ‘right wing’ identitarianism will simply kill them (and again, Trump is the True Democrat):69
“The Democrats’ only answer to racism, sexism and homophobia is to fire people and put them in prison. — Whereas Trump lets them out of jail to give them a job.
Perhaps their getting a job will help us, too.
So: Why not Trump again?”
I’ll end by saying that I would claim that Cutrone’s current writings do not occupy the space of “Why not Trump” or “Why not Trump again?”, but rather: “Do you (idiots) not see that Trump is happening again?”
A Reflective Note on Quantum History
As suggested previously,70 Žižek’s latest work Quantum History is a useful work to put into conversation with Cutrone’s political works published by Sublation Press. Žižek notes that, for quantum physics, we are focusing on a (Hegelian) movement in which the collapse of the wavefunction (e.g. the election of Donald Trump, and again) not only retroactively changes and reconstructs the past71 — not the actual facts but how it is symbolically contextualised72 — but also opens a forward movement in time (e.g. neoliberalism to post-neoliberalism). This is for Žižek ‘the parallax of time itself’, i.e. the “non-relation” or “lack of common ground” between “past and future” in the present. Thus, it is cheap and lazy for Leftists to only make fun of Trump’s retroactive re-imagining of America (e.g. “Make America Great Again”); Leftists must also recognise the way in which Trump’s collapse (of the political wave function) also functions to move us forward (into post-neoliberalism).
Here Žižek’s Quantum History reminds us that one of the meanings of the collapse of the wavefunction is that there is a genuine openness to the future, that reality is not determined, that reality has not “yet made all the children it’s going to make”.73 There is a birth process it be attentive to here, which requires “philosophical midwifery” qua “Socratic Marxism” (i.e. our spontaneous authoritarian sensibilities must not only tolerate, but learn to love, gadflies). By definition, a baby does not know what a child is, or that it is destined to be a child, but also and more interestingly, what type of child, let alone adult, it will be. Here Cutrone’s work reminds us of this old birth metaphor when it comes to thinking about the relationship between capitalism and socialism.74 Capitalism is a ‘labour qua birth process’, and socialism is the ‘foetus’ which capitalist politics repeatedly ‘aborts’, instead of ‘bringing to term’.
How do we bring it term?
First, we have to engage the Freudian work on the level of — not our personal Oedipal constellation — but rather the political social constellation of capitalist politics itself. This is what makes Cutrone’s work so valuable: it functions as a “remembering, repeating and working-through”. In this context, Žižek makes this surprising connection between Freudian analysis and quantum physics: what is revealed in quantum mechanics is that, not only is our personal subjective familial history a ‘barred-one’ (qua marriage, parental relations, etc.), but that the history of reality is itself a trauma.75 Recall, as Cutrone often does, the old Marxist axiom that “tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living”.
Thus, the current turn within the ‘right wing counter culture’ to ‘respect’ tradition, should be seen as the crucial first step of ‘remembering’: not to in the end fall into a non-dialectical identitarian relation, but rather to ‘repeat and work-through’, the trauma of the history reality itself. Žižek reminds us that remembering on its own runs into an immediate deadlock:76
“the content brought out lacks its proper symbolic context and thus remains ineffective; it fails to transform the subject and resistance remains active, limiting the amount of content revealed.”
In other words, the problem of simply remembering:77
“stays focused on the past and ignores the subject’s present constellation which keeps this past alive, symbolically active. Resistance expresses itself in the form of transference: what the subject cannot properly remember, she repeats, transferring the past constellation onto a present (e.g., she treats the analyst as if he were her father).”
Does not someone like political commentator Nick Fuentes make this mistake in his identity with Trump? Is he not now going through a child-like reaction formation qua rebellion to ‘His Father’? Does not the entire ‘right wing counter culture’ make this mistake, whether in identity with Christianity or whatever other tradition?
The stakes of moving from ‘remembering’ through ‘repeating’ to ‘working-through’, requires psychoanalysis, insofar as it requires attention to the present moment of the subject’s ‘libidinal-economy’. From Žižek:78
“Working through is working through the resistance, turning it from the obstacle into the very resort of analysis, and this turn is self-reflexive in a properly Hegelian sense: resistance is a link between object and subject, between past and present, a proof that we are not only fixated on the past but that this fixation is an effect of the present deadlock in the subject’s libidinal economy.”
And this brings us back around ‘full circle’ to the problem of ‘Sanders Socialism’, as well as Cutrone’s insistence that the form of political thinking we find here, is inadequate to the task of post-neoliberalism and the beyond of the Trump phenomenon. Here Žižek states that “counterfactual thinking” (e.g. running the thought-experiment: ‘What if Sanders beat Trump?’), allows us to “counter the facts” and entertain, from the position of philosophical speculation in a parallax (non-relation) with politics: “What if?” or “If only…”.79
So how do we avoid, not only the naive identity of ‘Sanders Socialism’ while not becoming ‘Professor Pangloss’ (i.e. the belief that Obama and Clinton represented the ‘best of all possible worlds’?); we should strengthen — through remembering, repeating, and working-through — our capacity for speculative cognition about socialism. And here, Cutrone’s work is indispensable.
This year Philosophy Portal will be hosting a year-long course with “The Last Marxist” Chris Cutrone. To learn more or to get involved, see:
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why not Trump? In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 97-102.
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why not Trump again? In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 123-128.
“The future belongs to America — so should Greenland.” Cutrone, C. 2025. The Future Belongs to America. So should Greenland. Compact. (link) (accessed: March 25 2026).
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek emphasises that, for philosophy, the logic of counterfactuals opens us to thinking the “What if?” and the “If only…” regarding how past events could have “turned out differently”. However, and as will be crucial for this article, we should also keep in mind that such speculative cognition must also incorporate into itself the Freudian lessons of history, that of “remembering”, “repeating”, and “working-through”, i.e. we must remember the past traumatic events that actually did occur (e.g. the election of Trump); if we do not then we will constantly repeat the same transferential mistakes (e.g. falling for the same impotent gestures of democratic socialism); without working-through what actually did happen, learning from it, so that we can properly assess the “present deadlock” in our (collective) “libidinal economy”. For more, see: Žižek, S. 2025. Chapter 3: Noncommutativity in the symbolic and in the (quantum) real. In: Part 1: Universal: Collapse comes first. In: Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy. Bloomsbury.
In this timeline, Cutrone does not even have to bother being “The Last Marxist”, because he is actually the leader of a “space communist” federation managing a fleet of new X-wing pilots to take on nefarious forces in a galaxy far far away.
In the course preview materials for Marxist Politics for Undead Millennials, Cutrone states that Trump’s entire motivation for becoming president, a motive that he traces from 1987 to 2016, is organised under the belief that he could get a ‘better deal for the United States’ in comparison to the neoliberal democrats, like Clinton and Obama, on trade negotiations, like NAFTA and TPP. In other words, the Trumpian phenomenon is about protecting national interests in a world dominated by international corporate logic, see: Last, C. 2026. The Trumpian Real and Post-Neoliberalism. Philosophy Portal Substack. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why not Trump? In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 101.
Ibid.
Cutrone, C. 2023. The Sandernistas: the final triumph of the 1980s. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 85.
Ibid. p. 95-96.
Ibid. p. 88-89.
Ibid. p. 88.
Ibid. p. 86-87.
Ibid. p. 88.
Ibid. p. 89.
Ibid. p. 95-96.
Last, C. 2026. On Black Holes and Socialist Unity. Philosophy Portal Substack. (link) (accessed: March 26 2026).
Ibid.
As opposed to a response that might have drawn on Marxist resources, i.e. mobilising workers from below (workers unions, etc.).
See again: Cutrone, C. 2023. Friedrich Hayek and the legacy of Milton Friedman. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 65-72.
Cutrone, C. 2023. The Sandernistas: the final triumph of the 1980s. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 90.
Ibid. p. 93.
Ibid. p. 88.
Ibid. p. 94-95.
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why not Trump? In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 97-102.
Cutrone, C. 2023. The crisis of neoliberalism and Marxism in the age of Trump. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 104.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 105.
Žižek, S. 2016. Q&A: Democratic Capitalism ‘In Crisis’, Says Philosopher Slavoj Zizek. Radio Free Europe. https://www.rferl.org/a/philosopher-slavoj-zizek-democratic-capitalism-in-crisis/27863243.html (accessed: August 24 2024).
Cutrone, C. 2023. The crisis of neoliberalism and Marxism in the age of Trump. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 105.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Cutrone sees the link between Trump and the term ‘right wing populism’ as problematic on the basis that its use tends to signify a pejorative used when the outcome of democracy is perceived to be “undesirable” by the status quo, see: Ibid. p. 103.
Trump, D. 2026. Davos 2026: Special Address by Donald J Trump, President of the United States of America. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
I attempted to analyse in microcosm the tensions on the U.K. side through a dialectical analysis of economist and tax reformer Gary Stevenson as well as political activist and nativist YouTuber Carl Benjamin, see: Last, C. 2025. Labour Vs. Reform, Stevenson vs. Benjamin. Philosophy Portal Substack. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
Cutrone, C. 2023. The Sandernistas: the final triumph of the 1980s. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 94-95.
Cutrone, C. 2023. The crisis of neoliberalism and Marxism in the age of Trump. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 105.
Ibid. p. 105-106.
Cutrone, C. 2023. The crisis of neoliberalism and Marxism in the age of Trump. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 107.
Ibid. p. 108.
Ibid.
For more, see: Cutrone, C. 2026. Chris Cutrone Reads Curtis Yarvin: A Marxist Interpretation of the 10 Red Pills. The Dangerous Maybe. (link) (accessed: March 27 2026).
Cutrone, C. 2023. The Millennial Left is Dead. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 109.
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why I wish Hillary had won. In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 119.
Ibid.
Ibid.
In Dimitri Crooijmans work on this topic, he also juxtaposes the development of the concept of ‘communisation’ against the concept of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, see: Crooijmans, D. 2025. Communisation in Absolute Capitalism. Actual Spirit Substack. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
Ibid. p. 122.
Cutrone, C. 2024. Lenin. In: Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024. Sublation Media. p. 22.
Ibid. p. 56.
Ibid. p. 62.
Ibid. p. 66.
Ibid.
Cutrone, C. 2024. Remember the future! In: Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024. Sublation Media. p. 97.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 98.
Cutrone, C. 2024. Critical authoritarianism. In: Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024. Sublation Media. p. 239.
Ibid. p. 240.
See: Last, C. 2024. The Case for Christian Atheism. Philosophy Portal Substack. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
See: Last, C. 2025. No Marxism Without Žižek, or: thinking towards “Conservative Communism”. Philosophy Portal Substack. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why not Trump again? In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 124-125.
Žižek, S. 2020. Slavoj Zizek — Universal Basic Income. I WOULD PREFER NOT TO. (link) (accessed: March 28 2026).
Cutrone, C. 2023. Why not Trump again? In: The Death of the Millennial Left. Sublation Press. p. 125.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 126.
Last, C. 2026. On Black Holes and Socialist Unity. Philosophy Portal Substack. (link) (accessed: March 26 2026).
Žižek, S. 2025. Chapter 1: Why a Hegelian needs quantum mechanics. In: Part 1: Universal: Collapse comes first. In: Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy. Bloomsbury.
Žižek, S. 2025. Chapter 2: Why quantum mechanics needs Hegel. In: Part 1: Universal: Collapse comes first. In: Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy. Bloomsbury.
Žižek, S. 2025. Chapter 1: Why a Hegelian needs quantum mechanics. In: Part 1: Universal: Collapse comes first. In: Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy. Bloomsbury.
Cutrone, C. 2024. Socialism and capitalism. In: Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024. Sublation Media. p. 624.
Žižek, S. 2025. Chapter 3: Noncommutativity in the symbolic and in the (quantum) real. In: Part 1: Universal: Collapse comes first. In: Quantum History: A New Materialist Philosophy. Bloomsbury.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
I appreciate this. Especially your personal reflections in the later section. I’ve been working through Cutrone this year and find myself in a similar headspace.
Nice one Cadell. I’m in your class with Chris and it’s been great so far.
One thing for the people reading this who haven’t been following along with Platypus is that “the death” of the millennial left occurred when they all joined DSA. that is in fact what that means. So, It’s not the trauma of Trump that killed, or defeated them per se, but rather their willingness to commit political suicide.
Chris says this here: https://www.youtube.com/live/ZaJlyGkO8GU?si=CBYKk_svFlGgwrbT