Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism's own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then in ever more obscure ways.
The essays by Chris Cutrone collected here span the time of the Millennial Left's abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone's participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large -- but was abandoned.
Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism's accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist "message in a bottle" cast adrift by history yet be received?