“Do you read Loren Goldner?”
That question caught me by pleasant surprise as I spoke with a few Trotskyists I randomly met at a late 2010 protest rally in downtown Manhattan. If I recall correctly, we discussed seemingly “obscure” topics, depending on one’s political standpoint and milieu as well as intellectual background. Well, certainly “obscure”, if not out of a completely different universe, to those with “mainstream” political stances in the United States of America and mainly if you only think in terms of “Republican versus Democrat”.
We talked about the theorizations of “really existing socialism” (also referred to as “actually existing socialism”) as “state capitalist” and/or “bureaucratic collectivist”. Relatedly, we discussed the political figures who proposed and articulated “state capitalism” and “bureaucratic collectivism” as conceptual devices for understanding “Stalinism”, an all-too-often used and abused term that is less than satisfactory but still useful as a single-word descriptor: Mostly Trotskyists, such as Max Schachtman, Bruno Rizzi, and Tony Cliff, hailing from tendencies that were ultimately marginal within the wider Trotskyist milieus, to say nothing of the historical, or twentieth century, New Left as a whole which became deeply wedded to “Third World”-ism à la Guevarism, Maoism, etc. Inevitably, and if my memory still accurately serves, we went on to talk about imperialism and opposition to such, the history and politics of left-wing support for struggles for national self-determination, the differences between “vanguardist” and council-oriented approaches to social and political revolution on the, very broadly speaking, “Marxist” Left, et cetera.
My enthusiastic answer in the affirmative to that question within the framework of discussing the aforementioned topics indicates something about my meandering and idiosyncratic political trajectory as well as the evolution of my worldview.
How his path and mine crossed is a long story. If the reader is willing to bear with me, then here goes…
I can’t remember when or how I first came across Loren Goldner’s writings, mostly posted to his website Break Their Haughty Power. I do recall I was in my late teens during the early-to-mid 2000s when I became deeply interested in social and political theory as well as history that focused on social and political issues, especially “the Left”, “political economy”, and socioeconomic class divisions. I was amazed by Loren’s erudition across multiple subjects and topics as well as his remarkable ability to meld together facts, viewpoints, and sociopolitical theory into scintillating and deep insights. You only have to read his wide-ranging and eclectic essays, articles, and commentaries to discover and know for yourself. I certainly did. That impression remains vivid and memorable.
Like others who knew, or at least knew of, Loren, if only by byline and reputation, I was impressed and in awe by his clearly obvious intellectual abilities and his longstanding political commitment as a “left communist” or “ultra-leftist” (to wit: Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Otto Ruehle, Sylvia Pankhurst, Amadeo Bordiga, Onorato Damen, Jan Appel, Paul Mattick, Sr., Paul Mattick, Jr.). His works, as far as I was concerned fifteen to twenty years ago as I write these lines, were invaluable. Any new additional writings uploaded to his Break Their Haughty Power website were welcome, indeed anxiously awaited. He also took part in a roundtable discussion in the late summer of 2007 which I, as usual with anything related to Loren’s commentaries on history and politics from an “ultra-leftist” standpoint, seized upon, grasping for whatever insights I could derive. Likewise, the interviews he did with the Korean Socialist Workers Newspaper Group (SaNoShin) during late 2007, and which he probably posted to his website during spring 2008. Loren’s perspectives were that important.
I never thought I’d meet Loren in person, much less befriend him, until one of the Trotskyists I spoke with in 2010 put me in e-mail contact with him during the following summer of 2011. Loren and I soon enough agreed to meet in person in front of the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue. Sure enough, we met and he told me about his life story: His parents’ departure from the Communist Party USA (acronym: CPUSA) after the then-Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech (officially known as “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”) at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956; his mother’s fear of repression under McCarthyism as well as her staunch anti-Stalinist stance after having left the CPUSA; his undergraduate and graduate studies which culminated in a PhD; his abortive attempts at learning Arabic while in Egypt; and his involvement with the Independent Socialist Clubs and the rest of the anti-Stalinist and non-Stalinist “Marxist” Left.1 He also mentioned where he went in the world, of having traveled to and resided in France shortly after he completed his secondary school studies and then, from France, moving to Germany. Along the way, he became fluent in French and German. During that initial conversation, Loren may have also mentioned he lived briefly in Italy and accordingly became proficient in Italian. That, or he mentioned his time in Italy later on.
All the above was a truly surreal moment—akin to watching a dream come true, unfolding itself before one’s eyes, and experiencing it. Yet it felt familiar as Loren and I became on friendly speaking terms. It couldn’t have come at a more opportune and convenient time for him, either. Loren was trying to begin learning Mandarin Chinese to better understand mainland Chinese social, economic, and political realities from his “left communist” standpoint. Therefore, he was looking for anybody who’d help him get a start. Upon discovering that I speak the language, he asked me if I could tutor him. He didn’t know what he could do for me in return, though. He explained to me that, when he started studying Korean (from the mid-to-late or late 2000s into the early 2010s), he did language exchanges with Korean speakers. The Korean speakers tutored him in Korean and he in turn instructed English to them. Since I wanted to stay in communication with him, I proposed a language exchange as well, to which he said to me, “You don’t need any help with English”. But, I countered, I could try learning a non-English language from him. Maybe… German? At that point, I was thinking of anything on the fly.
I don’t remember, either, if I had intended, much less planned, to study German as a language, but there I was proposing such a notion. I remember telling him I might as well try learning German, to read it at least, to become more familiar with the Neue Marx Lektuere, or the New Reading of Marx. Loren merely chuckled at this justification, probably because he already had a reliable working knowledge of the three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy as well as the Grundrisse and The Theories of Surplus Value. He also recommended I read a review he wrote of Moishe Postone’s Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory.Nevertheless, he agreed to my idea and we continued to meet.
Thus, our language exchange and broader relationship began from that chance meeting in mid-2011 via a random decision by a mutual acquaintance. We initially met during 2011 and 2012, through regular weekly two-hour appointments, in midtown Manhattan as we started and continued with the language exchange. Partway through 2012 and into 2013, we continued with our exchange-oriented meetings at his and his wife Sharon Jaynes’s apartment in Brooklyn.
In retrospect while considering the bigger picture, I admit to having a sense of unreality as to what I’ve described so far.
First, the fact that I’d even become interested and/or involved with any kind of “leftist” (or “left-wing”) and “socialist” politics. I grew up in a Taiwanese immigrant family that had a trajectory and mindset influenced by the Cold War and which, resultantly, developed a deeply engrained right-wing to far-right Cold War anti-Communist worldview. For us, “socialism”, “communism”, “Marxism”, and any kind of “left” politics amounted to Stalinism à la the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of China, Democratic Kampuchea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, etc. Period. Full stop. The notion of an anti-Stalinist or non-Stalinist “Marxist”, “socialist”, and “leftist” was and remains a contradiction in terms—an utterly inconceivable absurdity—although my family has since made a few concessions to Nordic social democracy.
But despite the cultlike anti-Communism, or anticommunism, I internalized and believed in during my childhood and adolescence, I became attracted to the basic principles and goals of socialism—of direct democratic control of the economy, of reducing and ending socioeconomic inequalities, of workers’ management of the industrial means of production and circulation. This interest in such a tantalizing political, social, and economic philosophy existed and persisted in spite of the aforementioned anticommunism as well as, relatedly, the no less strongly anchored assumption that “free market” (or “free enterprise”) capitalism is the only ideal and optimal mode of production for all time. Or, at least, humanity’s existence. Thus, when I first discovered Loren’s works, again sometime during the early-to-mid 2000s, they must’ve been curiosities. All insightful, incisive, and informative. Mind you, though, they were anything but mere curios. As I told Loren once by e-mail, so much of my post-adolescent life has been me reasoning my way out of a quintessentially conservative and reactionary mental political universe.
Second, that I’d even tutor someone else, Loren in this case, in elementary Mandarin Chinese. My family expected my sister and me to completely assimilate and integrate into “mainstream” US-American society and culture, which meant regarding vernacular North American English as our primary language. Indeed, for a long time I considered myself monolingual in English and unable to learn other languages until, since 2010, I tried learning Spanish and Mandarin Chinese (I had been illiterate in the latter and I was becoming literate since 2009) on my own. The reader can imagine why I’d write here about a “sense of unreality”.
Third, that Loren would be interested in such a language exchange and, relatedly, having political discussions with me. As with so many other “Generation Y” and “Generation Z” leftists, my grounding was more so in intersectionality, identity politics, postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc., none of which really meaningfully related to Loren’s worldview and approach to sociopolitical issues. Not to mention his focus on working-class struggles throughout the world. Granted, I knew something about the Russian and Chinese revolutions, Soviet and mainland Chinese political and economic histories, as well as “really existing socialism” via my upbringing but even then, that knowledge was at best general and rudimentary. I didn’t think I could hold my own in political discussions with an esteemed “left communist”, or “ultra-leftist”, intellectual like Loren. Certainly not when Loren appeared to know so much about, and could endlessly cite multitudes of sources about, all kinds of topics related to the arts, the humanities, social studies, and, of course, assorted leftist political and intellectual figures.
But none of those three reservations fazed Loren, leading him to decide against continuing his relationships and communications with me. We spoke in person and by telephone. We corresponded by e-mail. On occasion, I sent him postal mail. As the contributors to this Antifada episode in memory and honor of Loren attest: He was always open, generous, and encouraging—with my informal German-language studies; with talking at length about left-wing politics and the many, multifaceted, and diverse histories of such; with the authors he recommended such as John Eric Marot, Simon Pirani, Hillel Ticktin, Pierre Ryckmans (better known as Simon Leys), and Victor Serge. He also wanted me to become involved with Insurgent Notes, the online journal he and John Garvey co-edited.
After I found full-time employment in mid-2013, a minor miracle since I became in part a casualty of the 2008–2009 economic crisis from mid-2010 onward, Loren and I had more sporadic communications. I only saw him again twice in 2014 and twice in 2019. When I last met him in person, I did so at his request. He was due to give a lecture at the Woodbine Collective about the contemporary mainland Chinese working class and its travails vis-à-vis the post-Stalinist party-state in Beijing, the nascent domestic mainland Chinese capitalist class, and multinational capital. Aside from the occasional e-mail, I more or less lost touch with Loren since 2019. The last time he wrote to me, he merely noted that he wasn’t well. I didn’t know about his passing until a mutual acquaintance informed me about a week and a half after the fact.
There is so much more that I can write about Loren’s work and thought, so I will very likely revise and expand this remembrance essay, which has already become long enough, as more memories worth mentioning return, as I reread some of his writings, and as I listen to the reminiscences of others who knew him at the online memorial that John will convene on Saturday, June 1, 2024. I may also write more essays in honor and in critical reflection of Loren’s oeuvre, at least parts of it, over the next several months. Should I do so, I’ll include in my reflections and thoughts on Loren’s works where I still agree with him and where I may differ.
But, in the meantime, this much suffices, at least: Among libertarian socialists, anarcho-syndicalists, left communists and council communists, and assorted leftists (or ultra-leftists, not to mention some Trotskyists) throughout the world, Loren was and still is an inspiration. His work and legacy remain a, if not the, gold standard for those struggling to achieve a genuinely socialist, and eventually communist, mode of production and society—not the repressive Stalinist “bureaucratic-peasant utopias” (Loren’s term for the “really existing socialist” societies and nation-states of North Korea, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Albania, etc.) which the historical New Left, with and because of its “Third World”-ist self-delusions, glorified as “socialist” and as being admirably distinct from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. alike. One in which, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels aptly wrote in 1848:
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
We’ll keep trying, Loren, because that’s the ultimate and most appropriate tribute to you, your life’s work, and your legacy.
And so, with all that written and in the same spirit…
Loren Goldner, October 18, 1947 to April 12, 2024, ¡Presente!
Rest in peace, power, and solidarity, comrade!
安息!
Sunday, May 26, 2024
1 For more on Premier Khrushchev’s Secret Speech and the McCarthy era: https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-prosecution-of-professor-chandler-davis/.