>From John's blog ; "A similar article appeared in *The Atlantic*. It is entitled The Left-Wing Case Against Anti-Zionism <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/left-against-antizionism-israel/687616/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cr&utm_campaign=2024_Content_ContentTestingII_Prospecting_Sales_Advantage&utm_content=062226_LeftWingAgainstAntiZionism_NA_NA_LearnMore&utm_term=ContentTestingII_Advantage&referral=FB_PAID&utm_id=6581568102677&fbclid=IwY2xjawTNFxtleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQAAAZW7eFLrXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR759sVlpJ1rgSK83tHwmZxGnpbCZ76rY3-HCwSkCOrp0tKmBd7ABtAdtE_-Ng_aem_QgzyqBpFT6xrzuga4gJbEA>. Its author is anthropology student Adam Louis Klein, who also starts by asserting his “left” credentials."
I am usually a bit skeptical of assertions by polemicists on the Right, that they were once on the Left, or that their contemporary arguments for what are "objectively," rightist positions, are rooted in leftist commitments. Adam Louis Klein has a blog I just scrolled through, much verbiage too abstruse for me to understand. The final blog <https://www.adamlouisklein.com/thought> entry caught my eye, "Outline of Non-Maoism," as it reflects the influence of the Maoist scholars, Alain Badiou and J. Moufawad-Paul . The latter is the author of https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/N05-Critique-of-Maoist-Reason-6th-Printing.pdf & *Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy in the Maoist Terrain <https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/book/7496_continuity-and-rupture-philosophy-in-the-maoist-terrain/> , read it via *https://archive.org/details/continuityruptur0000mouf . See, in particular the Appendix : Maoism or Trotskyism <https://reconstructioncommuniste.wordpress.com/2018/08/22/maoism-or-trotskyism-by-j-moufawad-paul/> . Read the complete original outline on the Adam Louis-Klein Blog <http://www.adamlouisklein.com/thought> or explore the broader theoretical synthesis in the journal article Peace between Trotskyism and Maoism <https://www.axiapublishers.com/ojs/index.php/labyrinth/article/download/95/75> LABYRINTH Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2017 ADAM LOUIS KLEIN (New York) Peace between Trotskyism and Maoism: Non-Maoism and Double Superposition Abstract Non-Philosophy is a rigorous practice that can have useful applications for academic researchers and political activists alike. Utilizing its methods and frameworks, it is possible to bring Peace into the endless War of sectarian tendencies in which "the Left" is mired. In the following paper, we apply the technique of Non-Philosophy to Josh Moufawad-Paul's pamphlet "Maoism or Trotskyism," taking it as an instance of occasional material to be transformed. An important aspect of this analysis is a syntactical deployment of Non-Philosophy not always found in non-philosophical texts: here our dualysis proceeds by double (and not only single) superposition. We effectuate two non-philosophical clones, using the first in order to recursively effectuate a second. First, we transform Trotskyism by isolating its philosophical and auto-positional structure, then we use this radicalized Trotskyism in order to transform Moufawad-Paul's Maoist polemic. The result is a radicalized Maoism-Trotskyism opening the way towards a productive and integrative Peace between Trotskyism and Maoism. Keywords: François Laruelle, J. Moufawad-Paul, Non-Philosophy, Maoism, Trotskyism, Marxism Non-Philosophy in-Struggle Today capitalism is manifesting once again its fundamentally crisis-ridden and thwarted nature. The Crisis cuts the social body and the specters of fascism (not always so spectral) reemerge. Where is the so-called Left, the authentically politicized Left that might herald what Alain Badiou has called "The Idea of Communism," posing it as a real and effective alternative to auto-poetic Capital, relentlessly absorbing the social in both inten sion and extension? It is often remarked that the specifically and explicitly Marxist or Communist Left has been in shambles for a long time, mired in sectarian squabbles and near-irrelevancy. Might there be an immanent reason for this, and could not we locate this reason, not exactly to "transcend" it, but to radicalize its own resources? Indeed, the thinking of Non-Philosophy allows us to isolate the dogmatic and aporetic structure that under 72 LABYRINTH Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2017 lies sectarianism, and to transform such a structure into an integrative Peace between tendencies, a Peace in-struggle. In this text, we will isolate such an aporetic and philosophical structure at play in the conflict between Maoism and Trotskyism. We will see how the polemical form, here exhibited in Josh Moufawad-Paul's Maoist polemic "Maoism or Trotskyism"1 articulates an unsolvable circularity that must be transformed if we are to radicalize communist theory and practice. The productive and integrative Peace between Trotskyism and Maoism that emerges will find its concrete image in the figure of the united front. When bringing together Maoism and Trotskyism, it is true that we cannot deny the deep sectarianism, orthodoxy, and conformism that runs through much of present day Trot skyism, especially in the Anglophone world. In fact, taking up a ‘politics of the Real' might already seem to privilege Maoism, and yet a non-philosophical treatment demands that we renounce any transcendent access: any birds-eye view of the two tendencies whereby we might perform a mediating synthesis. We must at all costs avoid a banal, "centrist" Marxism, or even an unrigorous eclecticism. It is necessary to approach Maoism and Trotskyism from a single side, that is, uni-versally. This is the side of the foreclosed Real, which allows us to subtract from the conflictual and hierarchical duality of "Trotskyism vs. Maoism." There is no meta-language, in politics especially; nor is there a "balance" between Maoism and Trotskyism. If anything, their only common core is what throws them both into a certain imbalance. Yet such an imbalance can and will show itself to be a productive and integrative dis cordance, since irreducible to philosophical War: the war of opinions, positions, dogmas, and polemics. It is an imbalance that arises from allowing the Real to be given-without-givenness. In order to achieve such a discordant harmony requires here that we know how to handle the precise, formal operations of the non-philosophical technique that we shall employ. First, however, we must elucidate what we mean by the aporetic structure of the polemic. Polemic as Aporia and War Moufawad-Paul's text "Maoism or Trotskyism" is not a vulgar text. As he assures us, "to ask the question 'Maoism or Trotskyism' as a Maoist is to try to investigate Trotsky 1 The polemic features as an appendix to Josh Moufawad-Paul's Continuity and Rupture: Philosophy In The Maoist Terrain (2016). 73 <SNIP> Outline of Non-Maoism <https://www.adamlouisklein.com/thought/2017/10/29/outline-of-non-maoism> October 29, 2017 Outline of Non-Maoism *Axiomatic (non-)positing of the Real - The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.* *Philosophical invariant - The Party (and the Party-State) exhibit the auto-positional structure of Philosophy-World-Capital. * *Transcendental science-pragmatics - the non-Maoist non-party as clone of the (Maoist) Party. * The Party is a circular and auto-positional structure. Too often it speaks to the masses only to speak *for them* and in their place. It incorporates them into its dogmas and its jargon, and acts with them only to delimit the confines and determinations of their own action. It is a reflective *echo chamber *that desires to synthetically determine the masses' Being. Non-maoism, however, is the non-circular cloning of the Maoist mass line (“from the masses, to the masses”), the radicalization of the Maoist “solution” to this problem. The non-maoist non-party is a 'party of a new type.' The non-maoist non-party must become a clone of the Party, radically determined-in-the-last-instance by the masses, such that ‘from the masses, to the masses’ is a unifacial, non-circular, and non-reciprocal relation: i.e a unilateral dulaity. The non-party is a fusion with the masses, but only ‘according to’ or ‘from’ them. However, this fusion is nothing but the rigor of its *organization*. In order to clone the Party and effectuate the non-party by determination-in-the-last-instance by the masses, the general axiomatic form of non-philosophy (and non-marxism) is required. We must effectively isolate the invariant auto-positional structure of the Party, allow the masses to be given-without-givenness (in-struggle), and effectuate a transcendental cloning through those 'theorems' that utilize the materials of the Party. Such 'theorems' are organizational forms and strategies of intervention, determined by an inconsistent, unpredictable, wave-like Real. The non-party is a rigorous and inventive form of organization, without the reflective over-determination of the Party bureaucracy. The non-Maoist non-party practices 'self-criticism' as the necessary resumption of cloning when it is a question of maintaining the rigor of non-Maoist mass line and the masses' generic truth. Being indifferent to the material it takes from the World, the practice of the non-party proceeds on every front. It is cultural revolution. Indeed, the auto-positional and Decisional form of the Party which must be cloned is homologous to the auto-positional structure of Capitalism. This is the problem of revisionism, the fact that the party ideologically reproduces capitalism, even while asserting a communist 'content.' Undoing the decisional structure of the Party allows the effective undoing of capitalism and its pervasive ideologies, in practice. The clone which the non-party is simultaneously subtracts from the Party and from Capitalism. The non-party is however thoroughly immanent to both, for it proceeds from their Real materiality - the masses. The non-party is the possibility of – or is – the organized communist movement. > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42605): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42605 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120402323/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
