How to Read Like a Parasite: Why the Left Got High on Nietzsche

by Daniel Tutt

A how-to guide for the left on how to overcome Nietzsche's divisive and damaging influence."Beautifully written and bursting with spirit, How to Read Like a Parasite is destined to be vital reading." - Matthew McManus, author of Nietzsche and the Politics of ReactionHow to Read Like a Parasite overturns the whitewashed and defanged version of Nietzsche that has been made popular by generations of translators and academic philosophers who have presented his work as apolitical and without a core reactionary agenda.The central argument of the book is that Nietzsche’s philosophy does have a center, and that the left learns a great deal from Nietzsche when we read him as driven by a highly sophisticated reactionary political vision that informs all his major concepts and ideas.The most important Nietzschean concepts — from perspectivism, ressentiment, eternal return to the pathos of distance — are analyzed in the historical context in which Nietzsche lived and wrote, and several case-studies of prominent left-Nietzscheans from Jack London, Gilles Deleuze, Wendy Brown to Huey Newton are discussed.How to Read Like a Parasite makes a persuasive case for how we can overcome Nietzsche’s damaging influence on the left, showing us how to read and understand his work without becoming victims of it.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory

346 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 2, 2024

Reviews

[Farhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started my year with this 'philosophical' nonfic. The book is both eloquent and spirited, making it an essential read.
I liked the personal references of Daniel throughout the book about his experience while reading Nietzsche.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good sentiment, but a failed critique

I agree with Tutt that there's a lot of issues with Nietzsche's thought, especially if taken at face value. While reading Nietzsche, I would find myself being surprised at his insight with one aphorism while another would have me going WTF. I largely chalk this up to Fred being an upperclass 19th century European, who despite seeing through some of his culture and time's ‘narrowness’ - shall we say - was still a product of his era.

But moving forward with this review of Tutt's book, and attempting to read it from cover to cover, I just came away rolling my eyes more often than not. Largely because this book makes it sound like Nietzsche somehow knew future Leftists would read his writings and sought to cast a dastardly curse within his words, which would undermine any progressive social movement that dared to read a single sentence of his. Would Freddie approve of Deleuze or London or Newton's use of his work? Certainly not. But seriously, who cares? They're ideas. As much as 'pure' Nietzscheans toss around that quote about twisting his words for one's own ends, Nietzsche himself did this when he was making his own mark in philosophy. I'm sure Schopenhauer would have tossed him down the steps like he did with his landlady if he saw what Nietzsche did with his ideas. Basically, philosophy is like Deleuze said, panning for gold; take the shiny bits you like and toss the rest. I've read pretty well put together arguments that Hegal was a fascist stooge, which made me laugh as much as the Janus faced curse supposedly waiting for us in Fred's pages.

Not to say I think Tutt's a nut. I've watched his own channel and others interview him, and came away thinking he's a down guy. I'd hang with him over Fred any day of the week. Still, this doesn't make me think this was a great take. At least he does encourage us to not completely disregard Nietzsche, which as Tutt says, would be giving him wholly to the Right (unlike a certain professor from Toronto).

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tutt is himself a former fan of Nietzsche, and his personal reflections on grappling with Nietzsche's anti-socialist politics as someone from the working class add a compelling element to this work, which may therefore be an approachable entrypoint for Left Nietzscheans to contemporary Marxist critiques of the Basel philologist. This work serves as a condensed, more accessible companion to Losurdo’s The Aristocratic Rebel, which Tutt acknowledges as a foundational influence, however this book’s brevity and minimal quotations of Nietzsche's work leave Tutt more vulnerable to attack than Losurdo's 1000-page magnum opus.

One standout argument is Tutt’s assertion that “we live in Nietzsche’s world,” highlighting how Nietzschean philosophy, filtered through 20th-century interpretations, has deeply influenced Western thought and culture due to its ideological compatibility with the needs of capitalism. Tutt justifies studying Nietzsche “parasitically” to better understand and combat anti-socialist movements, which lends the book its provocative title.

Tutt highlights the impact Nietzsche has had on several left philosophers, including Derrida and Deleuze, however I found these sections a little challenging. I don't have much familiarity with these authors, and Tutt very sparsely quotes them in their own words and very briefly summarizes their main ideas. I think an extra 50 pages more to deal with them more fully, or 20 pages less to discuss them only generally, would have served me better. Those with more familiarity with these scholar (but without so much attachment to these scholars that they feel affronted by critique) may appreciate this work more. On the other hand, the portions on Frank Hampton and Jack London, with whom I was somewhat more familiar and whose philosophy is closely grounded in their practical work, stand out for their analysis of Nietzsche’s inherently limiting utility for anti-capitalist efforts.

Despite these limitations, Tutt’s work is an approachable introduction to modern Marxist critiques of Nietzsche, particularly for readers intrigued by the idea of engaging with Nietzsche antagonistically.

[Matt Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly readable and enjoyable book. Daniel does a wonderful job synthesizing the past 30, or so, years of Marxist scholarship around Nietzsche, and gives us the opportunity to engage with the philosopher on the combative terms he would have preferred. As Fred himself said "You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war - a war for your opinions. And if your opinion is defeated your honesty should still cry triumph over that!"

Even if you don't agree with Daniel's final analysis it is still a worthwhile read that will get you thinking about, and grappling with, Nietzsche's work in an exciting way.

[Garth · Rating 4 out of 5]

We live in a world that is still defined by the French Revolution and its aftermath. On the side affirming the ideals of the French Revolution is the philosophy of Hegel. On the other side opposing the ideals of the French Revolution are Nietzsche and many of his disciples. Daniel Tutt’s book is an examination and critique of Nietzsche in a similar vein to Domenico Losurdo’s ‘The Aristocratic Rebel’ in a more accessible form. In his critique, Tutt also examines why Nietzsche’s philosophies are so popular among the modern left and the perils of embracing his reactionary philosophy.

Why are Nietzsche’s ideas so important today? Well, we live in a world dominated by Nietzsche’s thought. In the global capitalist system in which we currently live, Nietzsche’s philosophy is prevalent over Hegel’s. At his core Nietzsche believed in a world of hierarchy, where a privileged and elite educated class can enjoy art and leisure while the majority engage in the hard work and misery of life needed to sustain this arrangement. To believe in Nietzsche’s philosophy is to believe in a class society and the great lie of meritocracy. How often have you heard phrases along the lines of “the poor deserve what they get”, or that people from developing countries are inferior? These are the questions that arise in a winner or losers take all society. To be a leftist and a Nietzschean is an irreconcilable position, since that means denial of class struggle and equality for all.

[Kyaw Zayar Lwin]

နိသျှ၊နိရှေးကို “hermetics of innocence “ဆိုပီး နိုင်ငံရေးနဲ့မသက်ဆိုင်တာ၊လက်ဝဲနဲ့နီးစပ်တာအဖြစ် ကောက်ယူလေ့ရှိကြတယ်။Tuttက နိရှေးကို သမိုင်းအခြေခံပီး သမိုင်းအဆက်အစပ်နောက်ခံနဲ့ ပြန်ဖတ်ဖို့ပြောတယ်။နိရှေးက မာ့စ်တွေယူဆသလို egalitarian ကို လက်ခံသူမဟုတ်ဘူး။တန်းတူညီမျှမှုကို လက်မခံဘူး။လူမှုအဆင့်အတန်းခွဲခြားမှုကို ရှေ့တန်းတင်တယ်။နိရှေးလက်ခံသူအုပ်စုလေးဟာ အခြားသူတွေထက် မြင့်မားနေသလို ခံယူမိစေတယ်။rankတို့၊hierarchy တို့ကို နိရှေးက လက်ခံတယ်။အရင်းရှင်စနစ်ကို မကြိုက်ဘူး၊ဒီမိုကရေစီကို ဝေဖန်တယ်ဆိုတာက သာမန်လူတွေကို နေရာပေးလွန်းလို့။လက်ဝဲသစ်တွေဖြစ်တဲ့ ဒိလုဇ်တို့၊ဖူကိုးတို့၊ဘာတိုင်းယီတို့က နိရှေးဆီက ယူတာက အရင်းရှင်စနစ်ကို ဝေဖန်နည်း၊ကြီးစိုးဆဲစနစ်ကို ဝေဖန်နည်းကို ယူကြတယ်။
Tuttကတော့ နိရှေးအယူအဆတွေဟာ reactionaryဖြစ်တယ်လို့ဆိုတယ်။reactionayဆိုတာ ရှိရင်းစွဲအခြေအနေကို ပံ့ပိုးနေတာမျိုး။ဥပမာ-အရင်းရှင်စနစ်ကို ဝေဖန်တယ်။ဒါပေမယ့် အကြမ်းမဖက်ရဘူး၊ဘာညာစတာစတာတွေနဲ့ အတွေးမှာပြန်ချုပ်ထားတော့ စနစ်ကိုတည်မြဲဖို့အတွက် ပံ့ပိုးနေသလိုတောင် ဖြစ်စေတယ်။နိရှေးကို romantic anti-capitalism၊elitism လို့ ခေါ်
တယ်။ဥပမာ-အားလပ်ချိန်(otium/leisure)လိုအယူအဆမျိုးနဲ့ အတွေးအခေါ်ပျိုးထောင်ကျင့်ကြံရမှာမျိုးလို့ဆိုတာက eliteလူတန်းစားအတွက်ပဲ မို့လား။Tuttက otiumဟာ လးတချို့အတွက်ပဲ မဟုတ်ပဲ အားလုံးအတွက် ဖြစ်သင့်တယ်လို့ဆိုတယ်။နောက်ပီး ressentiment ဆိုတဲ့ မုန်းတီးစိတ်ဟာ slave moralityနဲ့တန်းတူပြောတာကို ဝေဖန်တယ်။ဥပမာ-ကျွေးကျွန်တွေ၊အလုပ်သမားတွေက သခင်၊အလုပ်ရှင်ကို မုန်း၊မနာလို၊အဆိုးမြင်ရင် သူတို့ဟာ ကျေးကျွန်စိတ်နေရှိလို့လို့ ယူဆတာမျိုး။စနစ်အရဖြစ်နေတဲ့ မမျှတမှုကိုတော့ ထည့်မပြောဘူး။ပီးတော့ နိရှေးရဲ့ “pathos of distance”ကိုလည်း ဝေဖန်တယ်။ကြီးမြတ်သူတို့နဲ့ အောက်ခြေလူတန်းစားကြား ညှိမရအောင် အဟကကြီးတယ်လို့ နိရှေးက ယူဆတာ။”မွဲမှာပေါ့ သောက်သုံးမှ မကျတာတို့၊ဖိနှိပ်ခံရမှာပေါ့ အာမှမခံရဲတာတို့”ဆိုသလိုပဲ။ကြီးမြတ်သူတွေဟာ ကိုယ်ပိုင်တန်ဖိုးကို ဖန်တီးတယ်။နိမ့်ကျသူလူအုပ်နဲ့ တလှမ်းတဝေးကနေ နေထိုင်ရှင်သန်တယ်။ကျင့်ဝတ်မှာလည်း တူတူပဲ။ကျေးကျွန်စိတ်နေစိတ်ထားနဲ့ လူအုပ်ကြီးကို ထိန်းကွပ်နေတဲ့ ဘာသာရေးဆိုတာမျိုးက ချမှတ်တဲ့ စံနှုန်းတွေနဲ့ ကြီးမြတ်သူတွေကို တိုင်းတာလို့ မရဘူး။
နိရှေးအယူအဆမှာ bonapartism နဲ့ hypernominalismဆိုပီး ရှိတယ်။အကြပ်အတည်းတွေကို ဖြေရှင်းပီး စုစည်းပေးမယ့် ခေါင်းဆောင်မျိုးကို မှန်းမျှော်တာမျိုး။ဒါပေမယ့် ရှိရင်းစွဲအနေအထားကိုပဲ ပိုအားကောင်းစေတာမျိုး။ဒါပေမယ့် ဖက်ဆစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်တွေလိုတော့ မဟုတ်ဘူး။ရုစဗဲ့တို့လို soft bonapartနဲ့ မူဆိုလီနီတို့လို hard bonapartထိအသီးသီးရှိတယ်။hypernomalismဆိုတာကတော့ တခုတည်းသောအမှန်တရားမရှိတဲ့သဘော။ပုဂ္ဂလသဘောကိုပဲ ဦးစားပေးတယ်။perspectivism ဆိုတဲ့ သဘော။ပကတိအမှန်တရားမရှိဘူးဆိုတာမျိုး။နိရှေးကို လက်ဝဲတွေဖတ်ကြ၊သုံးကြတာကို တားမြစ်ချင်တာတော့ မဟုတ်ဘူး။ဒီလုဇ်လို ဟန်နဲ့ နည်းနာလောက်ကိုပဲ ယူရင်က မဆိုးဘူး။ဒါပေမယ့် နိရှေးရဲ့စာတွေထဲက elitismနဲ့ anti-egalitarian အမြင်တွေကို မေ့ထားလို့လည်း မရဘူးလို့ဆိုချင်တာပဲဖြစ်တယ်။

[Kamiab Ghorbanpour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can now read like a parasite.

[Rick Burcik · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be fair, I hate books written about philosophers, but Daniel Tutt overcame my distaste. The first two thirds of "How to Read Like a Parasite" is well written and informative but the rest is simply dreadful. Mr. Tutt footnotes everything about Frederick Nietzsche but he leaves all of his groundless claims regarding capitalism without any citations to authority. And this fatal flaw greatly impairs his book.
For example, he repeatedly insists that capitalism creates inequality, but the fact is that inequality in the US has been converging (and not diverging as Tutt errantly asserts) for at least the last 100 years, and inequality has also been converging in those third world nations that have abandoned socialism and adopted market driven economies for more than 50 years.
Mr. Tutt also mistakenly believes that capitalists "oppress" labor, but wage rates are set by the labor market and not by the owners of capital. Thus, the reason for the recent suppression of wages has been the creation of one billion new workers in Red China after the death of Mao in 1976. And the shift of these peasants from their rural villages to the factories in China's growing cities has lifted these one billion souls out of abject poverty.
Indeed, according to the Bank of England from 1765 (with the onset of capitalism in Northcentral England) until the year 2000 the overall wellbeing of everyone in the West increased by 5,000%! And since the recent turn of the century this positive trend has only accelerated. Capitalism is making thing ever better for everyone.
Finally, Tutt dismisses envy (which is proscribed by the 10th Commandment) for the rise of socialism and/or communism but Helmut Schnoeck book "Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior" easily debunks much (most?) of Mr. Tutt's belief structure. Indeed, skip Tutt's book and read Schnoeck's instead.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writings of Nietzsche aren’t for everyone, yet at some time nearly everyone is drawn to some phrase or other by him, the most popular being: What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. Only the rare reader completes the philosopher’s following qualifier: The philosophy of a warrior. When the critic and translator, Walter Kaufman read Nietzsche, Daniel Tutt describes Kaufmann’s excision of Nietzsche’s political polemics as ‘hermeneutics of innocence’, a phrase taken from Domenico Losurdo’s thousand page Intellectual Biography of Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel, rendering Kaufmann’s defense of Nietzsche apolitical through a method of apologetics.

Tutt is not the first critic to burrow deep into the body of Nietzsche’s political philosophy, but unlike the majority of critics who have feasted on Nietzsche, he acknowledges the fascist, racist, parts of which there is much literature and approaches Nietzsche’s political work from a Marxist perspective for the purpose of finding what is useful for readers of Left who contend with Nietzsche’s writings.

Tutt’s historical-materialist reading grounds Nietzsche’s writings within the politics of Germany and France of the times Nietzsche lived. From there he examines critical works of other Nietzsche scholars, activists, and contemporary thinkers, including Jack London, novelist, Huey Newton, co-founder, with Bobby Seale, of the Black Panther Party, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida, who have, in some part, been influenced by the writings of Nietzsche. Tutt writes: ’Nietzsche’s politics do not confirm to any one conventional political conventional political position in our political constellation, his thought rather latches onto existing political and ideological tendencies and shapes them in distinct ways ... .’

The parasitic metaphor first entered Marxist vocabulary in an essay on Nietzsche by Leon Trotsky, entitled On the Philosophy of the Superman, written in 1900: “Nietzsche became the ideologue of a group living like a bird of prey at the expense of society, but under conditions more fortunate than those of the miserable lumpenproletariat: they are a parasitenproletariat of a higher caliber. The composition of this group in contemporary society is quite heterogeneous and fluid even given the extreme complexity and diversity of relationships within the bourgeois regime.”

I suspect only readers familiar with Marxist theory will find this text easy going, whether or not they will find Tutt’s argument convincing, I can’t say. For the curious readers who followed Kaufman, much depends on how deeply one wants to burrow into the writings of Nietzsche, without flinching, fully aware of the distasteful parts. After beginning this book, if you continue, be assured Tutt does burrow his way out to a conclusion worthy of thought, bringing with him several writers worth reading.

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro consiste en una lectura de Nietzsche desde el marxismo, además de utilizar a otros filósofos para desenmascararlo. Para Daniel Tutt, debe de considerarse a Nietzsche como un autor reaccionario y fundamentalmente anti socialista. Debe de ser leído con cuidado y aún con más cuidado utilizar sus conceptos, pues aunque suenen contestatarios (la revaloración de todos los valores, la voluntad del poder, etc.), su proyecto no es emancipatorio. Por el contrario, busca la creación de una sociedad de clases. Un pensamiento que ha embonado perfectamente con el capitalismo, por lo cual sostiene que la filosofía que domina actualmente en el neoliberalismo es la nietzschanea. Una que permea la cultura, diferentes estratos y discursos políticos.

A lo largo del libro Daniel Tutt va desmenuzando los conceptos filosóficos de Nietzsche (ej. el "resentimiento"), así como sus estrategias discursivas, para demostrar como detrás de su critica a la religión y a la cultura burguesa, se encuentra toda una estrategia antisocialista que lleva a la desmovilización política una vez adoptado su discurso. Uno que es ampliamente utilizado por la derecha como arma contra los movimientos de izquierda.

Tutt sostiene que no es posible separar los conceptos filosóficos de Nietzsche de sus implicaciones políticas, dada la forma en que están desarrollados. Razón por la cual no es asimilable en un proyecto emancipatorio de izquierda. Por ello, propone leerlo de manera parasitaria, es decir, leer con su distancia y precaución, y extraer las lecciones de cómo despliega su discurso contra la izquierda y aprender de ellos.

El libro esta dividido en ocho capítulos. No se requiere tener un conocimiento profundo de filosofía, pues usa lenguaje accesible. Recomendable para todos aquellos interesados en debates filosóficos y sus implicaciones políticas.

Una buena reseña crítica del libro se puede encontrar en Cosmonaut Mag https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/05/the-...

[E H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has had a very polarizing effect on online leftist philosophy, which is to be expected of a work of this grandeur. It’s but one in the line of materialist critiques of Nietzsche (of which I still hold nobody has surpassed Losurdo), taking into account the history of the time he wrote in to assess what the political thought behind much of his writings was about.
One of the key things this book does is undo a large amount of the euphemisation of Nietzsche’s work, points out that he did absolutely have a political Kernel in his work and that this kernel only ever came to be lost after the events of WW2 and how the Nazis appropriated his work. The motive was simple, don’t let people think the Nazis could’ve appropriated his work without being wrong doing so.
The key point of this book is to approach Nietzsche head on so we aren’t innocent spectators becoming slowly Nietzschean, but rather that we take his work and read it like parasites.

My main points of critique are that Tutt doesn’t do that great of a critique of Nietzsches work throughout the work, or rather that his critique is too Nietzschean for its own good.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, illuminating achievement especially for someone like me relatively new to the Marxist perspective and raised on Walter Kaufmann's politically decentered, politically neutered Nietzsche. I'm now encouraged to dive into Losurdo's Nietzsche Aristocratic Rebel, Lukács' Destruction of Reason, Waite's Nietzsche Corps/e. An important work based on historical material analysis and Tutt's trenchant insights that uncover the full throated aristocratic, anti-socialist, anti-universalist Nietzsche and subsequent Nietzschean project/virus. Yet with the important caveat not to cancel Nietzsche, to read "not out but through him" much like Jack London and Huey Newton did. I'm struggling to do it full justice. Let's just say an eye opening Must Read that should be on everyone's bookshelf or tablet for those interested in an extensive overview of Western thought and concerned with the future of the Left. Raise a glass to Daniel Tutt and tune into his podcast Emancipations.

[Jon Spiegler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only does Tutt argue persuasively that Marx is the way out of the inevitable impasses of left Nietzcheanism but his model of reading like a parasite carries over to any writer with valuable insights and reactionary politics. First book I finished this year.

[Livia Damaceno · Rating 5 out of 5]

tl:dr tem um ranço antirrevolucionário no nietzsche sim mas não precisa cancelar o homem.
só tratar igual um carrapato que te ensina coisas importantes sobre o capitalismo e ignorar as papagaiadas elitistas na obra dele.
(é melhor ficar só com o daddy marx mesmo)

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the argument is right (or at least fruitful), but it is very repetitive. It might have earned 5 stars if it was 1/2 the length.

[Ehsan Ghazavi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stopped reading after Tutt claimed that: "[Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism] must be read as a philosophy that aims to justify the persistence of the status quo, and that is reactive to any changing of the world." and how Nietzsche himself can be "understood as an aristocratic, bourgeois, layabout intellectual who fostered a political workshop for future intellectuals to use" and how he "he dealt with periodic physical and later mental illness" which just isn't true if you've read either Ecce Homo or Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
There's a lot of issues with Tutt's books and it seems like he's writing more about Nietzsche fanboys than Nietzsche himself.

Update:

So I decided to do give Tutt's book a second chance and it seems my initial negative reaction was perfectly warranted. There was one instance where he quotes Nietzsche from the Gay Science but the quote is from Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy, and that's where I put the book down again. There's tons of sections as well where Tutt is quoting or paraphrasing Nietzsche and it just doesn't read like Nietzsche at all.
My suspicions were seemingly confirmed as I found two very in-depth twitter threads where they both go through instances where Tutt doesn't cite properly at all. It seems like an issue with Tutt's over-reliance on secondary sources and trying to cover it up by citing primary sources instead? (not too sure about this but that is what it seems like to me) or Tutt just simply hasn't read Nietzsche and has only ready secondary sources on Nietzsche (Which seems more likely to me)
Here are the two twitter threads:
https://x.com/DevinGoure/status/17624...
https://x.com/RomulusNotNuma/status/1...

This book just isn't worth reading in my opinion, but that's just me.
If anyone is interested in a book on a Left-Nietzschean politics, I would 100% recommend Jonas Ceika's How to Philosophize With a Hammer and Sickle. I have also heard good things about Tracy Strong's Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration which I will be reading soon.

[Karen Carlson]

h/t john holbo https://twitter.com/jholbo1/status/17...
maybe' I need to do some work on nietzsche first