*UPDATE* I want to clarify that I in no way intended any offense to Graham, or anyone else for that matter. I find the sort of remarks to which this post responds (and Graham is certainly not alone in making them) to be objectionable and deserving of criticism, but I certainly am not attacking anyone. This is simply a statement of my skepticism regarding the out-of-hand dismissal of political positions with revolutionary aspirations. I hope this is taken as a good faith statement of my convictions and not some kind of personal attack.
*UPDATE 2* To abate any confusion, let me clarify at the outset. My argument here is absolutely not that skeptics of revolutionary politics are McCarthyists or guilty of any sort of ‘Red Scare’-like tactics. The argument is really the opposite, that this skeptical position was originally generated as a reaction-formation to the brutality of McCarthyism, that the moderate left’s hand was forced by the latter. They had to dissociate from any sort of radicalism or risk being attacked as well. This skepticism was an unfortunate but necessary defensive tactic that by now has outstayed its welcome. However, it is, again, in no way a form of McCarthyism, and is on the contrary a defense against it.
Some brief comments on K-punk’s “Dialogue with Graham Harman”:
There are several mentions of “a Left devoted to Revolution” as Harman puts it. Perhaps I’m showing my ignorance, but I admit I wasn’t aware of anyone actually ‘shouting “Revolution!” without context or explanation’, in a philosophical article or any other sort of mature discussion. Of course the caricature is commonplace, but I don’t know anyone over the age of 17 that makes such a heedless appeal to some “total and immediate eschatological transformation of society”. I’m beginning to think that the demonization of this largely imaginary position is about as detrimental as the behavior it ridicules. Who are these leftists so concerned with such a fantasmatic and unattainable ideal?
This sort of rhetorical criticism seems especially discomforting to me, in that it is likely derivative of mocking dismissals of Marxist and anarchist positions by the more mainstream Left. Of all the conversations of I’ve had with people of such persuasions (and I do count myself among the former), I’ve never encountered anyone that regarded such a quick-fix notion of revolution as anything more than a self-deprecating in-joke. I doubt there are many radical Leftists of an adult age that seriously advocate such nonsense.
It seems more likely that this condemnation is a remnant of the sort of anti-communist hysteria that unfortunately split the Left for so long, at least in the US (I’m not sure about the UK or anywhere else). Where there should be solidarity, for too long moderate Leftists were forced to distance themselves from their more radical comrades for fear of loosing any popular credibility. And resentment amongst the radical Left was an understandable side-effect.
Make no mistake, the red scares were long, bloody monstrosities, the closest the US has come to Stalinism thus far. They were so frightful they drew the condemnation of famed Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko. A truly shameful moment in American history. I get the feeling that the knee-jerk rejection of radical politics is a sort of inheritance from that history, looming skeptically over any vaguely revolutionary temptations.
Of course, radical Leftists, especially those of a more theoretical stripe, are generally more talk than walk, and Graham is certainly right to say they likely don’t expect a revolution to actually occur. Indeed, as Zizek has said repeatedly, the majority of Leftist academics would probably shy away from any such upheaval that deprived them of their comfortable social status (which is not to imply all academics are so comfortable, but only that such status is not easily relinquished). Yet this criticism misses the point.
One would have to be a madman to think that revolutionary transformation could occur out of nowhere, that suddenly everything would up and change. Nobody expects this to happen. Revolutionary politics has far less to do with this sort of pipe-dream, and far more with questions of what people want, why they want what they want, and how to get them to question these desires. Above all, revolutionary change is not a matter of instantaneous redemption, but of generating a critical desire in the people, a desire capable not only capable of questioning authority or the status quo (such desires are almost ubiquitous on the far Right), but of questioning itself. The people must become critical of their own desires, they must ask why they want what they want, rather than always criticizing from a position of certainty.
Revolutionary politics is concerned first and foremost with generating a revolutionary criticism amongst the people. Recently, it has not often been successful in the thinking through pragmatics of this task, certainly no more so than with greater strategic and theoretical concerns. Yet I doubt there are many people actually committed to revolutionary politics that think such considerations are unimportant. No one worth listening to advocates any sort of imposition of revolutionary change on unwilling masses. The question is one of provoking the masses to strive for such change themselves. The heart of this change is, above all, in the shift from a social order based upon certainty of its own desired ends (however broad and general these might be), to one based upon a foundational critical stance with regard to any such desire. This is not to say such criticism must remain negative and dismiss any positive content, but it cannot advocate any such content without retaining an essentially critical prerogative toward it. Again, the question of revolutionary politics has nothing to do with the miraculous solution to all social woes, and everything to do with the pragmatics of generating and maintaining an essentially self-critical social order.
Have you read Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? Substitute Bernstein/Schmidt with Fisher/Harman and you’ll get an adequate response. This is an old conversation, I think, and although it’s not wrong to be ignorant of historical precedents (just sad), it’s wrong to simplify to the point of idiocy, therefore I’m wholly behind your comments here.
I would only add that it is in fact unfortunate that no one is yelling “Revolution” – however childishly – because then at least it would draw some attention to the simple fact that we don’t mind revolutions at all, at long as they take place, say, in technology or fashion or philosophy, just not politically (although the present excitement about the events in Iran might be a peculiar example to consider) – the language of “revolution” is still very potent, much more potent than that of “reform”…
Okay a few points on this from Kpunk’s post but not having read what you have said here. A caveat: friends, I’ve had a couple of drinks, so forgive me if I am too polemic here Graham and Mark. The intention is to comment on what has been said and contribute to a necessary debate, not attack you as people.
1. Who is this speculative ‘left’ that claims only revolution, no reform? No real leftist activist really thinks that elements of reform are not a necessary stopgap – even in the bad old days of Marxist-Leninism this is what was thought – struggles over workers rights – piecemeal reform – were always part of it. No leftist to my knowledge in the last fifty years has thought the revolution was one moment of overturning the society, but a gradual process of change – Trots like to call it permanent revolution…
2. I agree about the academic parlour game. But I think practically, let us be honest, no person for Badiou’s metaphysics has ever not signed a petition or gone to a protest because the protest was organised by a Deleuzian. Though I am not a speculative realist, I would gladly attend a protest with them…
3. No leftist has ever been properly against technology – iPhones etc – but if that technology is about human flourishing or about human oppression…creativity, particularly creativity beyond the profit motive has always been a socialist goal.
4. To be honest to Graham, if he is reading leftist thought and finding it stale, this is perhaps because he is reading philosophy. Of course Badiou’s calls for revolution are contentless and vague – politics is not directly the subject of philosophy. However there are plenty of real suggestions around and about, generally not the West, about how we might move forward. At the end of the day philosophy never won political struggles on its own – as the neoliberals well understood – but organisation and soft and sometimes even hard power wins the fight.
I wonder if a clarification is needed here – What do you mean by “revolution” here, folks (Reid or slightly tipsy Alex)? I suppose maybe the term has been sufficiently mystified to a point that any discussion of it is indeed silly, but as far as I remember, revolution in the sense of Marxian tradition was always an actual taking power by force (by the proletariat) – are we talking about that sort of revolution or are we using the term as a metaphor for really really radical change?
By revolution, I basically mean fundamental transformation of society. This can involve the political order, but is more about a change in the nature of economic relationships. From a strictly Marxist perspective, “taking of power by force” would have to mean seizure of “economic power”, or control of the means of production, as this is more important than any political power (or rather, political power is only one important but not preeminent form of the means of production, in this case, social reproduction). And I don’t see any reason why this seizure must happen all at once, rather than piece by piece; I don’t think Marx obliges the former, nor does it even seem conceivably possible.
Of course, we all own some proportion of means of production. The question is not simply one of this or that group owning everything. The proletariat is, more than a specific group, the function by which ownership over means of production coincides with a fundamental transformation of ownership itself. They only appropriate these means as their private property while simultaneously abolishing private property.
Thanks for this clarification, Reid. I only asked because I see a tendency to use “revolution” as a kind of meta-concept that really nothing. I think my own understanding of the relationship between political and economic power is slightly different here – can you envision a seizure of economic power without a simultaneous seizure of political power or the other way around?
Things get dicey here, because one could mean many things by ‘political power’, etc. In the previous comment I was really referring to straight-up control of the state apparatus. But I do think there is a broader sense of the political that encompasses economic power as well…I’m not being very rigorous with definitions here. Certainly there is quite a range for transforming economic relations that would not require taking over the state, although the scale would probably have to be limited.
Your point is both banal, of course nobody is dancing their way toward divine violence, and at the same time ridiculous. You know why everyone is tired of hearing about revolution from academic departments? Because they say things like “revolutionary change is … a matter of … generating a critical desire in the people, a desire capable not only capable of questioning authority or the status quo … but of questioning itself.” No, it is not. This just allows the properly-educated to feel themselves carriers of the revolution, if only a small piece of it, their own constant questioning.
Now, I think Harman’s point is equally banal, but certainly less popular. Revolution is simply a magical catchphrase to defer political engagement, and an extreme given to quality simply because of its radicalism.
Bluntly, revolutions are necessarily spontaneous events. Thirty good years were wasted by Academics who wanted to understand the formula of 1968, to finally figure out the keys to the event. It is beyond analysis, which is why it is valuable in the first place. If, instead of narcissistically bleating about the revolution and its value, “revolutionaries” worked on a long-term strategic political plan, with goals and an understanding of how your proposed actions will find their reactive engagements, the results would be far more interesting and valuable than the so-far meaningless efforts to combat the existing economic and political orders.
“No, it is not. This just allows the properly-educated to feel themselves carriers of the revolution, if only a small piece of it, their own constant questioning.”
I’m not sure I get your point, could you clarify? What specifically is problematic about this?
“Bluntly, revolutions are necessarily spontaneous events…”
Your formulation is equally as academic as mine. I’m not sure why mine is more of pat-on-the-back.
On the first point, the problem is the pretense. There is nothing revolutionary about the self-satisfied master critique. To mistake critique for revolutionary spirit is necessary only to spur academics who desperately desire the label “revolutionary”, but this is only helpful insofar as academic theory is needed for revolution itself (which is to say very little, if at all, and almost never from those who imagine themselves revolutionaries.)
Now my formula is certainly academic. A lot of work went into figuring out exactly how meaningless academics were to the shifts in politics that they fantasize about. But this claim is also far more limited, suggesting that one recognize the boundaries within which one is effective instead of trying to think to an other side which would be produced only by forces far outside any intellectual current.
Let me try to be more conversation and pose my point in three questions. First, are you really unaware of the strain in contemporary left academia that Harman is discussing, those who see the measure of radicalism as a measure of quality, without expressing how the events as they might occur have value?
Second, why is revolution so binary, as to be either the vision of the madman, “that revolutionary transformation could occur out of nowhere, that suddenly everything would up and change,” or the avande-gardist ideal that “revolutionary politics is concerned first and foremost with generating a revolutionary criticism amongst the people”? Why choose the second? Why not take the appearance of revolutions, that they often begin as small reforms, minor quakes and spontaneous insurrections, seriously?
Third, there appears to be a serious weakness within theory, a chasm between its rigor and its effectiveness in producing political change, despite the apparent prevalence of your opinion. How do you explain this?
I think you misunderstand what I mean by critique. I’m not talking about ‘academic’ ‘master critique’. I’m talking about thinking critically about your situation and what you want to become of it. There’s nothing academic about this, and moreover, I don’t think revolutionary action is intelligible without it.
I also find your hostility toward academics strange. If academics really are not necessary for revolutionary movements, then why bother wasting time criticizing their delusions?
I think theory is absolutely essential for meaningful political change, but posing this in terms of an academic avant-garde is mistaken. The gap between academic theory and non-academic practice is highly artificial, and its dismantling should be a principle task of politically minded intellectuals. Theory is not simply an academic exercise, it is pervasive. Everyone makes sense of their world and projects their desires for that world in terms of basic theoretical coordinates, however unreflected these might be.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to grant an undue authority to academics as especially apt in reflecting their own theoretical worldviews. The kind of theory I’m talking about is not the kind we think about or consciously employ. Rather it is made up of those ideas that are operative in practice, regardless of what we think about them. In this regard, academic theorists are just as likely to poorly reflect their own practically-operative theories as anyone, no matter how politically-minded their work is. To really criticize one’s own theoretical worldview, one cannot simply think about it, one has to change the practices constitutive of one’s existence, including in the case of the academic, the practices of thinking, writing, debate, publishing, discourse, university structure, etc.
I don’t grant any special autonomy or authority to academics. But I do think theory is essential, and that really radical theoretical work is only possible through the dismantling of practices by which ‘theory’ is consigned to the academic ivory tower and reduced to a matter of contemplation.
As for your three questions:
First, I’m aware, yes, but I think Harman’s account is overly shallow. People may make disingenuous references to revolution or radical change, in that they are not at the same time radically changing their own position within the relations of production, but it is not these references themselves that prevents political potency. Their hearts are in the right place, and I think it would be better to concern oneself with shifting this discourse about revolution into a concern with the revolutionization of the discourse and the means of its production.
I do, moreover, see radicalism as a measure of quality, but not in this childish way of ‘the degree to which one talks about revolution’. I’d measure radicalism by the extent to which one transforms the means and practices of intellectual production, dismantling the divide between ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’, etc.
Second, I don’t think the first sense is coherent. No revolution happens all at once. They require ripe conditions. And you misinterpret me if you think I’m advocating avant-gardism. Avant-gardism wouldn’t worry about generating such a criticism amongst the people, because the party would carry out that function for them. My point is the opposite, that people must grow critical themselves, not have this criticism imposed upon them.
I think I’ve already addressed your third point throughout.
Great post Reid, effective critique of a position which doesn’t degenerate into a personal attack. Look forward to engaging with you in a dialogue about the question of ‘what people want, why they want what they want, and how to get them to question these desires’, which is part of my research these days: the problem of ‘the kindgdom of ends’, and that unalienated work freed from physical compulsion, or even ‘actual material production’, which motivates the pursuit of communism in Marx’s philosophy. Highly problematic formulations, and yet very difficult to improve upon!
Thanks for the kind words. These are all big concerns for me as well, so I’d love to discuss them!
It is true that there was something of the straw man about figures crying for revolution in Mark/Graham’s exchange. But I think this decrying of revolution stems not from a reformist response to McCarthyite terror, but the more familiar strain of leftist in-fighting (or for Graham an essential dis-inclination towards revolutionary politics full stop.)
Indeed it is this self-critical position which is the weakness of the left- the (neo-lib) right establishes itself in the absence of coherency with grotesque mish-mash assemblages propelling themselves forward on crippled callipered legs, powered forward by the very contradictions they disseminate… and why your terminology of revolutionary political consciousness in critical terms is not as straightforward as it might appear. As an end, I agree, but as the means to that end? Why not experimentality? But both are problematic- what would it take to inculcate in the masses a critical-experimental libido? [Guattari seems an essential reference point here]
…an abstract machine as effective as capital is what is needed.
You might be right about the first point, but I wonder to what degree this in-fighting was aggravated by, if not having originated with, the red scares. Again, I can only speak about the US, but to my knowledge the labor movement before the red scares, while by no means without in-fighting, was far more likely to host cooperation and solidarity between socialists, communists, anarchists, and more mainstream leftists.
By criticism, I should clarify that I don’t mean so much criticism in theory, but in practice – questioning and changing the way one acts, not only the way one thinks. Of course, this latter thought is only a kind of superficial, conscious thought, not necessarily getting down to the unconscious ‘thought’ operative in practice. This is what I’m trying to get at with ‘criticality’ and also ‘experimentality’.
I agree with your last point, but what would this abstract-machine be?
…an abstract machine as effective as capital is what is needed.
How so? Can’t we just wait for capital’s self-destruction to realize itself?
The problem with this is that we are so bound up with capital that its self-destruction would almost certainly be our own as well.
So when Marx talks about “contradictions of capitalism” that would inevitably lead to its demise, he’s possibly talking – in a way – about our collective suicide? I think the position that the end of capitalism is the end of the world (as we know) it is rather ambiguous – if it is the end of the world, then nothing beyond capitalism is possible, if it is the end of the world only as we know it then it might not be so bad after all and the driving idea is the basic “another world is possible” that is in one sense or another a fundamental sentiment for any meaningful political change, it seems…
In other words, what’s your take on this classical Marxist argument of the inevitability of capitalism’s failure due to its internal contradictions? Is it still valid?
The point isn’t that the end of capitalism is the end of the world, but that letting capitalism self-destruct without actively shaping something new from it could lead to the disintegration of social order. Not very bold of an argument considering how often this happens in the global South. The demise is inevitable, but whether that leads to catastrophe or communism will depend on how active the proletariat is in this demise. An early line in the Manifesto is exemplary:
“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
Certainly, no argument here, I suppose I must have read you differently – in some sense, I often hear things like “I don’t see an alternative to capitalism” as a kind of an argument which is somewhat annoying, because it mostly comes from people for whom capitalism “works” so I get a bit worked up (well, more than usual) because certainly it is true that “capitalism works” (yay, I have an iPod and a job) and that its end would be a catastrophe for many, but it’s also true that in many more cases capitalism does not work and a simple imaginative exercise of thinking about the alternatives (yes, academic, if we want to label it, but it doesn’t have to be, it’s just non-academics don’t have as much time on their hands as academics) would be better than nothing…
hi Reid,
I think K-Punk hits a nail square in the jaw saying that academic commentators on revolution often proceed
“without really thinking that there is anything much more than an academic parlour game at stake. Because the discussions are detached from credible, determinate proposals, they are part of the end of history rather than an alternative to it. As Alex Williams has rightly argued, the differences between, say, Deleuze and Badiou mean a lot in continental philosophy, but they don’t have any purchase politically in the lack of any agents corresponding to these positions”
I have a love/hate relationship with reading stuff like that. I find it both deeply annoying and deeply entertaining when academics talk about concern with revolution as primarily something academics are concerned with, ie, when it happens without any engagement with the actually existing alphabet soup of would-be revolutionary left organizations.
I do think Harman has a point – or could be understood as making this point, not sure it was his intent – in that radicalness and utility to radical movements does not necessarily mean something is intellectually/philosophically important, and is an insufficient way to judge scholarship. Just as ‘good scholarship’ or ‘philosophically interesting’ is a limited criterion politically. I find Harman’s suggestion of re-imagining revolution kind of annoying in this context, though, ditto for K-punk’s point about reform vs revolution. I mean, sure, fair enough, but there’s both a very long history of discussion on these matters and a large set of current conversations on these matters today in various corners of the actually existing left. K-punk and Harman have as much right as anyone else to their views, but I don’t see why their thoughts on those questions will be of any more use than anyone else’s; it seems to me that it’s a reasonable hypothesis to say that the more familiar one is with (which is not to say, more faithful to or more bound by) actually existing past and present discussions of these themes (and I’d say that membership and participation in groups counts as a form of familiarity), then the more likely one is to have something insightful to say on those questions.
More from me later, I have to run just now.
take care,
Nate
I agree with your point about familiarity with tradition.
As for the first point, about academic discourse on revolution, I agree. I think the problem is primarily that academics are concerned more with thinking or talking about these concepts, and not with revolutionizing their own social position and the means of the production of this discourse. I think we err as soon as we separate a concept of revolution from a revolutionization of the means by which that concept is produced and publicized. That said, I don’t think we should treat academic discourse on revolution as itself what is wrong with left intellectuals. Their hearts are in the right place, only their heads are not. Or rather, their heads are in the right place, only their hands are not.
I just want to add real quick – I hadn’t read the comments yet, and have only now read Mikhail’s first. I want to quibble a bit with Mikhail, in that I do think it’s “wrong to be ignorant of historical precedents” if one is going to make big claims. I mean, let’s say I said “let’s rethink Dasein” or “let’s question the binary between superego and id” or something. If I’m reading some use of the term and I say “I take the term used here to mean X and I have the following problem with it, I’d prefer to understand the term this other way” then that’s great. Lots of us do something like this at least some of the time in reading stuff. But that’s not enough to say anyone else should adopt the same understanding (ie, people are welcome to their own idiosyncratic understandings and uses of terms and ideas and there’s something quite salutary in developing them, but that doesn’t mean they have any relevance other than being useful in one person’s thought process). If said that stuff but I didn’t know the precedents w/r/t prior uses of those terms, how would I know
if I’m actually rethinking or if I’m just reinventing an already invented wheel? or if I even understand the ideas as they actually exist in contexts?
Nate – I don’t’ disagree, I suppose in the context of my remark I wanted to point out that the conversation about “reform vs. revolution” has a rather rich history (my reference to Luxemburg’s book is just one example, but of course, as you know, it was a complex and divisive discussion), but I don’t think it’s fair for me to necessarily accuse others of being horribly uninformed if they don’t know about this. Of course, if we are talking about something like the problem of whether capitalism can be defeated through a series of reforms or if it can only be defeated through a revolution, it would be great if people knew that this question was hotly debated, but I don’t think that it’s necessarily wrong that people might not know about it as it is becoming more and more obscure. Maybe it’s time to revisit instead of reinventing the wheel? Here, I’m in agreement – take his awesome quote from Luxemburg that neatly captures some of the issues:
“Fourier’s scheme of changing, by means of a system of phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a fantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less fantastic.”
hi Mikhail,
We’re in heated agreement. I’ve no problem with a sort of … lowercase rethink sans context, along the lines of “this doesn’t work for me as presented” or, as I suspect is the case here, “this doesn’t work for me as I assume others think of it”, and so saying “therefore I want to think of it differently.” Totally fine. Just not something anyone else has to care about – a sort of idiolectical revision, if you will, as opposed to revision in a shared vocabulary, a change in how *one* thinks a term vs an uppercase Change in how *we* think a term, or ought to think a term. The former without context or history is no problem at all. (Private wheel-reinvention is well and good.) Anything approaching the latter, however without context and history and revisiting, is infuriating, and rarely (if ever) as worthwhile as it feels while doing it.
take care,
Nate
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The distinction between desiring the world to just “up and change,” and implanting a “critical desire in the people” for radical alterity, is a clear case of the false either-or. This matter of instantaneity versus the ‘long view’ has been with the Left far longer than the more recent fears which have indeed taken root since McCarthyism–I agree with you when you say they continue to structure some (particularly reformist) thought and action. Instead the point of view from below in any capitalist system–and this remains true in the age of globalism–is that the instantaneous assumptions of an aggregate mass of angry, mobilized people is the only way to get to a position where a more critical ‘theory,’ exactly the kind of living theory you espouse as a sole solution, would emerge. This generating of ‘criticism’ amongst the people, divorced from the impatience (and yes sometimes even the violence) of the ‘instantaneous’ view, is precisely an impossibility. It is pleasant sounding, but it’s bullshit, and it just results in another round of impotent theorizing.
Take as an example the riots in immigrant communities in the Paris suburbs, which spilled over into the city. The spectacle of a lot of pathetic old white ‘critics’ on TV–the human refuse leftover from ’68–trying to speak for these people, was funny in a bitter, laugh-up-the-sleeve kind of way. What we should have seen was a series of spokespeople emerging from these communities. It it was not as if they did not exist–there were recognized leaders from the beginning. However, these were exactly the folks trivialized by both Sarkozy and the academic ‘Left’ as reactionaries and zealots, or made to stand on some hierarchy of deference to the ridiculous pieties of the academics, who went off and wrote lots of nice books about the events.
But let’s stay focused on the confrontation. In that moment, the Left and Sarkozy worked in perfect communion, even as they provided the false argument which prevented the real actors from emerging into general public view. Later, when the smoke of burning cars (most of them ugly models anyway) had cleared, a few so called leaders were allowed on TV. But these were never the people that those followers of the ‘instantaneous’ wanted. And here–right here, and not later on, and not through any gradual process at all–is where the absorption begins…
So…It must be both: One must accept the rule of the mob, as the impulse of the instantaneous dictates, and follow it to the letter IN THEORY AS WELL AS ACTION. Or one must give up all hope of ever achieving anything. I am fed up with compromises.
By the way, what kind of car do you drive? And where is it parked?
TOG
I absolutely agree with everything you say, and never meant to imply this separation should be maintained. Indeed, if this was unclear, I hope my response to commenters above clarifies that.
I don’t have a car at the moment, why do you ask?
“I don’t have a car…” Very funny. Really. Your position is much clearer to me now–I tend to comment to the post and read the thread later. But I notice you talk about academics’ hearts being in the right place even if their heads are not. True. What I would add is that it doesn’t really matter. This whole idea of a revolution emerging from the academy has been with us for decades now and it hasn’t happened, and it hasn’t happened, and….
It reminds me of the joke Debord made once, when he was asked if he was serious about his proposition that revolution could only emerge out of a ‘chaos of the mind’– at least that’s how it would appear as far as the ruling class was concerned (including intellectuals, academics, pundits, etc). Reportedly he responded to the question by saying, “Fuck a pineapple and find out.” What a wonderful nonesuch way of representing the real level of social chaos that would have to come about to give birth to a revolution. Of course then there is Zizek’s version–making the capitalist’s balls fall off while he’s not looking and so on, subtlety in the service of radicality. All in all, I am more on the side of Debord…and the car-torchers.
TOG
I really don’t have a car. I walk everywhere.
Yes, I don’t either. I was not being haute. I really did think it was a funny thing to say in that context. Obviously I was not really planning on setting your not-car on fire.
For what it’s worth – and I think I’ll find few in agreement here (thanks Reid for another thought-provoking thread, I’ll get back to you on brassier’s Laruelle one day!) – I have often personally experienced a naive Left that demand revolution and shun all alternatives. They’re all over squats and bars in East London, East Rome, dare I say East Paris, and East Berlin (incidentally, working class quarters are generally ‘East’ in European cities as the wind blows from West to East and having the industrial quarter on the East of the city means that chimney smoke – not such a concern now – blows away from the affluent homes). They’re also all over academic departments. Sometimes, admittedly, they characterise themselves as Anarchist and not Left, but it is safe to say that in the broad coalition of anti-capitalist forces there are an awful lot of unrealisitic and unhelpful methods and demands employed. If this is what Graham was getting at I can quite agree.
Further, I really wonder why we even approach these staid terms, ‘Left’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Capitalism’, etc, at all? These terms are at such a remove from the public mood in much of Europe – even in this huge recession – as to make them virtually useless in terms of finding allies. Admittedly the public may have been indoctrinated, but as new media forms offer innumerable opportunities for alternative minded people to present their case, would it not make sense to field Leftist ideals, which are pretty basic human wants on the whole, in different terms? Otherwise ‘Left’ will become just a byword for tactical ineptitude.
Finally I think that the notion that it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to Capitalism arises not just because the world IS capitalist but because the world houses capitalism. One might equally say it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to endless philosophising. In any case it would be a little arse about face to change philosophy by changing the world as, equally, it might be that a few tweaks to capitalism – the mechanisms that underlay it – are sufficient, rather than a wholesale countering of it on all fronts, i.e. Socialist, Anarchist, or similar, revolution.
On this point I see a constant ideological sticking point among Leftists, who want all or nothing. I speak here for the UK and Italy. I cannot speak for the US. But in any case the demands of US Leftists are more basic and fundamental – healthcare reform being one example – as a result of the US being so far Right.
Anyhow, this is what disheartens me about the Left – and I used to count myself among the Left, and would still, bar the fact that its rhetoric is faded – and I look forward to reading Mark Fisher’s book as I understand that it takes a more sober approach than many others.
Finally, finally, the Left could certainly do with more philosphical discussion, even if only to get them thinking laterally. So long as that doesn’t involve a rehashing of nostalgic drivel around 1968 it could be a good thing!
Clearly, you’ve outdone even the Master himself in making nonsensical generalizing statements about “revolution” and “the left” because you personally had to listen to some “leftist” at a bar. There are so many weak points in your little tirade, it’s hard to decide where to begin – how about actually reading Reid’s post instead of giving it shallow praise and then going on to say the exact opposite? I’m sure your personal experience of disappointment with “the left” is very significant, but it doesn’t mean that it is exemplary and that you can make such sweeping conclusions based on it. I’m sure “the left” is very attuned to what you have to say and will gladly follow your advice here – maybe you should start a column of advices on your blog just for that very purpose? I’ll read it.
I wonder if there aren’t moments–including the present one as represented by Berlusconi in Italy, and the growing ‘grumbling class’ in America–when the reactionary turning of working people toward the Right represents something positive, or at least historically necessary for survival? This provides a hard shell, temporarily, for this class to persist, when its very existence is threatened. Global capital really wants to eliminate the working class in particular, and it will even use the Left to do so, these old distinctions matter little to its project. And those who are so quick to believe that these people are stupid, that they’re just being herded into pens made specially for this purpose, that they’re being entirely fooled, may just underestimate their ability to control such grotesque political phenomena, and turn it to their account. There will be more many more Berlusconis and Palins at this rate. Unfortunate.
TOG
Thanks theothergardner, but I’m not advocating a move to the Right just a different set of tools for the Left. But I loathe to say ‘Left’, as that would be sticking with the old language rhetoric from the offset. Why does everyone find that hard to stomach?
The Right always manages to shift pepsectives, dogma and language, so why can’t the Left learn to adapt, and not by selling their principles off wholesale, New Labour style?
I live in Berlusconi’s Italy. It is used as a constant example of what’s wrong with the Right. Yet it’s no more defunct though than Brown’s Britain, which I regularly return to (where’s my country?). Both cases are unfortunate instances of the Right capitalising on the Left’s failure to sell their message to the public.
Why does the simple message of benevolence always go awry? Because it got caught in the quagmire of nationalising politics and state control, facets that were demonised by the Right wing press, and now no one wants to listen. Meanwhile Leftist governments presided over brutalistic state machinery while their populations starved. Another tact?
I agree on the left’s failure to adapt, in certain situations, but my point was not to advocate for a turn to the Right. On the contrary, I regard as horrible farce the “ugly populism” of Berslusconi and Palin (“What’s next in America? Trump for Prez?” real headline in a English-speaking Dutch paper). But I think the idea that runs behind it–even behind your use of these terms–is that the working people who gravitate there are being fooled somehow. My appeal was to an understanding that are subterranean levels to grand tectonic political shifts (and historical diversions, which capitalism is very good at), but also to smaller but not exactly national shifts as well, since they depend on changes in capital itself. In this sense, global capital may very well represent more than just a ‘stretching’ of capitalistic forms over a broader surface or territory. Its elasticity may not be the main thing in question here. Rather it should be seen in light of more local, and more successful models of resistance–hardly revolutionary, but which nevertheless represent a real threat in the imaginary of capital. Capitalism, in this scenario, had to ‘go global’ in order to continue to enact its own ‘perfect mythology,’ even in the face of massive failure, economic catastrophe, and other events that normally would have been reabsorbed into the normative level of its own self-perception, but the effects of which were beginnning to break through in the presence of this growing resistance, rioting, police actions, on a scale that could no longer be re-mythologized under the labels of order, especially because, and this is very important, the actors were racially and culturally outsiders to its main sense of order. So, the anti-immigrant stance of Berlusconi and Sarkozy and others is not just a response, but constitutive of a new order of capital, one where (white) working people can fantasize about their better work ethic, stronger historical ties to the “land,” etc. This is as much to say that the global-capital split of North and South has finally come home to rich countries, and is now represented by an internal presence. Capital therefore needs more than a new political dodge, it needs a new face, voice, a whole new body politic. The reactionary petit-bourgeoisie will no longer do, their numbers have dwindled anyway and their culture is complicated (to capital, compromised) by other influences. Instead a whole new sub-case of the working class is being brought into being, the service industry prole perhaps.
Here is my point: This may not be such a bad thing. As with every major mutation in the history of capital, it cannot leave the stain of exploitation behind. In fact it continues to carry the seeds of its own destruction within it. By choosing the right this new sub-group may not be saying exactly what the leaders, or the denunciatory critics on the left, think they’re saying. The situation is more complex, and really once again working people are far more aware of their situation than they’re being given credit for. In such a toxic, rapid, leveling expansion of capital in every direction, the most vulnerable people (at least one group of them) is reaching out for a temporary means of shelter. Notice how this often houses thoughts, feelings, and political formations that the right party cannot account for and does not approve. The traditional leftist response would be to bemoan the fact that the working class is being divided against itself, yet again, and would suggest that the whole point should be to get these two groups–immigrants and poor white workers–to join together in solidarity against their oppressor. But I think that is beside the point. The interests of these two groups is really quite different. It may even turn out, as it often does once the first generation of immigrants gain more territory (more power) of their own, that they turn out to be the really conservative, reactionary element. I think it is unclear.
This is not just another, more hyperbolic replay of ‘racism’ either since the immigrant populations in Europe, and increasingly in America, are not as internalized minorities, but as outsiders who come exactly from those zones of capital that are supposed to be invisible and unknowable. So this really challenges and begins to collapse not only the old obscurities of racism–African as the ‘dark continent,’ Asia as a series of ‘threats’ and ‘deceptions’–it turns instead to an outright construction of ‘whiteness.’ This is not a reversion to older, more virulent forms of racism either, since it comes along with the soft, politically correct language of tolerance and integration. ‘We want these people to become Italians,’ Berlusconi is saying, and his followers too. They should speak the national language (even though it too is a relatively recent invention), and be absorbed. But everyone knows there is no such intention.
By the way, excuse my grammar. Sometimes I speak English, sometimes not.
I find these comments interesting. And I think you touch upon the complexity of the situation in Italy. I’ve been here two years and am yet to fully understand the politics, especially re; ethnicity. The truly confusing, or ‘novel’, aspect for me is that the Italians are not be ‘nature’ (forgive this gross simplification, but if there is such a thing as an acceptable stereotype I think this would be a safe one) aggressive or discriminating people. One wonders what it is they seek to protect when occasional and deeply worrying racist acts break through the surface of the food-sharing, wife-swapping, hospitality caricature of Italians that many are used to seeing ( as portrayed in films, US and Italian, on tv, f.e. Eurotrash, as was, and in papers keen to follow the PM’s shenanigans). I have been put in the houses of a stranger who has insisted I take their bed, whilst they sleep on the sofa (I return to the UK where friends give me the floor, and no blanket!)… and this was not in the deepest South, where one is told to expect such ‘quaintness’ but in a northern city (and many other similar examples abound).
Now this is getting anecdotal again… forgive me, but to continue in this vein a while, I have also been subject to humiliating discrimination, not when in some supermarkets and grocers I am forced to leave my rucksack by the door, trusting that no one will steal it, whilst many (most) Italians walk freely with their bags
through the same store (and this is something foreign friends have also experienced. I might add this has never happened in a Bangladeshi owned shop). What is deeply disturbing about this is that my Englishness, if recognised, often brings gushing attempts to differentiate me from other foreigners (Bangladeshis, Romanians, etc. I’m ‘one of the alright ones’. Which of course is no consolation for me.
Yes, Italy has a peculiar and worrying take on race and ethnicity.
I will say though, anecdotes aside, that I do not see this as a rightist trend as such, it lacks any sense of a ‘Liberal’ motive. I think the problem is that Italy has not yet Liberalised; instead of having its Liberal moment ala Thatcher, Blair, Sarkozy, etc, it has got this awful pasctihe politics happening, as Berlusconi throws together policies to keep himself in power. One policy that is working seeks to stoke the fears of the Italian public re; race.
NOW, the public, and this is where I think one can equate their good (almost Walton-esque)sense of simple moral values with their baffling prejudices, on the other hand seem to sense globalist invasion (and by that
I mean a Liberal invasion) and fear its negative effects, and thus reject johnny foreigner – the migrant worker- for the economic changes that he signals. As always, Italy’s right has a leftist seed threatening to grow inside (whereas its Left are impeccably behaved, rejecting Liberalism and racism, but failing to propose a sensible alternative for many voters tired of the economic stagnation of the past.
Well, clearly this is a mess, but one can sympathise perhaps, without for a moment condoning racism, with the Italy’s fear of becoming some global ‘Italia’ theme park-come-food processing plant.
That’s my analysis, though I am not sure it differs greatly from yours. Indeed, the immigrant population, in their own interest, if they ever get a footing would probably benefit from supporting Liberalism here. Myself, I am torn. English politics was so much easier (though just as corrupt)…
We agree on many points; however, I do see racism in Italy being deployed as a rightist program with ‘liberal’ sounds attached, and this is exactly the content of Berlusconi’s ‘pastiche,’ which he pastes together with the application of law and order tactics.
Look at the proposals to use the army to patrol public areas, the increasing presence of local militias in the countryside–this would be eerily reminiscent of the early days of the Fascisti, if it weren’t for the smiley-face logo of corporate politics placed over all of it. Really what corporatism wants is neither a fascist (cancerous) state, nor a “Liberal moment.” Not anymore. As a global phenomena, corporatism, the political ideal of global capital, now simply wants to rule over those who see marketing as their new god. Racism is a means to this horrifying end—the corporation, made corporeal, becomes a person, which becomes an essence, which then becomes a god, a ruler in perpetuity.
In this sense Berlusconi’s coterie, and other members of the financial-agent class, see themselves more as agents of some ‘higher power.’ If they have to take over the state, for a while, in order to accomplish Its aims, so be it. But eventually everything will come clear, we will reach a new plateau, and people will submit without any need for all this fuss (read proto-fascist measures, ‘subtle’ racist rhetoric, growing pressure for internment camps etc.).
This is the new narrative emerging with Berlusconi, and in a slightly different way, but with the same effect, with Palin in America. This is neither the old racist provincialism nor some kind of new globalist outlook (in fact capitalism needs nationalism, badly, to provide coordinates for its own re-territorializations). What seems to follow this, if there is not a radical rupture, is unclear. Perhaps the idea of state organization through internalized ‘zones’ is not so farfetched. The future of this type of politic, taken to its horizon, seems to be something like the movie ‘Children of Men,’ not in content but in mise en scene, where people are herded from one security checkpoint to another, but all the while under the watchful eye of advertising.
Interesting points again!
Though I would be suprised if much of this were precisely calculated.
Would you agree that Capitalism is a ‘runaway train’? Race hatred on the other hand has much longer standing, forgotten origins and it has been demsontrated that it can be bought under the thumb of Capital, even to a large extent being tempered through education… one wonders how the UK economy and society would fare if anti-racist multi-culturalist education (it is virtually a doctrine in schools)had not been succesful.
I am sure in terms of being a Liberal State Italy would benefit from the same.
Also this is fascinating, but we are hijacking Reid’s thread a bit here. I’d be interested in continuing the conversation though. I’m on logicalregression@gmail.com.
Maybe we can take this to another blog space, not least as this has enabled me to finally think a means of talking about Italian politics, wheeas before I found it tricky.
I’ve already responded to your first point, about the ‘naive’ invocations of revolution in your experience, but I’ll summarize here: I think such shallow advocacy is a response to the shallow criticism I discuss in the OP. Its simply the other side of the coin. Now in my experience, such advocacy is not dominant – its marginal at best. But I don’t mean to generalize from my experience. If they really are the majority, they ought to be ignored, because they are doing as much damage to the concepts in question as those that oppose them.
Now as for your point about leftist rhetoric, it may sound reprehensible to some, but in a sort of Hegelian vein I’m tempted to say that if these concepts have fallen out of fashion, then so much the worse for the people. I’d rather keep the concepts and be done with the people that have no use for them. Of course, I only mean that half-seriously, but you get my point: there is a real and vital core to these concepts that must not be lost. Many people have suffered and died so that we could inherit them, and this legacy is far more important than whatever might be pragmatically expedient at the moment. Moreover, the vitality of the notion of revolution lies precisely in its self-critical capacity, and anyone who denies this needs to read or reread Marx. Anyway, I don’t really see why we need different terms if the concepts will remain the same at heart…it seems that would only obscure them. If the words ring hollow, then its because of the poverty of mainstream discourse, and the latter will not be alleviated by our capitulating to it. Maybe we need some good old fashioned propaganda!
Well I think the Left need different terms AND policies, whilst maintaining the same intended ends.
As for people suffering and dying for Leftist ideals, many of them died as a result of Leftist ideals being mis-managed.
Some people died fighting Fascism, but either in suppot of Empire, Stalinism, or US Capitalism (and boy did they Capitalise!).
But then we get into rhetoric I guess, so to the crux of what you’re saying here:
‘Moreover, the vitality of the notion of revolution lies precisely in its self-critical capacity, and anyone who denies this needs to read or reread Marx.’
I agree to an extent, if that self critical capacity has a useful physical real-world correlate, and that would basically be dialectical materialism. However, where that self critical capacity can neither jettison the terms or the policies, politically speaking, that have failed for a century almost, it seems that the Hegelian-Marxist aspect you like so much, becomes simply a dialectical game of theories with no potent offering for the world outside of that game.
I don’t want to labour my point any more here (I already might have,I know). But I do just really want people to come round to the notion of a just politics and philosophy that moves on from worn out Leftism.
Oh, so I’ve outdone Harman – who puts up wth enough rubbish on these threads – whilst you just seem to be trying to outdo your little huddle, as regards obnoxious responses to blog thread entries.
But that won’t dishearten me as you vitriol is by now impotent given that it aims itself at just about anything that doesn’t fit the usual Leftist-Kantian academic criteria. You sad bully.
I did read Reid’s entry, and I’m glad he posted it as it gives oportunity to clear the air.
I’ve listened to Leftists in all kinds of places. I rarely walk into bars and never talk about politics when I’m in one. Forgive my rhetoric, are we all supposed to write like automoton philosophy robots? You rarely do!
Anyhow, I, in my extensive experience can quite definitely say that Reid’s characterisation of the Left here, –
‘I’ve never encountered anyone that regarded such a quick-fix notion of revolution as anything more than a self-deprecating in-joke. I doubt there are many radical Leftists of an adult age that seriously advocate such nonsense,’ is wrong.
And whilst he may never have encountered such a Left, and he says ‘never’… a quite sweeping statement… I have frequently met such people on the Leftist UK scene. Are you based in the UK? Do you know the people I have been talking to? These people are activists, Leftists, and they want revolution, like they want the Queen lynched, the banks sacked and philosphers pilloried. And and I have frequently disagreed with their narrow politics. Those that aren’t that extreme still often live in cloud cuckoo land, appealing to the rhetoric of a bygone age.
Reid states that he is principally referring to US Leftists, which I can imagine are another breed. In fact their politics are really quite different, because their situation is different..
I have, as I guess you may know, hence your sarcasm, mentioned my dissillusionment with the Left on my blog, and may continue to do so. By all means read it.
Frankly I think my vison of an impoverished and unrealisitic Left is representative of the Left as a whole in the
UK, which is worn out and needs not only reinvigorating but probably replacing with something else entirely.
That is what I am saying. Why ‘the Left’? the ‘Left’ didn’t work? Could there not be another way, that does not reside, ‘Third Way’ style between the two poles of Left and Right?
‘Yet I doubt there are many people actually committed to revolutionary politics that think such considerations are unimportant. No one worth listening to advocates any sort of imposition of revolutionary change on unwilling masses. The question is one of provoking the masses to strive for such change themselves.’
‘The question is one of provoking the masses to strive for such change themselves,’ is ancient rhetoric and smacks precisely of revolution.
We are not changing anything so long as we keep bleating on about the Left.
Finally: “but I admit I wasn’t aware of anyone actually ’shouting “Revolution!” without context or explanation’, in a philosophical article or any other sort of mature discussion.”
When was politics ever conducted around mature or philosphical discussion?
If you think my comment was vitriolic, you might be too sensitive for the internet. I was simply stating my annoyance (as I usually do, don’t mind me) with your comment that was basically reaffirming (if not restating) the position that was directly countered in the post itself.
Your logic is ridiculous – take a look: “I have encountered the Left and concluded that they are X” – [inner voice]: “Certainly, it is silly to generalize based on my experience alone, can I am wrong?” – [outer voice]: “Therefore, the Left must be the way I have experienced it.” Do you not see the problem here? I’m sure your experience of the Left is extensive and awesome, but you produce the kinds of generalizations that would make most people cringe, don’t you think? Personal experiences are important sources of information, but if I were to build any sort of theory based on my personal experience, I would think that all Russians are alcoholics and all British love Stephen Fry.
Your comment was unecessarily antagonistic. It’s ridiculuous to suggest I should get off the net if I can’t take insults from someone who makes it their pastime to hand out such ‘annoyances’. Like I said, it doesn’t deter me in light of the frequency with which you make outbursts at people. I’m even more sure of this as you’re so barmy as to then suggest I shouldn’t be here given that I can’t silently take your rudeness. Further, I began to tire of senseless Harman bashing a while back and you were one of the worst culprits, even if he has himself overstepped the mark in his criticism of at keast one individual some time back (he apologised). Incidentally, I do not subscribe to OOP or OOO.
That is to say nothing of Reid’s criticisms of Harman, which were presented in a reasonable way. I just happen to think he is wrong, for reasons that will be made clear here (and him knowing he is in this respect wrong could help him better formulate his arguments, which would be a good thing as he’s clearly immensely talented, and young)…
I never said all Leftists were bad. I also think not all Rightists are bad. Try running that by many Leftist extremists.
Forgive me for not cataloguing and qualifying my experience piece meal. I am satisifed that my experience, together with the corpus of texts that exist and what I see happening politically all around suggests that the Left is defunct on the whole. Though their grounding aims, towards fairness, community and equality, are vital for the world, of course.
That is not to say that there are not well meaning individuals enacting Leftist policies from both sides of the divide. But the whole gamut of ideologies that characterise a Leftist stance are for me tired and inneffective and any really convinced Leftist, I believe, would therefore stop fetishising the language, dress codes, rhetoric and policies of the past, in secarch of a wholly new approach (one sees this happen, intentionally or not, in the Climate Change movement, though clearly different factors characterise its motives, and this is cause for positivity).
Re; the point that so antagonises you in my initial post, if you were reading properly instead of spoiling for a fight, as usual, you would see that I am responding to Reid’s assertion that there are no ‘Leftists devoted to Revolution’:
‘I’ve never encountered anyone that regarded such a quick-fix notion of revolution as anything more than a self-deprecating in-joke. I doubt there are many radical Leftists of an adult age that seriously advocate such nonsense.’
Now, I found that rather sweeping and ill advised as a comment… so I pointed out that such people exist, a fact I know from experience… what better way to know than from personal experience (and you do not doubt that my experience is extensive)?
Reid knows the US Left better than the Left in the UK, Italy, France, etc. But in the US, public sponsored healthcare is nearly too much to ask, so of course most ‘Leftists’ are not asking for revolution, not least as such thought was wiped out following an extensive programme of propoganda and ‘education’ decades ago.
I maybe went a bit far in my rhetoric, but I don’t think so really as Reid published without seemingly knowing the facts, because such Leftists, those who employ the rhetoric of revolution – admixed with a host of other garnishings – DO categorically exist, something you don’t even seem to doubt.
I am NOT saying that all Leftists are like this (though I am now also saying, be it of interest, that the more moderate ones are also barking up the wrong proverbial tree, one which the public have long since evacuated). I am saying that Reid was wrong in saying that there are no Leftists like this, because there are many.
So I think you may have misread me. I can understand that partly, in view of the rhetoric I employed, but I also think that if you weren’t so quick to jump on every opportunity to aim your dry disdain at people you may have seen that.
Mike, let’s leave my horrible sinful ways alone, shall we? Everyone already knows that I’m a troll/grey vampire and so on, including you (which makes me surprised that you react with such surprise at my “usual” antics). I’m sorry if I suggested you need to get of the net, that’s not what I meant. In any case, it’s very likely that I’ve misread you and therefore was unnecessarily antagonistic, but I feel that you are exaggerating the evilness of my comment as it wasn’t directed at your person, but at your comment (yes, yes, I know it almost impossible to separate the two in online communication). Here’s the gist of my problem with your original comment: there are all kinds of “Leftists” and just because your general had a bad experience with them (even if you met all of the Leftists in UK), means nothing vis-a-vis the “Leftist ideas” (if there is such an easily identifiable cluster of ideas). I think you’ve responded to that “attack” sufficiently well. Moving on?
I read Reid’s post (again, maybe mistakenly) as objecting precisely to the following connection – some Leftists are pathetic losers, therefore what they stand for (say, “revolution”) is not worth the trouble (isn’t practical and so on). That’s all I was trying to say. And I’m honestly way past the talks about “niceness” and “charity” and “online etiquette” – I’ve heard it all, please, spare me another lecture, its’ enough that neo-Puritans in the US are becoming more and more insistent in their discourse on “civility” – I thought you Brits were all about telling it like it is and can take a bit of sarcasm (but then again, my exposure to UK is limited to occasional episodes of EastEnders).
Here’s my point and it does agree with your point, just in a different manner – I agree that it’s likely a generalization to say that there are no Leftist running around talking about revolution, but it’s the same generalization to suggest that capitalism is the only option we have or that (a la Harman’s mind-reading insight that I have foolishly and meanly attacked, the man must be tired of all the meanness indeed) even those Leftists who talk about revolution secretly do not actually believe in it (how does he know that? how can anyone know that?) – plenty of people talk about revolution and believe in its need. Now, the situation today is not the same as 100 years ago and this revolution is not really about overthrowing governments and so on (but even if people still talked about it, more power to them, to refuse that sort of conversation is to support the neo-liberal ideology of “this is the best we’ve got, don’t even think about the alternatives”).
Ok. So does your frustration with the Left matter? Of course, I can sense that you are passionate about it, but so am I. Instead of playing stupid games of who offended who and how, let’s talk about it.
[I couldn't find your email on your blog, so I'm posting this as a comment, but I would love to continue the conversation offline if you are so inclined, this comment section is too small for my fingers and my utter disdain for human decency and politeness - you know where to find me, if you're interested]
ok Mikhail, I’ll mail you my e-mail address shortly!
ok, all, theothergardner, Mikhail, I’ve taken steps to relieve poor Reid of the burden here… posting on my blog some basis of what I would propose politically as an alternative: http://logicalregression.blogspot.com/
re; the race and capital thread, I’d love to build on that, as said. Soooorrry Reid
Isn’t this just another instance of K-punk tracking to the right?
Just wait for the post where he complains about being audited by speed cameras.
For me, Mark’s post was a real disappointment, as are some of the oh so frightfully mature we’re so post-Marxist comments above. Especially coming now amidst the biggest crisis of our lifetimes. For a once ‘revolutionaryish’ thinker to disavow revolutionary change so completely, no matter how artfully dressed up and hedged that distancing was, is a sign of bad faith. Anyway, fck it, get back to your ’68 Chardonnays – now you’ve got the foreman’s job, I guess the working class can go kiss your ass, right? And I was going to buy his book and all.
At least Mark’s posts have interesting links – the Harvery one contained this gem, “Questioning the future of capitalism itself as an adequate social system ought, therefore, to be in the forefront of current debate.” One has the impression of somebody who hasn’t gone all snide and bourgeois;
I know this is coming a bit late, but great post.
talking about vehicles.i have trouble telling the difference between my left and right. i’ve made so many wrong turns, crashed a few times because of it and given many a bum steer when handing out directions to lost travellers.
metaphorically applying that to politics and philosophy means i havent read any continental cultural stuff i could understand, nor marx lenin or any form of alternative to capitalism, but that doesnt mean i cant see we need a revolution. perhaps more so a revolution in action coming from a re-evolution in thought.
with that in mind i’d like to posit some observations. we are indebted to capitalism by debt and credit to the banks which are the ultimate tool for keeping the masses in check while opening up new avenues for exploitation by the practitioners of capitalism. forget the political system du jour. take the banks down and the rest will fall.
as long as people feel indebted to society by being in hock to the banks we will never revolt. for many of us we dont even know what that means, only that if there is nothing to step into the vaccuum created by the non presence of a post revolutionary capitalism, then it’s all hell and every man for himself not some idealised co-operative form of self help that will evolve.
so unless someone can come up with a plan about what to do after the revolution you wont get the buy in by the average joe to be part of the revolution, rendering any high falootin talk by academics about revolting irrelevent.
strike, protest, stand on our soap boxes and yell the sky is falling for all its worth but it wont make any difference. i’m thinking of just closing my bank account and maybe if everyone did it, a critical mass would develop that would topple ‘the man’, then the academics could implement the capitalist alternative plan, if there is one.
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