The Communist Hypothesis
French President Sarkozy said, soon after his depressing election, that "The spirit of May 68 must be done away with once and for all". It was not just the "spectre" of empirical communism, but the very hypothesis (as Alain Badiou puts it) he wanted buried forever.His "renewal" meant to banish the logic of class and the idea that a different collective organization is possible (Thatchers TINA) ,that the existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society will wither away as a reorganization based on free association of producers replaces it.
On this blog we have Beakerkin to remind us of the disastrous results of one historical attempt at manifesting this hypothesis.His own "hypothesis", that 1 attempt + 1 failure = 0 remaining possibilities for infinity is simply the logic of the victor. Were capitalism to fail I would not say capitalism can THEREFORE never succeed.
Beak will never surrender his notion that The Left wilfully ignores "facts", that, like in the NFL, the "instant replay camera" removes all doubt about Marxism's evil nature. History as Championship Playoff!
Others see the "hypothesis" refusing to stay buried, reappearing with each new crisis, whether political (including geo-political), economic or social. Badiou argues that "we are closer to the questions of the 19th century than to the revolutionary 20th". Vast zones of poverty, widening inequalities, politics dissolved into the 'service of wealth', the nihilism of the young, the reactionary attitudes of the right,the servility of most intellectuals, the besieged experimentalism of a few groups seeking ways to express the communist hypothesis are all too familiar. In this low period it is difficult to find the courage to keep possibility alive, to find the will and have the patience to maintain the grounds of its existence.
Harvey ends his book with a critique of "purely relational thinking" ( where transcendence trumps actual political engagement) as found in Holloway's Changing The World without Taking Power in which he treats "every completed thing as a reification from which we are by definition alienated and which therefore, should not even be considered as relevant to political struggle." He extends the critique to Bookchins dismissing "all forms of organization, institutionalization, and territorialization ( including the much maligned state as a specific but DISTINCTLY MALEABLE KIND OF GEOGRAPHIC CONSTRUCTION) as somehow either irrelevant or inherently repressive..."
By understanding "the dialectical movement across and through the different dimensionalities of space-time (absolute, relative AND relational) and the intersecting moments (of technologies, social relations, processes in nature, mental conceptions, production [labor] processes,and everyday life), we may "reaffirm the communist hypothesis" grounded in "historical geographical materialism." It is an admittedly complicated way of saying let's not undermine our quest for a cosmopolitan, egalitarian, universal justice at the very moment "spaces of hope" are opening all around us for the taking and the making. Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom by David Harvey is a worthwhile read and fills in a piece to the Marxist puzzle.
posted by troutsky @ 8:24 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Troutsky
You are arguing against facts, logic,
history, economics and human nature.
All you have is a pseudo religious death cult and some pot smoking developmentally disabled lemmings led by Bathroom Bolsheviks.
Even his amoralness Kultur does not deny the mess your kind has created.
As liable to be labeled, "death cultist," as one may be for bringing up the source of the recurring problem of empathetic socialism and self reliant anarchism ebbing and flowing like flotsam on the shoreline of every continent, is the ocean of ever increasing population justifying the capitalists waves of "more is better. more is necessary" eating away at the substantive value of our lives and leaving the debris filling double car garages and storage lockers lest the have-nots have anything.
Until the pope is censured the battle you fight here is perpetual.
Once he is, the battle will be unnecessary.
Talk about synchronistic serendipidy;
here's the word verification for my population rant here:
momysica
yodood; I wish I had kept track of the great word verifications I have had.
As for population, it is a strange contradiction that progressive economists are advocating four day work weeks (in order to spread work around) at the same time misery and hunger grow worldwide. We produce too much, including food, driving profits down.I agree the Pope is unhelpful in strict resource terms but the injustice comes from other systems.
Beak: Sit down for this one. One doesn't argue for or against your categories. One argues ABOUT their meaning. It is not an instant replay ie... Did the Ref make the right call?
Troutsky
Have you gone mad? The idea has killed hundreds of millions. Would you be as stone deaf to a dolt who wanted to give Nazism a second shot.
Communism is evil it is a failed idea
that needs to be eliminated by decent folks.
Once again I would like to remind folks that one of the definitive records of Paris, 1968 which was long unavailable is out on DVD.
Chris Marker's "Grin Without a Cat".
A youth rebellion that the old line leftists couldn't support.
Essential
Actually Beakini Brains
I think a pure Marxism would be a better solution to planetary and human relations than this cowboy capitalism we have!
You still have failed to show any one of us how this morass of capitalist economics is any less troublesome than marxism. In fact, capitalism is on the verge of failure, as was Stalinism. Communism itself did not crush the people. It was decades of Stalinism that killed a people.
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