Counter - Rally
"..secular Marxism has gone, leaving us with two completely gutless alternatives: liberal rationalism (a la Dawkins,Sam Harris, Bill Maher, etc) and culturalist post-modernism (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert). This spells good news for global capitalism, which rapaciously both promotes and devours such un-troubling sensibilities."
Gregor McLennan examples in parenthesis are mine.
The two ironic celebrities are throwing counter-Glen Beck rallies to demonstrate a rational center is still the dominant ideology. They are less angry, less militant, more liberal and secular. Anyone watching Colbert's recent Celebrating the Returning Troops Specials will understand how totally confused (and subversively subservient) this ideology is. Is it Real or Symbolic? Mc Lennans article checks out Terry Eagletons attempts to fuse left radicalism and spirituality in Reason, Faith and Revolution:Reflections on the God Debate.
As Slajov Zizek reminds us in his New Left Review article Storm Over Eurozone : "We are witnessing an over-load of critiques of capitalisms horrors;..there is however a catch to all this criticism,ruthless as it may appear; what is as a rule not questioned is the liberal-democratic framework within which the excesses should be fought."
He is talking here about things like the Elizabeth Warren selection or Michael Moores critique of "Wall Street"and I agree, they are a banal response. But I disagree with his casual use of the word "democratic". The Slovenian "Elvis" is fast and loose with his definitions as he rails further against democracy:
"It is illusory to expect that one can effectively change things by "extending" democracy into this sphere (social relations of production) say, by organizing 'democratic' banks under peoples control...It is the acceptance of 'democratic mechanisms' as the ultimate frame that prevents a radical transformation of capitalist relations."
I understand that he is attempting to de-fetishize democracy as such but one must be careful with indiscriminate use of scare quotes. Is it the representation of formal democracy at which he scoffs or true sovereignty of the demos he finds unworkable? Is he confusing democracy with politics? Might not Peoples Control and Worker Management create a framework for radical transformation? (such as the Parecon model)
He does the same thing when he critiques a vague form of ecology:
In it's ideological version, ecology also adds it's own list of impossibilities ( to "capitalist economic realities") ,so called threshold values- no more than two degrees of warming-based on "expert opinion".
Ideological version? Would we really lump threshold values in with "impossibilities" such as "no large collective acts", "no clinging to the old welfare state" or "no isolating oneself from the global market"? And why put expert opinion in scare quotes? If he is saying those "limits" are a scary lack of freedom he is mimicking the local Tea Party!
I thoroughly enjoy Zizek and just finished In Defence of Lost Causes which totally stretched my brain. But being a contrarian (in and for itself) can lead to intellectual black holes. For instance he ended the piece saying "Today we do not know what to do, but we have to act now..."
Just last year he was turning Marx upside down saying "The task is to first interpret the world before changing it.."
posted by troutsky @ 7:00 AM
16 comments
16 Comments:
He is talking here about things like the Elizabeth Warren selection or Michael Moores critique of "Wall Street"and I agree, they are a banal response. But I disagree with his casual use of the word "democratic". The Slovenian "Elvis" is fast and loose with his definitions as he rails further against democracy:
I agree with you.
The New Atheists are correct on several issues. Their arrogance is what discredits them to me.
It's idealist to have the secular and non-secular in a battle of ideas, to change minds. Conditions/events change minds.
Just last year he was turning Marx upside down saying "The task is to first interpret the world before changing it.."
Well, there's sense in that. Strange coming from that guy - how can you read him?
I'm having trouble these days imagining what a 'truly democratic' industrial-technological state would be. Maybe Kultur and Wendall Berry are right - maybe you can't have one.
Well put Renegade, why flaunt your atheism as uber-progressive? Eagleton is far smarter than me and believes in God and egalitarian society.
Lichanos: It is a daunting task and requires massive participation. But from what I know of you (just reading), your input would be invaluable. I refuse to accept that any possibility is totally foreclosed, it is illogical and history tells us all paths are possible. Or, as Lacan puts it "the impossible happens".To quote Zizek: "...an act changes the very coordinates of what is possible and thus retroactively creates its own conditions of possibility."
As for technology, I believe it only gets it's power because the political has been undermined and hollowed.
People like Zizak get into being creative for its own sake. Zizek has to always say something different. Camille Paglia and Hitchens are like that too.
@Renegade:
...being creative for its own sake.
I am totally for that, which is not at all the same as having to always say something different. Hitchens and Paglia seem to love nothing so much as the sound of their own voices, regardless of what they are saying.
@Troutsky:
Yes, daunting task. As one peasant was reported to complain of life under Mao, "too many meetings!" Not sure that your confidence in possibilities is warranted. Can you have a industrial society under feudalism? No, that would seem to be foreclosed. I'm just wondering if we are seeking two ends that are mutually exclusive right now.
BTW, I wouldn't trust Lacan and his ilk to give me directions to the nearest toilet, let alone to map our society's way to the future? How can you invest so much in a guy who is so invested in Freudian analysis? Some people say Marxism is a religion - I don't agree - but with Freud, they may be on to something. I speak as one who knows him only through the impenetrable writings of his disciples, however.
Oh, and the impossible NEVER happens. It's sort of obvious, isn't it? I guess that's why Napoleon said it wasn't in the French language - if you can't say it, it can't be true. I'm sure discussed this thoroughly on his return trip from Moscow.
Correction: I HAVE read Freud, it's Lacan that I know from his disciples.
Troutsky
As someone who is slow of mind I will do this slowly for you. Communism has always been a religion.
It is a death cult and you and your kind are more doctrinaire than the folks at the 700 club and about on a moral par with Nazis and Al Queda.
I think he gets it right over at Clusterfuck Nation.
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/09/puke-time.html
So what do we do, my brothers in the egg. We have an economic system that is an unsustainable disaster and a populace that thinks the answer is Newt Gingrich and Christine O'Donnell.
A modest amount of sanity may in fact prevail in November but it hardly matters.
Can we penetrate the bunker mentality. As people beat on immigrants more often and more violently is there a way to point out that NAFTA and the destruction of jobs and income in Mexico/Latin America has been the driver? How do you convince Beak that his precious laissez-faire is the engine driving us off the cliff.
We can just point to Larry Summers getting the boot and cheer that the tide is turning as Obama selects the next Rubinite to take over. Kapital can rebrand itself so quickly that it's a losing battle.
Palin/Bachmann 2012 -- let it go down, it's our only hope.
Ducky: In Minnesota Bachman won, I believe because the Democrat supported the bank bailout.
The Democrats are in power, not the Tea Party.
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Lichanos: You ask if we can still have an industrial society that is co-managed/owned? (or feudal)
This is actually two interesting questions: What exactly is "industrial" and what possibilities for power sharing does the system foreclose?
I am in the recreation industry and a society of shared power would change the "relations of production". Who would I take fishing? What would be my remuneration? How would it be decided?
As for Lacan and Freud, ( and Zizeks devotion), I am surprised you dismiss their influence so casually. It is done frequently with Marx and Lenin. To me it is like saying St. Augustine did not lay out the perfect unified theory of everything therefore all his thinking is worthless. Yes there are obvious flaws, but the dialectic builds on those as well as what they got correct.
Ducky: I have been pushing for a Palin/ Joe the Plumber ticket! With Captain Sulley Sullenberger as Sect.of State. That was why I was poking fun at John Stewart and his "civil discourse" dream. It is like Tom Hartman going on and on about "monopoly capitalism".
Newsflash
Patriotic Colombian troops have done the planet a public service and removed communist narcoterrorist crimianal and Chavez toady Mono Jojoy from continued existence. Jojoy was a blight on the planet which is now improved by his removal.
We now return you to reality impaired mindless Marxist blather.
Can someone explain Beaks obsessive concern about Chavez?
Also, Beak, the wealth discrepancy in Venezuela has closed considerably and it is now more equitable than the U.S. Any comments?
@Troutsky:
I asked if we could have a feudal-industrial economy only by way of raising the connection between production system and political system. I doubt it's possible. Co-managed? We'll see...but it would be different, as you say.
I don't dismiss Freud, and certainly not his influence, but I am sceptical of any theoritical system that takes him as a starting point, especially a system that is about something other than mental health.
As for Lacan, I dismiss him utterly. He was a marginal and eccentric psychoanalytic theorist until he somehow was discovered by the lit crit crowd. He makes a value of obscurity. His prose is incomprehensible. He has no interest in even striving for clarity or communication. He has become the focal point of an intellectual dogmatic cult. I see no useful analysis coming from the Lacanian point of view - just obscure, endless pontificating about vague concepts, psychoanalytic and otherwise.
Zizek, in the forty or fifty pages I read in his intro to Robespierre's speeches, advances so many points that he can't support any of them. He is rhetorical without backup analysis, he is flamboyant for the sake of it, and he is utterly dogmatic about his main points. He struck me as simply a showman who's instrument is his authorial voice. Ditto for Paglia and Hitchens.
If they stimulate you, read them. I get nothing from them.
Ducky
Are you an imbecile. By getting the rich to flee and reducing the rest now all can live in misery.
Contra time. Elimination of communists improves the planet
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