Do we really want out?

[version]

Let me flip the question on its head. Why be a cultural critic?

That's also what the thread was about. Why be any form of opposition or critic if it's either ineffective or inconsequential?

If you can't get out, or there is no outside to even get to, what's the function of critique etc that makes you increasingly aware of how unbearable being in is? Does it end up being some form of self-harm or torture?

 

[luka]

the marcuse vs norman o brown thing that i read a couple of days ago was going over this ground. marcuse taking the third
marxist materialist line and brown going, like, revolution is revelation man, tune in and drop out

 

[thirdform]

That's also what the thread was about. Why be any form of opposition or critic if it's either ineffective or inconsequential?

Sure, but my point is that there is nothing really to be said about modern culture. There's still a lot of history that needs to be interrogated within the marxist tradition. This was Bordiga's strength. The insistance on universal world history.

A book-length essay illustrating the principles of historical materialism with respect to the role of race and nation in the “cycles” that were preconditions for the communist revolution, tracing the human saga from pithecanthropus and Adam and Eve to the Trieste Crisis, with sections on Greece, Rome, the German barbarians, feudalism, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the European wars and national liberation struggles of the 19th century, and the Paris Commune, interspersed with incisive comments on the individual (a “puppet”), the family (it “will be destroyed after the victory of communism”), national languages (they “will perish with” capitalism), etc.

The factors of race and nation in Marxist theory - Amadeo Bordiga

A book-length essay illustrating the principles of historical materialism with respect to the role of race and nation in the “cycles” that were preconditions for the communist revolution, tracing the human saga from pithecanthropus and Adam and Eve to the Trieste Crisis, with sections on Greece...

libcom.org

 

[luka]

marxist history is cool but it can feel a bit circular.

 

[luka]

the reasoning can seem circular

 

[version]

Sure, but my point is that there is nothing really to be said about modern culture. There's still a lot of history that needs to be interrogated within the marxist tradition. This was Bordiga's strength. The insistance on universal world history.

To what end though? You'll never run out of history to interrogate, history's being made all the time, or is this an end of history type of thing where it stopped at some point and now we have to sift through the debris?

 

[luka]

which is why it works better as history than as prediction

 

[thirdform]

marxist history is cool but it can feel a bit circular.

Well, English intellectual culture has no sense of what history actually is. Just facts and opinions. The French try to avoid this by going into the realm of pure aleatory materialism, a materialism of chance and science standing above material struggle although I tend to think that succumbs to the same pitfalls as the English. Hegel is good in this sense because he is the last christian, in a philosophical sense. The spirit of world history is as far as the godhead can be taken within a capitalist framework before one becomes atheist.

 

[luka]

the english are the only historians. they invented it.

 

[thirdform]

To what end though? You'll never run out of history to interrogate, history's being made all the time, or is this an end of history type of thing where it stopped at some point and now we have to sift through the debris?

Well that's a different question isn't it. That's not do we want out but what is the point of doing anything. I don't think studying history is a radical act of anticapitalism, neither is reading pynchon. You could then ask why do people want to understand literature and music because it's always being remade and its endless?

 

[thirdform]

the english are the only historians. they invented it.

Bollocks. That honour belongs to the Greeks, if anything. Corpseys nemesis.

 

[version]

Well that's a different question isn't it. That's not do we want out but what is the point of doing anything. I don't think studying history is a radical act of anticapitalism, neither is reading pynchon. You could then ask why do people want to understand literature and music because it's always being remade and its endless?

Reading Pynchon or wanting to understand literature or music can be argued for personal pleasure or entertainment though. You could argue that for politics too, but it feels like it undermines the seriousness of it in a way that isn't a problem with the other examples.

 

[version]

Bollocks. That honour belongs to the Greeks, if anything. Corpseys nemesis.

Herodotus, proper Englishman.

 

[DannyL]

In that case, why be a Communist or anything like that? You can do whatever you want and revolution will happen or not happen regardless.

Idk you'd have to ask communist. Maybe @john eden could enlighten as to the leftcom position on revolution, it's inevitablity or ...not?
Don't forget there have been plenty of revolutions all across the Arab world in the last 10 years, it's a bit parochial to assume otherwise

 

[thirdform]

Reading Pynchon or wanting to understand literature or music can be argued for personal pleasure or entertainment though. You could argue that for politics too, but it feels like it undermines the seriousness of it in a way that isn't a problem with the other examples.

Now there is nothing more pro-capitalist than the personal entertainment trump card. Nothing but commodities to be acquired. Shakespeare is hardly very entertaining is he? Yet he's miles above the crude thriller of an Ian Banks novel!

 

[version]

Idk you'd have to ask communist. Maybe @john eden could enlighten as to the leftcom position on revolution, it's inevitablity or ...not?
Don't forget there have been plenty of revolutions all across the Arab world in the last 10 years, it's a bit parochial to assume otherwise

I'm not arguing there haven't been revolutions. I'm saying if, as you say, revolutions occur independently of people's politics, critique and so on then why bother with politics and critique in service of revolution?

 

[thirdform]

The Beatles are more entertaining than Stockhausen, but Stockhausen was and is always more important, mystical psychobabble aside.

 

[thirdform]

I'm not arguing there haven't been revolutions. I'm saying if, as you say, revolutions occur independently of people's politics, critique and so on then why bother with politics and critique in service of revolution?

You're making an artificial separation here. Peoples politics and critiques don't just exist in aspic, they can of course contribute to revolutions, or more than not, understand how they degenerate. The problem here is centring the locus of desire as if its some transhistorical absolute. It's a case of being pushed (quite literally) into these conditions. I doubt many people in Syria in 2008 saw themselves as revolutionaries, yet by 2011-12 this was evidently the case. Your image of human behaviour seems to be static, as if the will and not the stomach is king.

 

[version]

Now there is nothing more pro-capitalist than the personal entertainment trump card. Nothing but commodities to be acquired. Shakespeare is hardly very entertaining is he? Yet he's miles above the crude thriller of an Ian Banks novel!

If someone's response to why they read Shakespeare is because it's fun and makes them feel good then that's a perfectly acceptable answer. If someone offers the same response to being asked why they're an activist then they're likely to get some pushback for being self-interested and using other people's plight for personal ends.

 

[thirdform]

For instance the problem with the likes of k-punk and co-thinkers is they try to be everything to everyone. Which is natural. it makes money, generates a lot of chattering, and so. But if they were part of some anonymous left com group posting on a website that looks like it was designed in 2002, they would hardly get any traction would they? And its not because they lacked a comms team.