Do we really want out?

[version]

if we want out but we can't get out wouldn't we end up discussing that a lot

Fair point.

 

[version]

"While these people bustled into factories, or were driven into them, building themselves more rigidly and irretrievably into a mechanical urban life, they exploded in dreams of bucolic "freedom." Pictures of the "freedom" of the noble savage and the child of nature excited them to a great outburst at the very moment when (as they must from their own point of view have regarded it had they not been so full of a false and exotic emotion) they were enslaving themselves more thoroughly to men. So it has been in the name of nature always that men have combined to overthrow the natural in themselves.

For their instinct to be so fallible, where, it would seem, so much is at stake for them — for them to proclaim so ardently that they wish to be "free" and nature's children, and yet, in effect, to carry through great movements that result in an absolute mechanization of their life — can only mean one thing. It must mean that they do not really know what they want, that they do not, in their heart, desire "freedom" or anything of the sort. "Freedom" postulates a relatively solitary life: and the majority of people are extremely gregarious. A disciplined, well-policed, herd-life is what they most desire. The "naturalistic" form that eighteenth-century revolution took was because all violent revolution is saturnalian. A rare saturnalia is necessary for most people, but it exhausts their passions, and the rest of the year they are anything but their saturnalian selves. The few years of youth is such a saturnalia: but youth, in that case, is not synonymous with life.

That men should think they wish to be free, the origin of this grave and universal mistake, is the (usually quite weak) primitive animal in them coming into his own for a moment. It is a restless, solitary ghost in them that in idle moments they turn to. The mistake can be best appreciated, perhaps, by examining a great holiday crowd. How can these masses of slowly, painfully, moving people find any enjoyment in such immense stuffy discomfort, petty friction, and unprofitable fatigue, you may ask yourself as you watch them. They ask themselves that, too, no doubt, most of them. That is the saturnalian, libertarian, rebellious self that asserts itself for a moment. But if they have to choose between what ultimately the suggestions of the "free" self, and the far steadier, stronger impulse of the gregarious, town-loving, mechanical self, would lead to, they invariably choose the latter. So to be "free" for one person is not what to be "free" for another would be. Most people's favourite spot in "nature" is to be found in the body of another person, or in the mind of another person, not in meadows, plains, woods, and trees. They depend for their stimulus on people, not things. So inevitably they are not "free" nor have any wish to be, in the lonely, "independent," wild, romantic, rousseauesque way. In short, the last thing they wish for is to be free. They wish to pretend to be "free" once a week, or once a month. To be free all the time would be an appalling prospect for them. And they prefer "freedom" to take a violent, super-real, and sensational form. They are not to the manner born where "freedom" is concerned; and so invariably overplay it, when they affect it." - Wyndham Lewis

Which Lewis is this from?

 

[RWY]

The Art of Being Ruled - I believe Luka once recommended it elsewhere on the forum.

 

[luka]

I have. McLuhan loved that one too.

 

[woops]

"They wish to pretend to be "free" once a week, or once a month. To be free all the time would be an appalling prospect for them. And they prefer "freedom" to take a violent, super-real, and sensational form. They are not to the manner born where "freedom" is concerned; and so invariably overplay it, when they affect it." - Wyndham Lewis

we're back to the raving bit at the start of this thread now

 

[version]

I guess the loose consensus is there's no outside, but we refuse to roll over and wholeheartedly accept it because resisting serves a purpose in its own right and feels necessary.

 

[RWY]

I would agree with that.

 

[luka]

We need to do a Jeremy Paxman session with Rudewhy soon. Find out what he thinks about fishing quotas and whatnot.

 

[thirdform]

Just incidentally, but sort of related... On that gek opel podcast I linked to somewhere, the social discipline one, he says an interesting thing, which is that the left needs to stop worrying about the alt right, or the sharp celebrity type end of it, ie nick Land type area. And just worry about the plain old right instead.

So in terms of answering your question version, he would probably say "it doesn't matter"

Now that's a bona fide alt rightist, if not in spirit, in theory.

Would gladly face prison if it meant I could rip the Deleuze out of his hand. Deleuze, Land, Hitlerite ethnopluralism. The timeline is apparent.

 

[thirdform]

I'd like to get out but since it's not possible I'd like to pretend that I'm at least trying to figure a way out because the alternative is too bleak

Well, I mean, this is just ultra pessimism. Why would the alternative be too bleak if you were politically unaware? Just capitulate wholesale to the superficial, or at least make an effort to engage with the historical material.

In some ways you're (well, we all are) trying to juxtapose too conflicting impulses, being working class/unemployed and trying to reason with an existential middle class political consciousness which fundamentally despises you/us. We've all been there.

 

[thirdform]

monsieur Dupont have a good passage on this. let me find it @boxedjoy and others.

 

[thirdform]

Consciousness died seventy years ago. It has been replaced by electronic media.
No one is listening now, we leave messages on voice mail but our addressees never get back to us, no one can hear us above tempest sounding alienation.
No one reads what we write, and rf they do then tomorrow they'll read someone else's webpage (we can make the message as simple as you like, write it in single syllable words a foot high on the walls of the amphitheatre or scribble it on origami paper and fold it seven times, slip it in the menu at a truckers' caff, 'capitalism is rubbish, communism is good, you alone have the power of transformation'. Our Prospero spell binds nothing to our will).
On the couch, the neurotic prattles on, matching hats to heads in the psychoanalytic rigmarole, a-ha I am Oedipus, a-ha here is the castrating father, a-ha the phallus. It soon became evident to Freud's gang that the recognition of formulas was part of the problem and in the same way but at the risk of appearing ridiculous we have discovered that consciousness, that is knowledge, does not equal power. Every worker-unit understands its own exploitation but how significant is understanding when all proposed alternatives are as unconvincingly schematised as the ghosts of Christmas's past, present and future? What sane person would jeopardise their wage packet and mortgage for creased blueprints of socialism's fairground rides when capitalism supplies dvd players, Thai restaurants and central heating? By what means, precisely, would an analysis of alienation and a promise of eventual redemption through revolutionary transformation change anything should a worker choose to commit itself to that routine? I know I am held in a vice, I can feel it closing, it hurts, but how do I help myself by thinking about it? Isn't it better to be distracted by beer and art? How many worker-believers with fully articulated consciousness would it take before reality jumps its tracks? (On the internet individuals band together to buy in bulk and get those prices down, is this solidarity?) The structure of the pro-revolutionary party is such that no amount of recruits is enough, there is always some circumstance that will convince it that playing the resistance game and thereby retaining its organisational integrity is preferable to risking all in a revolutionary gambit. All defined structures seek stasis. So tell me one more time of how Israel crushes Palestine, or why Nike dumps on Malaysian workers, sing me the song of the Zapatista's and maybe at last I'll get patriotic for our common cause, but it's more likely you'll be asking me for contributions to finance the 'struggle' (one Trotskyite group in the early Nineties used to stop shoppers in the street to ask them if they had a bank account before trying to get them to subscribe to their glossy mag by direct debit, if you replied no to their first question they immediately lost interest).
Is consciousness Our Side in This World? Joschka Fischer has passed across the spectrum of political consciousness from pro-RAF crash helmeted street fighter to K/For-ist German Foreign Minister, but through those thirty years he never ceased to be a bourgeois. Back then he was in the vanguard of the revolution and now he leads a nation state - now Fischer has come to accept his class status (achieved transference), consciousness had pushed him into falsity, into rebellion against his essence but now he does not feel guilty, he has come home, he was young, it was all those years ago, now he regrets only being held to account for what he did back then. What difference is there between the anti-capitalist spectacular events and a Benetton advertising campaign, both compete in the pit of quick ideas and branded distinction? Knowledge, information, communication, consciousness, are held by, and do not hold, the world; those middle class individuals who revolt against capital for political reasons always seem to to earth indistinguishable from what they oppose (groovy protest, a product of groovy capitalism); for them revolution loses its appeal, they find that when their energy is spent they have been in error, their revolt was no more than their energy. Their subsequent understanding, that revolution is impossible because it did not happen under their stewardship, is really only an insight into their typically bourgeois ambitions, that and the realisation of the structural impossibility of revolution as a mere continuing of the intensification of protest politics. Earth First! grasped this point by declaring that the London First of May demonstrations in 2000 were not protests at all but were expressions of capability, like IRA promo video's and shots over coffins. But there was no self-examination as to what kind of collectivity was present on that day and how it related to the wider public, what was it expressive of? No doubt the organisers would prefer it if we focused on the political consciousness of the crowd rather than, say, its class identity, ie., an informal leadership showing us the way to revolution. If these were not protesters, if they were not representative of a wide section of the populace then who were they and by what right and under what terms did they make the presumption that we should go and join them? Seventy million Hindus, ten thousand anti-capitalists, historical dust.
'Proletarian consciousness' too is always earthbound, it is constituted under a star of diversion, we look elsewhere, we hold on to the things we can; what motive is there for contemplating what's over the rainbow when history indicates that here might be Oz and there might be Kansas?
All political consciousness is bourgeois.
Workers cannot believe, as belief is a betrayal of experience; who can believe and get up before dawn?
Have I fired off enough bombast to take away your will to live? Have I won because I'm the last one talking? Stacked enough pancakes to make a... stack. But what is this, what is it really? Don't I do the consciousness thing as much as anyone else, but dishonestly and with suspect motive? I don't know. But it doesn't concern me if hypothetical readers cannot understand what I'm saying because in literature I think the writer must dictate and the reader must follow, the writer must determine the rules of reading otherwise a democracy takes hold like that of Hollywood's preview performances and the demand of producers for happy endings. Writers create readers and not the opposite. I did not demand that Hegel, Kafka, Carroll, ought to exist, and out there, there is no 'market' of readers which demands particular products before they have been written. I do not see my task as a theorist of revolution to either convince or explain to people who wouldn't read what I had to say even if I did. My aim is to write as well as I am able within certain formal bounds, I have no time to explain and only just enough to describe what I find out. Description must precede explanation.

Monsieur Dupont - Nihilist Communism (appendix)

 

[thirdform]

Appendices: The Optimism of Revolutionaries, Language and consciousness

libcom.org

 

[WashYourHands]

Tuppence worth.

Lived in vehicles, lived in squats, lived in tents, lived on traveler sites. You had dole money and scams but the entire rejection of aspiration and capitalism was still bumping into balancing scarce resources. The Brew Crew, rampant alcoholics to a T, could ruin any day or night. So up sticks, again, and travel over to the European continent.

Too late. Everyone and their dog is on ketamine, from the French eastwards to the Czechs/Prague. Eat first, morals later really equates to steal someone else’s drugs before they steal yours. Jfc, I’m going home, but home is full of heroin. Heroin is very moreish. And deadly. Let’s rob smack dealers. At least at home you know who not to rob.

You’re back in rain-sopped Albion, sat with a couple of oz’s of horse in sub-let flat in piss soaked Radford. Do you sell it all or snort it all? Take a middle road - sell one Oz in g’s and smash the rest down. Then the heroin runs out, so you start reccy’ing local dealers again. You prowl and wait and scope every single movement in and out of the building over 48hours. Are there kids? No, ok, let’s do this. 5 oz’s of heroin in a bag running down half-lit alleyways, smell of blood still fresh in your nostrils.

Out is a fragile position. Look before you leap.

 

[thirdform]

My issue is not so much that they benefit from the system (although obviously they do), if someone has managed to find a way of making a living from writing and selling books then good for them. My issue is that in order to do so, they deploy this totalising high-mindedness with regards to their political positions: that the entire capitalist system is to be despised, opposed, fought and somehow overcome through the sole deployment of their intellectual thought. It's absolutely ridiculous and bears no relation to reality, which leads to my second point: if all this activity (their writing, their activism, their books) has no actual political effects (the complete collapse of the Corbyn project should be enough evidence that the influence of a decade's worth of their thinking on politics in Britain was either negligible or, perhaps, even had a negative effect), then what is the point of it all other than to prop up their own careers?

I wouldn't have an issue with them if they actually analysed the specificities of the capitalist ssystem. I.E: italian and German Unification, Meiji restoration, post WW II decolonisation. Yet they don't. It's as if history begins and ends with J.G Ballard. It's insulting in all honesty.

And you know, I really like Ballard, but he's very of his time.

 

[thirdform]

me too, you arent her for banter only and you wouldnt be here if prior or future book deals werent in play would you? so think about your own libidinal economy here, how you indulge the theatre and what your role is

Chaos demon innit. You're too serene. That's your problem. You must discover your own form of communication. It's about using these platforms to systematise your own communication to nurture further communication. This cannot be done with a mere defence of someone else or a regurgitation of cliches. You have to offend and headfuck in equal
measure

 

[thirdform]

 

[thirdform]

this foolish home counties boy understands nothing.
Reminds me of the flatmate I had to share with in halls who was a Mogwai/Explosions in the Sky fan and also had a hard on for UKIP. Vague atonality and screaming does not mean questioning music, let alone the dullard postrockers who completely detracted the voice and made gloopy corpse food for those who are wholly resistent to embracing the materialism of hip hop. Which is essentially what all post-2000 post-rock was.


Listen to Lydon himself for christs sake. The Sex Pistols was supposed to be the absolute last rock n roll band ever. That is the only emancipatory content in them. Not that they were part of a counter-culture.

The Pistols were death, not a machine!

 

[xenogoth]

xenogoths mark fisher haunt twitter account said this place had been overrun by alt right degenerates

Not my account just fyi

Although this place does have very chaotic energy

 

[thirdform]