From owner-marxism-international  Fri Apr  4 21:11:21 1997
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:11:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Zarembka <zarembka@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFT, Pt.2
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970404144645.29174A-100000@autarch.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970404210144.21413E-100000@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu>

Brian, I am at the University at Buffalo and I have never heard of your
Collective.  If I remember, you posted something about the Graduate
Student Conference to be held here April 18, with Ellen Meiskins Wood as
keynoter, but I deleted it and cannot remember the post (even whether it
was supportive or critical).  I am a member of the Group sponsoring
the Conference and I supported inviting Wood.  Her presence, hopefully,
will stimulate interest in Marxism on campus.  

If you mention some names in your collective, maybe I'll get a "recall".
Paul

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Paul Zarembka, supporting the  RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY  Web site at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka,  and using OS/2 Warp.
*************************************************************************


On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Brian M Ganter wrote:

> ------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Revolutionary Marxist Collective at U of Buffalo
> 
> 
> PANIC LEFT, Pt. 2
> 
> 	It is strange--isn't it--that on the one hand the RMC/Buffalo is
> accused of writing impenetrable prose that no one can read and that no one
> would read ("beyond the first sentence"--to quote Doug Henwood) and on the
> other hand we are discovering that all of our texts are not only "read"
> but "studied" and responded to!  How is that for a "contradiction"!  How
> the "un-readable" is at the same time the most read!  Which shows that
> "readability", "stalinism", etc. are little more than ideological alibis
> deployed as devices of resistance against thoughtfulness and difficult
> thinking.  The sentimental left of Ralph Dumain that lives on anecdotes
> justifies itself by accusing rigorous thought of being stalinist.
> Stalinism is, for Ralph, to put it another way, a cover up for the fascism
> that his brand of leftism (as the paid agent of capital) advocates.  He
> shares his strategies of fascist propaganda with not only Stanley Crouch
> but also Laura Ingraham and others who also have made a habit of deploying
> stalinism to defend a triumphalist capitalism.  Since Ralph Dumain is
> clearly a "fan" of "Comrade Zavarzadeh", we publish here a short and very
> accessable text by the "the comrade" (appropriate salute for the stalinist
> in residence) that might make clear why Ralph is so mad at him!  
> Here we go:   
>         
> 
> 
>         THE FRESH FACE OF POSTMODERN FASCISM ON TV POLITICAL ANALYSIS
> 
> 			By Mas'ud Zavarzadeh
> 
> 
>         
>      The retirement of David Brinkley as the commentator on ABC's talk show 
> ("This Week with David Brinkley") and the subsequent lowering of George Will's 
> profile on that show, signal the arrival of a new era in television political 
> analysis. The Brinkley-Will brand of conservative commentary has become rather 
> embarrassing. They speak the old languages of the cold war and show how out of 
> touch they are with the emerging global capitalism and its post-national 
> politics so important to big business. Their commentary is mired in nostalgia 
> for a dying nationalist capitalism and its fading nation-state. 
> 
>      The TV networks are now scrambling to find fresh voices that are tuned to 
> the new globalization of capital and can defend the interests of transnational 
> big business in hipper, more cosmopolitan tones. They are looking (to 
> paraphrase one network executive) for young, smart, image-savvy political 
> analysts who can cut against the nationalist conservative cliches of Brinkley-
> Will-Novak. 
> 
>      In Laura Ingraham--the new analyst on the 
> CBS's Weekend News who also has a spot on Microsoft-NBC's world-wide MSNBC--
> the networks have found the new postmodern political commentator for the post-
> cold war. She is not simply another "far-rite" (as her Porsche vanity-plate 
> proclaimed) conservative. She is a postmodern analyst whose "fresh voice" is 
> the voice of transnational postmodern fascism. Like her Italian counter-parts 
> (the "post-fascists"), she packages fascism as a transnational ideology with 
> wit, humor, irony and an image-savviness for mass consumption. She makes 
> postmodern fascism look cutting-edge--a hip politics. 
> 
>      Ingraham's commentary is aggressively postmodern, irreverent and--unlike 
> the old modernist fascism--postnational. Her main interest is in a foreign 
> policy that protects transnational business. She believes that the model for 
> US foreign policy should be one based on the "desire to promote democracy 
> abroad." But "democracy aboard" is a code word, in her commentary, for the 
> free market. She is, therefore, upset about the lack of trade balance between 
> the US and China and wants human rights issues be used as a lever to correct 
> that imbalance by opening up more of the Chinese market to US business. 
> Similarly, Milosevic's regime, which is still based on state supervision of 
> business, should be replaced by a "pro-democratic" government that accepts the 
> free market and offers favorable business terms for foreign capitalists. 
> 
>      Her defense of transnational business avoids the old nationalist fascist 
> "argument" against "liberalism." Instead, like other postmodern fascists 
> steeped in the culture of MTV, she bypasses "argument" and simply presents her 
> audience with an image, an ironic play of wit. When she showed up for lunch 
> interview with David Shribman of The Boston Globe, she wore a full-length fur 
> which, she assured him, was made from "baby squealing foxes." In one image 
> she condenses her case for big business; her contempt for animal rights,
> and her ironic pleasure in the  individual rewards of capitalism. And she
> does this fearlessly (in John MacLaughlins word on whose show, The McLaughlin 
> Group, she also appears). 
> 
>      "Fearlessness" is the trade mark of all fascist militaristic aggressions 
> against the people's democracy. Ingraham's postmodern fascism is born out of 
> the current crisis of U.S. capitalism. Fascism is the outcome of the 
> tremendous economic hardship facing the petty bourgeoisie. Like other 
> postmodern Fascists, Ingraham persuades the petty bourgeoisie that its 
> economic hardship is caused not by the exploitation of workers, which has 
> resulted in the rising profits of transnational business, but by liberal 
> cultural policies, which favor the working class,  the poor, the African-
> American and women. More specifically, her commentaries manipulate the fears 
> of the middle class in order to attack liberal social policies that, she says, 
> support homosexuality abortion, secular school curriculum, feminism, welfare 
> mothers and a whole host of other things that scare the white middle class. 
> She has, for example, called the Gay Students Association at Dartmouth, where 
> she was an undergraduate, "cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites." However, 
> for her, the main beneficiaries of shameful liberalism, which robs people of 
> their rights of free competition (by affirmative action, for example), are 
> labor unions. 
> 
>      Unions have become the symbol of liberal and anti-business regulations 
> that restrict free enterprise and limit individual freedom and prosperity. 
> Ingraham thinks, like another postmodern fascist, Arianna Huffington, that we 
> should abandon social programs that provide a safety net (because they 
> increase taxes on big business) and susbstitute for them compassion and moral 
> responsibility.  
> 
>      In the guise of debating cultural issues, Ingraham's comments alienate 
> people from working class movements and thus weaken the unions. Weakened 
> unions leave transnational big business free to increase its exploitation of 
> workers all over the world--from sweatshops making designer clothes in New 
> York to child labor in Bangladesh making soccer balls and carpets for Western 
> consumers. 
> 
>      What is just as dangerous as Ingraham's postmodern fascism is the way in 
> which she is received by the media. Her views are being accommodated and made 
> familiar not just by entertainment magazines like Vanity Fair but by the 
> "serious"media, notably Sixty Minutes and The New York Times. For instance, 
> The New York Times, which put her on the cover of its Sunday Magazine, has 
> treated her postmodern fascism as the charming views of an outspoken, bold 
> and hip performance artist and not as the dangerous political ideology that 
> it is. Her anti-gay comments, for example, are not seen by the media as an 
> ingredient of fascism but as an ironic performance since, after all, her own 
> brother is gay. 
> 
>      By personalizing her views and representing her politics as pure style 
> and image, the media has taken her fascist views as a refreshing new voice. 
> Network executives argue that such a hot new voice should be heard as part of 
> larger pluralism of voices on TV. But this is, of course, a very selective 
> pluralism: when was the last time network executives allowed a socialist voice 
> to be heard as a part of a pluralist commentary? 
>      Ingraham's views, far from being "personal" and eccentric expressions of 
> a hip postmodern conservative, are symptoms of a new transnational fascism 
> marked by the increasing violence of big business against workers: lay-offs 
> and outsourcing to maximize profits; the rise of white militias in the U.S. 
> and ethnic cleansing abroad; the trafficking in child prostitution and slave 
> labor, and more and more sweatshops--whether in U.S. cities or free trade 
> zones. Ingraham's postmodern fascism is the symptom of the latest crisis of 
> transnational capitalism. One should look beyond its slick veneer and fight it 
> on all fronts. 
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