From lnp3@columbia.edu  Sun Apr  6 23:45:08 1997
From: lnp3@columbia.edu (Louis N Proyect)
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 18:45:08 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: M-TH: Ganter's revolutionism
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.95L.970406161111.11583C-100000@kiaora.cc.columbia.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.95L.970406183614.23832A-100000@aloha.cc.columbia.edu>

Ganter:
they think of fascism only in relation to monopoly
capital, the "fascism" that Adorno & Horkhiemer fought on the one hand
and the Spanish civil war and the Red Army fought on the other.  

Proyect:
The sentence above represents the depths of petty-bourgeois impressionism.
References to names and events are throw about with scant regard for
putting them into any kind of context. The "fascism" that Adorno fought
was based on a total rejection of the Marxist model. He viewed the German
working-class as fundamentally flawed. That was the reason for the rise 
of Hitler: the workers didn't cut the mustard. The empirical studies of
the Frankfurt school were totally consumed with the project of trying to
explain why socialist workers embraced Hitler. 

Their methodology was anti-Marxist. You are so impoverished of the history
of this school that you throw names of its adherents around with zero
understanding of how opposed to classical Marxism they were. When you say
that the Spanish Civil War and the Red Army fought fascism, you are
reducing complex historical events to name-dropping. The problem is that
the Spanish Civil War [sic] fought fascism but not capitalism. This led to
the defeat of the possibility of working class revolution. This defeat led
in turn to the Nazi attack on the USSR. When you telescope complex events
such as these into a sentence or two, you are betraying the second-rate
education you have received from your cult leader Navah. If you spent less
time adoring him and more time reading some of the Marxist histories of
the 1930's, you wouldn't make such embarrassing gaffes. 


Ganter:
It is true that the class roots of the fascism that is articulated in
cybercapitalism are also the petty-bourgeoisie caught between the working
class and the capitalist class.  But the  specific shapes of the
contradictions of this class fraction have changed. The fascism of
cybercapitalism works to "solve" these contradictions not by guns...but by
"family values"...by the "aesthetic"...it is this "fascism" which uses
"Stalinism" as a cover.  It is this "fascism" which often takes

Proyect:  Cybercapitalism is resolving *what* contradictions? Have you
ever left the campus coffee shop to take a look at what is going on in the
city of Buffalo? There are no contradictions such as the kind that fascism
was called upon to resolve in the 1920s and 30s. Mussolini took power in
the context of revolutionary explosions in the aftermath of WWI. The same
crisis led to upheavals in Hungary and Germany. Bela Kun was defeated in
the first country and Luxemburg/Liebknecht in the second.  

Buffalo, New York has no working class parties, no class battles, no grass
roots forms of workers democracy, etc. Those who are employed leave their
job each day and go home to watch television, drink beer or smoke a joint.
The unemployed are bitter and hopeless but this 10% or so of the
population has not turned to political struggle. This is the reality of
life in Buffalo. If you could tear yourselves away from your cult leader
and observe class relations based on an understanding of the economy, you
wouldn't be so prone to these fantasies in technicolor.

Ganter:
The goal of cyberfascism is to put forward well-written sentences as the
condition of a "good society",
to divert attention from THINKING to FEELING...to get rid of "false
consciousness" as a concept.  This is why Doug Henwood's brand of fascism
on the one hand fights pomo and at the same time naturalizes what pomo
has always  done--the aestheticization the everyday.  

Proyect:  No, the goal of well-written sentences is to communicate. Most
of us have trouble understanding your ideas because they are cloaked in
absurd jargon that we assume you learned from your cult leader. I met a
couple of other pod people from Syracuse once and they too couldn't stop
using the absurd term "problematize" either. I used to notice this form of
behavior in my former cult, the SWP. People used to use the pet
phrases of our own guru like "In the coming period". This is symptomatic
of people who prefer to let others do their thinking for them. I suppose
the big difference between 1967 and 1997 is that academic cults substitute
for the absence of Marxist-Leninist cults.
 
One day, my child, when you leave the ivory tower and go among the people,
you will learn to speak like regular human beings. This is the first step
in becoming revolutionaries. Read Lenin. Any resemblance between your
academic jargon and the way he wrote is purely coincidental.

Ganter:
simultaneously hints at the need for increased "authority" from above, in
this case, more "moderation"  as a result of FLAME WARS that have gotten
out of hand. This is cyberfascism: throwing people off of the list
(the Dumain/Proyect/Henwood clique) all under the guise of an attack on
Stalinism and the exclusion of persons who have a different set of
understandings.. .these are the weapons of the cyberfascist..     

Proyect:
Odd, this reminds me of the complaint of the old Shining Path contingent
last year. They claimed that if they were suspended, this proved that the
Spoons lists were "fascist". No, Ganter, fascism is breaking up working
class meetings with knives and guns. I am trying to get somebody to
*chair* our meetings. Trust me, I will always have time to respond to you
on the unmoderated lists. I find you so unspeakably arrogant and
petty-bourgeois that I find it an absolute joy to skewer you.

The impression I get from you and the Radical Orange types I have run into
in NYC is that you are a bunch of rich kids who have never taken part in a
single labor, environmental, peace, women's or gay group on a sustained
basis. Your revolutionism is purely verbal. Ten years from now you will be
ensconced in your Connecticut estates or Maine summer homes after having
taking a position in your daddy's firm. While sipping Martinis and
watching the setting sun, you will have a chuckle or two about those
wayward years of your early twenties when you talked about revolution.
What a worthless group of poseurs you are.





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