From owner-marxism-international  Fri Apr 18 23:12:52 1997
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 23:12:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Stephen C Tumino <sctumino@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: PANIC LEFT - 12
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970418230400.28566G-100000@lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu>




Revolutionary Marxist Collective (Buffalo/Syracuse)

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PANIC LEFT - 12

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The point we have made and are now making again is not that postmodernism
(or any other ideological practice) CAUSES... eclecticism, pluralism or
pragmatism.  Our point is that postmodernism provides a cognitive climate
in which such practices find a new cycle of life -- as if they are new and
not in fact part of the very contradictions of capitalism. Two more
specific points: pluralism is not simply a co-opting of pre-capitalist
elements in capitalism.  It is an attempt to produce a "truce" in class
struggle.  Pragmatism is one of the main theoretical practices that
postmodernism and poststructuralism have "re-cycled": Lyotard's JUST
GAMING and THE DIFFEREND are exemplary instances of such a re-NEW-ing of
pragmatism by "new"  re-descriptions of them (to use Rorty's own term).

  The desire to dismiss whatever we state is so intense that our texts are
rarely read: the question is not that postmodernism provides a mode of
analysis -- the point is that it acts as a climate of thinking-feeling in
which old bourgeois forms of thought find a new lease on life. To refuse
to engage postmodernism and treat it as "joke", "fad"... is the way that
the reformist left has dealt with it (and all other advanced bourgeois
thought) and the result has been quite visible on the net-left.  There is
really not much thinking going on in response to our critique: what we get
is ridicule, marginalization, and scatology.  It is the result of such
inability to engage (not agree/accept...) issues that, for example, Hugh
Rodwell seems to think that by using the image of Buffalo "scrotum" he is
responding/engaging our critique.  He confuses the use of scatology as a
"therapy" for his fears of an engagement with "theory". 

  The practice of non-reading, of course, is not limited to Hugh Rodwell
-- although he has turned it into an art. Robert Malecki's rantings
prevent him from even pausing to consider the issues at stake. It is quite
clear that he has NOT read Ebert's article (and has no idea of her
theoretical analysis in her book) he has not even read the summary of her
essay on this list. As Proyect has pointed out: hers is a conjunctural
analysis of the state: she is responding to the views on the state that
are put forth (e.g. in a recent issue of SOCIAL TEXT on the question of
the "withering away of the civil society"). Her point is that there is a
fundamental difference between the "withering away of the state" (the
classical Marxist theory) and the systematic commodification of the state
by transnational capitalism: the privatization of schools,... The latter
is a systematic attempt by transnational capitalism to remove all
resistance from the complete commodification of life... in this space (and
only in this conjuncture) it might be necessary to defend such functions
of the state as affirmative action, welfare, Medicare... even though these
are in and of themselves, as Joao Paulo Monteiro has said, not
incompatible with capitalism. The alternative -- given the existing
situation -- is to throw children and women out on the street.  Ebert's
text is not a defense of the state, it is a resistance against
the commodification of the social sphere by global capital... 

  Rather than thinking about issues raised, Malecki in his own unique
brand of philosophical anti-intellectualism advises people to tear apart
Ebert's book (as all fascists have done) and use it for wiping their shit. 
Here is a rigorous MARXIST thinker for you! 




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