From owner-marxism-international
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 23:12:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Stephen C Tumino <sctumino@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: PANIC LEFT - 12
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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