politics

Updates

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Some recent blog entries and threads of note:

1. Over at the blog An und für Sich, there has been a recent post regarding Moishe Postone’s fascinating and insightful thesis that Nazism (and historical anti-semitism in general) is a perverse form of misrecognized anti-capitalism.  The comment thread has now turned into a broader discussion of neoliberal capitalism and the state of the Left.

2. Also, once again the blogger Pete Wolfendale of Deontologistics has posted a brilliant and thorough rejoinder to Levi Bryant’s irresponsible and frankly indefensible anti-epistemological and anti-representationalist speculations.  I expect that Bryant will feign ignorance to it, will not directly respond to it, even though it is both polite and extremely charitable in taking anything that Bryant has to say seriously.  My own critique of his post on commodities, objects, and persons, of which he is doubtless aware and which he has almost assuredly has read and broiled over, will likely never receive a response either.  I do not know whether to attribute Bryant’s refusal to respond to such legitimate criticisms is a sign of his intellectual incapacities or of his general cowardice when it comes to confronting harsh critiques of his work.

Also, a blog I recently discovered:

3. A brilliant website on architecture and other interesting topics, aggregat456.  As the author of the blog explains in the right-hand column of his site, “Originally conceived as a place to post thoughts about architecture, this site now contains a variety of design-based ideas that cut across various disciplines.”  One of his posts proved to be extremely helpful for the composition of my recent post on the Palace of the Soviets.

Nadezhda Krupskaia, Articles on the Socialist City (1929-1930) — Free PDF Download

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A Young Nadezhda Krupskaia

The problem of the “socialist city” introduced by Sabsovich was not exclusively pondered over by architects and urban planners.  Indeed, quite a number of prominent Soviet officials weighed in on the matter, from the People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharskii, to the renowned Bolshevik and member of the Politburo Grigorii Zinoviev, all the way to Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaia.

Krupskaia, who will be the subject of the present post and whose writings will be included along with it, had largely been relegated to the sidelines of Soviet politics by 1929-1930.  The Stalinist bloc had by then established itself on fairly firm footing in the political sphere, but knew that Krupskaia was too symbolically important to the Revolution to silence altogether.  So Krupskaia was still able to publish some political articles here and there, and became a popular pedagogical and matriarchal figure for the young Soviet regime for her writings on education and children.

In 1929, when the economist Sabsovich published his seminal article on the Socialist city, Krupskaia became intrigued by the prospect of a new mode of social and municipal reorganization.  Early on, she sided with Sabsovich’s proposal to overcome the antithesis of town and country with a more uniform system of settlement.  She thus wrote her article, “Cities of the Future,” which can be found on pages 161-165 of the volume uploaded below, in which she announced her support for Sabsovich’s Urbanist plan.  As a correlative of that plan, in which Sabsovich had proposed that children have their own “little cities” (детьские городки), Krupskaia responded by writing an article posing the question, “Where will Children Live in the Socialist City?”  This can be found between pages 206-209.

Also, as the competition for the “Green City” of Moscow heated up, Krupskaia offered her input, as she (amongst other Soviet intellectuals) tried to conceptualize a city for workers’ rest and leisure.

Надежда Крупская – Педагогические сочинения в десяти томах – Том 6

The articles:

  1. “Where will Children Live in the Socialist City? (in the order of consideration)” = «Где жить детям и социалистическом городе? (в порядке обсуждения)»
  2. “‘The Green City’ and the Leisure Activities of the Workers” = ««Зеленый город» и задачи отдыха рабочих»
  3. “The City of the Future” = «Города будущего»

On Veganism

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The Absurd Moral Casuistry of Ethical Veganism

To be clear, I am not the author of this entry.  I came across this article some time ago, and at that point merely thought it both hilarious and correct.  Since I have now written up my own critique of veganism, and “Green” lifestyle politics in general, I find that this piece provides a nice supplement to my own qualms with dietary ethics, as well as the political positions it implies.  The article is written from a clearly Marxist perspective, and I find myself agreeing with all of the points it makes regarding the nature of capitalism and the falsity of the supply-and-demand model of economics.  The blog on which this was originally published seems to have died out, unfortunately, but I invite readers who enjoy this article to read a follow-up they did to this, now posted on their main page.  And yet, in spite of the truths revealed by this article, some pro-vegan abolitionist websites promote the ridiculous notion that veganism is somehow more “revolutionary” than political Marxism.

Reposted from the Original Piece by the Fighting Words Staff

I’m sure you’ve come across some variant of “with the amount of grain used to fatten animals for human consumption, we could, if we all became vegetarian, eliminate world hunger.” The “case” for veganism suffers from the same limitations particular to consumer politics. In that it fails to understand capitalist production, the “air tight” arguments are shown to be nothing but non-sequiturs.

First, world hunger has nothing to do with scarcity. We continue to produce enough grain and other foodstuffs for human consumption to feed double the human population. Economists who speak of a “grain glut” mean that literally tons of grain is wasted and unused, not because people aren’t in need of it, but because they can’t afford it. Second, it speaks to incredible naiveté to assume that world agribusiness would give away any excess grain left over if the meat industry suddenly collapsed. When I say political veganism doesn’t understand capitalism, this is what I mean.

While there’s nothing wrong with seeing it as simply a moral issue, there is something incredibly obnoxious and self-aggrandizing about puffing out your chest, believing your diet will change the world. While the number of vegetarians and vegans has grown into sizeable minority, you would think that meat consumption would’ve shown a slight decline. But the opposite is true. Total meat consumption has increased. With food costs rising, meat has become more practical (in terms of calorie intake) and affordable. There is absolutely no substance to the claim that going vegan saves any animals. Capitalism does not plan production based on a one to one correspondence of a supply demand. In fact, its key feature is overproduction. A general lowering of demand will then likely mean two things: 1) animals not consumed will just be wasted 2) the price of meat becomes cheaper, increasing total consumption.

There is also no precedent for a boycott strategy that has shut down an entire industry the way it’s being described (and it would require a boycott of all supermarkets and restaurants). That’s because the consumer has very little power. One can “choose” to drive a fuel-efficient car, but can’t choose why cities lack efficient public transportation. One can choose to buy energy efficient light bulbs, but has no say about planned product obsolescence. No one can dispute that the factory farm model creates tremendous amounts of waste, contributing to environmental catastrophe. It does so because capitalism forces every industry to accumulate and capture as much of the market as it can, in the most cost effective way. It functions to maximize profit, not to meet needs or work rationally. So every industry is structured unsustainably.

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A Cruel Irony in the History of Architectural Modernism

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Monument to Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemburg (1925)

It is a cruel irony in the history of architectural modernism that the Mies van der Rohe, who earlier in his career designed the monument to the fallen Communist heroes Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemburg, would (thirty years later) be the same man who designed the Seagram Building, one of the swankiest monuments to high-Fordist capitalism.  This may have been pointed out before, but it stands as a testament to the tragedy of architectural modernism in the twentieth century.

The Seagram Building (1958)

Man and Nature, Parts I-IV (Complete)

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For those who would like to read my series of articles on Man and Nature, here they are, presented as a continuous text.  Also, for a detailed response to the fourth installment of my series on Man and Nature, please visit the Oroborous Self-Sufficient Community.  Its founder, the scientist Allister Cucksey, is a Robert Owens of sorts, and his counter-critique is welcome.

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Some Long Overdue Gratitude, Plugs, and Recognition

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During my time as author of The Charnel-House I have been the beneficiary of a number of appreciative comments and plugs that have helped to publicize and further spread the word about my blog.  Needless to say, I am deeply grateful to have received these endorsements.  But now it has come time to return their generosity, as well as to include a few plugs of my own.

First of all, I should like to thank the following blogs for their support:

1. Anti-German/Anti-National Translation: A blog with incredible breadth and critical acuity, providing translation work as well as discussions of anti-Semitism on the Left.

2. Nasty, Brutalist, and Short: Perhaps the most original and intriguing architectural critic to be found in the blogosphere, writing from an explicitly Bolshevist and pro-Modernist perspective.

3. Renegade Eye: A blog associated with the Trotskyist International Marxist Tendency (IMT), whose position on Chavez and Venezuela might be a far cry from my own, but which always provides interesting articles and topics for discussion.  The quality of discussion varies from post to post, but the author of the blog himself is quite to-the-point and intellectually honest.

4. Bob From Brockley: Of all the blogs that have linked to mine, I am by far the least acquainted with this one.  From what I understand, the author is a British Leftist who quickly got fed up with all the nonsense floating around on the Left there.  It’s a blog I’d love to explore some more in the coming months.

The list of sites I’d like to plug is too long for a single post, but you’ll find them all in my links on the right-hand side of the page, organized roughly according to their content.  I recommend all of them, with the only reservation being that they do not necessarily reflect my own views.  Nevertheless, I find all of them engaging enough to check out.  Enjoy!

Environmentalism and the So-Called “Green Scare”: An Ideological Critique

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The Idea of the Perpetual Forest, 1923

Will Potter, the self-styled alternative journalist and author of the blog Green is the New Red, has recently taken issue with the presentation of environmental activist criminals alongside neo-Nazis and anti-abortion activists.  The blog, whose content usually amounts to little more than accusations of hypocrisy and appeals to common sense, suggests that the reason for this invidious association is corporate interests “polluting” the spirit of democracy through lobbying groups operating in Washington.

It actually shouldn’t come as so much of a surprise, however, that environmentalists should be listed alongside neo-Nazis as prisoners, in terms of their ideology (that is, if they are not grouped according to the crimes they committed).  After all, Nazism and fascism in general promoted a number of policies and philosophical outlooks that are today considered “progressive” by the soft left and mainstream environmentalism.  They introduced the concept of environmental sustainability and often advocated a sort of vitalistic respect for Nature considered in itself, as some sort of untouched wilderness paradise or Dauerwald.  They saw natural sites like the Black Forest as the Ursprung of the Teutonic spirit, uncorrupted by modern society and its economic form of capitalism, which they associated with cosmopolitanism, decadent urbanism, and Jewry.  Of course, a lot of this Germanic naturalist horseshit has been unwittingly “recycled” and reprocessed by the present-day environmentalist movement, which still fancies itself to be extremely forward-thinking and anti-establishment.

It actually makes much less sense that an anti-abortion terrorist would be mentioned in the same breath as a neo-Nazi, ideologically speaking.  Fascism, especially in its NSDAP strain, supported forced sterilization and mandatory abortion procedures as part of its eugenicist program of racial hygiene.  Anti-abortion extremists may be religious lunatics, but they wouldn’t be caught dead with a neo-Nazi.  “Radical” environmentalism is far more compatible with Nazism than the pro-life fringe.

So it would seem that the only legitimate basis for Will Potter’s objection is that the environmentalists are being associated with murderers, not specifically anti-abortion or anti-semitic murderers.  McGowan and the SHAC 7 have been imprisoned for the destruction of property, not the destruction of life, as with Furrow and Waagner.  But the ideologies involved would seem to be irrelevant, since at an ideological level environmentalists would have far more in common with neo-Nazis than anti-abortion fanatics.  I’m not sure why Potter feels it’s even necessary to mention them.

I suspect the point he is trying to get at is that apparently “left-wing” anti-corporate/anti-capitalist activists are being unfairly equated with right-wing terrorists who are guilty of far worse crimes.  The nature of their crimes notwithstanding, however, this takes for granted the idea that animal rights advocates and environmentalists are actually part of the political Left.  From an historical perspective, on the contrary, it would be seen that environmentalism is politically ambiguous and that a great deal of its ideology has been inherited from romantic nationalist currents in the 19th century and more recently from mass right-wing movements like fascism.  A leftist position that was less politically confused would see the goal of society and humanity in general as the self-conscious global mastery of nature, not the dangerously haphazard and chaotic hyperexploitation of the environment, as things currently stand.  But not the flimsy and shallow anti-corporate rhetoric that’s peddled today by most environmentalists.

To close with a reflection on the site’s premise, a few words might be said.  Potter’s main contention on the site is that the Green environmentalist and animal rights movement is suffering persecution akin to that experienced by Communists during the famous “Red Scares” of the 1920s and 1950s.  Besides the obvious point that the parallels Potter sees are exaggerated and overblown, it strikes me as exceptionally ironic that a website whose mission statement insists that “Together, we can stop they cycle of history repeating itself” can be so oblivious of its own movement’s history.

For now, however, we might even grant Potter that this so-called “Green Scare” does constitute a repetition of sorts.  But for this sort of repetition, no observation is more apt than Marx’s when he recalls in his Eighteenth Brumaire that

Hegel remarks somewherethat all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

The Red Scares of the ’20s and ’50s possess a tragic aspect, particularly the former.  By contrast, the “Green Scare” of recent years appears farcical.  The Animal Liberation Front for the Bolsheviks, Daniel McGowan for Leon Trotskii, the Green for the Red.

Regressive activism at the recent Toronto G-20 conference

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An excellent piece by Ashley Weger of Platypus provides a desperately-needed critical reexamination of the latest round of anti-globalization protests, which took place at the G-20 Conference in Toronto a couple months ago.  Unsurprisingly, the same predictable scenario of spectacular, ineffectual “resistance” played itself out there yet again.  In some ways, it’s a continuation of conventions established by ’60s and ’70s radicalism.  The newer element, noted by Weger in her article, is the peculiar hodgepodge of unrelated and even contradictory tendencies within the Left that have shown up at these events ever since they were first held back in 1999.  Any notion of a common goal toward which these disparate groups are working, under which they are united, is, however, completely lost on the protesters.  Their “courageous” acts of defiance and non-conformity all too often amount to nothing more than empty displays of a vague, generalized discontent with the status quo, however inadequately they understand it.

Whether or not the riots were provoked by undercover police agents posing as Black Bloc members is irrelevant to an investigation of the fundamental premises of the G-20 marches.  This is so no matter what the excesses committed by the police might have been, since these are matters of purely legal and ethical consideration.  Though many of the accusations of police brutality against innocent protestors might be well-founded, this does not in any way retroactively justify their tactics, goals, and antics.

The characteristics exhibited by the demonstrations in Toronto in late June are nearly all symptomatic of what Theodor Adorno termed “actionism” in his “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” and in his final published essay, “Resignation” (1968).  His evaluation of this phenomenon was as follows:

Actionism is regressive.  Under the spell of the positivity that long ago became part of the armature of ego-weakness, it refuses to reflect upon its own impotence.

Adorno was here responding to the new wave of mass social activism that was first beginning to emerge in the 1960s, culminating in the widespread protests, demonstrations, and university takeovers of 1968.  When he expressed his misgivings about these protests, Adorno was accused of turning his back on the students’ revolutionary struggle.  To this he responded:

We older representatives of that for which the name Frankfurt School has established itself have recently had the reproach of resignation leveled against us. We had, it is stated, developed elements of a critical theory of society, but we were not prepared to draw the practical consequences from this theory. The objection raised against us be states approximately in these words: a person who in the present hour doubts the possibility of radical change in society and who for that reason neither takes part in nor recommends spectacular, violent action is guilty of resignation. Thinking activists [claim]: among the things to be changed is that very separation of theory and praxis. The trouble with this view is that it results in the prohibition of thinking. The often-evoked unity of theory and praxis has a tendency to give way to the predominance of praxis. Today…one clings to action because of the impossibility of action.

At the present point no higher form of society is concretely visible: for that reason, anything that seems in reach is regressive. The Utopian impulse in thinking is all the stronger, the less it objectifies itself as Utopia whereby it sabotages its own realization.

Repressive intolerance toward a thought not immediately accompanied by instructions for action is founded in fear. Thought, enlightenment conscious of itself, threatens to disenchant pseudo-reality within which activism moves. This activism is tolerated only because it is viewed as pseudo-activity. Only thinking could offer an escape. It is the responsibility of thought not to accept the situation as finite. If there is any chance of changing the situation, it is only through undiminished insight.

Adorno witnessed the anti-intellectualism of popular protest movements firsthand.  This character of unthinking has been more recently addressed by Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti, in their 2003 article “Action Will be Taken”, written in the context of the (now largely forgotten) antiwar movement.  Activists and protesters, they observed, would rather not “get bogged down in analysis.”  Featherstone, Henwood, and Parenti thus asked: “So over all is the activist left just an inchoate, ‘post-ideological’ mass of do-gooders, pragmatists, and puppeteers?” To which they promptly answered:

No.  The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology and it is as deeply felt and intellectually totalizing as any of the great belief systems of yore.  The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drum, who lead the “trainings” and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed.  They are Activismists.

That’s right, Activismists.  This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade.  In this worldview, all roads lead to more activism and more activists.  And the one who acts is righteous.

Those who participate in events such as the recent G-20 protests often leave with the sense of smug self-satisfaction that comes from knowing that they have “done their part” in order to somehow “make a difference” in the world.  The danger for the Left is not police repression, but rather its own thoughtlessness.  Or, as Weger puts it, in a magnificent line: “[the current crisis for the Left is] not a rain of rubber bullets aimed at it, but the perverse, perennial celebration of its own comatose state.”

Lenin’s critique of the politics of spontaneity in What is to be Done?

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.Untitled
IMAGE: Agitprop poster, 1920s:
“Without revolutionary theory,
there can be no revolutionary movement.”
.Untitled

In preparing my presentation on Lenin’s What is to be Done? this week for the UChicago Platypus reading group, I found myself returning again and again to his description of the so-called “spontaneity” of the masses.  It was on this supposed spontaneity, of course, that the Economists pinned their hopes of social revolution (should there be one at all).  I noticed that in his critique of the notion of the working class’ spontaneity, Lenin employed a number of categories borrowed from classical German philosophy.  All of these categories pertain to consciousness, and constitute an epistemology of sorts.  I found, moreover, that this seemed to provide a theoretical link to Lukács’ later account of reification.  Though this began as little more than a meditation, I brought it up at the reading group and found that it was well received.  Afterward, Sunit encouraged me to elaborate on this notion and submit my thoughts online. Continue reading →

Review of Lenin’s State and Revolution (1917)

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Lenin’s State and Revolution, composed during the summer months of 1917 (between two revolutions), is praxis embodied in text. While its content is ostensibly theoretical, the corrosive criticism it contains simultaneously served practical ends. The work may therefore be viewed in two fairly distinct formal lights: first, qua Marxist political treatise; second, qua polemic. But, in true dialectical fashion, Lenin’s two central motifs constitute an inseparable unity. They interweave with one another, sundering apart at one moment only to again coalesce in the next. Lenin distinguishes himself from many other dialecticians in this work, however. For while he remains faithful to the oscillating (even hypnotic) method of presentation that typifies dialectical reasoning, his style nevertheless retains its lucidity. His examination is thoroughgoing, yet the conclusions it yields are unambiguous. It is at once a testament to the author’s political genius as it is to the demands of the times in which it was written, bearing the stamp of irreducible brilliance (contingency) alongside the incumbent historical conditions (necessity).

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