From owner-marxism-international  Thu Apr 17 10:36:44 1997
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:36:26 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199704171436.KAA11315@mailhub2.cc.columbia.edu>
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: The Teresa Ebert thread

(1) I post from Teresa Ebert's article:

(In early December, I reproduced a substantial chunk of Teresa Ebert's prose
>from Against the Current magazine. I remember sitting in my apartment on a
Saturday morning with the magazine propped up reading for transcription and
thinking to myself, "This will be a tedious chore typing all this in, but it
is important that people learn about her." Ebert's thoughts are as follows.
I should remind everybody that she is one of the guiding lights of the
Buffalo collective.)

There are clearly new aspects to late capitalism, which increasingly 
tries to secure its fundamental relations of profit by deconstructing the 
state and setting up, in place of the state, what might be called a global 
civil society. This global civil society is itself mapped out in terms of 
NGOs, which are used in many way ways to secure the interests of 
global capitalism by displacing class and marginalizing economic 
policy and practices by sheer enterpreneurship and the free market.

It may be necessary to make a distinction here between globalism--
which is the privileged term in contemporary left theory--and 
internationalism, which is the Marxist notion. By emphasizing 
globalism, contemporary transnational feminism deconstructs the state 
and establishes a transnational order based on culture--at the center of 
which is the matter of consumption. This, in other words, is globalism 
in which transnationality is achieved by the fact that a clerk in Hong 
Kong listens to the same music and enjoys the same jeans and "GAP 
clothes" as a teacher in Rumania or a London teenager.

Hence this civil society is based on consumption, and the connections 
that it makes are connections of objects of desire. In short, this is the 
civil society of commodification. In opposition to this is the idea of 
internationalism based on a world historical solidarity beyond the 
boundaries of nationality and consumption and founded upon class 
and production.

Red Feminism is a contestation of globalism as the regime of 
consumption, and it is the struggle for internationalism--the solidarity 
of all workers of the world beyond national boundaries. Red 
Feminism, in other words, is a materialist and historical 
understanding of the workings of capitalism, and it recognizes that at 
this stage of its development, it is necessary to support, as a strategic 
matter, the national state as a site where reforms and rights must be 
fought for and protected.

For postmodern theorists--especially following Foucault's "non-
economic analysis of power" (Power/Knowledge 88-89)--power is 
local, contingent, reversible, producing its own resistances, and the 
state is seen as a repressive regime suppressing both the play of 
individual desires and the aleatory flows of power/resistance. The post-
al left [!!!!], thus, "wages war" not so much against the exploitation of 
people by capitalism but against the domination ("totality") of the state 
as an oppressive agent restraining individual freedoms. In doing so, it 
is quite willing, as Spivak indicates, to form alliances with "capitalism 
with a small 'd' development".

For Marx, however, power is not autonomous but derives from the 
ownership of the means of production--it is an outcome of labor (not 
discourse) and thus a force in the class struggle. The state, in 
capitalism, is the historically specific exercise of power on behalf of 
the ruling class: "The executive of the modern State is but a committee 
for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie".

The issue of the state, for Marxists then, is its role in the class 
struggle. The State, in other words, is not an essence: Historically 
under communism it will wither away when the workers gain control 
over the means of production and the force of the state is no longer 
necessary to enforce class rule.

But we do not live in a communist or even a socialist order. Instead, in 
the current world historical situation, no particular social force can 
contest transnational capitalism with anything like capitalism's 
resources--except the state. As Masao Miyoshi writes in his essay, "A 
Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the 
Decline of the Nation-State," "the state did, and still does, perform 
certain functions, for which there is as of now no substitute."

The fact that the state is, for the most part, as Miyoshi also notes, 
"thoroughly appropriated by transnational corporations" does not 
change its importance in the class struggle. It is only through gaining 
control of the state that the workers will acquire the resources and 
apparatuses of power to enable them to control the means of 
production. The nation-state in late capitalism continues to be a 
necessary site in the international struggle to end the exploitation of 
people's labor and wrest the ownership of the means of production 
away from a transnational bourgeoisie.

It is, thus, necessary to engage the state as a resistance against 
transnational capitalism. As Lenin reminds us in The State and 
Revolution, Marx and Engels provide "a highly interesting definition 
of the state, which is also one of the 'forgotten words' of Marxism: 'the 
state, i.e. the proletariat organized as the ruling class.'"

Contemporary feminism, under the influence of postmodernism, has 
developed a number of theories and practices that are represented as 
progressive. As I have indicated, however, they are far from being so. 
In its localism, this kind of feminism cuts off the relation of a coherent 
theory as an explanatory critique to guide its practices and prevent 
them from becoming ad hoc reactions; in its ecological anti-
progressivism, such feminism becomes an ally of capitalism.

Feminism's anti-growth logic is ultimately an attempt to keep the third 
world a permanent market of products for the first world. Feminism's 
concept of transnational anti-Statist resistance is identical--in its 
effects--with conservative attempts to remove the last existing obstacle 
>from the path of capitalism. Its moralistic celebration of limits and its 
ethics of give-and-take lead to establishing philanthropy as 
international policy. Finally a feminist valorization of consumption as 
the new political power of transnational citizens destroys the solidarity 
of women on the basis of their production practices and class 
connection.

What we need is not a new "global-girdling" (post) consumptionist 
feminism, but a Red Feminism. Instead of alliances based on 
individual desire(ing), we need an international collectivity committed 
to emancipating women and all oppressed people from need and the 
exploitation of their labor."

(From "After Transnationalism and Localism: Toward a Red 
Feminism", by Teresa Ebert in the November/December "Against the 
Current". Ebert is the author of "Ludic Feminism and After: 
Postmodernism, Desire and Labor in Late Capitalism", published by 
University of Michigan Press. She is currently working on a new book 
"Red Feminism". She is also the co-editor of a new series/serial 
"Transformation: Marxist Boundary Work in Theory, Economics, 
Politics and Culture.")


(2) Joao Monteiro is outraged by Ebert and lets the list know it:

Teresa Ebert wrote:
> There are clearly new aspects to late capitalism, which increasingly
> tries to secure its fundamental relations of profit by deconstructing the
> state and setting up, in place of the state, what might be called a global
> civil society. This global civil society is itself mapped out in terms of
> NGOs, which are used in many way ways to secure the interests of
> global capitalism by displacing class and marginalizing economic
> policy and practices by sheer enterpreneurship and the free market.
>

After reading all this pack of nonsense, I'm beginig to dig a little bit
into that "marxian" business. I think you two Lous are just reading too
much and thinking too little. And those 'Rethinking Marxism' seminars
haven't made you any good either. O.k., marxism is a work in progress,
Marx's ideas should be subject to debate, critical reexamination and,
eventually, corrected - when we have something better. But I simply
refuse to mingle it with every paperback hip that gets to be reviewed in
the 'New York Review of Books'. I refuse to put post-modern, feminist,
ecological or multicultural shades and tones on Marx's cheeks, only to
have him end up looking like a silly old harlot. Is this the way you
make political alliances these days?

> (...) in the current world historical situation, no particular social
force can
> contest transnational capitalism with anything like capitalism's
> resources--except the state. As Masao Miyoshi writes in his essay, "A
> Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the
> Decline of the Nation-State," "the state did, and still does, perform
> certain functions, for which there is as of now no substitute."
> It is, thus, necessary to engage the state as a resistance against
> transnational capitalism.

I read this and just can't believe my eyes. Are you backing this Louis (P)?
The state aginst capitalism? This is better be a joke. The american state is
the political headquarters of american monopoly capital in its fierce
competition world wide. It will back it through means of economic
policy, industrial and agricultural policy, exchange-rates and monetary
policy, interest rate fixing, market regulation, protectionism and trade
negotiations, diplomacy and, if need be, military action abroad.
The state is only a "resistance" against the transnational capital of
the others, or, by other words, it is an instrument of inter-imperialist
struggle.

If your politics is that the american workers should back their state in
this way against "transnational capitalism", your heading for a rough
ride indeed. You're telling the american workers to work harder for less
pay and stand with "their own", helping Ford beat Honda, and Boeing beat
Airbus. For that, you'll ask for some welfare charity and maybe some
positive action (for blacks, women, gays or whatever) but you're not
likely to get much. This is class colaboration in its worst. Meanwhile,
your bosses we'll be looking for new oportunities to keep sending your
jobs abroad.

The only real marxist politics (this must be the 37th time I say this in
this list) is the one that gathers workers around the world against
their bosses. I'm still looking fore someone to discuss this with.
Now, Bob Malecki may be a sectist lunatic, but he is surely on target
when he says you're heading for the dustbin of history following this
track.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.


(3) I come to Teresa Ebert's defense:

On Sun, 15 Dec 1996, Joao Paulo Monteiro wrote:

> the 'New York Review of Books'. I refuse to put post-modern, feminist,
> ecological or multicultural shades and tones on Marx's cheeks, only to
> have him end up looking like a silly old harlot. Is this the way you
> make political alliances these days?
>

Louis P: Teresa Ebert, whose article I was quoting from and whose ideas you
find so trendy, is actually one of the most important Marxist thinkers in the
United States trying to return Marxism to a *class* analysis. Just because
she uses the words post-modern, feminist, ecological, etc. doesn't mean
that she is expressing an anti-Marxist viewpoint. I often use the words
imperialism or fascism in my posts, but this does not mean that I am for
imperialism or fascism. Learn to read more carefully. Your problem is not
that Portugese is your primary language. It is rather that you prefer
typing to thinking.

> I read this and just can't believe my eyes. Are you backing this Louis
> (P)? The state aginst capitalism? This is better be a joke. The american

Louis P: Why do you suppose Ebert said, "As Lenin reminds us in the State
in Revolution..."? She is talking about a workers state, a dictatorship of
the proletariat in the Leninist sense. Furthermore, short of revolution
there is a necessity for revolutionaries to press for the bourgeois state
to supply social welfare legislation. Socialists are for the reforms that
Allende put forward when he was the prime minister of bourgeois Chile. We
oppose their removal by the Pinochet and neoliberal regimes that followed
Allende. Ebert's polemic was directed against people who pay no attention
to the state whatsoever in the name of feminism.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY:

The problem we are facing here is that the Buffalo group has whipped itself
into such a frenzy that it can not distinguish friend from foe. Months
before I heard Teresa Ebert speak, Doug Henwood was telling me that her book
on Ludic Feminism was making a big impact on him. This is the same Doug
Henwood who is closely associated with the Monthly Review/Ellen Meiksins
Wood current that the Buffalo group considers to be not Marxist or part of
the left.

They have put themselves into a position where everybody except their own
small ideological current is the enemy. They create artificial differences
between themselves and others who are clearly in sympathy with their own
ideas. They demand ideological conformity.

What's interesting is that they have appropriated the political culture of
"Marxism-Leninism" but grafted it onto the style and discourse of academic
Marxism. Lenin is invoked to support a body of ideas that demands
familiarity with a range of thinkers who are inaccessible to the average
person. Their original manifesto made a big point of attacking Zizek. Who
among us has read Zizek? I can assure these comrade graduate students that
if they were not within the academy, there would be very little motivation
to read Zizek. Trust me on this one.

What is sad is that Teresa Ebert deserves the widest audience. She has a lot
to say, even if her prose is filled with jargon and neologisms. Yet her
acolytes are giving people the impression that there must be something fishy
going on in the narrow academic circles of upstate New York. When people
start to associate the names of people like Steven Tumino with Teresa Ebert,
the unfortunate reaction might be the grating of teeth and raising of the
hair on the back of the neck. She deserves better.

Louis Proyect




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