From owner-marxism-international  Thu Apr 17 17:57:27 1997
Message-Id: <l03020900af7c3a41ac7e@[130.244.68.29]>
In-Reply-To: <199704171300.JAA295070@mime4.prodigy.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 23:59:59 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970@mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: M-I: PANIC LEFTIST:  FRAME TEN

Symbiotic Van-Guard Critique (SUNY-Sing-Sing)
	in solid-arid-ity with
>Red Theory Collective (SUNY-Albany)
>      in solidarity with
>Revolutionary Marxist Collective (SUNY-Buffalo)
>*******************************************************
>
>Critique is part of class struggle.  The language of
>critique must be complex enough, layered enough to be able to analyze
>the highly sophisticated, nuanced and elaborate constructs of ruling
>class practices and ideas.

As Russ intimated, wen I says "Sod the outside trouble-makers", yer puts
the boot in. Or: when in douBt, send the marines. I think I'll go and put
"Apocalypse" in the VCR and watch the cowboy killer do the ride of the
Valkyries again. "Highly sophisticated, nUanced and elaBorate constructs"!
Yes indeedy. Or "Robocop" for the scene where the 100% law and order
machine goes haywire in the boardroom. Or should I listen to the Watergate
tapes and check out the highly sophisticated Dick on ruling class practices
and ideas? Or the equally sophisticated but less scatalogical Mr Kissinger.
Or the nuanced strike-busting practised by Coca-Cola and other ruling class
practitioners in Central America and elsewhere. What was it Yeltsin said
the other day: the cruder, the richer?

What the Solid-arid-ity Herd is doing is mystifying ruling class practices
and ideas because it's in abject fear of the crude brutality of class
oppression. It's doing the dance of the petty-bourgeois pedants around the
altar of the word (that's *the* LoGos in your pretentious pretender patois)
-- first you find an enemy who sycophantically mystifies his master's
brutality by cloaking it in raiment of shimmering hue and elaborate cut (eg
Sorensen's eulogy on Kennedy), then you pretend the mystification is the
real problem and get into a lather combating it -- spurring the Rosinante
of your wit and erudition at windy windmills, while Sancho P looks on and
taps his forehead.

You lot remind me of the Double Maoists and various sectarian academic nuts
in Scandinavia in the late 60s. The Double Maoists congregated in summer
cottages and held purge sessions weeding out the comrades with Bourgeois
Eyes, while the academics went on endlessly about the subsumption of
everything and everyone under capital -- containment and repressive
tolerance gone mad. You forget if you ever knew that Marx was into actual
political work with workers (the League of Communists) at a very early
stage, and detested the narcissistic cloud-cuckoo land in which polemics
such as yours are located. You ought to be sent into the countryside to
shovel nightsoil for a year or two. Or these days it'd be into a free zone
to assemble components for six months or until you cracked up, whichever
came first.



>To demand that critique be "translated"
>into a commonsensical language is to systematically reduce its
>analytical ability:

The others have stomped this as thoroughly as it deserves.

>abuse and scatological shouting (Hugh Rodwell),

Love them long words! Let's have some evidence for the scatology eh? --
sensitive hearing you have by the way -- never worked in a noisy factory?


<Critique must remain theoretically thick

This is the truest thing in the Buffalo Bilge that's poured over us today
-- were you aware of the British meaning of "thick" -- like "thick as two
short planks"? or "Thick as pig shit (oops scatology but it's a proverbial
expression so that's all right) and twice as clarty"?


>and deploy a
>language resourceful enough to engage the most advanced discourses
>and practices of the bourgeoisie.

Now in Britain everyone would take these "discourses and practices" to
refer to the latest Tory sex scandal, or a new implement discovered up a
dead Tory MPs behind. What was it Tom Lehrer said: "Smut -- or as they say
in New York, sophisticated". Or the massed militarized deployment of the
police and troops in cops' clothing practised by Thatcher during the
miners' strike.


>the left not
>only is not able to offer a counter-practice, it is the laughing
>stock of all thoughtful people.

Ah, is this your real constituency -- *all thoughtful people*? Tell us in
any terms you like (or are capable of mustering) just who they are and how
you and we can relate to them, and just what they can do for human
emancipation.

Cos I think you'll be as stuck as the Stalinists are when asked to produce
their precious progressive national bourgeoisies.

As for the completely un-Marx-ian blanket characterization of list
subscribers as the net-left, Barkley did a good job on that.

By the way, my favourite proverb is the Sicilian "La porta si apre di
dentro" -- the door opens from the inside. Think about it if you want to
actually engage any of us in real dialogue.

I'm as glad as anybody for the contrast Christi-Ann provides to the spoilt
self-indulgence of the Buffa-lites. Chewed up and spit out by capital at
the age of 25 -- it's the same in the big Volvo factory in Gothenburg. Few
of the youngsters  employed last more than a couple of years before they're
literally broken by it. Or hospitals and care, where backs are ruined
before the age of 30. At Volvo, by the way, anyone over 28 is usually a
foreman or supervisor. It's a bit like jungle warfare. Ever so
sophisticated.

Can't help thinking about Eugene O'Neill when I see Christi-Ann's name
(Anna Christie backwards, same true grit). So let's follow the tragic
trajectory of our Beaufort-loos (how's *that* for scatology!) in their Long
Knight's Journey into Daze.

Cheers,

Hugh

PS Have any of you read any of Marx's polemics and invective? Have you seen
what he does to the names and humanity of people who irk him? Read "Herr
Vogt" or his stuff on Palmerston, and you'll get the idea...












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