From owner-marxism-international
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:19:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Brian M Ganter <bmganter@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: PANIC LEFT: TAKE THREE
PANIC LEFT: TAKE
THREE
Carrol Cox's most recent text, we believe, displays with a great
deal of clarity the place of the panic left and its fascist
practices in “history." “History” it should be
recalled is that which Cox insists cannot
and will not be grasped by the “dilettantes” of Red
Critique. “History” (of the academy, of the M-I list,
of ideology, etc. and all of the other terms invoked ad infinitum
in her short panicky narrative) is simply beyond the ken of the
RMC/Buffalo, Brad Rothrock and all others in solidarity with their
positions.... Although we will deal with more general issues and
(yes) the history of the panic left below, we want to deal briefly
first with Cox's narrative, a familiar story of the
petty-bourgeois in a time of crisis: s/he reasserts the same
reactionary practices under the cover of the new
“reasonability” and “reinvention” of the
center. One of the main moves of her text then is separating the
“serious” left from the “cuckoo” left
(Proyect/Dumain) in order to reconstruct the
“reasonable” center.... Of course this centrist
trajectory of reinvention and renewal is simultaneously being
deployed by others to cover over their evident bankruptcy as
radicals and theorists—“cuckoos” and
“serious” alike (see below). After the earthquake of
Red Critique this is the very historical “alliance”
that the Coxs, the Proyects, the Henwoods and their supporters do
not want to hear read back to them. Thus the rear guard of this
group — Malecki — is now also attempting to
“reinvent” history by his feigned amnesia
["perhaps I have missed something” he bursts
out]—he, like them, caught up in the nightmare of history
just wants to “go back” (renew and reinvent) and in
doing so start all over again contradiction-free! We do not
believe that jokes, grammar lessons, “deep thinking”
or “allusions” to the “deep” left
experience (those untheorizable “intensities” that
have always been put forward as the source of wisdom and
authenticity in the fascist imaginary) should dictate the terms of
this space or for that matter what passes for historical analysis
(Cox's “serious” text, Proyect's cynicism, Malecki's
amnesia...). We have worked to make this space a critique-al space
for sustained materialist analysis of capitalism, particularly of
emerging forms of fascism (see Zavarzadeh's analysis of postmodern
fascism in our last post for instance, PANIC LEFT, Pt. 2). The
panicky left's implication — however marked by retreats and
flutters of panic — in the reemergence of fascism in the
moment of late capitalism is our focus here.
I. Allusion and the “Deep” Left Experience
Cox's text ("Playing Word Games") calls above all for
attention to “history” (we admit first off that the
fleeting traces of concepts in her texts set her apart from her
accomplices — but not far enough apart). The violent
underside of Cox's distorted version of “history” is
that those who don't get it simply need to “shut up”;
they are in her words in “no position
to... understand” even the simplest goings on in the world
today. Cox's pseudo-"history” in short, is one of the
fascist devices deployed by the panicky leftist for shutting up
some “presumptuous” revolutionaries. Take her rebuttal
to Mr. Rothrock that one cannot even speak of
“ideology” in polemics without “confronting its
varied history”. How then, we want to know, can she mark
Mr. Rothrock's deployment of ideology as mistaken and wrong? How
can Cox after first declaring the need for more analysis before
one (Rothrock) speaks at all, then proceed to announce what
“ideology” is and is “not” ("Ideas
are precisely what an ideology is NOT” she says)? These are
not trivial details of “clarity” and
“style” but are part of the alibis through which the
left as a whole marginalizes critiques of its complicity with
capitalism: through its intellectual emptiness it performs the
rule of ignorance and defends the poverty of left philosophy at
large. Cox's deployment of something she calls
“history” finally then shows the complicity of the
“serious” left and the “cuckoo” left. It
is no surprise that Cox's violent silencing of Red Critique with
ALLUSIONS, EMPTY CONCEPTS ("history") and SPECTRAL ANALYSES
(which are alluded to again and again but never make an
appearance) echoes that of the very “cuckoos” she
calls on to clean up their act (Proyect/Dumain) — so that
they can all stand tall and proud in the absolutely new and
improved “center”. Cox echoes Proyect who has mocked
and aggressively opposed Red Critique for several days (at least)
and only now finally stops to wonder what its really all about
after all! Instead of cynicisms he now writes with all seriousness
“tell us exactly what you have to offer"! What has he been
opposing up until now??! Cox also embraces the postepistemological
strategies of Dumain/Crouch: Cox like Dumain only has to
“allude” (no presentation of argument is
necessary). Dumain embraces “allusion” as a form of
pseudo-argument, and in doing so reifies experience (the fascist
mysticism of the self-evident experience) as the authentic source
of knowing. He thus only needs to ALLUDE to his definitive study
in the register of the Crouch/Dumain bureaucrat “I'm not
going to recapitulate the detailed study I gave to the
[Alternative Orange] just for your benefit"!. Like Proyect then,
Cox shuts up those she doesn't comprehend and like Dumain she
points and alludes to her absent arguments and spectral analyses
(ultimately her “deep experience” as a person of the
left) as the justification for her fascist attacks and
silencings. Why shouldn't Dumain post his “detailed study"?
WHY is Cox “suddenly” running out of time and space
when it comes time for analysis ("Perhaps another time”
she writes). WHY NOT ANALYZE OUR CRITIQUES HERE AND NOW? What is
this space for if not analysis and theorization for social change?
With Cox's/Proyect's/Dumain's endless fetishization of the
“deep” left “experience” this is perhaps
the point to move on to...
II. The Death of Intelligence in the Left Mafia
We will turn now to the history of the panic left — a
tumultuous series of reversals and shufflings that have attempted
to construct some semblance of radical thinking. In doing so this
left falls back on the clichés of history. The panic left
has been using “Stalinism” to represent its foes as a
“gang” of uniform thinkers and itself as independent
thinkers who act individually, write individually,.... This use of
“Stalinism” — as we have already
indicated—is simply a cover up for an underlying fascism. It
is mark of this fascism that the panic left on the net is now
acting like a mafia: defending each other (C. Cox annotating Louis
Proyect, Henwood's coming to Cox's rescue by announcing that STYLE
is the lynch pin of ideological struggle... Henwood and Scott
McLemee rushing to rescue what is left of
Dumain/Proyect... Proyect's glee towards Andy Austin: “He's
one of us!"... Dumain's defense of Henwood and Proyect and his
summing it all up in the networking slogan of the new left mafia:
"socialism is who you know"). The members of the
“reinvented” center—the left mafia—we
are finding are getting to “know” one another better
and better.
The primary issue that unites this mafia is its fear and loathing
of intellectuals. Scott McLemee after some delay and lingering in
the editor's lounge of LINGUA FRANCA finally confesses to his
disgust of intelligence. He, however, like all those who get
nervous around smart guys, cloaks his fear in jokes ("gas
bag”... “red scientology” etc.). The joke is the
last resort of the embarrassed petty bourgeois who has nothing to
utter but a nervous laughter. And this is, of course, typical of
the panic left (e.g. Louis Proyect's laughter on being told that
he has to READ Engels... he does not get the point but laughs at
the suggestion anyway... it at least covers his ignorance... ).
It is scandalous that in the last several days during which
members of the mafia have all announced and re-announced
their “opinions” on our text, none (not a single one)
has actually ANALYZED it — not one has discussed/critiqued
its ideas... all we have is “opinion” (as a device for
protecting the holder of opinion from thinking) and the shield of
“style” — to divert attention from dense
theoretical issues to matters of rhetoric. This is the scandal of
this mafia left; it is so intellectually insecure that does not
know what to think of what it reads. Until her last post, Carrol
Cox was convinced that TRANSFORMATION was quite a
“good” thing... now she is not so sure anymore. Soon,
undoubtedly Henwood will change his view on LUDIC FEMINISM, Cox
will perform (as all performative leftists do) an interpretive
acrobatics and change her mind about the book. This is simply what
happens when the panic left becomes the last bastion of
anti-intellectualism. Thus its relentless attack on the
academy—which is in a sense another mark of its
self-loathing and insecurity in the presence of ideas. It is
a symptom of this embarrassment and the intellectual insecurity
and impatience with complex thinking that Louis Proyect declares:
“do the rest of us a favor and tell us exactly what you have
to offer." Of course, the very same person who says HOW you say
(STYLE) is the most important element in communication, now has
changed his mind — he no longer cares about HOW its
said—he wants to know the WHAT of it — like all petty
bourgeois readers he has no time to think through things (like Cox
he cannot “afford” the time — “Perhaps
some other time"). He wants a “summary” — a
READERS DIGEST OF THE LEFT... well, we are not writing for READERS
DIGEST... for paraphrase and summaries read Scott McLemee's
luminous texts in LINGUA FRANCA...
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