michael yates
Steve Perry wrote:
> gosh, that's funny--while i agree with you entirely about
> the joyless, unimaginative prose that clogs most left
> publications, i'm inclined to blame it on an excess of
> ironic sensibility (and its longtime companion, paralytic
> cynicism) in the livelier minds round journalism and
> academe. they've essentially ceded "serious" writing to
> the dullards.
>
> but then you're a fan of ana marie cox, aren't you?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 12:12 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: irony, etc.
>
> Michael Yates wrote:
>
> >Now I was there to explain the style to those who did not understand it
> >and to explain that MR was a radical magazine and that Yurick was
> >appalled by the drug business. But the writer does not know who will
> >read what he or she has written or in what context or with what level of
> >schooling and sophistication. So does the radical writer, one who
> >desires a transformation of the social order, have any special
> >obligation to write in manner which would make it difficult to be
> >misunderstood, especially about a subject critical to those actually
> >living in the ghettoes? Some students said yes and some no. What do you
> >think?
>
> One of the things that makes so much left writing so dismal is the
> fear of wit or irony or style, as if beauty and pleasure were somehow
> suspect. (I could name names, but I won't.) Instead, we get the
> endless recitation of pieties in a grating moralizing-exhortatory
> tone, or some affectless just-the-facts empiricism. In one of the
> first issues of Z magazine, there was an exchange between George
> Scialabba and Michael Albert, in which Albert claimed that
> Scialabba's preference for style was really an attempt to speak to
> and seduce elites.
>
> I find it very hard to believe that prison inmates would be dead to
> irony. Popular culture and popular speech are full of it.
>
> I also find it hard to believe that any Marxist, or anyone who
> admires Marx, would be suspicious of irony. Robert Paul Wolff wrote a
> whole book (a small one, but a book nonetheless) on Marx's irony.
> Speaking of Marx, irony, and crime, there's this from the Addenda to
> Theories of Surplus Value:
>
> >[11. APOLOGIST CONCEPTION OF THE PRODUCTIVITY OF ALL
> >PROFESSIONS]
> >
> >V 182 A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a clergyman
> >sermons, a professor compendia and so on. A criminal produces
> >crimes. If we look a little closer at the connection between this
> >latter branch of production and society as a whole, we shall rid
> >ourselves of many prejudices. The criminal produces not only crimes
> >but also criminal law, and with this also the professor who gives
> >lectures on criminal law and in addition to this the inevitable
> >compendium in which this same professor throws his lectures onto the
> >general market as "commodities". This brings with it augmentation of
> >national wealth, quite apart from the personal enjoyment which - as
> >a competent witness, Herr Professor Roscher, [tells] us - the
> >manuscript of the compendium brings to its originator himself.
> >
> >The criminal moreover produces the whole of the police and of
> >criminal justice, constables, judges, hangmen, juries, etc.; and all
> >these different lines of business, which form equally many
> >categories of the social division of labour, develop different
> >capacities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of
> >satisfying them. Torture alone has given rise to the most ingenious
> >mechanical inventions, and employed many honourable craftsmen in the
> >production of its instruments.
> >
> >The criminal produces an impression, partly moral and partly tragic,
> >as the case may be, and in this way renders a "service" by arousing
> >the moral and aesthetic feelings of the public. He produces not only
> >compendia on Criminal Law, not only penal codes and along with them
> >legislators in this field, but also art, belles-lettres, novels, and
> >even tragedies, as not only Müllner's Schuld and Schiller's Räuber
> >show, but also [Sophocles'] Oedipus and [Shakespeare's] Richard the
> >Third. The criminal breaks the monotony and everyday security of
> >bourgeois life. In this way he keeps it from stagnation, and gives
> >rise to that uneasy tension and agility without which even the spur
> >of competition would get blunted. Thus he gives a stimulus to the
> >productive forces. While crime takes a part of the superfluous
> >population off the labour market and thus reduces competition among
> >the labourers - up to a certain point preventing wages from falling
> >below the minimum - the struggle against crime absorbs another part
> >of this population. Thus the criminal comes in as one of those
> >natural "counterweights" which bring about a correct balance and
> >open up a whole perspective of "useful" occupations.
> >
> >The effects of the criminal on the development of productive power
> >can be shown in detail. Would locks ever have reached their present
> >degree of excellence had there been no thieves? Would the making of
> >bank-notes have reached its present perfection had there been no
> >forgers? Would the microscope have found its way into the sphere of
> >ordinary commerce (see Babbage) but for trading frauds? Doesn't
> >practical chemistry owe just as much to adulteration of commodities
> >and the efforts to show it up as to the honest zeal for production?
> >Crime, through its constantly new methods of attack on property,
> >constantly calls into being now methods of defence, and so is as
> >productive as strikes for the invention of machines. And it one
> >leaves the sphere of private crime: would the world-market ever have
> >Como into being but for national crime? Indeed, would even the
> >nations have arisen? And hasn't the Tree of Sin been at the same
> >time the Tree of Knowledge ever since the time of Adam?
> >
> >In his Fable of the Bees (1705) Mandeville had already shown that
> >every possible kind of occupation is productive, and had given
> >expression to the line of this whole argument:
> >
> >"That what we call Evil in this World, Moral as well as Natural, is
> >the grand Principle that makes us Sociable Creatures, the solid
> >Basis the Life and Support of all Trades and Employments without
> >exception [...] there we must look for the true origin of all Arts
> >and Sciences; and [...] the moment, Evil ceases, the Society must be
> >spoil'd if not totally dissolve'd"* [2nd edition. London, 1723, p.
> >428].
> >
> >Only Mandeville was of course infinitely bolder and more honest than
> >the philistine apologists of bourgeois society.