what to do

[Nasreen Karim]

Well, I don't disagree with Yoshie's analysis of a disintegrating welfare
state, an increasingly centralized corporate state, or the fragmentation of
the U.S. left.  What I don't understand is how that analysis is incompatible
with an argument for a "decentering" of the Statecentric left politics.  We
can argue endlessly whether "decentering" is an unfortunate term or not, but
that semantic polemic ultimately does not interest me.  What I argued in my
brief post was for a radical attempt to take politics beyond an exclusive
focus on the state, not in an either-or (either state power or Foucauldian
micropolitics) but by producing organic/political connections between the
the agenda of state power and the politics of everyday life.

I am troubled by the fragmentation of the U.S. left as well. ( Although I
don't think a monolithic, totalizing left would have been a viable
alternative either. As I mentioned elsewhere, it would be a sad day for the
left if the only choice available to us is between Stalin and Lyotard.)  In
other words, unless I am missing some implicit subtext of her post, I share
Yoshi's concern with the current state with of the U.S. left.

By the way, I am perfectly aware that Gramsci did not use the term
"counterhegemony."  Marx didn't use the phrase "historical materialism"
either, but we don't seem to have any problem in using that signifier to
describe Marx's reading of history.  The very nature of Gramsci's text makes
itself more opentextured and plurivocal than almost any other classical
Marxist text that I can think of (having said that, let me also say that I
am sufficiently contaminated by deconstructionist method of reading to argue
that any text opens itself to plural, opentextured readings).  Even  more
conventional non-pomo type readers of Gramsci will agree that one can see an
interesting copresence/tension among radical Jacobinism (prison insulated
Gramsci from the full implications of Stalinism), left-Hegelianism, and
Sorelian syndicalism, among others.  However, there is enough democratizing
promises in Gramsci to make it  justifiable to appropriate him for a
democratic socialist politics.

Manjur Karim

----- Original Message -----
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2000 12:31 PM
Subject: Re: what to do


> Manjur Karim wrote to Carl Remick:
>
> >I don't see anything defeatist about the argument for reassessing the
Left's
> >traditional defense of government.  A certain "decentering" of the state
> >seems to be a legitimate task for the democratic socialist left.  This
> >decentering does not signify a departure from the question of state
power,
> >but extends the project of politics beyond the terrain of the state to
every
> >possible frontier of the social space. To me, this seems to be a valid
> >extension of the Gramscian project of counter-hegemony, the radical
> >construction of an alternative civil society.
>
> Except that in the case of the United States, most functions of government
> were already too decentralized to begin with (e.g., states' rights in
> service of racism).  And in the age of neoliberal attacks on social
> programs, the trend has been further down the path of devolution, of which
> the end to AFDC & the institution of TANF is a part.  On the other hand,
> economic management of capitalism has become further centralized (from
> legislatures to central banks, from Keynesian states to international
> institutions, from poor nations to rich ones, etc.).  The federal
> government has meanwhile acquired further policing power (here & abroad),
> blurring the distinctions between the military, the national guards, and
> the police, fighting the wars on drug, crime, and terrorism.  And while
> social programs have become un- or underfunded, citizens have been
hectored
> by slimy politicos, officious journalists, & naive academics to become
more
> civic-minded, donate more to charities, volunteer more often, etc.
>
> At the same time, the U.S. Left (broadly defined) has been quite
> decentralized as well: a flowering of micropolitics of all varieties (and
> micro-politicking _within_ micro-orgs, too -- yikes!), but neither a
> coherent program nor real political power.  Many of them had already
> adapted themselves to the post-Carter status quo ("Habitat for
> Inhumanity"!), moving to the right, even without Ehrenreich's advice.
>
> Given this reality, I doubt that further "decentering" is the way to go.
>
> BTW, Gramsci, I don't think, was adovocating an oppositional project of
> "counter-hegemony" (first of all, I don't recall Gramsci using the term
> "counter-hegemony").  He was, even in prison, thinking of how the
Communist
> Party (the "Modern Prince") might become an organizing instrument
> (politically & culturally) for communist hegemony.
>
> Yoshie
>
>