> It's pretty weird. As even LNP3 conceded, the stuff I write about
> hasn't changed much, nor has my prose style. I still care about
> economic and social polarization, exploitation, the despoilment of
> the natural environment, etc. etc. - all those issues of "real"
> politics that the enemies of the "merely cultural" disparage.
> Apparently any sign of interest in the psyche (a distraction that
> leads us from the struggle, even if many people don't perceive any
> need to struggle), or gendering (aside from what Carrol characterized
> as the exploitation of women, as if that were a self-evident,
> straighforward field of analysis), or sexuality (nothing material
> about that, of course!), or discourse (plain speech, unambiguous
> slogans, that's what we need! forget Marx's interest in Hegel) makes
> you a wanking dupe of the bourgeoisie.
Not at all. But the political tradition I come from is instructive of the problem. Our group had various names at various times, but was principally defined by the leadership of C.L.R. James, whose interest and elegant writing on all these concerns of philosophy, literature, culture, personality, sports, and so forth, and their importance to Marxism, is well known. No one in the 20th century did as much as James to demonstrate the importance of Hegel to Marx and to Marxism. The trouble is, we spawned a large constituency of mostly academic admirers (Paul Buhle is one), who enthusiastically propagated those aspects of James's legacy while excising the revolutionary heart that made them all matter. Selma James, another of our leaders, pioneered a Marxist understanding of women's oppression and independent women's struggle in the 1950s, which eventually made her views a "paradigm" for academics in the 1980s, but shorn of its proletarian focus.
And that is the central problem with LBO-talk dialogues. By a wide majority, they are preoccupied with scholastic minutia (Ken M is the worst example, but Doug's infatuation with Zizek's diversions are, if less impudent, nevertheless more effective in their misdirection), while being contemptuous of actual mass struggles that raise a direct challenge to bourgeois authority (excepting when Doug is personally on the scene), and particularly avoid developing the most essential political/philosophical/dialectical element of all, the importance of dual power in the transformation of mass consciousness.
For example, the political limit of union struggles, as almost everyone agrees, is their assigned role to establish the terms of exploitation, but not to abolish it. How then do Marxists propose to advance beyond that? Our first answer is, by developing strategies of struggle in which ordinary people exercise actual power over their conditions of life, which we regard as fundamental, in contrast to statistical evidence of alleged improvements in income, consumption, longevity, etc. Our second answer is, by developing strategies of struggle that impart the morality of cooperation and solidarity in contrast to individualism and self-interest. The other discussions are important to Marxists to the extent they contribute insights to these projects, not as independent subjects. But these are precisely the issues that are regarded here as beneath contempt, particularly when someone tries to sweep away the fog of obscurantism that the various academic celebrities impose, in order to avoid the requirement of actually becoming involved in struggles for power.
I agree that for people who reject concerns with a transfer of power to oppressed and exploited people, and who see no value in solidarity, elements of Leninism are anachronistic, and the dialectics of esthetics and sexuality are probably more enticing. But to caricature those of us who remain committed to a revolutionary transformation of society as cultural boors is a bum rap.
We can read here literally hundreds of posts on the nuances of sexual desire and satisfaction, which are taken oh so seriously by our scholars, but not one serious discussion of, let alone a declaration of support for, the brave Austrians who have battled selflessly on behalf of immigrants whom their bourgeoisie and their country's fascists have terrorized. This is Marxism? Bullshit. It is narcissism, no matter how much windy dialectical mystification is appended to it.
Ken Lawrence